On September 26, at 1:00pm (EDT), the ACTOR Training and Mentoring Committee(TMC) hosted an online workshop on CVs and cover letters with professors Robert Hasegawa (McGill University), Pierre Michel (Université de Strasbourg), Lindsey Reymore (Arizona State University), and Caroline Traube (Université de Montréal).

La musique symphonique retentit à nouveau à la salle Claude-Champagne! Les musicien.nes de l'OUM, l'Orchestre de l'Université de Montréal, reprennent les répétitions après une interruption de 6 mois causée par la pandémie de COVID-19.

Bright (brillant), round (rond), warm (chaud) and rough (rugueux) are four terms vastly used in French language for sound description in sound creation processes such as music performance, orchestration, sound engineering or sound design, yet they lack formal, standardized definitions.

The impression of ensemble sound and blending between musical instruments is an important feature relevant in music composition, orchestration, stage acoustics adaption, and virtual acoustics.

The impression of ensemble sound and blending between musical instruments is an important feature relevant in music composition, orchestration, stage acoustics adaption, and virtual acoustics. Within a larger project, we perform research on musical instruments and the effect of blending.

I will demonstrate how timbre and auditory scene analysis act as a central element in the emergence of musical form in a contemporary aleatoric composition with open instrumentation: all voices are heard (2015) by James Saunders.

Composers for film and video games generally make use of digital audio workstations (Pro Tools, Cubase, etc.) to complete their work. Sample libraries, virtual instruments, and extensive programming in their chosen software allow them to produce realistic sounding mock-ups that serve either as placeholders until their music has been recorded or, in some cases, as the final product itself.

A video presenting non-guitarist composer Jason Noble's approach to timbre-based composition for the guitar, discussing issues of notating timbre with various types of mappings. Including musical examples from many pieces created collaboratively with guitarist Steve Cowan.

In this video made for the 2020 meeting of Music Theory Midwest, Reymore describes some of her timbre research: building a cognitive linguistic model of timbre qualia, using the model to construct profiles for orchestral instruments, and applying these findings in analysis of the first movement of Mahler's first symphony, where Reymore looks at form and at the climactic breakthrough, or Durchbruch, moment.

Composer Fabien Lévy joins McGill researchers in music theory, composition, and music perception in a symposium co-sponsored by ACTOR (Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration) and CIRMMT Research Axes 3 and 4. Levy, author of Le compositeur, son oreille et ses machines à écrire: Déconstruire les grammatologies du musical pour mieux les composer, will present a morning lecture on “functional orchestration” followed in the afternoon by shorter presentations on aspects of analytical and orchestrational theory applied to the first movement of Franz Schubert’s Eighth Symphony and a hands-on analytical workshop. This workshop is co-sponsored by ACTOR, CIRMMT Research Axes 3 and 4, and the Schulich School of Music’s Composition and Music Technology Areas.