Skip to main content

James Mooney

University of Leeds, School of Music, Faculty Member

Followers

386

Following

72

Co-author

1

Public Views

I am a researcher and lecturer specialising in electronic/electroacoustic music, sound, and music technology. I work at University of Leeds - http://music.leeds.ac.uk/people/james-mooney.

I am currently leading the Hugh Davies Project - a research project exploring the work of the English musician and musicologist Hugh Davies (1943-2005). Current/recent activities can be seen on the project's own website - http://hughdaviesproject.wordpress.com.

My other work includes the design of multi-loudspeaker sound systems for electronic music performance - M2 and Resound.
Phone: +44 (0)113 34 32532
Address: School of Music
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds
West Yorkshire LS2 9JT
United Kingdom

less

InterestsView All (21)

Uploads

Papers by James Mooney

A concept-based system for the live diffusion of sound via multiple loudspeakers

This paper presents a conceptual framework for sound diffusion: the process of presenting multipl... more This paper presents a conceptual framework for sound diffusion: the process of presenting multiple channels of audio to an audience in a live performance context, via loudspeakers. Terminology that allows us to concisely describe the task of sound diffusion is defined. The conceptual model is described using this terminology. The model allows audio channels (sources) and loudspeakers (destinations) to be grouped logically, which, in turn, allows for sophisticated abstract methods of control that supercede the restrictive 'one-fader-one-loudspeaker' approach. The Resound project - an open source software initiative conceived to implement and further develop the conceptual model - is introduced. The aim is, through further theoretical and practice led research into the conceptual model and software respectively, to address the technical, logistical and aesthetic issues inherent in the process of sound diffusion

International Conference: Alternative Histories of Electronic Music, 2016

This first international conference on 'Alternative Histories of Electronic Music' (AHEM)... more This first international conference on 'Alternative Histories of Electronic Music' (AHEM) was staged at The Science Museum Research Centre, London, on 14-16 April 2016 as part of an AHRC-funded project exploring the work of the English musician and musicologist Hugh Davies (1943-2005). The project is led by Dr James Mooney (University of Leeds) in partnership with Dr Tim Boon (Science Museum). http://hughdaviesproject.wordpress.com In the late 1960s, Davies produced a comprehensive inventory of electronic music compositions, entitled International Electronic Music Catalog (1968), in which he documented the output of 560 studios in 39 countries. This challenged the hegemony of the Paris, Cologne, and New York schools, whose activities had dominated the literature of the 1950s and 60s. As such, Davies provided what was perhaps the first alternative version of electronic music's history. While this conference is not directly 'about' Hugh Davies, then, it does explor...

Hugh Davies, "Quintet" and "Music for a Single Spring"; Stockhausen, "Verbindung" and "Intensitat" from "Aus den Sieben Tagen"; Christian Wolff, "Edges"; and Owen Green, "Neither the Time nor the Energy": Performances by Grey Area, with pre-concert lecture by James Mooney

A concert of music composed by, or related to the work of, Hugh Davies, staged at the Clothworker... more A concert of music composed by, or related to the work of, Hugh Davies, staged at the Clothworkers' Centenary Concert Hall, University of Leeds, UK, at 7.30pm on Saturday 23 May, 2015. The data-set includes video recordings of a pre-concert talk by Dr James Mooney, and of all the pieces performed, as well as a concert programme with programme notes in PDF format. Pieces performed include: Stockhausen, 'Verbindung' from Aus den sieben Tagen; Hugh Davies, 'Music for a Single Spring'; Christian Wolff, 'Edges'; Hugh Davies, 'Quintet'; Owen Green, 'Neither the Time Nor the Energy'; Stockhausen, 'Intensität' from Aus den sieben Tagen. The pieces are performed by the ensemble Grey Area: Owen Green, Emma Lloyd, Dave Murray-Rust, Armin Sturm, Sean Williams. Sound and video: Colin Bradburne. Sound diffusion: James Mooney. The concert was staged as part of the AHRC-funded research project 'Hugh Davies: Electronic Music Innovator' (AHR...

