This research study investigates how music technology can enhance and develop the musical ideas of students, focusing on the creative processes involved in computer-assisted composition and multimedia composition. The study investigates the Creative Multimedia Music Project, a module of the Associate of Arts (Music) Degree where students are using computers as music workstations. The aims of the study are (a) to evaluate the use of music technology for composing; (b) to describe the creative process of composing and investigate how the students comprehend this; and (c) to analyze the relationship between the creative process of the musical treatment and the visual image in multimedia composition. The study is conducted in an exploratory, self-directed environment where the students make musical decisions about their compositions. From the preliminary survey, 10 out of 45 music-major students (Year Two) from the Associate Degree Music Program at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) were selected. Composition activities took place over 15 sessions. The first phase focused on computer-assisted composition and the second phase focused on multimedia composition. The students attended lectures on alternate weeks. This gave them enough time to compose in the laboratory or at home, allowing them to explore, make decisions, and evaluate decisions. Data were collected from four sources: (1) written reports including a musical analysis of the creative process, (2) one-to-one interviews conducted during and after the creative process (15 questions were asked in each phase), (3) self-reflective journals that students maintained during their creative process, and (4) MIDI file observations after the creative process had occurred. After data collection, commonalities between each of these data sources were analyzed. This highlighted that during the creative process, a developmental pattern emerged that extends Webster's model (2003) of creative thinking in music. The relationships between the findings and the lite rature review were articulated to reinforce the creative thinking model, trends, and perspectives from different sources. Through an analysis of these students' creative processes and the strategies they adopted while composing with music technology, research projects such as this one may provide composers, music technologists, and music educators with insights into how students approach the task of composing using music technology. The findings might prove as a useful guidance to music educators on how to structure computer-assisted composition and multimedia composition programs for different age groups from school to university.

Swan is a multimedia work for conducted ensemble with amplified instruments, electronics and video projections. Swan is about going out: going out to the street, to the club, to a ritual, to a party or a funeral. It’s about real places with real people, but less about the realities of these places and more about their vibe. It’s about getting out of home, the studio, the institution, going to places where people connect and do things, sing, dance, laugh, cry, perform or celebrate. The music of Swan come from ‘outside.’ Swan’s aesthetic is a blend of Turkish/Islamic and pop-cultural elements. The opening section, Korridor, is a drone/ambient movement with a big trance synth part. It is ritual music. It is big, dense, heavy, and it moves slowly, like lava. Karaoke Mahshar is a Turkish Trance-Pop hybrid. It is a very melancholic, dark piece of music. The instrumental choir sing an emotional pop/“fantasy music” (a Turkish genre) melody in unison over a flamboyant electronic track. It’s the soundtrack to a club for the wasted, for emotional after-hours karaoke. The final section, Rod Modell, is a dub-techno influenced ambient movement. It is the sound of a giant, post-apocalyptic mosque - a mosque sunken in chalky waters. This section evolves to a big, stretched monophonic melody, a song from the old times, which finally cadences to an electronically processed “tilâvet”. I started composing Swan in July 2016 in Turkey, before the military coup attempt took place. The work is not programmatic, however, the sound materials I worked with, the musical references and the sonic and visual iconography it incorporates are rather influenced by and derive from the sounds, sights and emotions I experienced during my stay. By the end of my visit, a person who had been very dear to my heart, Ferhunde Köke, had passed away. I recorded the sounds of her burial accompanied by a hafız’s recitation of the Surah Al-Baqarah 2:156 from the Holy Qur’an which I edited, processed and ended this work with.

jn4.gesture is an interactive multimedia composition for dancer and computer designed to extend the possibilities of artistic expression through the use of contemporary technology. The software produces the audiovisual materials, which are controlled by the movement of the dancer on a custom rug sensor. The software that produces the graphic and sonic material is created using a modular design. During run-time, the software's modules are directed by a scripting language developed to control and adjust the audiovisual production through time. The visual material provides the only illumination of the performer, and the projections follow the performer's movements. The human form is isolated in darkness and it remains the focal point in the visual environment. These same movements are used to create the sonic material and control the diffusion of sound in an eight channel sound system. The video recording of the performance was made on April 22, 2002. The work was produced in a specialized performance space using two computer projectors and a state of the art sound system. Arleen Sugano designed the costumes, choreographed and performed the composition in the Merrill Ellis Intermedia Theatre (MEIT) at the University of North Texas. The paper focuses on the design of the program that controls the production of the audiovisual environment. This is achieved with a discussion of background issues associated with gesture capture. A brief discussion of human-computer interface and its relationship with the arts provides an overview to the software design and mapping scenarios used to create the composition. The design of the score, a graphical user interface, is discussed as the element that synchronizes the media creation in "scenes" of the composition. This score delivers a hybrid script to the modules that controls the production of audiovisual elements. Particular modules are discussed and related to sensor mapping routines that give multiple mapping control to computer function enabling a single gesture o have multiple outcomes.

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