This thesis examines the development of electronic synthesis systems and their associated philosophies from the antecedents of the first half of the twentieth century to the early part of the current decade, viewed in the first instance from a musical rather than a technical standpoint. Such a task is in itself an exercise in communications, for it is necessary to evaluate the artistic characteristics of a rapidly expanding area of inter-disciplinary activity which has been largely dominated by technological interests, not always to the best advantage of the art and practice of music. Although the development of the medium has led to the publication of numerous books and articles, ranging from general descriptions to detailed scientific accounts, the former for the most part are uncritical in their approach, and the latter are rarely presented in a form which may be readily appreciated and commented upon by musicians in general. This account thus attempts to fill a major gap in the literature of the subject by presenting a broadly based critique of its most important historical features. After an introductory perspective of the background to electronic music systems, the first volume continues with a critical study of the main developments during the period 1948-1964, concluding with an examination of the characteristics of both voltage and digitally based control technology and their impact on studio designs during the remainder of the latter decade. The second volume is primarily concerned with the application of the digital computer, both as a means of directly generating sound information and also as a control device for analogue studios, particular attention being paid to the systems MUSIC 360 and MUSYS. The overriding objective of this study is to establish a sound and coherent basis for determining the artistic criteria which must be applied if future technical advances are to benefit the creative uses of the medium.

The focus of this thesis is to explore interactivity within musical composition. I start by examining the evolution of the relationship between artist, medium, and audience during the 20th century regarding how it distanced itself from a primarily hierarchical construct towards a more interdependent and flexible structure. The once established model where the composer's creative voice was the only one echoed in one's work has thereafter been challenged. Gradually, new compositional techniques appeared that allowed performers to influence the musical outcome of a composer's work (e.g. compositional techniques such as indeterminism, alternative notation system such as graphical scores, etc.). Towards the end of the 20th century, technological advances in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) accelerated this trend by providing artists with the ability to construct customised musical interactive interfaces. Such interfaces have the potential to facilitate the involvement of audience members and extend the role of performers so they can leave a temporal mark on the final artistic work. In the course of my research thesis, I experiment with the designing of such musical interactive interfaces. I focus on the creation of solo projects, aiming at assisting studio based composition and enhancing musical performance, as well as collaborative cross-disciplinary projects (involving choreography, theatre, etc.) where the performers' and the audience's participation influence the musical outcome. In my commentary, I describe with a practical perspective the reasoning behind their physical, as well as conceptual attributes on a per case study basis.

The practice driving this research is called RoadMusic. The project uses a small computer based system installed in a car that composes music from the flux of information it captures about the journey as it unfolds. It uses a technique known as sonification that consists of mapping data to sound. In the case of RoadMusic, this data capture is realtime, external to the computer and mobilised with the user. This dissertation investigates ways in which such a sonification can become an artistic form. To interrogate the specificity of an art of real-time it considers philosophical theories of the fundamental nature of time and immediacy and the ways in which the human mind ‘makes sense’ of this flux. After extending this scrutiny via theories of system and environment, it proceeds to extract concepts and principles leading to a possible art of real-time flux. Time, immediacy and the everyday are recurring questions in art and music, this study reviews practices that address these questions, essentially through three landmark composers of the twentieth century: Iannis Xenakis, John Cage and Murray Schafer. To gain precision in regards to the nature of musical listening it then probes theories of audio cognition and reflects on ways in which these can apply to real-time composing. The art of sonifying data extracted from the environment is arguably only as recent as the computer programs it depends on. This study reviews different practices that contribute towards a corpus of sonification-art, paying special attention to those practices where this process takes place in real-time. This is extended by an interrogation of the effect that mobility has on our listening experience. RoadMusic is now a fully functional device generating multi-timbral music from immediate data about its surroundings. This dissertation argues that this process can be an alternative to mainstream media systems; it describes how RoadMusic’s programs function and the ways in which they have evolved to incorporate the ideas developed in this thesis. It shows how RoadMusic is now developing beyond my own personal practice and how it intends to reach a wider audience.

