The Rockheim Museum
The Music
Technology Days (Musikkteknologidagene) is an annual Norwegian academic
conference. In October 2011 it took place in Trondheim’s own museum of rock,
Rockheim. It was hosted by the Department of Music at
The Norwegian University for Science and Technology (NTNU). NTNU has over the last decade established itself with a very
solid Music Technology stream both for under-graduate and post-graduate students.
The interactive wall of Norwegian recorded music
At Rockheim you can test your DJ'ing skills
Yours truly behind an old SSL mixer from Fagerborg Studio in Oslo
The Music
Technology Days is predominantly held in Norwegian language, but receives talks
in both English and the other Scandinavian languages close to Norwegian. In
addition to Norwegian papers and projects, the 2011 conference also saw a
collection of presenters from Sweden, Germany and the UK and at least one
visitor from Iceland. The evenings had a number of concerts by students and
staff from NTNU and there was plenty of time for mingling and looking around
the museum.
Below you’ll find a
complete list of the presentations that took place. Most Norwegian and Swedish
project titles have been translated for the purpose of this post, but
originally there were a mix of English, Swedish and Norwegian project titles.
Titles translated from Swedish are marked [S] and translations from Norwegian
are marked [N], this to clarify when the titles are my translations of the
authors’ works. I have written a few lines about the works I took most note of
and have provided as many links as possible (some of the links will inevitably
be in Scandinavian languages). These are my personal comments, so for further
information about the presentations I encourage you to contact the respective
presenters or look up their works.
You can
find the official programme for the event here. It is in Norwegian, but has all
the links provided by the university in it.
Svein Berge
has collaborated with Natasha Barrett on developments in higher order Ambisonics. I’m afraid some of the technicality
behind what they do is beyond me, but one of the ideas is to split up auditive
happenings into different frequency bands and make Ambisonics process them more
like we know the human psyche does. The system sounded very natural when
demonstrated. As I am more likely to be on the user side than the developer
side I found it interesting how you can pan around in a sound-sphere by using a
simple interface. The results sounded incredibly convincing and if you use
headphones it can also be used with a head-tracker.
Håkon
Kvidal and Sigrid Jordal Havre both are or have been undertaking research in
Norwegian schools on the use of modern music technology:
Håkon
Kvidal of the Norwegian Academy of Music has years of experience in working
with music technology in education. He has also contributed with research and
texts on a national level for a long time. Currently he is conducting a study
where he uses iPads with a selection of apps to deliver a music module. The
apps are easy to get into and create an entry point for digital literacy in
music and sound, but have little in common with a traditional musicological
approach. It will be an interesting space to watch since the field is totally
new.
Sigrid
Jordal Havre has undertaken a research project where students could use
computer technology to jam with each other or play music on their own. The
software used was jam2jam and it allows you to create a
musical output by using a selection of software instruments. The software
allows you to work as a group and rearrange other people’s choices or grab
their instruments. In the first sessions this lead to a lot of digital fighting
between the students (everyone tried to grab the drum-kit etc.) As the project
progressed this gradually changed and the students became increasingly
interested in developing a product together. All sessions were recorded on
video and have been meticulously dissected.
Maja Bugge
has created a project at a public library where children can come and take part
in a show where all the audio is presented on headphones. The stage is the whole
library where they are lead around by the narration and various actors. The
project comprises narration and sound on the headphones, and dancers and actors
at the premises. The story is created as a mystery and the children are in a
way taking part in solving it as they explore the whole space of the library in
the hunt to solve the riddle. Children were used as “consultants” in the making
of the experience.
Gary Bromham ‘Man in the machine or machine in the man – the ever changing role of
music technology in popular music culture” (Keynote, day 2)
A grand
tour in the history of modern music production covering topics like technology
developments, recording media, the sound of different types of equipment, the
loudness war and much more. With Bromham’s extensive background from music
production this was probably one of the most exciting talks of the whole event,
but one that would be hard to sum up in just a few lines…
Musicologist
Gunnar Ternhag points to three main spreaders of music production terms in
education: Software, books and lecturers. He has studied the quantity of terms
are in use in a number of music production softwares and he also argues that
these softwares are often more effective in establishing lingual terms than the
lecturers are. Books, which are often written in English present foreign terms
that you may or may not wish to hold on to. Ternhag presented his method of
testing and choosing effective expressions to communicate the desired
knowledge.
