Week 1 Forum

This week Stephen talked to us about our assignments in semester 1. He went through the documentation of Program Notes, Analysis documentation, and writing a Score. I think it would've been a lot more helpful if we had this talk before we handed up all our work in first semester. By doing this in the first week back, it’s too late to change what we wrote and we're guaranteed to forget it by the end of the year. Having said that, it was still useful but I know I will forget it all.

I still think that writing a score for music that is generated by electronic means is a useless exercise. There is no possible way I can interpret my piece for creative computing in a score. It was created using samples and synthesis, so how can you possibly write that out in a logical score? [1]

We had a guest speaker this week, Martin Armiger, a film composer. Martin was by far my favorite speaker we’ve had all year. He was a fantastic public speaker, who really knew what he was talking about. I loved that he was involved in the industry and it was really great to hear his insight to what music in film was meant to be about. [3]
I learnt a lot from the one hour we had. I also went to the extra presentation at Flinders University on the Friday. This was a four-hour presentation, which was just great. He went through a number of different films and analyzed them thoroughly in terms of sound and music. I am defiantly going to do a course at AFTRS where he teaches. The only downside to the day was the shocking parking at Flinders University. Thank God I don’t go there.[2]

[1] Steven Wittington. 'Music Technology Forum Lecture - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electroninc Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 27th July 2006.

[2] Martin Armiger. 'Music Technology Forum Lecture - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electroninc Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 27th July 2006.

[3] APRA. 'Awards Central', APRA|AMCOS. http://www.apra.com.au/awards/music/gallery/2004/images/Stephen-Cummings-Martin-Armiger.jpg (Accessded 28th September 2006)