Society for Music Analysis Postgraduate Workshop, Royal College of Music, 28 October 2023, 11am-4pm.
Workshop Leaders: Oliver Chandler & Isabella Thorneycroft
Imagine drinking a dram of whiskey. One might be vaguely aware of ‘notes’ of various kinds, while being unable to distinguish them precisely from one another, or to put a name to them. A whiskey sommelier might inform you that vanilla and caramel are both present, but that caramel predominates. Analysis through discrete Fourier transform does something similar for music: it tells the analyst which particular ‘harmonic flavour’ (e.g., diatonicity, octatonicity, chromaticity, etc.) a given chord is most similar to, even if – indeed, particularly if — it matches no established chord or scale exactly, or is a subset of a number of said chords/scales. Much like pcset theory, DFT is not preloaded with presumptions about which kinds of musical information will be salient; it allows us simply to analyse what is there. However, ‘many of the harmonic qualities it identifies – diatonicity, octatonicity, whole-tone balance, hexatonicity – invoke the kinds of prototypes that scale theory takes as primary referential collections’ (Yust 2016). In other words, analysis of music through the DFT mediates between abstract and enculturated observation, combining the best of both.
In the aforementioned gustatory example, the sommelier’s judgement is necessarily individual and contingent. DFT, by contrast, is universal: it depends on impersonal mathematics. The DFT’s mathematical basis need not be a barrier to musicological application, however. Jennifer Harding has developed an easy to use but powerful web application which does all calculations for you and represents the results in a visually intuitive way. This means that the explanatory power of DFT is now available to music analysts without mathematical expertise (https://jenndharding.com/vectorCalculator). Part of the aim of this workshop is to show how this application might be used and, more importantly, how the information that it yields might be interpreted.
This workshop will be led by Olly (academic professor, Royal College of Music) and Izzie (flautist, Royal Academy of Music). The day will be composed of two parts: 1) an informal lecture, where the workshop leaders will explain how the theory works; and 2) small-group sessions, in which participants will attempt to use Jenn Harding’s applications to make their own analyses. They will circulate a draft of an article manuscript they have recently finished ahead of time, as well as a short list of pieces to read/listen through, although participation is not contingent on any prior preparation.
There will be plenty of time for catching up with old friends, and for making new ones! (Spaces will be capped at 12 people to ensure the possibility of collaboration and dialogue.)
Expressions of interest should be sent to the SMA Student Rep, Rebekah Donn: rebekah.donn@napier.ac.uk