Talk by Anna Clarke

Anna Clarke, from the MRL, will present her current PhD work to the group.

Anna's PhD involves giving musicians composition software that can be adapted to their individual working practices. Her PhD investigates how supporting the ability to evolve the representations of music affects how composers work.

In this talk she will discuss the results of her initial study into the methods used by four experienced pro-am composers while they use their existing software tools. An interaction analysis approach was used to gain information about how and when they used their environments, paper notes, instruments, tools and software as part of the composition process. Combining this with additional evidence from semi-structured interviews with the composers, Anna describes some themes that are apparent in their approaches to composition that could inform future development of composition tools in her PhD and elsewhere.