Keynote Speakers
Raymond MacDonald
music: a universal language
We are all musical; every human being has a social biological guarantee of musicianship. Not a vague utopian ideal but rather a conclusion drawn by an increasing number of academic researchers involved in investigating the foundations of musical behaviour. Moreover, the earliest communications between a parent and a child are essentially musical and to respond emotionally to music is a defining feature of our humanity. We can indeed sing before we can talk.
Music plays a greater part in the everyday lives of more people than at any time in the past. This is partly the result of the extremely rapid technological developments that have occurred in the last two decades or so, allied to the increasing commercialisation and economic power of the music industry. In the developed countries of the world at least, the widespread availability and relative inexpensiveness of MP3 players, the internet, the MIDI interface, the video recorder and more means that a vast diversity of musical styles and genres is available to us as listeners. The ways in which people experience music – as ‘consumers’, fans, listeners, composers, arrangers, performers or critics – are far more diverse than at any time in the past, as are the range of contexts in which this takes place. The topics of musical identities and musical communication will be introduced by summarising recent work that suggests the ubiquitous nature of music within modern life signals possible evolutionary functions of music and that our musical tastes and preferences are crucial indicators of who we are.
This lecture will also present overviews of a number of research projects highlighting the multifaceted ways in which music plays an important role and influences our life. Research studies utilising an Indonesian Gamelan that highlight the use of music for individuals with special needs will demonstrate how music can be utilised to facilitate psychological and musical developments. A summary of a project investigating the provision of music within Scottish education will be presented. This study highlights the fundamental importance of improvisation within musical development and it will be suggested that improvisation is currently a much under used strategy within music education. A number of studies showing how music can be used for pain and anxiety relief in hospitals will also be presented.
In summary, I aim to demonstrate how music is a fundamental channel of communication: it provides a means by which people can share emotions, intentions, and meanings even though their spoken languages may be mutually incomprehensible. It can also provide a vital lifeline to human interaction for those whose special needs make other means of communication difficult. Music can exert powerful physical effects, can produce deep and profound emotions within us, and can be used to generate infinitely subtle variations of expressiveness by skilled composers and performers.
bio
Raymond MacDonald is Professor of Music Psychology at Glasgow Caledonian University, and has been lecturing and researching in the psychology of music for 15 years. His PhD, from The University is Glasgow, investigated the educational and therapeutic effects of music workshops for individuals with special needs. He is currently editor of the Journal Psychology of Music and associate editor of The International Journal of Music Education. He has published and presented his research extensively and is co editor of two books Musical Identities and Musical Communication, both published by Oxford University Press. He has also been Artistic Director for a music production company, Sounds of Progress, working with individuals who have special needs. He is currently supervising 10 PhD students investigating such topics as music therapy, music education, musical identities and he is the head of the Glasgow Caledonian Music Research Group, which includes lecturers, researchers and post-graduate students from The West of Scotland who have an interest in the psychology of music. As a saxophonist and composer he performs internationally and has recorded many CDs.
Juergen Herre
personal audio: from simple sound reproduction to personalized interactive rendering
For a long time, one of the foremost goals in audio engineering has been seen in the faithful transmission or reproduction of recorded sound for the listeners. More recently, with the growing use of computers and digital signal processing to create a rich multimedia experience, the notions of personalized and interactive audio have gained increasing importance: For many applications, users desire the ability to interact with the reproduced sound in an intuitive way and adapt it to their personal preferences. Applications like karaoke/play-along, gaming and teleconferencing call for new levels of interactivity. This talk discusses some relevant steps on the long road towards comprehensive interactivity. Special attention will be given to technologies that enable both bitrate and computationally efficient representations of interactive sound, including the ongoing developments within the ISO/MPEG standardization group.
bio
Jürgen Herre joined the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits
(IIS) in Erlangen, Germany, in 1989. Since then he has been involved in the development of perceptual coding algorithms for high quality audio, including the well-known ISO/MPEG-Audio Layer III coder (aka "MP3"). In 1995, Dr. Herre joined Bell Laboratories for a PostDoc term working on the development of MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). Since the end of '96 he is back at Fraunhofer working on the development of advanced multimedia technology including MPEG-4, MPEG-7 and secure delivery of audiovisual content, currently as the Chief Scientist for the Audio/Multimedia activities at Fraunhofer IIS, Erlangen.
Dr. Herre is a fellow of the Audio Engineering Society, co-chair of the AES Technical Committee on Coding of Audio Signals and vice chair of the AES Technical Council. He also served as an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing and is an active member of the MPEG audio subgroup.
