Supported by a university Excellence Scholarship, in September 2022 I started my PhD at University College Cork, supervised by John Godfrey and co-supervised by Dr. Jeffrey Weeter.
Synthesisers are conventionally considered as tools utilised to generate broad sonic paletes by simply executing the instructions of the composer (or operator) in a lead/follow relationship. This research investigates the potential of considering the synthesiser and operator as a dyad or duality in which both have creative agency. Synthesisers are musical tools rich with potential as nodes of a network: they are dense webs of interactions with themselves, the operator and a listener.
This practice-led research will develop an ecology of compositional practice for synthesiser in which musical trajectories and meaning will show themselves through emergent processes and the reciprocal relationship between operator and instrument. The resulting portfolio of works will employ methods of mapping creative practice such as Nodalism (Adkins 2014) and Flocking (Cascone 2005) to minimalist and drone-centric forms of electronic music in which timbral development and examination is prioritised.
By considering the affordances (Kruger 2014) of the instrument, and the works produced, the portfolio will contribute to the sphere of experimental electronic music by inverting Cybernetic and generative approaches. Self-organising and chaotic methods of patching the synthesiser will be applied specifically to these musics, rather than any minimal or sustainted-tone style being the result of such methods.