CCOB/COBS

Creative Musical Practices
Pratiques Musicales Créatives

A scoping systematic literature review of the effects, characteristics and contexts of storytelling use by person-brands: towards a research agenda for commercial independent musicians

Adrien Simonnot-Lanciaux

Over the past fifteen years, a convergence of technological developments has dramatically reduced the economic barriers to entry for commercial musical artists wishing to start a career as independent performers. While they can now produce, distribute and promote their creations from home, it has also greatly increased the competition for consumer attention. Although storytelling has already been shown to be an effective tool for improving consumer intentions and attitudes, it remains to be seen whether the person-brands who communicate with their audiences through stories (e.g. about themselves or about their work) can achieve the same effects, as the underlying mechanisms at play may differ greatly. I thus offer a scoping review of the marketing literature that presents what has already been established about person-brand storytelling: its contexts of use, its characteristics, and its effects. It includes a hand search of all the articles published in the last ten years in the ten marketing journals with the highest H-index. This work will allow me to formulate initial recommendations for commercial music performers wishing to enter the market and will lead to the constitution of a research agenda, presenting avenues to explore for future work in this field.


10:45 a.m.

Improvisation impulse: Exploring the relationships between vocal improvisation and the acoustic space

Carolina Rodríguez, Mariane Generale

Tempo choices and musical phrasing can vary with acoustic change (Berg et al., 2016) (Lachemnmayer et al., 2015). In the present work, the interaction between the human voice and the particularities of acoustic spaces will be explored during an improvisation in both, a controlled and a non-traditional performance space, a laboratory and a staircase at McGill. This study aims to examine the relationship between the acoustics of a non-traditional performance space, the performers’ perception of it, and how this relationship affects performance choices during a vocal improvisation.

Acoustic characteristics (frequency response, reflection delay times and reverberation time) are measured in both spaces. Two singers are invited to then improvise there for a short period of time, and a semi-structured interview was given to them at the end with questions about the perception of their improvisation and how the sense of acoustics altered their musical approach or choices. Lastly, thematic analysis will be performed on these interviews, and compared to the acoustic characteristics to indicate possible correlations.

A literature review on the topic and preliminary results on acoustic differences between spaces will be presented at COBS, with final analysis and production of a mini-documentary finalized in the summer 2022.

3:30 p.m.

De la musique avec du bruit ?

Mélanie Frisoli

Fascinée par le bruit (en particulier le bruit de fond), son omniprésence et ce qu’il révèle de nos vies modernes, j’ai voulu composer une performance musicale en direct avec, pour unique source sonore, un générateur de bruit. J’ai donc créé plusieurs « instruments » numériques susceptibles de générer des matériaux sonores à partir de ce son monocorde, et, à l’aide d’un seul contrôleur (une autre limite fixée), je devais être capable de gérer à la fois le traitement sonore et la spatialisation. D’un point de vue musical, la pièce, d’une durée de 25 minutes, présente une série de tableaux pensés comme des espaces, chacun incarnant un lieu imaginaire. Les matières sonores générées imitent volontairement quelques éléments sonores référentiels (vagues, oiseaux, pluie, etc.), dans une volonté de naturalisation du bruit. J’ai ensuite cherché la confrontation entre ces objets sonores « naturels » avec des sons bruitistes plus « bruts », plutôt proches du glitch, de la noise et du monde des machines. J’expliquerai, lors de ce symposium, le processus de création du dispositif ainsi que l’élaboration de la performance live, qui possèdent chacun leur lot de défis et de contraintes. Enfin, j’en profiterai pour présenter les projets et compositions qui découlent directement de cette recherche.
15h45

Mon approche de la composition de musique immersive

Nicola Giannini

En présentant des projets de création, j’illustrerai mon approche de la musique immersive et ma recherche sur le développement des stratégies de spatialisation. Je considère l’espace comme un paramètre de composition en me référant à Normandeau, qui indique que la spatialisation n’est pas simplement un effet à ajouter à la fin de l’écriture. À travers la musique immersive, il est possible de créer un espace sonore qui se transforme dans le temps. Existe-t-il des sons et des trajectoires plus appropriés à cet égard ? Inspiré par Barrett et Kendall qui mettent en relation composition et psychoacoustique, j’ai porté mon attention sur la perception auditive spatiale. En avril 2020, j'ai réalisé des expériences de perception avec les étudiant.e.s du cours de psychoacoustique de Caroline Traube à l’UdeM. Les résultats ont donné des indications utiles aux stratégies de spatialisation quant au choix des sons, aux trajectoires et à l'interdépendance entre espace et autres paramètres. Ces indications ont inspiré les œuvres composées par la suite. Lors de ces créations, je me suis aussi questionné comment des caractéristiques des contextes de diffusion pouvaient influencer des décisions de spatialisation. L’écriture de l’espace a été réalisée avec SpatGRIS, le logiciel développé au GRIS de l’UdeM.
16h00

Compose for concert film: claiming a new type of live performance?

Romain Camiolo

Since its revival in the 80s, the concert film, which I define as the projection of a film accompanied by one or more musicians playing live, has become a type of show fully recognized in the European and North American cultural landscape. When I discovered such a show at the beginning of my academic studies, I was intrigued by the constituents of a concert film that make it a living show: the scenic arrangement and the musicians' presence in particular. I was interested in the opportunity to turn musicians on stage into characters that could be fully part of the show, thus taking them out of their role as pit musicians. I wanted to further explore this idea in the context of my doctorate, by considering this interdisciplinary show (music, cinema and scenography) as a particularly meaningful poetic and sensitive experience. In order to put my reflections into practice, I am composing an original theme for Jean Renoir's La fille de l'eau, a 1924 silent film that is part of the poetic realism movement. Always working in the service of the movie dramaturgy, I offer a musical score for orchestra that I want to be immersive, thanks to sound materials linked to the characters, to the landscapes, and in particular the presence of water, which irrigates the whole plot.
poster presentation 4:30 p.m.