Department of Music

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14078/18

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Research recast(ed): S1E16 - Soundscapes with Dr. Emilie LeBel
(2022) Ekelund, Brittany; Cave, Dylan; LeBel, Emilie
Today we dive into the music world, touching on technology in composition, challenging norms, the importance of artistic spaces and, most importantly, dogs! Joining us is Canadian composer Dr. Emilie LeBel, whose work has been referred to as intelligent and audacious, beautifully coherent and impressively subtle and sensuous. Dr. LeBel is an affiliate composer with the Toronto Symphony, and she also teaches composition and music theory at MacEwan University. Bent River Records is an artist-focused record label providing unique opportunities for students to work with artists to gain experience in the music industry.
Ark: a return to Robson Valley
(2022) MacDonald, Michael B.
What follows is a fictional conversation with a reviewer about the cinematic research-creation film Ark: A Return to Robson Valley(MacDonald 2022, dir.) published in this first issue of JAVEM. The purpose is to begin to discuss the value of fiction/neorealism in knowledge creation. The title and form of the essay riffs off of Brian Massumi’s (2008) “The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens: A Semblance of a Conversation.” In this conversation I am addressing comments from both reviewers, though playfully use the name Reviewer 2 to make a point about what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari call conceptual personae from “What is Philosophy?” that: “names are intrinsic conceptual personae who haunt a particular plane of consistency” (1994:24). Authors quite often make jokes about the critical nature of Reviewer 2, and some will possibly have an affective response to the name, which may open further the space I am trying to flow through with this essay.
Remix and life hack in hip hop : towards a critical pedagogy of music
(2016) MacDonald, Michael B.
Many hiphoppas labour to sustain Hiphop Kulture in their communities far from the big stages, world tours, and hit singles enjoyed by a shockingly few American hiphoppas. The creative labour of these few mega stars is calculated in billions of dollars. But for most hiphoppas, their creative labour may never get expressed in economic terms. Instead it is expressed in social capital, the production of collective and individual subjectivities, the bonds of love that build and hold communities together, and the healing of broken hearts, broken homes, and broken neighborhoods in broken cities. Hiphop Kulture is not a music genre, it is much more, and exploring how the sharing of aesthetic resources builds community, and how situated learning plays a necessary role in cultural sustainability draws out questions that may lead to a model of community located cultural education, and a starting point for a critical pedagogy of music
Playing for change : music festivals as community learning and development
(2016) MacDonald, Michael B.
Playing for Change – performing for money and for social justice – introduces a critical pedagogy of arts-based community learning and development (A-CLD), a new discipline wherein artists learn to become educators, social workers, and community economic development agents. Challenging the assumption that acculturation into a ruling ideology of state development is necessary, this book presents a version of CLD that locates development in the production of subjectivities. The author argues that A-CLD is as concerned with the autonomous collective and the individual as it is with establishing community infrastructure. As a result, a radical new theory is proposed to explain aesthetics within arts movements, beginning not by normalizing music cultures within global capitalism, but by identifying the creation of experimental assemblages as locations of cultural resistance. This book offers a new vocabulary of cultural production to provide a critical language for a theory of anti-capitalist subjectivity and for a new type of cultural worker involved with A-CLD. Drawing from a four-year study of thirteen music festivals, Playing for Change forwards A-CLD as a locally situated, joyful, and creative resistance to the globalizing forces of neoliberalism.
CineWorlding: scenes of cinematic research-creation
(2023) MacDonald, Michael B.
Using cine-ethnomusicology as a focus, Cineworlding introduces readers to ways of thinking eco-cinematically. Screens are omnipresent, we carry digital cinema production equipment in our pockets, but this screen-based technological revolution has barely impacted social science scholarship. Mixing existential phenomenological fiction about social science digital cinema research practice followed by theoretical reflection and discussion of methods, this book has emerged from a decade-long inquiry into cineworlding and a desire to help others produce digital media to engage creatively with the digital networks that surround us.
Collaborative projection and the twin ecstasies of DIY cineworlding
(2023) MacDonald, Michael B.