Hugh Davies, "Voice", "Not to be Loaded with Fish", and "Birth of Live Electronic Music"; plus improvisations: Performances by Steve Beresford, Phil Minton, Aleks Kolkowski and Sean Williams, with pre-concert lecture by James Mooney

A concert of music composed by Hugh Davies, plus improvised music in tribute to Hugh Davies, stag... more A concert of music composed by Hugh Davies, plus improvised music in tribute to Hugh Davies, staged at the Clothworkers' Centenary Concert Hall, University of Leeds, UK, at 4pm on Sunday 18 October, 2015. The data-set includes a video recording of a pre-concert talk by Dr James Mooney, video recordings of all the pieces performed, and a concert programme with programme notes in PDF format. Pieces performed include: Hugh Davies's 'The Birth of Live Electronic Music', 'Voice', and 'Not to be Loaded with Fish'; an 'Improvisation on Steve Beresford's "Voice"'; and a group improvisation. Davies's 'The Birth of Live Electronic Music' is performed twice. The performers are Steve Beresford, Aleks Kolkowski, Phil Minton, and Sean Williams. Sound and video: Colin Bradburne. The concert was staged as part of the AHRC-funded research project 'Hugh Davies: Electronic Music Innovator' (AHRC ref: AH/M005216/1), led by Dr Jam...

Hugh Davies, "Galactic Interfaces", "Mobile with Differences", and "Printmusic"; Alex McLean, "Printmusic - Live Coded"; and David Keane, "Les Voix Spectrales": Performances by Grey Area and Alex McLean, with pre-concert lecture by James Mooney

A concert of music composed by, or in response to the work of, Hugh Davies, staged at the Clothwo... more A concert of music composed by, or in response to the work of, Hugh Davies, staged at the Clothworkers' Centenary Concert Hall, University of Leeds, UK, at 6pm on Saturday 17 October, 2015. The data-set includes a video recording of a pre-concert talk by Dr James Mooney, video recordings of all the pieces performed, and a concert programme with programme notes in PDF format. Pieces performed include: Hugh Davies 'Printmusic', 'Galactic Interfaces', and 'Mobile with Differences'; David Keane, 'Les Voix Spectrales (des Oeufs Tranchés)'; and Alex McLean, 'Printmusic – Livecoded', a live coded set combining live dot-matrix printer and sampled audio sounds. The performers are Grey Area (Owen Green, Emma Lloyd, Dave Murray-Rust, Armin Sturm, Shiori Usui, Sean Williams), and Alex McLean. Sound and video: Colin Bradburne. Sound diffusion: James Mooney. The concert was staged as part of the AHRC-funded research project 'Hugh Davies: Electronic ...

‘The Same Trade as Mozart’: Convincing the sceptics of electronic music’s value

In August 1969, the music documentary series Workshop focused on electronic music in a film title... more In August 1969, the music documentary series Workshop focused on electronic music in a film titled The Same Trade as Mozart. Produced and directed by David Buckton, the film included interviews with composers Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tristram Cary and Justin Connolly; BBC Radiophonic Workshop staff Desmond Briscoe, David Cain and John Baker and the Workshop’s founder, Daphne Oram; and Peter Zinovieff, director of EMS (Electronic Music Studios). It presented electronic music in a number of contexts, such as education, pop production and live performance. Technological change in music has often provoked hostility among the public and critics, and the rapid advancement of electronic music post-World War II was no exception. Adopting a mode of analysis more commonly encountered in studies of the public communication of science, this paper considers The Same Trade as Mozart as an attempt by electronic music’s advocates, such as those listed above, to convince sceptics of its value. While s...

Resound: Open-Source Live sound spatialisation

Resound is an open source cross-platform software tool for real time multi-channel sound spatiali... more Resound is an open source cross-platform software tool for real time multi-channel sound spatialisation. This paper gives a non-technical account of the key capabilities of the system, predominantly from the standpoint of live performance in electroacoustic music, with specific examples of how the various functionalities might be used.

