{"id":2090,"date":"2017-02-24T13:21:43","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T13:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/?p=2090"},"modified":"2017-02-24T13:24:21","modified_gmt":"2017-02-24T13:24:21","slug":"bath-open-score-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/2017\/02\/24\/bath-open-score-lab\/","title":{"rendered":"Bath Open Score Lab"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Postgraduate composition\u00a0student Alex Glyde-Bates tells about a recent visit to the\u00a0Open Score Lab at Bath Spa University<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On the 1<sup>st<\/sup> February, myself, Ben Jameson and our supervisor, Dr Matthew Shlomowitz made our way to Bath Spa University. We had been kindly invited to talk about our work at a new research study group called Open Score Lab based at the University. The Open Score Lab, organised by Professor James Saunders is a monthly forum for composers and practitioners to talk about their work with a particular focus on new approaches to scoring, interdisciplinary performance practices and collaborative working methods. The purpose of the Lab is\u00a0to develop new approaches to scoring, and consequently to develop new modes of music making.<\/p>\n<p>We set off from Southampton early in the morning and made our way across the south west, enjoying the rural scenery. Arriving early for our talk, we took in some of Bath\u2019s impressive Georgian architecture before getting a taxi to the University\u2019s Newton Campus. Situated quite a way from the city centre, the Music Department is nestled on the side of one of Wiltshire\u2019s many rolling hillsides. After taking in the campus\u2019s pastoral vistas, the three of us found the room in which where we were due to be speaking. There we were greeted by James, who helped us get set up ready for our presentations.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"660\" height=\"372\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dusyorY_Plc?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-GB&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Up first, I presented on one of the first pieces I wrote as part of my PhD as part of a collaboration with a group of Brussel\u2019s based performers, my <em>One and Four Canons<\/em>. My talk covered how in the piece I had engaged with, and notated, interdisciplinary performance practices to de-familiarise the well-known <em>Kanon in D<\/em> by Johannes Pachelbel. My talk concluded with a discussion of a new piece I have just completed for Harpsichordist Jane Chapman, due to be premi\u00e8red in a lunchtime concert at the Turner Sims on Friday 10<sup>th<\/sup> March. <em>Fugue-State<\/em>, which is the final work completed as part of my PhD Studies, marks a return to many of the issues I investigated in <em>One and Four Canons<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"660\" height=\"372\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zf_ReRQ4Hiw?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-GB&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Ben\u2019s talk concerned his 2015 work for two performers, entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/2016\/05\/05\/composition-phd-partnering\/\"><em>Construction in Metal<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em> Ben\u2019s presentation \u2014 subtitled \u2018Authenticity, Performance and \u2018Virtual\u2019 Guitars\u2019 \u2014 discussed how his piece explores and questions the cultural connotations of the guitar and its virtual counterpart in the commercially successful computer game, <em>Guitar Hero<\/em>. The piece, for guitarist and performer playing a <em>Guitar Hero <\/em>game controller, takes highly stereotypical physical and musical gestures from Rock music and assembles them in ways that problematizes the conventions of authenticity and agency in both the game and the conventional performance practice of the instrument. Ben\u2019s talk finished with a brief discussion of how the race and gender of the performers of <em>Construction in Metal<\/em> could affect the interpretation of the work given the highly charged cultural connotations of the electric guitar.<\/p>\n<p>The day finished with Dr Shlomowitz\u2019s presentation, entitled <em>Listening Out<\/em>, which explored musical referentiality in some of his recent work, as well as more widely. Beginning with a brief introduction to some of the more contemporary twists in the age-old discussion of musical representation and musical abstraction, Dr Shlomowitz\u2019s paper outlined what he called \u2018listening in\u2019 \u2014 a concentration on the materiality of musical sound \u2014 and \u2018listening out\u2019 \u2014 a type of listening that focuses on musical material\u2019s relationship to the wider world. He then went on to outline how is own work relates, and negotiates between, these two archetypal poles. Playing two movements from his recent <em>Popular Contexts, Volume 8: Five Soundscapes for a Contemporary Percussionist<\/em>, Dr Shlomowitz explained not only how he thinks of his own music, but how contemporary composers can more broadly think about and define issues of musical reference, indexicallity and materiality.<\/p>\n<p>Each of our talks were followed by a period of question from the members of the Open Score Lab, these questions were extremely insightful and stimulating. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the group the questions and suggestions led us to composers, artists and dancers we hadn\u2019t encountered before, giving us much food for thought going forward with our own work. We all greatly enjoyed our day, and found the discussions creatively stimulating as well as thoroughly thought-provoking. We would like to thank both Professor James Saunders and the Open Score Lab for the invitation, and are looking forward to returning to Bath Spa soon to perform as part of the Ludomusicology conference being hosted there in April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Postgraduate composition\u00a0student Alex Glyde-Bates tells about a recent visit to the\u00a0Open Score Lab at Bath Spa University On the 1st February, myself, Ben Jameson and our supervisor, Dr Matthew Shlomowitz made our way to Bath Spa University. We had been kindly invited to talk about our work at a new research study group called Open Score Lab based at the &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57407,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[522211,65478],"tags":[1069909,1069606,1070115],"class_list":["post-2090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-composition","category-postgraduate","tag-bath-spa-university","tag-open-score-lab","tag-professor-james-saunders","column","threecol"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3YgXZ-xI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57407"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2090"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2093,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2090\/revisions\/2093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}