The purpose of this teacher action research project was to develop and field- test a music composition curriculum for middle school band and assess whether the curriculum was adequate for overcoming the obstacles of teacher-training, resources, time and large group composition. Three phases were completed: 1) an exploratory pilot phase (lesson plan and curriculum development); 2) a second pilot phase (lessons tested); and 3) a final phase (five band directors taught and assessed the curriculum). Research questions focused on the extent to which middle school band directors and their students were able to successfully follow the proposed curriculum. Five middle school band directors and their bands representing diverse ethnic and socio economic backgrounds were chosen to participate in the project as well as two composers who reviewed the curriculum and provided feed back. Each of the participating directors taught the proposed curriculum involving ten lessons over approximately two to five weeks. Initial data collection included the initial gathering of lesson plans and the development of a composition curriculum from journals, dissertations, living composers, audio and video materials, and two pilot projects with three different middle school bands. Additional data collection included field observations and notes, interviews with band directors and composers, and a final focus group interview with participating band directors. The final results will help contribute to the development of basic resources and strategies for music teachers to use to teach composition to middle school students and for college music education professors to teach pre-service public school music educators on incorporating composition into their classroom teaching.

Communication is the cornerstone of co-production, and the director is the cornerstone that brings together the different parts of communication. Basically, communication is "the process of exchanging information between people through a common system of symbols, signs or behaviour". A director does everything in a form of communication during a production. Whether it's blocking, scheduling rehearsals or calling a show; communication is as "vital to stage management as memorisation is to artistic skill". Communication allows the production director to effectively manage the production. Since communication is a broad topic, this study will first consider the two forms of communication that the production director uses, how these skills can be applied to very specific communication aspects and what these benefits look like. This study examines the works on the development of choreographic art, the development of personality within a dance group, and the feature...

This submission investigates computer-aided performances in which musicians receive auditory information via earphones. The interaction between audio-scores (musical material sent through earpieces to performers) and visual input (musical notation) changes the traditional relationship between composer, conductor, performer and listener. Audio-scores intend to complement and transform the printed score. They enhance the accuracy of execution of difficult rhythmic or pitch relationships, increase the specificity of instructions given to the performer (for example, in the domain of timbre), and may elicit original and spontaneous responses from the performer in real-time. The present research is inspired by, and positions itself within traditional European notational practices. Through a reflection on the nature and function of notation in a variety of repertoires, this study examines how my own compositional research – and its reliance on audio-scores — relates to and differs from the models considered. Following the realisation of pieces investigating complex rhythms and the use of recorded samples as borrowed/found material, results have proven to be highly effective with a group of vocalists, with works in which audio-scores facilitated the precise realisation of microtonal material. Audio-scores also proved particularly useful in site-specific ‘immersive’ concerts/installations. In these settings, audio-scores mitigate challenges associated with placing musicians at an unusual distances from one another, e.g. around the audience. This submission constitutes an original contribution to knowledge in the field of computer-aided performance in that it demonstrates how musical notation and current ubiquitous audio technologies may be used in tandem in the conception and performance of new works. Recent findings include a Web application currently being developed at IRCAM. The application is based on a local server and allows the synchronous delivery of audio/screen-scores via the browser of the performers’ smarphones, tablets, or computers. Keywords: audio-score, click track, composition, computer-aided performance, earpiece, microtonality, music, notation, performance, screen-score, server, voice.

It is common to learn to play a musical instrument through regular one-to-one lessons with an experienced musician. Intuition suggests that the principal activity during these meetings would be performance, but conversation is also important; not just as a way to analyse the student’s musical contributions, but to organise them within the lesson flow. Activities are managed conversationally, discussion interleaved with performance, resulting in a rich multi-modal social interaction between student and tutor. This impacts the way that the interaction changes when a lesson is carried out remotely, mediated by video technology. This thesis presents a detailed study of same-room and video-mediated lesson interaction. Conventional conversation analysis transcription notation was augmented specifically to represent the musical sounds produced alongside dialogue. Analysis of the shape and timing of the musical contributions shows that they are managed in ways that are analogous to turns at talk. For example, duration and timing of the tutor’s utterances, in relation to the student’s musical phrasing, determines whether they are interpreted as encouraging backchannels, or a bid for the floor to provide immediate feedback. Non-verbal behaviours such as gaze and changes in posture are used to encourage a student to self-repair and continue with their performance, despite mutual acknowledgement that a problem has occurred. Fine-grained analysis of video-mediated lessons reveals what happens when this organisation is disturbed. The change in medium reduces the availability of non-verbal cues, and the disruption caused by latency has divergent effects on the sequence and placement of turns, which are experienced differently at each location. Students find it more difficult to anticipate tutor interruption of their performance or correctly identify backchannels, leading to miscommunication. Recommendations are made for technology which might better support student-tutor interaction during remote music lessons.