We present an interdisciplinary collaboration between McGill, Audiotopie and Plateau-Mont-Royal borough around the design and evaluation of spatial sound installations in Montreal.

Orchestration is defined by Stephen McAdams as “the choice, combination or juxtaposition of sounds to achieve a musical end.” This typically invokes a palette of heterogeneous sounds, especially those of the instruments of the symphony orchestra, but McAdams’ definition equally applies to homogeneous sound palettes encountered in ensembles of uniform composition, such as the guitar orchestra.

In this presentation concentrating on my latest two works from 2019, I will discuss my extended use of Orchidea, the latest assisted orchestration platform in the Orch* tools lineage, and spatialization using OpenMusic and the Ircam Spat~ package for Max.

Recent developments in the field of computer-aided orchestration have provided interesting approaches for addressing some of the many orchestration challenges, supported by advances in computational capacities and artificial intelligence methods. Nevertheless, harnessing the many sides of this musical art, which involves combining the acoustic properties of a large ensemble of varied instruments, has not yet been achieved.

Human acquisition of skills and knowledge about the spaces they inhabit is linked to our development of proprioceptive skills from the earliest moments of physical and psychological negotiation with the world around us. The acquisition of “spatial intelligence” extends to the development of skills in comprehending the acoustic spaces through which we move, unconsciously and consciously measuring, comparing and committing to memory the sound signals and sources fleetingly inhabiting these spaces while building a library of sounding spaces to which we return and reference.

Computational musicology is emerging out of the necessity of finding methods to deal with music (both art and popular) that escapes conventional Western notation. To better understand this music, we use computational methods to decompose recordings of performances of contemporary music into digital musical objects.

Timbre has been identified by music perception scholars as an important component in the communication of affect in music. While its function as a carrier of perceptually useful information about sound source mechanics has been established, studies of whether and how it functions as a carrier of information for communicating affect in music are still in their infancy.

Depuis 2008, le groupe de recherche en immersion spatiale (GRIS) de la Faculté de musique de l'Université de Montréal développe des outils de spatialisation destinés à des environnements immersifs de multiples haut-parleurs.

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.

Videos, blog posts, and other resources documenting compositions and other creative applications of timbre and orchestration.

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.