D i a c h o t o m y is my upcoming album. half way there now, it will be released in mid november sometime! Stay tuned! This album explores our connection to our technology such that it plays an integral part of our social lives, the effects of how we interact with eachother online and how it spills into our reality.
"From the various encounters with diametrically opposed ideologies, the structure of ones opinions can be swayed from one thing to the other, rearranging not only the prioroties that were once held dear, but possibly also putting into question ones very identity. It has been said that a healthy debate can refine an individuals logic, reaffirm beliefs through the process of defending them, and offer new perspectives into why they choose to retain or discard aspects of their ideology. It appears with the introduction of social media in the past few decades, that people have forgotton how to communicate effectively, especially in the form of healthy debate. These disagreements quickly turn into a heated argument, which often results in people further polarizing their opinions, driven by intense emotion rather than leading their ideologies with logic."
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Wiggins, J. (2002). Creative process as meaningful music thinking. In T. Sullivan & L. Willingham (Eds.), Creativity and music education (Vol. 1, pp. 78–88). Canadian Music Educators’ Association.
Dr. Jackie Wiggins, Professor of music education at Oakland University, Michigan writes a book chapter about the creative process as “meaningful music thinking”, and the role it has in primary school students’ music education. Musical thinking is defined as the act of listening to, performing and/or creating music. Dr Wiggins draws from 10 years of collected recordings during music classes to inform her research on the nature of the students musical thinking when learning a melody by ear, improvising and composing a melody on an instrument. She uses these case studies to highlight several patterns in behaviour that are common and analyses how these processes unfold for her students. She discovers that creative experiences are most meaningful when the student can claim some ownership from the creative process, and by setting overly constraining tasks for students the experience feels less like compositional practise, and more like a puzzle to be solved. By giving the student freedom, the music learning experience becomes personally valuable and meaningful to them. MacDonald, R., Byrne, C., & Carlton, L. (2006). Creativity and flow in musical composition: An empirical investigation. Psychology of Music, 34(3), 292–306. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735606064838
Former artistic director and reader of psychology at Glasgow Caledonian University Raymond Macdonald, Senior lecturer in the department of Creative and Aesthetic Studies at University of Strathclyde Charles Byrne and PHD student at Glasgow Caledonian University’s Psychology Department Lana Carlton, investigate Csikszentmihalyi’s concept on flow and its relationship with the quality of music composition and creativity. Undergraduate students in Byrnes Applied Music class were asked to complete a small group composing task that would then lead to a survey where students would assess their own concentration during the task, and each of the group’s outcomes were assessed on creativity and quality by music educators. The aspects to Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow that are focused on in this study included removing the worry of failure, providing clear goals each step of the way and providing a balance between the perceived challenge and the control the individual has in the duration of the task. I personally found this to be something of a contradiction considering that sometimes the worry of failure is the very thing that allows us to perceive a challenge as a challenge. I also think that the complex nature of the individual makes it incredibly difficult to assign the correct level of challenge to each individual student as to keep them engaged. The result of the study suggests positive outcomes to incorporating methods from Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory, but I’m not completely certain that flow state was achieved by the students. By providing students with exciting and achievable challenges, they are going to motivated to improve, and by providing instant feedback on their work they are given the opportunity to improve their work more efficiently. I question whether all the students were able to enter a state of flow. By leaving it up to the individual to assess, they can only compare their concentration level compared to what they know, and flow state as the ultimate form of focus and concentration may not be familiar to some of the students. They conclude by reporting that higher levels of flow lead to higher quality compositions and higher levels of creativity. Lowe, G. (2002). Creativity and motivation. In T. Sullivan & L. Willingham (Eds.), Creativity and music education (Vol. 1, pp. 89–99). Canadian Music Educators’ Association.
In this Chapter, Executive Director of the Western Australian Youth Orchestra Association, Geoffrey Lowe explores the topic of motivation for students in music classes and implies the importance of creativity in lower education. He argues that motivation is driven by an individual’s attitudes, beliefs and emotional and instinctive feelings that exist on a positive/negative continuum. A reference to Eccles, J separates motivation into four components of value, Attainment value; The importance of doing well on a given task, Interest value; Inherent enjoyment gained from doing the task, Utility value; how the task fits into future or related goals, and Cost; what an individual must give up undertaking the task. Competence and expectancies factor in as a student will become more motivated if they can imagine themselves improving or have memories in succeeding in their musical learning. Interviews uncover the students desire for creative exploration and suggests that implementing a form of creative freedom can improve attitudes towards music education. There is also the need to negotiate skills acquisition in allowing effective creative exploration to take place. Students should be guided through creative exploration, and not taught it. I've decided to write my thesis about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow theory and how it applies to music composition in a more modern sense. I intend to make lifestyle changes throughout this journey to accomodate the greatest chance for creativity to flow from me as i work on music, as advised by different sources including methods of meditation, exercise, and of course Csikszentmihalyi's advice on the matter, to find what is the most effective for me on a personal level.