The notion that ethnographic practice needs to be normative in order to be rigorous is problematic, especially when the partners in that research are producing experimental and resistant DIY cultures. Nonnormative ethnographers are “activist” in their critical engagement with dominant regimes of truth and must contend with digital disruption and platform capitalism that has vastly expanded DIY production. It is no longer possible to identify DIY culture with self-production because digital self-production is simply demanded for the “digital citizenship” of platform capitalism. In this article, the psychoanalytic concept of projection is turned upside down and understood as a socially performed digital-bodying that worlds. The screen becomes a location of dissensus, projecting the ecstatic truth of Modern/capitalist worldings or Altermodern/anti-capitalist worldings. Cinematic research-creation, CineWorlding, is an activist cinematic posthumanographic study of the interstices that infold concepts, bodies, social, technological, and environmental ecologies into worldings.
What can music learning do? Audiovision as research-creation in undergraduate music studies
(2023) MacDonald, Michael B.
Livestreaming as research-creation for music studies introduced students to research-creation and the felt experience of extralinguistic concepts. As a way of both rethinking the divide between musicology and music performance and engaging in much needed critical reflection on how music teaching has always been done, research-creation in audiovision creates a laboratory for extralinguistic musicology. By connecting research-creation literature with practical training in the production of audiovision music studies, dominant image of thought emerges and a new machinic image of thought is introduced. If music studies is to find its way beyond the disciplinarity of inherited models, it will do so along with a wider engagement in a diversity of what it means to teach and what it means to do research. This is, at its core, a question of what image of thought will be allowed.
Unspittable: long-form ethnographic music video as cine-ethnomusicology research-creation
(2020) MacDonald, Michael B.
Cine-ethnomusicology, the cinematic study of music culture, is an emerging discipline in ethnomusicology. Benjamin Harbert, a leading figure in this movement, has called for a critical cinema of music to blend ethnomusicology and film studies. In response to this call, I forward the long-form ethnographic music video as a research-creation model that combines ethnographic filmmaking with music video production. This article introduces a three-assemblage ethnographic production model and uses the making of Unspittable (2019) as a case study.
African rhythm as the foundation of contemporary bass performance
(2018) de Toledo, Rubim
Jazz and contemporary bass playing is a varied and deeply elaborate landscape. If jazz, American popular music, Caribbean, and Latin musical genres are taken into consideration, the breadth of bass styles is too broad to encompass in one lifetime. However, when the roots and traditions of these styles are examined, many common musical devices appear. With even more examination, these musical qualities can be seen and linked to West African ancestry. In this thesis, I outline several of these qualities and demonstrate these concepts from the perspective of modern bass performance. As well, I discuss the core rhythms in contemporary bass playing that have been retained from West African music. In conclusion, I present a handful of practical practice exercise to aid the bassist in internalizing some of the concepts discussed in the thesis. With such a broad topic it is clear to me that, while I present a unique perspective on contemporary bass performance, the study of African retention in bass performance goes far beyond the scope of a master’s thesis. It is my goal to open a gateway to a new awareness on the roots of contemporary bass playing and aid the bassist to build an authentic and profound connection to the ancestry of the art form.
Pimachihowan
(2015) MacDonald, Michael B.; Lertzman, David
The product of three years of work in Northern Alberta that explores the traditional Cree philosophy of Pimachihowan that roughly translates into living with the land. The northern Cree are First Nations (Indigenous Canadians) living in the Boreal forest, second in size and ecological importance only to the Amazonian Rainforest, an indispensable resource to maintaining life. A Michael MacDonald film; written and produced by Dr. David Lertzman; director, editor, sound: Michael MacDonald; featuring Dr. David Lertzman, Conroy Sewepagaham, and Willard Tallcree; 33:03 minutes. Retrieved from: http://www.michaelbmacdonaldfilms.ca/
Megamorphesis: the hip hop quest for enlightenment
(2016) MacDonald, Michael B.
Every week Dre Pharoh and iD meet with young Edmonton hiphoppas at a local community centre. Together they make a knowledge cypher called Cipher5 where they work towards developing both skills and better selves. This is a film about one of those meetings where they talk about HipHop Kulture and build a new hip-hop track about their transformation to a higher self, Megamorephesis. A Cipher5 production; a Michael MacDonald film; 29:46 minutes. Retrieved from: http://www.michaelbmacdonaldfilms.ca/
Citizen science on the Bras D'Or
(2016) MacDonald, Michael B.
