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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ItemLa colección Alberto Ginastera en la Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes: un fondo documental desconocido(Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2023)The Alberto Ginastera Collection at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires, Argentina) is one of the most significant institutional holdings related to the composer worldwide, second only to that of the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel (Switzerland). Its existence, however, has gone unnoticed by researchers, and it is not mentioned in the extensive literature on the renowned Argentine composer. This article offers a preliminary overview of the collection's contents. After a brief introduction to the composer and his work, the ANBA collection is contextualized within the framework of other repositories related to Ginastera, both in Argentina and abroad. Its contents are classified into a tentative taxonomy comprising five categories: writings, photographs, periodical documents, and memorabilia, which are briefly described. The article mentions the preventative conservation actions taken by the author and suggests potential future actions. It concludes with some reflections on the importance of documentary collections for a cultural history-engaged musicology.
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ItemA Day with Michael Shrieve(Musictek Australia, 2023-10-24)A Day with Michel Shrieve addresses the US drummer’s background and identity as a band member, band leader, composer and record producer. I delve into Shrieve’s outstanding career which commenced as the drummer of the legendary San Francisco based band Santana, instantly famed after their ground breaking performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival. Throughout his career he has been praised for his innovative approach to drumming and his ability to blend diverse musical influences seamlessly, his contributions to the drumming world inspiring generations of musicians, myself included. With the recent marking of the 50th anniversary of the iconic Santana album Caravanserai, considered one of the outstanding works in Santana’s discography, Shrieve discusses with me various aspects of recording that remarkable album, his upcoming book on master drummer Elvin Jones, as well as his much-anticipated forthcoming release Drums of Compassion.
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ItemA Day with Bobby Sanabria(Musictek Australia, 2023-05-19)A Day with Bobby Sanabria addresses New York based, Puerto Rican Sanabrias’ background and identity as a band leader, arranger and record producer. I delve into Sanabria’s career in New York and discuss his work, and particularly this latest release by his Multiverse Big Band titled ‘Vox Humana’. Sanabria discusses his approach to the organization and development of this latest album, which apart from his extraordinary big band, also features three remarkable jazz contemporary vocalists; Janis Siegel from the Manhattan Transfer, blues and jazz vocalist Antoinette Montague and multi-lingual vocalist Jennifer Ledesna. The album recorded live in New York City received a Grammy nomination under the Latin-Jazz category.
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ItemA Day with Agustin Diaz(Musictek Australia, 2023-01-09)A Day with Agustin Diaz addresses master drummer Diaz’s Latin American identity, his style and career. I delve into Diaz’s connections with the highly acclaimed Cuban ensemble Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. Diaz discusses percussive development and techniques as applied to Cuban percussion styles, his long tenure as a member of the ensemble and his work in maintaining and further developing Cuban cultural and folkloric musical styles.
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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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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 AvailableHow accurate are self-evaluations of singing ability?(WILEY, 2023-12)Research has shown that people inaccurately assess their own abilities on self-report measures, including academic, athletic, and music ability. Evidence suggests this is also true for singing, with individuals either overestimating or underestimating their level of singing competency. In this paper, we present the Melbourne Singing Tool Questionnaire (MST-Q), a brief 16-item measure exploring people's self-perceptions of singing ability and engagement with singing. Using a large sample of Australian twins (n = 996), we identified three latent factors underlying MST-Q items and examined whether these factors were related to an objective phenotypic measure of singing ability. The three factors were identified as Personal Engagement, Social Engagement, and Self-Evaluation. All factors were positively associated with objective singing performance, with the Self-Evaluation factor yielding the strongest correlation (r = 0.66). Both the Self-Evaluation factor and a single self-report item of singing ability shared the same predictive strength. Contrary to expectations, our findings suggest that self-evaluation strongly predicts singing ability, and this self-evaluation is of higher predictive value than self-reported engagement with music and singing.