This journey of self realization is quite atypical of an honours thesis, my goal is to remain as objective as possible and highlight what works, what doesnt and why, taking into account the modern world we live in and the tools that composers have available to them today. The tools that i myself will make use of. What is creativity? is it the invention of something the world has never seen before, or the mixing of two or more things that already exist to make something new? As the world advances through time, it will become increasingly difficult to create new works, and perhaps one day, all new ideas will be exhausted. Will creativity die on that day? Perhaps creativity is the ability to advance ones skils at putting something together, the compitency of building a structure that is useful and respectable. What is flow? 1) Completely involved in what we are doing - focused concentrated. 2) a sense of ecstacy - of being outside everyday reality. 3) great inner clarity - knowing what needs to be done and how well we are doing. 4) knowing that the activity is doable - that our skills are adequate to the task. 5) a sense of serenity - no worries about oneself, and feeling of growing beyond the boundries of ego. 6) Timelessness - thoroughly focused on the present hours seem to pass by in minutes. 7) Intrinsic motivation - whatever produces flow becomes its own reward. (Csiksentmihalyi, 2004) Where do these ideas meet, and can it be achieved by a modern day composer? A. R. (2015, October 4). TED Talk – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Flow – 2004. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_u-Eh3h7Mo The approach i often find myself taking when designing a new idea, is to take the idea and just start building without a clear plan or structure to follow, because often the best insight on better design comes through identifying problems in the process of building. For the star sheet certain infilstructure was already in place when i started. I already had a working arduino code which was tested on a bread board with LED's, and creating a max patch was easy work since I've already done similar patches for different projects. The real problem I faced with this project has more to do with using materials that I'm unfamiliar with (such as nylon sheet), and doing tasks that i lack skill in (sewing). So to start off with, i purchased a large amount of cheap black nylon material and started thinking about how i was going to bring this idea into reality. This nylon sheet had a curtain-like texture, and was slightly shiny on one side, and darker on the other. All i really knew at this stage was that i was going to need a lot of white LED's, meters of wire, and lots of time to complete the project. Then I tested to see if the LED's were going to work hanging off a nylon sheet. I pushed each diode of multiple LED's throught the sheet like a needle through thread, then separatated the diodes out so the lights orientation was facing outwards from the sheet on the other side. I soldered them up and ran a current through them. Everything appeared to be working fine, so I knew i could continue forward without stressing about the material being conductive. I tested the lights on both sides of the sheet to figure out which side would look the best. I made my decision and continued moving forwards. Soldering in the LED's prooved to be incredibly time consuming. Taking care of the diodes as i push them through the material was a great deal harder than i originally anticipated. The material was thick, so the diodes would often bend as i was trying to push them through. But before i got too carried away with the LED's i needed to figure out how I was going to hang the sheet. My idea was to create a support beam at the top that would ensure that the material was hanging nice and flat so all the lights are emitting light toward the audence (if the sheet warps then the lights will point in all sorts of directions). The picture above was taken just after i had sewn in the top support beam. Before i reached this point in the process, i had assumed that the weight on the material might be enough to hold it down straight, but soon realized after hanging it that more work would need to be done to ensure that the sheet would be a nice flat plane. Here you can see that the material curves and warps at the bottom and in two spots where I've connected the stands on. i also noticed that the material was warping slightly because my stiching wasn't straight enough at the top the first time around. So i restitched the top and inserted another support beam at the bottom and made cutouts 60cm in from each side for the stands.
Wire management and arduino placement.Where is the best place to sew in my arduino?
