Exploring Audio and Music Technology in Education

Special Issue: ‘Exploring Audio and Music Technology in Education: Pedagogical, Research and Sociocultural Perspectives’

Full paper submission deadline: 1 April 2022

The past decade has seen increased interest in the pedagogical facets of audio engineering, sound design, music technology and related fields. Much of this rising interest in the teaching and learning aspects of sound corresponds to a growing number of institutions offering training options for people interested in the technical, creative, scientific and cultural aspects of audio. However, while the options for learning about such topics have expanded, there remains a dearth of scholarship on the theoretical, sociocultural and interdisciplinary aspects of audio and its connection to teaching and learning in a broad array of institutions. Also, little scholarship has emphasized a professional development model for the educational aspects of audio, particularly for those working with the next generation of practitioners in all educational contexts. What impact do audio and music corporations have on facilities and curricular decision-making? For this Special Issue of the Journal of Music, Technology & Education, the guest editors seek contributions addressing one or more of the topics below:

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M/C Journal: ‘Cities’

Over the past 20 years, interest in the ways in which cities might be re-imagined and place-branded through specific creative and cultural identities and activities has increased exponentially (Landry; Andersson; Evans; Grodach), with urban policy-makers in particular seeking to find ways to leverage these identities to drive a range of urban development, economic, heritage, and tourism initiatives (Richards; Baker; Martinez; Ballico and Watson). In turn, significant attention has been given to the vital contribution creative workers make to the creative, cultural, and economic fabric of cities, with policies aimed at attracting these workers becoming a central tenet of many creative city strategies (Florida). To this end, urban development strategies prefaced on the enactment of a range of ‘creative’ and ‘cultural’ frameworks are commonplace in cities across the world. Examples of this include the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, which encompasses creative sectors as diverse as Crafts and Folk Art, Design, Film, Gastronomy, Literature, Media Arts, and Music (Ballico and Carter), as well as other sector-specific frameworks such as the global music cities movement (Baker; Ballico and Watson). Considering the emergence, circulation, and adoption of these policy frameworks, as well as more broadly the ways in which creative and cultural identities can be leveraged through place activation strategies, we invite contributions that provide, although are not limited to:

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Festival Activism!

For decades festivals have provided important sites of inquiry for folklorists and ethnomusicologists alike. While theoretically and methodologically diverse, this literature has traditionally focused on the communitas of festival experience and the flow of everyday social life beyond the festival’s liminal boundaries. Attending to the activist turn in ethnographic research, we wish to explore the idea of festivals as strategic forms of social action. Specifically, how can a critical ethnographic study of festivals reveal the ways in which performers, participants, and organizers encounter and challenge the myriad forms of violence that frame the contemporary world? How do festivals constitute sites of activism and forms of social and political intervention?

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Eighth International Conference on Music and Minimalism

May 5–8, 2022

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Deadline for Proposals: January 10, 2022 (11:59PM PST)

All scholars and practitioners of minimalist music (broadly conceived) are invited to submit proposals for the Eighth International Conference on Music and Minimalism hosted by the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts in Bowling Green, OH, USA.

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Rethinking Participatory Processes Through Music

‘Rethinking Participatory Processes Through Music’
14-15 January 2022, online event
https://musicdemocracystudydays.wordpress.com

Convened by Igor Contreras Zubillaga (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Huddersfield) and Robert Adlington (University of Huddersfield)

Keynote speakers: Hélène Landemore (Yale University), Anna Bull (University of York), Raymond MacDonald (University of Edinburgh)

In recent times, the UK’s Brexit vote, the 2016 US presidential election, and other elections worldwide have made democratic processes the subject of unprecedented public debate. This has led to widespread questioning of the mechanisms for people’s participation in the democratic system and in political decision-making. One of the most ground-breaking inquiries into what public participation ought to look like within democracy has recently been carried out by political scientist Hélène Landemore (Yale University). In her book Open Democracy (2020), Landemore favours the ideal of ‘representing and being represented in turn’ over direct-democracy approaches. Drawing on recent experiments with citizens’ assemblies, Landemore offers a different concept of nonelectoral democratic representation.