Ternhag
runs a well-recognized programme in Sound and Music Production (For English, click here)
at the Dalarna College in Sweden. There is currently a new book out that he has
authored together with a number of Scandinavian music production academics.
It’s called “På tal om musikproduktion,” that from Swedish translates into “On music
production,” or more literally “Talking about music production.” It is a
collection of articles that touches on a variety of topics in music production.
Andrew
Scott has done a study of how people traditionally have learned a craft and how
various philosophers from antiquity till today comments on different modes of
learning. Scott takes a particular interest in apprenticeships and argues strongly
for a practical real world approach to learning.
Professor
Brantsegg and his team have together with an Irish and two other Norwegian
institutes developed a system for web-based studies to train and test students’
knowledge of DSPs through listening. The system is
used as a part of NTNUs regular DSP module, but it can also be delivered as an
online module. For the regular students the concepts are still taught in the
classroom, but with the additional web-based training they’ll have more opportunity
to dive into the world of sound in their personal study time. The system is
also automatically correcting your performance. If you continuously mix up
chorus and flanger it will suggest you spend more time studying the sound of
those processes. This feedback mechanism multiplies the time the lecturers put
into each student.
Arne
Nordheim was one of the great 20th century profiles in Norwegian
arts music. Ola Nordal is currently writing his PhD thesis on Nordheim at NTNU
in Trondheim. In his talk Nordal examined one of Nordheim’s works; how and why
it was created and it’s public reception and legacy. The work was created to
play continuously from a sculpture called ‘Ode to the Light,’ or ‘Ode til Lyset’ in Norwegian from 1968. You can read Ola Nordal’s blogpost from the
conference here.
Tone Åse and Andreas Bergsland ‘Voice meetings – a meeting between performer and researcher’ [N]
Gerhard Steinke ‘The Subharchord story’
Tone Åse and Andreas Bergsland ‘Voice meetings – a meeting between performer and researcher’ [N]
Musician
Tone Åse and researcher Andreas Bergsland, both of NTNU in Trondheim, has
teamed up to examine the audience response from Åse’s vocal/ electro acoustic
performances. Tone Åse was one of the concert-holders the night before, so most
delegates had already seen her perform before the talk. Their research showed
that what you aim to communicate is not always what comes through, and they
looked at ways to develop her performance to better communicate with audiences.
Seen from my more commercial angle, I think it is a brave move of Åse to
develop her art along with the audience-feedback provided through the research.
Åse and Bergsland have some valuable lessons to teach us in the area where new
and groundbreaking arts meet an audience.
Gerhard Steinke ‘The Subharchord story’
Steinke
joined the East-German radio in 1947 as a sound-engineer and was one of the
developers behind the Subharchord instrument. His presentation was a very entertaining and in-depth history of
the instrument and the state of the current surviving instruments. –One of
which (albeit currently not in playable condition) is placed at the Ringve Museum of music and musical instruments in Trondheim, where he travelled off to after the conference. Mr. Stenike will
be releasing a paper on the Subharchord in German at some point during 2012.
Hadron is a synthesizer plug-in created by Brandtsegg and his team at
NTNU. It performs several types of granular synthesis and has an easy to use
interface that allows you to morph between these types of synthesis. Hadron has
the capacity to be a useful tool both for commercial music producers and
experimental sound-artist looking to create new sounds.
Natasha Barrett (Keynote, day 1): "Ambisonics, spatial ontology and invisible
music"
Simon Emmerson (Keynote, day 3): "What is live about electronic music?"
Notto J W Thelle: "Making Sensors Make Sense: challenges in the development of
digital musical instruments"
Mats Claesson: "The Kjell-Tore
project"
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