Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Research Publications
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ItemThe Living Instruments Project: Sharing sounds of heritage instruments in the Grainger Museum Collection(Australasian Sound Recordings Association, 2022-01-01)The Living Instruments project aims to digitally preserve the sound of the fragile Grainger instrument collection, but it also presents a way of transforming the relationship between musical artefacts and their cultural value with a diverse group of people including contemporary makers. The Living Instruments project emerged in the nexus of teaching, learning, and research activity in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, and the stewardship of Percy Grainger’s historic instruments held in the Grainger Museum, at the University of Melbourne. It aims to provide greater research opportunities and creative engagement with the instruments through an interactive platform of sonic resources. This paper provides an overview of the stimulus for the Living Instruments project and shares the stages of the research journey and public outcomes.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableOnline music learning: informal, formal and STEAM contexts(Begell House, 2017)The increased development and learning benefits of online learning technologies have prompted music educators to rethink the possibilities of learning music online (Crawford, 2013). Found throughout the Internet on sites such as Online Academy of Irish Music Online, BanjoHangout.com and MusicTheory.net, online music learning has firmly established a base of informal learning. The informal online music learning context has been built through specific affinity groupings ‑ online communities and websites that promote learning music through identity, community or curriculum skill sets. The innovation of formal online music learning (i.e. post‑secondary credited courses) utilizes the academic learner′s affinity for music. According to preliminary data as identified in this paper, formal online music learning is currently increasing at an exponential rate of inclusion. While formal online music learning is not a fix‑all for niche faculty programs like music, it can present opportunities for offering students flexibility in time and location, community of collaboration, and assistive learning modalities for broader ranges of students (Crawford, 2013; Johnson, 2016). Dove‑tailing on the innovations available in online music learning, we conclude by highlighting the field of audio engineering ‑ a discipline that requires both music and mathematical skills. As a connector to STEAM education, online learning becomes an important learning support for audio engineering students taking physics as they can better experience audio, visual and practical aspects of music and physical mathematics.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableImprovisation, Music Education, and the Embodied Mind( 2018-07-24)IICSI colloquium - Sounding Promise in the Present Tense, University of British Columbia, Canada - July 24th, 2018 Presentation given by Dylan van der Schyff at the 2018 IICSI colloquium "Sounding Promise in the Present Tense: Improvising Through Turbulent Times." van der Schyff discusses improvisation in relation to music education and theories of cognition.
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ItemThe dynamics of musical participation(SAGE Publications, 2021)In this paper we argue that our comprehension of musical participation—the complex network of interactive dynamics involved in collaborative musical experience—can benefit from an analysis inspired by the existing frameworks of dynamical systems theory and coordination dynamics. These approaches can offer novel theoretical tools to help music researchers describe a number of central aspects of joint musical experience in greater detail, such as prediction, adaptivity, social cohesion, reciprocity, and reward. While most musicians involved in collective forms of musicking already have some familiarity with these terms and their associated experiences, we currently lack an analytical vocabulary to approach them in a more targeted way. To fill this gap, we adopt insights from these frameworks to suggest that musical participation may be advantageously characterized as an open, non-equilibrium, dynamical system. In particular, we suggest that research informed by dynamical systems theory might stimulate new interdisciplinary scholarship at the crossroads of musicology, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive (neuro)science, pointing toward new understandings of the core features of musical participation.