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Working as a Musician Transnationally

Special Issue of Rock Music Studies

Guest-edited by Pierre Bataille (U. of Grenoble-Alpes), Marie Buscatto (U. of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne), Martin Cloonan (U. of Turku), and Marc Perrenoud (U. of Lausanne)

Submissions are invited for a special issue of Rock Music Studies on the topic of Working as a Musician Transnationally.

This issue addresses the question of rock and popular musicians working across borders. We would like to focus on the careers of those rock and popular musicians who have become transnational when they regularly tour in another country or tour recurrently around the world. It can be routine for musicians to play in a foreign country or region where they have an audience. In some cases, the international market may even be more important for them than their audience at home. The scope of such activities can range from a big world tour of stadiums by a megastar to a humble tour in some countries in underground venues by an alternative independent artist. Musicians may also operate transnationally via active local music networks and venues.

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Progressive Rock: Geography, Culture, Discourse

The 5th Biennial International Conference of the Progect Network for the Study of Progressive Rock
Sr Peter’s College, University of Oxford, August 27-29, 2022 (Oxford, UK)

General enquiries about the conference can be sent by email to: [email protected]

In the late 1960s, the term ‘progressive’ was used to define music that transcended the commercial ‘pop’ product, and audiences that sought the wide range of hybridized forms that emerged from that time. This blurring of boundaries was enacted by musicians who had experience performing in rock, pop, folk, blues, and soul bands, as well as those with experience or training in orchestral music, jazz, electronic and other genres. Over the past half-century numerous hybrid sub-genres have subsequently emerged; progressive rock is now a global phenomenon with significant bodies of work found on every continent.

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The Chiptune Studies Reader

We are excited to announce that we are seeking contributions for The Chiptune Studies Reader, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed and edited volume on chiptune – or ‘chipmusic’ and ‘micromusic’ as it is also known – which we intend to publish through Oxford University Press. Rooted in the emergence of video game audio technology, and subsequently re-routed through the subversive musicality of an underground participatory culture, chiptune is a form of electronic music that has blossomed into a global phenomenon over the course of nearly four decades. Today, the umbrella term ‘chiptune’ subsumes an ever-growing plethora of (sub)genres, practices, and a heterogeneous worldwide following, whose musical output is as creatively playful and diverse as it is distinct by way of its mediation. Chiptune’s technologies, timbral palettes, and associated iconography have grown rapidly in their accessibility, playability, and ubiquity, and have become woven into pop-cultural imaginaries far beyond their own humble beginnings in the music of video games’ past.

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Progressive Rock, Metal, and the Literary Imagination

Chris Anderton and Lori Burns, editors
https://www.progectnetwork.com/call-for-papers

Progressive Rock, Metal, and the Literary Imagination will present analyses of progressive rock and metal music that reveals a striking engagement with literary texts and themes – from classic literature, mythology and poetry to science fiction, horror, and other genres. While many of the extant publications on progressive rock and metal have focused on the history of progressive rock, few have examined the ways that it intersects with the literary imagination, whether drawing on myths, legends, and stories as source material, or using storytelling modes to create new stories and worlds. Progressive rock musicians have often created concept albums based around these source materials and worlds, and they offer more than simply fantasy and escapism, with narratives and themes that comment on the social, cultural, and political milieux in which they are made.

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1st International Music Livelihoods Symposium

The Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre and/of the Creative Arts Research Institute will be holding the 1st International Music Livelihoods Symposium (online), December 6&7, 2021. Keynote speakers include Dr Nicole Canham (Monash University) author of recently-released Preparing Musicians for Precarious Work (Routledge).

The core theme of the symposium is “Educating for the Sustainable Musician in Post-Normal Times.” Postnormal times (PNT) is a concept developed by Ziauddin Sardar as a development of post-normal science. Sardar and Sweeney (2016; 2020) describe the present as “postnormal times”, “an in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to make sense” (n.p). The term “music livelihoods” further acknowledges the complex lives of musicians involving their changing musical identities, diverse career journeys, and an external environment impacting their values and opportunities.

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