In this project update I will describe how I incorporate OrchPlay in my research project. It contains the outcome from research activities that have been conducted during my ACTOR exchange at the McGill University’s Music Perception and Cognition Lab as well as follow up implementations in the Music Perception and Processing Lab at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany, up until now. I plan to follow up with a series of updates on this project in the future.

In the Fall of 2022, I co-taught a seminar on the ACTOR project with Rand Steiger. There were seven UCSD grad students enrolled in the seminar. The group also included ACTOR visitor Yuval Adler, who participated energetically and usefully, while also undertaking archival responsibilities. Five of those enrolled composed “Timbre Etudes” for the specified septet of instruments for the CORE project.

Website update

I would like to welcome to all ACTOR members to the workshop wrapping up our fourth year of activities. As we transition back to some form of normal life again, many of the collaborative workgroups have been very active, demonstrating once again the resourcefulness and devotion of our community to our common passion.

The aim of their project is to evaluate musical blend in choral performance from both signal and perceptual analysis methods. They will analyze choral blend on two levels: at the sound source level and the room acoustic level. The influence of feedback from the acoustic environment—along with coordinated performance strategies between musicians—is observed to have a high impact on individual musical performances and significantly affect the resulting sound field of joint performance.

Lena Heng and Mengqi Wang have also been working on their Collaborative Student Grant project, "Sounding the interaction of cultures: Orchestration techniques and perceptual effects." Compositions for a solo Chinese instrument with the Western orchestra require the composer to consider ways in which orchestration techniques might function in different ways.

Gabriel Couturier and Martin Daigle have been hard at work on the project for which they were awarded the Collaborative Student Project Grant! "Masque de fer" (Iron Mask) is in the final stages of composition. The research phase was fully recorded, generating an open-access extended technique resource that includes a stereo mix, the entire recording session, and the stems in 96 kHz or in 48 kHz.

Recording of three original pieces for guitar and electronics in McGill University’s Multi-Media Room (MMR), as part of a larger project researching dialectal variation as a source for musical creation.

As well, the team has been working to harmonize the OrchView data-format with the OrchARD data structure.

Currently conducting a pilot study of timbre in popular song and its interactions with musical form and texture.

A new round of the CORE project is now in motion at the Haute école de musique de Genève, McGill University, Université de Montréal, University of British Columbia, and University of Toronto.

I would like to welcome to all ACTOR members to the workshop wrapping up our third year of activities. I sincerely hope that all ACTOR members managed to maintain their research and creative activities in spite of the continuing pandemic. Many of the collaborative activities of course have been virtual and yet again this year's workshop is online. In spite of these challenges, many of the collaborative workgroups have been very active demonstrating once again the resourcefulness and devotion of our community to our common passion.

In 2019, Miller Puckette and I received a joint award from UC San Diego’s Committee on Research to undertake a project with two primary goals: the ability to accurately track a timbrically complex, two- part continuity, that was constantly varying while being generated from the same physical source, a cello. The ability to differentiate the two “parts” of a performed succession of double-stops that continuously alter their pitch, their dynamic balance, and their timbral profile will, in-turn, allow the composition of a musical composition for live cellist and a duo partner who is a computer musician managing the constant transformation of live events by selected algorhythms (in particular a spectrally sculpting one named THINNR).

The first Timbre and Orchestration Taxonomies Workshop was held virtually 29–31 May. Over the first two days, participants gave presentations using Maurice Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso as the shared reference for each method. This pluralistic approach brought up engaging questions and facilitated discussions about the unique qualities of each taxonomic system. The third day was devoted to group discussion and proved to be intellectually stimulating and invigorating for all.

I would like to welcome to all ACTOR members to the workshop wrapping up our second year of activities. I hope that all ACTOR members managed to maintain their activities in spite of the challenges presented by the pandemic. Many of the collaborative activities of course had to go virtual as did this year's workshop, but everyone rose the challenge as best as circumstances allowed, and this year's slate of workgroups is a testament to the resourcefulness and devotion of our community.