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ItemPhenomenology, Technology and Arts Education: Exploring the Pedagogical Possibilities of Two Multimedia Arts Inquiry Projects(Inference, 2016)The relevance of phenomenology for arts education is explored through two multimedia arts inquiry projects. I begin by offering a brief outline of what arts inquiry and phenomenology entail. Following this, I consider a phenomenological study relevant to creative multimedia studies, and develop the relationship between phenomenology, critical pedagogy, and creative praxis in the arts. Drawing on these ideas, I then discuss the processes involved in creating the multimedia projects and consider possibilities for similar projects in educational contexts. Most importantly, I attempt to show how such projects might open arts educators and students to more reflective, imaginative and participatory ways of being-in-the-world, while simultaneously developing deeper historical, cultural, technical, and aesthetic understandings of the art forms they are engaged with.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableMusic interventions for dementia and depression in elderly care (MIDDEL): The Australian part of an international cluster randomised controlled trial(Wiley, 2021-12-01)BACKGROUND: Dementia and depression are highly prevalent, comorbid conditions in older adults residing in care homes and are associated with individual distress and associated challenges for care staff. Music-based interventions are widely used and potentially effective nonpharmacological interventions, due to the relative preservation of the ability of people with dementia to respond to music even with disease progression. However, there is a lack of large-scale studies evaluating the effectiveness of music-based interventions in dementia care. Music Interventions for Dementia and Depression in the Elderly (MIDDEL) is the first large-scale international cluster-randomised controlled trial to investigate the effectiveness of small group music therapy (GMT), recreational choir singing (RCS) and their combination on levels of depression in residents with dementia. The trial is currently being conducted across six countries, and this presentation will outline the study outcomes from the Australian arm of the trial. METHOD: Between June 2018 and November 2019, 20 care home units were randomised to music interventions (GMT, RCS, GMT and RCS) or standard care delivered over 6 months. The primary outcome was level of depression as measured by the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS). Secondary outcomes included neuropsychiatric symptoms, quality of life, care staff burden and adverse events collected at baseline, 3-months, 6-months and 12-months post-randomisation. Outcomes were analysed as intention-to-treat, per-protocol, and with exploratory predictor analyses. RESULTS: 318 participants (215 female; 103 male) aged 65 years or more with diagnoses of dementia and at least mild depressive symptoms (as defined by score of 8 or above on MADRS) residing in care homes were recruited. In addition, 131 care staff (108 female; 23 male) answered questions regarding perceived care burden to search for potential ripple effects of the music interventions. We will present the main findings of the study including the predictive effects of clinical characteristics on efficacy. CONCLUSION: The presentation will include discussion of contextual factors and conditions that support efficacy, and clinical implications for safety and quality of life for people with dementia living in care homes.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableHOMESIDE-A home-based family caregiver-delivered music and reading intervention for people living with dementia: A randomised controlled trial.(Wiley, 2021-12)BACKGROUND: Pharmacological interventions to address behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) can have undesirable side effects, therefore non-pharmacological approaches to managing symptoms may be preferable. Past studies show that music therapy can reduce BPSD, and other studies have explored how formal caregivers use music in their caring roles. However, no studies have examined the effects on BPSD of music interventions delivered by informal caregivers (CGs) in the home setting. Our project addresses the need for improved informal care by training cohabiting family CGs to implement music interventions that target BPSD, and the quality of life (QoL) and well-being of people with dementia and CGs. METHODS: An international three-arm parallel-group randomised controlled trial has so far randomised 130 of the target 495 dyads from Australia, Germany, UK, Poland and Norway. Dyads are randomised equally to standard care (SC), a home-based music programme plus SC, or a home-based reading programme plus SC for 12 weeks. The primary outcome is BPSD of people with dementia (measured using the Neuropsychiatric Inventory-Questionnaire). Secondary outcomes examine relationship quality between CG and people with dementia, depression, resilience, competence, QoL for CG and QoL for people with dementia. Outcomes are collected at baseline, at the end of the 12-week intervention and at 6 months post randomisation. Resource Utilisation in Dementia captures economic data across the life of the intervention and at 6-month follow-up. Our presentation will briefly outline the study protocol and describe the caregiver training protocol and interventions in detail with video footage illustrating how the intervention looks in practice.
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ItemBy myself but not alone: Agency, creativity, and extended musical historicity(Routledge, 2022-11)In this paper we offer a preliminary framework that highlights the relational nature of solo music-making, and its associated capacity to influence the constellation of habits and experiences one develops through acts of musicking. To do so, we introduce the notion of extended musical historicity and suggest that when novice and expert performers engage in individual musical practices, they often rely on an extended sense of agency which permeates their musical experience and shapes their creative outcomes. To support this view, we report on an exploratory, qualitative study conducted with novice and expert musicians. This was designed to elicit a range of responses, beliefs, experiences and meanings concerning the main categories of agency and creativity. Our data provide rich descriptions of solitary musical practices by both novice and expert performers, and reveal ways in which these experiences involve social contingencies that appear to generate or transform creative musical activity. We argue that recognition of the interactive components of individual musicking may shed new light on the cognition of solo and joint music performance, and should inspire the development of novel conceptual and empirical tools for future research and theory.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableEudaimonia and Music Learning(Frontiers in Psychology; Frontiers in Education; Frontiers in Cultural Psychology, 2021-08-18)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableGroup music therapy to support community-dwelling older adults living with dementia and their carers( 2018-06-29)DAAD-UA symposium - Music Therapy and Dementia - Singende Krankenhäuser