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Forgotten Names is a fifteen-minute programmatic work for wind ensemble and electronics. The piece represents my aim to express conceptually the memories of human lives being lost with the passage of time. The two salient vehicles used to convey the concept are melodic motivic development and pre-recorded electronic audio accompanying the ensemble. The prerecorded electronics work in tandem with the ensemble and provide the audience with inferable aural symbolism. These audio samples are to be triggered by a percussionist by using the free, downloadable program, Pure Data along with a performance file provided by the composer. Forgotten Names also draws its influence from similar works by well-known American composers. The pitch material used in this work is derived from On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams while the formal structure is influenced by Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Science. 14 August 2014. / Reinforcement learning is a branch of machine learning wherein an agent is given rewards which it uses to guide its learning. These rewards are often manually specified in terms of a reward function. The agent performs a certain action in a particular state and is given a reward accordingly (where a state is a configuration of the environment). A problem arises when the reward function is either difficult or impossible to manually specify. Apprenticeship learning via inverse reinforcement learning can be used in these cases in order to ascertain a reward function, given a set of expert trajectories. The research presented in this document used apprenticeship learning in order to ascertain a reward function in a musical context. The agent then optimized its performance in terms of this reward function. This was accomplished by presenting the learning agents with pieces of music composed by the author. These were the expert trajectories from which the learning agent discovered a reward function. This reward function allowed the agents to attempt to discover an optimal strategy for maximizing its value. Three learning agents were created. Two were drum-beat generating agents and one a melody composing agent. The first two agents were used to recreate expert drum-beats as well as generate new drum-beats. The melody agent was used to generate new melodies given a set of expert melodies. The results show that apprenticeship learning can be used both to recreate expert musical pieces as well as generate new musical pieces which are similar to with the expert musical pieces. Further, the results using the melody agent indicate that the agent has learned to generate new melodies in a given key, without having been given explicit information about key signatures.

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Thesis (M.M.)--Boston University

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University

As a composer of electroacoustic music, I’m interested in understanding which characteristics of classical orchestration can be used in electroacoustic music after these years of its development. In specific, which aspects of orchestration can be used as powerful techniques in acousmatic music? The aim of this study is to create connections between the conventional acoustic orchestration practice and electroacoustic orchestration by using a transfer2 technique.

We are free, from the shackles of the finite, and of the physical world. Sound now enjoys morphological freedom through a myriad of transformations. It is malleable to the utmost degree. We have at our disposal an astounding plethora of tools, with which we can manipulate and organise sound. This thesis project is a collection of musical materials that explore the idea of The Uncanny Valley, as it relates to music being real, fake or some strange combination of the two. This thesis project is primarily one in which I produce sound files. In a secondary capacity, I’m also producing a text file. In this text I aim to present some of my thoughts on how my work writing code and making music might be connected, in some hopefully interesting ways, to my field. I’m unlikely to be able to adequately convey my own origin myth. Instead I’ll focus on stories I’ve been told about music, throughout my life, inside and outside of academia. I have a strong suspicion that these stories have shaped my coming into being as a composer. However difficult the task of introspection, and ultimately to know one self proves to be, I at least regard these stories as a source for clues as to why I am driven to do the things that I do.

This thesis, A Portfolio of Original Compositions, contains six musical compositions and an accompanying commentary presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music Composition at the University of Aberdeen in 2018. The focus of my research at the University is sacred choral music composition, though not exclusively; many instrumental works and secular choral and vocal works have contributed to the development of my compositional technique. The portfolio contains two large-form sacred works: the St Andrew's Mass, a setting of the mass ordinary for chorus and quartet, and Babylon, a 30-minute work for large choir and percussion on themes of journeying and solitude, excerpting texts from both sacred and American folk sources. This commentary will focus on these works, as they have been the focal point of my research at the University, with supplementary examples of techniques and ideas from the other shorter works in the portfolio. The individual chapters of the accompanying commentary will discuss various aspects of research-based composition found throughout the portfolio, with particular focus on my use of text, texture, and harmony. I will examine how these elements are used in the St Andrew's Mass and Babylon, whereas these two works comprise the bulk of my research. Additionally, I will discuss the contributions of influences from works by other composers of the past and present, as well as folk and traditional sources, to my compositional outlook and research.

Many current schools of compositional thought evidence an interest in the integration and collision of different methods of harmonic organisation. Creating strategies that aid composers in incorporating many dramatically different methods of harmonic organisation in individual compositions will help lead to new, exciting music and ideas - the methods leading to the generation of such strategies are a central concern of this thesis. Composers can create pieces of music that engender dramatically different states of being and relate seemingly unrelated musical ideas - the manipulation of many methods of technical organisation will lead to the successful implementation of such shifts, the thesis also addresses this. A major difficulty in the furtherance of new music relates to how composers can make use of more unusual compositional techniques in contexts where performance practicalities could inhibit the realisation of a piece - working closely with soloists and ensembles lends a crucial insight into appropriate instrumental and vocal writing, a third important aspect of this thesis. In conclusion, this thesis evidences that it is absolutely possible to relate seemingly distant musical ideas in individual compositions in service of an effective, practical composition. There is a tremendous, exciting wealth of powerful musical ideas to draw upon; such ideas can be found in the collision and integration of dramatically different musics.