Speaking + Workshops

What makes something music? This session uses listening, discussion, and philosophical approaches to ask whether music is defined by sound, intention, culture, notation, context, or the act of listening itself. Students encounter silence, noise, environmental sound, found sound, and experimental composition, then develop and defend their own working definitions of music.

Creative work rarely begins with a fully formed idea. This session examines how artists, musicians, writers, designers, and media-makers develop work through experimentation, constraints, failed attempts, research, critique, documentation, and revision. Workshop versions include a short making exercise that lets students test these ideas through practice rather than only discussing them.

How can sound document a place? Drawing on my work in sonic cartography, this session explores field recording, environmental listening, memory, mapping, and the transformation of recorded environments into artistic material. Examples can include Lake Hebron, ME, travel-based works, specialty microphones, and sound-map projects. Workshop versions can include a short listening walk or field-recording exercise.

What happened when composers began questioning pitch, rhythm, notation, instruments, performance, and even the definition of the musical work? This session traces a practical path through modernism, experimentalism, indeterminacy, extended technique, electronics, graphic notation, sound art, and contemporary practice. It is designed as an accessible way into twentieth- and twenty-first-century music rather than a conventional history lecture.

A beginner-friendly introduction to rhythm, pitch, melody, harmony, texture, and form that starts with listening rather than notation. Students identify patterns in recordings, build rhythms, compare textures, and connect what they already hear intuitively to basic theoretical ideas. No previous music-reading experience is required.

How can an unusual sound become a playable musical idea? This specialist session introduces extended instrumental techniques, unconventional notation, graphic scores, electronics, and the collaborative relationship between composer and performer. Students can examine examples from my own work and develop a miniature score or notation system of their own.

If a machine can generate material, where does the artist’s work begin? This session examines authorship, originality, taste, judgement, automation, copyright, datasets, creative labour, and the role of AI within contemporary artistic and media practice. The emphasis is not on demonstrating tools, but on helping students think critically about what creative decision-making means when generation itself can be automated.

A practical workshop on moving a creative project from an initial idea toward a finished and presentable work. Students consider research, reference gathering, experimentation, process documentation, critique, revision, writing about their work, and professional presentation. The session is useful for students developing portfolios, major projects, exhibitions, performances, or other sustained creative work.