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My research is primarily conducted through the creation of acousmatic music. I am very conscious of the ongoing development of my compositional practice: over 20 years of production I have noted aspects of my work that change, grow and some that remain common across the years. Realising how my research reflected back to my teaching (and was indeed influenced by it), I began to share the tools I made to create my music. This meant developing some rationale for explaining why I used one particular tool over another. Although by no means original, I began to talk about a theory of opposites: a sound suggested a development that (normally) required a particular parameter to be driven towards its polar opposite. At its most simple: short sounds need to be made longer; noisy sounds need to be made less noisy. I then suggested the most common means of implementing these transitions or developments. The noisy sound would require a filter. As development continued, our filtered sound would, ultimately, require some multiplicative method to make it tend back towards something more complex (or noisy). This all takes place as we put sounds one after the other (montage) and one on top of the other (mixing). This research led to the production of a practical textbook outlining this particular compositional method and a set of free development tools in PureData and CSound.  

I see the development of artistic practice as the embodiment of skills and experiences over time. I am also acutely aware that works must set out to do more than merely bathe the ear in sound. My most recent works ‘test’ the performance practice of acousmatic music and in so doing, break the sealed nature of the acousmatic work, which - for right or wrong - ‘tests’ my compositional practice. 

• ‘Routes’: returning to the 'Fractured Acousmatic': Testing the composition/performance boundaries of electroacoustic music by combining pre-composed materials, samples and diffusion at performance time.

I am currently returning to work with voices, both real and synthetic. 

• Electroacoustic opera based around artificial intelligence and the human condition.