Towards Technological Ecologies as Compositional Environments in the Pedagogy of Acoustic Composition

Abstract

Over the last few decades, the use of engraving software in acoustic composition pedagogy has become near ubiquitous. Numerous studies, such as those by Chen and O’Neill, Owlabi, and Nielsen, show that the use of both notation software and technology more broadly in composition aids both the creative process and the development of musical skills. However the paradigms of thought offered by traditional engraving software such as Sibelius and Finale arguably discourage approaches to acoustic composition beyond the quantifiable parameters it encodes visually and represents in playback, leading to the decentring of many of the musical features prevalent in contemporary art music.
Using a framework informed by ecosystem-oriented analyses of creativity and Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology of disorientation, this paper will interrogate the potential for practical applications of new technology to broaden student composers’ toolkits when used in addition to notation software. As such, it draws from a range of real-world examples in order to offer educators some achievable means by which they can encourage student composers to think beyond notation software, as well a number of suggestions for future research, and furnish them with a basis from which to consider their music in terms that matter most to them.