Citizen Science is a community based approach to ecology research. One afternoon in the summer of 2016 Bras D'Or Watch organized an opportunity for the general public to learn how to do citizen science. This short film introduces citizen science and some of the interesting scientific questions that face the Bras D'Or Lakes, Cape Breton Island's UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (blbra.ca). 3:35 minutes. Retrieved from: http://www.michaelbmacdonaldfilms.ca/
You are here
(2017) MacDonald, Michael B.; MacDonald, Michael B.; Pearson, Diana
A daughter's journey to discover the music festival her father loved and the island that makes it possible. A Michael B. MacDonald film; written by Diana Pearson; all songs by Mike Pearson; filmed on location on Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada; 37:03 minutes. Retrieved from http://www.michaelbmacdonaldfilms.ca/
Letters to Attawapiskat
(2016) MacDonald, Michael B.; Cipher5
The story of tragedy at the Attawapiskat First Nations brings up issues of colonization, truth and reconciliation in a very personal way for a group of hiphoppas in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. A film by Michael B. MacDonald; A CIPHER5 Production; 31:11 minutes. Retrieved from: http://www.michaelbmacdonaldfilms.ca/
Who's afraid of the vagina monologues?
(2017) MacDonald, Michael B.
Behind the scene at the University of Calgary's fifth annual production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. This short behind-the-scenes film follows directors Shirley R. Steinberg and Lauryn Record at the dress rehearsal as they shape their contribution to the global effort to stop violence against women and girls. A Michael B. MacDonald film; 15:47 minutes. Retrieved from http://www.michaelbmacdonaldfilms.ca/
Back to the garden: territory and exchange in western Canadian folk music festivals
(2010) MacDonald, Michael B.
Until now folk music festivals in western Canada have not been systematically surveyed nor has their operation been theorized as a mode of creative production. This work develops a historically grounded approach to folk music as a means of social production and challenges the idea that folk music is only a music genre. I conclude, using a theoretical approach developed by Deleuze and Guattari, that contemporary folk music festivals make use of social capital to establish a folk music assemblage. This assemblage provides an alternative, non-centralized, and increasingly global alternative for the flow of music capital. Folk music is no longer a style of music but a mode of doing business in music that is socially oriented and politically and economically potent.
Research in the creative and performing arts
(2014) Gilliland, Allan
What research is for a composer and how the work is disseminated.
Eighty-eight drums: the piano as percussion instrument in jazz
(2011) Van Seters, Tom
Evidence of a link between piano and drumming performance practices in western music dates back to at least the mid-nineteenth century. The modern construction of the piano had yet to be fully standardized when percussive techniques were being applied to its keyboard. Since that time, pianists and drummers (especially those involved with the creation of groove-based music) have grown closer and closer, participating in what remains a richly symbiotic relationship. This study examines parallels between piano and drumming performance practices in jazz. In this context, drumming is acknowledged as an important inspiration guiding the expression of rhythm and percussive attack by non-drummers, pianists in particular. Historical connections between pianism and drumming in jazz are addressed through an examination of those legacies that are widely believed to derive from West African drumming, European march and dance traditions, and various aspects of the so-called "Latin tinge" from the Caribbean and South America. Playing techniques are compared in part based on the premise that similarities in musical output flow naturally from congruencies in instrumental architecture. Percussive action unites pianists and drummers, as do shared abilities to create rhythmic layers through the independent functioning of multiple limbs. A discussion of ensemble roles reveals conceptual links, especially with regard to time-keeping, "comping," and mutual approaches to the creation of groove and swing. Transcriptions are employed to illustrate instances of widely adopted drumming-like gestures from the history of jazz with special attention paid to rhythmic counterpoint, complementation, and rudimental sticking patterns used by jazz pianists since the 1960's. Though a statistically small sample, interviews with ten professional jazz pianists support the essential findings of the study. Questions are raised throughout regarding the effectiveness of traditional jazz pedagogy in emphasizing the importance of drumming to non-drummer instrumental praxis.
Lunar winter
(2008) Richards, William
This is the title track for a self-produced electronica album I did in 2008 [Lunar winter]. I call my style of electronica "eclectronica." Soul Dog is my electronica name (visit my site: souldogmusic.com). This track and others of my self-produced electronica/eclectronica were published (CD) as part of the MacEwan produced POP CITY 4 (2009).
Transformation and generic interaction in the early serial music of Igor Stravinsky
(2003) Richards, William
This dissertation investigates the compositionally continuous and discontinuous serial and non-serial formations found at or near the musical surface in works selected from Stravinsky’s early serial music, draws these formations into relationships through the analytical apparatus of an original transformational system, and explores their interactions through the model of generic set-class space. Ultimately, a dynamic model of the pitch structure for each of these works emerges that transcends order relationships embedded within the linear formations.

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