This thesis is the first academic text to apply the notion of the ‘Post-Internet’ to music, uniquely deploying the concept to stress the role that authenticity has played in contemporary online musical milieux. Using digital aesthetics and themes, Post-Internet art considers a symbiotic relationship between post-millennial youths and their technological devices that has ramifications for contemporary identity and communication. This thesis argues that Post-Internet musical cultures also exhibit these motifs. Much academic analysis of post-millennial musical milieux is narrowly focused on changes to the music industry that occurred at the turn of the millennium, or maintains that the mass archives of the Internet promote retromanic musical production. This thesis contrastingly analyses contemporary musicians that evince Post-Internet themes in their music and self-representation. One of the thesis’ original claims is that these musicians have developed an authentic representation of Post-Internet existence due to their sensitive examination of post-millennial cultural and personal experiences. Post-Internet themes and academic debates about authenticity are presented as a key context for the textual analyses of these undertheorised Post-Internet musicians. The thesis’ multi-disciplinary focus draws on posthumanism, queer theory, notions of information overload, social media theory and representation politics. Academic works by theorists such as Simon Frith, Simon Reynolds, Nathan Jurgenson, Mark Fisher, Sarah Thornton, Richard Middleton, Adam Harper and Steve Jones are analysed. The texts explored in this thesis include albums, YouTube videos, social media, live performances, games and digital mixes. References to influential blogs and magazines such as Pitchfork and The Fader illustrate online reaction to these musicians and emphasise the authentic reputation that they have attained. I conducted fifteen interviews with the key musicians, exploring the perspectives of these practitioners as a means to illuminate their oeuvres. The research spotlights, for the first time, music that self-consciously expresses Post-Internet themes to explore digital technology’s impact on identity, culture and society. One of the key original arguments offered is that these artists develop authentic representations of Post-Internet cultural and personal experience through their output and public personas. The conclusion notes that the aesthetic trend outlined here has also informed mainstream musicians, with many commercially successful artists appropriating from, and collaborating with, Post-Internet musicians in order to develop a comparably authentic representation of Post-Internet culture and identity.

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Audio analysis algorithms and frameworks for Music Information Retrieval (MIR) are expanding rapidly, providing new ways to discover non-trivial information from audio sources, beyond that which can be ascertained from unreliable metadata such as ID3 tags. MIR is a broad field and many aspects of the algorithms and analysis components that are used are more accurate given a larger dataset for analysis, and often require extensive computational resources. This thesis investigates if, through the use of modern distributed computing techniques, it is possible to design an MIR system that is scalable as the number of participants increases, which adheres to copyright laws and restrictions, whilst at the same time enabling access to a global database of music for MIR applications and research. A scalable platform for MIR analysis would be of benefit to the MIR and scientific community as a whole. A distributed MIR platform that encompasses the creation of MIR algorithms and workflows, their distribution, results collection and analysis, is presented in this thesis. The framework, called DART - Distributed Audio Retrieval using Triana - is designed to facilitate the submission of MIR algorithms and computational tasks against either remotely held music and audio content, or audio provided and distributed by the MIR researcher. Initially a detailed distributed DART architecture is presented, along with simulations to evaluate the validity and scalability of the architecture. The idea of a parameter sweep experiment to find the optimal parameters of the Sub-Harmonic Summation (SHS) algorithm is presented, in order to test the platform and use it to perform useful and real-world experiments that contribute new knowledge to the field. DART is tested on various pre-existing distributed computing platforms and the feasibility of creating a scalable infrastructure for workflow distribution is investigated throughout the thesis, along with the different workflow distribution platforms that could be integrated into the system. The DART parameter sweep experiments begin on a small scale, working up towards the goal of running experiments on thousands of nodes, in order to truly evaluate the scalability of the DART system. The result of this research is a functional and scalable distributed MIR research platform that is capable of performing real world MIR analysis, as demonstrated by the successful completion of several large scale SHS parameter sweep experiments across a variety of different input data - using various distribution methods - and through finding the optimal parameters of the implemented SHS algorithm. DART is shown to be highly adaptable both in terms of the distributed MIR analysis algorithm, as well as the distribution

The main aim of this thesis is to explore the use of learning technology within the music technology curriculum. First of all, it is recognised that there is a problem for music technology tutors in providing support for students who have 24-hour access to a music technology studio: typically, there is no support available outside of normal working hours. One solution is to implement the use of learning technology in the studio. However, there is no research to date in the field of music education that considers the pedagogical value of an interactive multimedia-based tool for music technologists. In order to address this matter, two learning technology interfaces were designed to support music technology students in different areas of the curriculum, specifically recording and psychoacoustics, and empirical work was carried out in order to evaluate their effectiveness. The intention was for both interfaces to enable contingent learning, or learning at a time of need, so that music technology students could undertake a creative task and retrieve help without having to leave the studio environment or seek assistance from a member of staff. In the light of general educational literature on learning and teaching, the information contained within the pages of these interfaces was divided into two categories, procedural and conceptual. The former provided step-by-step guidance on the execution of a task, while the latter provided broader theoretical knowledge associated with that task. A second aim of this thesis is to examine the effect of acquiring procedural and conceptual information through the interfaces on students' abilities to perform a task and retain knowledge about it. Two experiments were carried out involving 48 first-year undergraduates and 30 second-year undergraduates respectively. For each experiment, the students were divided into two groups and were required to carry out a task using one of the interfaces. In completing the set task, the first group was asked to gather procedural information from the interface, while the second group had to gain conceptual information. One month later, the students were asked to carry out the same task, but without using the interface. On both occasions, the students submitted task material for assessment. In general, the results showed that there were some significant differences in the levels of knowledge retention and task performance between the two groups of students, notably in favour of those who had acquired conceptual information.