Thinking logistically, the best place for it is at the top or bottom of the sheet somewhere to avoid adding weight in a place that is vulnerable to warping the sheet with the weight. If i place it on the left or right, it might be possible to place the sheet to my left or right during the performance and disguise the USB cable connecting it. However, to do this will require a larger amount of patching cable because the lights on the opposite side of the arduino will be so far away. If i place it in the middle, the best place for the sheet would be behind me as i perform. The USB cable can hang down and under the sheet and connect to my laptop. If i end up deciding that i dont want to send messages to the arduino, i could sew the arduino in the middle, but it will require a power source aswell. This would be ideal if i decide that the effect of highlighting different channels isn't as effective as i originally thought it to be. The downside would be that a significant amount of weight would be added with the battery pack. What is the best way to manage the wires so they're neat and dont short? For starters, this project is likely to short at some stage. the diodes on the LED's are completely exposed, so if they bend and connect positive to negative, then i could short out entire constilations. I thought of using heat shrink, but it's not really ideal because the diodes often have multiple connections, and i would need to cut the heat shrink to get it passed to connections. I could wrap the diodes with electrical tape (similar to what i did on the spider LED) but this will be hugely time consuming, and it would look messy on the opposite side. I could sew in the diodes so that they have restricted movement, and while this would be the most time consuming option, it would ensure that the LED's remain in their correct orientation. The other downside is that in may be possible to see the thread for each sewn spot with a close inspection of the sheet (not a huge issue since the audience is so far away). In terms of wire management: i could feed the wire directly to where the bottom support beam has been inserted and feed the wire along the support beam. This would require a large amount of cable because instead of feeding the wires straight to the arduino, they'd have to come all the way down first and then accross to the arduino. A better solution might be to sew the wires in so that they remain in their positions for easy patching when setting up. I think i'll use electrical tape on the diodes to stop them shorting, and sew in the wires nice and close to where-ever i place my arduino for easy patching and setup. Idea:To create a backdrop sheet with LED's that resembles stars in space. This will be used as a backdrop for my recital. The backdrop will consist of constillations that will flicker at different rates. some constilations will be paired with audio tracks and go brighter or darker depending on how much volume is being used on that channel. Others will flicker randomly. Should i be using resistors on these lights? The thought occured to me, and since these LED's are in series, and all the constilations are different sizes, they will require different resistors. To calculate the desired resistor value (in ohms) we can use this formula. (Power supply voltage – LED voltage) / current (in amps) = desired resistor value (in ohms) https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2012/resistors-for-leds/ Therefore for one light: (5v - 3v) / 0.02 amps = 100 ohms two lights (5v - 3v) / 0.04 amps = 50 ohms five lights (5v - 3v) / 0.1 amps = 20 ohms ten lights (5v - 3v) / 0.2 amps = 10 ohms How many ports on the arduino can send fade values effectively? There are 15 different ports which will effectively work with the analogWrite command. those ports are 2 to 13, and 44, 45 and 46. These are the PWM pins, and they can send a variable amount of voltage through each pin. Max Patch:Poly instrument with microtonal update/converting midi into micorotonal pitch information.1/22/2021 this section of the patch converts and calculates pitch based on variables within the equation which allows you to change how many notes per octave you would like, but where you'd like to tune A. the first part of the calculation calculates frequency, (freq = A*2^(n/o) where A is middle A -usually 440Hz, n is number of notes away from middle A, and o is how many notes per octave -usually 12, and allows each variable to change.
then it takes that frequency and reverse caclualates the midi note number you would require to achieve that pitch. as such i have another patch that converts standard midi into microtonal pitch information aswell.
In anticipation to one of my units this year, i've been working on a number of arduino programs during the uni break.
when i started with arduino there were a few early programs that allowed you to create a blinking light on a variable timer. at first i wanted to create a program that would allow multiple lights to flash on indipendant timers, but i found that within arduino, you can only set a single loop of code, so writing the code was going to be very tedious.
each letter reprisents one line of code (blue on and black off) per 10ms with 5 variable lights if i had to write out the code for one continuous loop. i never actually found the point where they all meet up again but gave up this idea at this point because the lights would have to be on a set time and it wouldnt be as good to experiment with.
I began exploring the idea of metering audio and after watching a few tutorials, created a program that took information from max/MSP and sent it to the arduino for one channel of audio, and metered over 12 LED's. My journey became much more difficult when i tried to send two seperate integers through the programs (to meter a left and right channels).
I came across a kind of code called ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) that could sent multiple intergers, letters and symbols through the serial port as bytes. from there the arduino decodes the information and applies it to the program. This was the ultimate solution to most of my issues, but it took a bit of fine tuning for me to get the program running as quickly as it does now.
You can see pictures of the code set for 12 varible lights below.
This code sets 12 separate variables and turns on all the LED outputs.
Here the code says that if 12 bytes of information come through, set the the first byte as "vl", set the second as "va" etc. and then states that if a variable is 1, then the LED connected to that would react and turn on, and turn off if the variable is 0.
whenever the status of a switch is changed it sends a slightly delayed bang so that the information can enter the pack first. the information passes to a sprintf to add the full stop at the end of the 12 bytes of code (sending as 24 bytes including the spaces between the ones and zeros and for some strange reason it just works better with the full stop at the end).
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AuthorMy name is Daniel Ohm and this section will include my research into music theory, experimental ideas, Mixing techniques and lessons learned from creative forums and musical endeavors. Archives
September 2022
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