A goal of Artificial Intelligence is to develop computational models of what would be considered intelligent behaviour in a human. One such task is that of musical performance. This research specifically focuses on aspects of performance related to the performance of musical duets. We present the research in the context of developing a cooperative performance system that would be capable of performing a piece of music expressively alongside a human musician. In particular, we concentrate on the relationship between musical structure and performance with the aim of creating a structural interpretation of a piece of music by analysing features of the score and performance. We provide a new implementation of Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s Grouping Structure analysis which makes use of feature-category weighting factors. The multiple structures that result from this analysis are represented using a new technique for representing hierarchical structures. The representation supports a refinement process which allows the structures to be disambiguated at a later stage. We also present a novel analysis technique, based on the principle of phrase-final lengthening, to identify structural features from performance data. These structural features are used to select from the multiple possible musical structures the structure that corresponds most closely to the analysed performance. The three main contributions of this research are:1- An implementation of Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s Grouping Structure which includes feature-category weighting factors; 2- A method of storing a set of ambiguous hierarchical structures which supports gradual improvements in specificity; An analysis technique which, when applied to a musical performance, succeeds 3- in providing information to aid the disambiguation of the final musical structure. The results indicate that the approach has promise and with the incorporation of further refinements could lead to a computer-based system that could aid both musical performers and those interested in the art of musical performance.

This thesis is about interactive music, a musical experience that involves participation from the listener but is itself a composed piece of music and the Interactive Music Systems (IMSs) that create these experiences, such as a sound installation that responds to the movements of its audience. Some IMSs are brief marvels commanding only a few seconds of attention. Others engage those who participate for considerably longer. Our goal here is to understand why this difference arises and how we may then apply this understanding to create better interactive music experiences. I present a refined perspective of interactive music as an exploration into the relationship between action and sound. Reasoning about IMSs in terms of how they are subjectively perceived by a participant, I argue that fundamental to creating a captivating interactive music is the evolving cognitive process of making sense of a system through interaction. I present two new theoretical tools that provide complementary contributions to our understanding of this process. The first, the Emerging Structures model, analyses how a participant's evolving understanding of a system's behaviour engages and motivates continued involvement. The second, a framework of Perceived Agency, refines the notion of `creative control' to provide a better understanding of how the norms of music establish expectations of how skill will be demonstrated. I develop and test these tools through three practical projects: a wearable musical instrument for dancers created in collaboration with an artist, a controlled user study investigating the effects of constraining the functionality of a screen-based IMS, and an interactive sound installation that may only be explored through coordinated movement with another participant. This final work is evaluated formally through discourse analysis. Finally, I show how these tools may inform our understanding of an oft-cited goal within the field: conversational interaction with an interactive music system.

This thesis discusses research conducted towards the development of an objective model that predicts punch in musical signals. Punch is a term often used by engineers and producers when describing a particular perceptual sensation found in produced music. Music is often characterised by listeners as being punchier yet the term is subjective, in terms of its meaning and the subsequent auditory effect on the listener. An objective model of punch would therefore prove useful for both music classification purposes and as a possible further metric that could be employed in music production and mastering metering tools. The literature reviewed within this body of work encompasses both subjective and objective audio evaluation methods in addition to low-level signal extraction and measurement techniques. The review concludes that whilst there has been a great deal of work in the area of semantic description and audio quality measurement, low-level analysis with respect to the perception of punch remains largely unexplored. The project was completed in a number of phases each designed to investigate the perceptual effects resulting from manipulation of test stimuli. The rationale behind this testing was to establish the key low-level descriptors relating to the punch attribute with the aim of producing a final objective and perceptually based model. The listening tests in each phase were conducted according to the ITU-R BS 1534-1 recommendation. In producing an objective model for the prediction of punch, listener perception to the attribute shows a strong correlation to the signal onset times, octave frequency band, signal duration and dynamic range. The punch measure obtained using the model is named PM95, where 95 indicates the upper percentile used in the measurement. Secondary measures were also obtained as a result of the iterative approach adopted. These are Inter-Band-Ratio (IBR), Transient to Steady-state Ratio (TSR) and Transient to Steady-state Ratio+Residual (TSR+R). These measures are useful in quantifying overall audio quality with respect to its dynamic range across frequency bands in addition to being a more reliable metric for defining the overall compression being applied to a piece of music. In addition, the latter two measures proposed may be useful in highlighting perceptual masking artefacts. The completed perceptual punch model was validated using the scores obtained from a large scale and independently conducted forced pairwise comparison test using expert listeners and a wide range of musical stimuli. From the results obtained, the PM95 measure showed a ‘very strong’ positive correlation with listener punch perception. Both r and rho coefficients (0.849 and 0.833) being significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). The PM95M measure, which is the PM95 measure divided by the mean value of punch frames also correlated very well with the perceptual punch scale having both r and rho coefficients (0.707 and -0.750) being significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). A real-time implementation of the punch model (and other measures proposed in this thesis) could be utilised as extensions to the metrics currently being used in Music Information Retrieval.