Beyond Auditive Unpleasantness: An Exploration of Noise in the Work of Filthy Turd

Resonances, 2013

Rethinking Music through Science and Technology Studies

Hugh Davies'S Electroacoustic Musical Instruments And Their Relation To Present-Day Live Coding Practice: Some Historic Precedents And Similarities

The purpose of this paper is to present the self-built electroacoustic musical instruments of Hug... more The purpose of this paper is to present the self-built electroacoustic musical instruments of Hugh Davies (1943-2005) to the international live coding community, and to propose points of similarity between Davies's practice and present-day live coding practice. In the first part of the paper, the context within which Davies's instrument-building practice developed, in the late 1960s, is outlined, and a number of specific instruments are described. Aspects of Davies's performance style, repertoire, and the ensembles with which he performed are discussed, as are activities such as instrument-building workshops and public exhibitions of instruments, in which he regularly participated. In the second part of the paper, four areas of connection with present-day live coding practice are suggested. Respectively, these focus upon live coding's status: (1) as part of a long historic tradition of live electronic music performance (as opposed to electronic music constructed in t...

How the Institutional Data Repository helped me promote my data

Guest post from James Mooney, Lecturer in Music Technology, University of Leeds As part of Intern... more

Sound Spatialisation, Free Improvisation And Ambiguity

Proceedings of the SMC Conferences, Jul 31, 2008

This paper documents emergent practice led research that brings together live sound spatialisatio... more This paper documents emergent practice led research that brings together live sound spatialisation and free improvisation with digital tools in a performance context. An experimental performance is described in which two musicians -a turntablist and a laptop performerimprovised, with the results being spatialised via multiple loudspeakers by a third performer using the Resound spatialisation system. This paper focuses on the spatial element of the performance and its implications, its technical realisation and some aesthetic observations centring on the notion of 'ambiguity' in free improvisation. An analysis raises numerous research questions, which feed into a discussion of subsequent, current and future work.

International Electronic Music Catalog: Hugh Davies and the (ethno)musicology of electronic music

This is a repository copy of International Electronic Music Catalog: Hugh Davies and the (ethno)m... more

International Electronic Music Catalog: Hugh Davies and the (ethno)musicology of electronic music

In this essay I discuss Hugh Davies’s Repertoire International des Musiques Electroacoustiques / ... more In this essay I discuss Hugh Davies’s Repertoire International des Musiques Electroacoustiques / International Electronic Music Catalog, a book of 330 pages that lists, ostensibly, every piece of electroacoustic music ever composed up to the time of its compilation. I begin by describing the Catalog itself, and the process of compiling it. I then discuss Hugh Davies—aspects of his character, and interests—and suggest how these might contribute toward an interpretation and contextualisation of the Catalog. I refer to a sample of publications that reference the Catalog, highlighting some of the broader issues that the Catalog raises in relation to the musicology of electroacoustic music, including some specifically international issues.

Hugh Davies’s International Electronic Music Catalog: a preliminary exploration of its classification system and subsequent influence

In this paper I suggest that Hugh Davies’s Repertoire International des Musiques Electroacoustiqu... more In this paper I suggest that Hugh Davies’s Repertoire International des Musiques Electroacoustiques / International Electronic Music Catalog (1968)—which lists every work of electronic music up to April 1967—is more than just a list of compositions, and that it in fact expresses a particular view—encapsulates a particular narrative—of electronic music. I also show some of the ways in which that particular narrative has been carried forward in subsequent writings that have referenced the Catalog, as a way of indicating how the Catalog—and by extension Davies’s narrative—has shaped subsequent discourses on electronic music and its history. To do this I refer to the systems of classification used in the Catalog, through the theoretical lens provided by Bowker & Star in their book Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences.

Internationalisation and historicisation in Hugh Davies’s international electronic music catalog: a position paper -OR- Hugh Davies: international electronic music champion

In this paper I focus on Hugh Davies's work as a researcher and documenter of electronic musi... more In this paper I focus on Hugh Davies's work as a researcher and documenter of electronic music in the 1960s. In particular, I discuss Davies’s work as a champion of two causes in electronic music - internationalisation; and historicisation - explain how these were manifest in his programme of research from 1961-8, and show how these concerns are reflected in subsequent studies that reference Davies's work. This text is a combined transcription of presentations given at the Eighth Biennial International Conference on Music Since 1900 (Liverpool Hope University, 12–15 September 2013) and the Royal Musical Association’s 49th Annual Conference (Institute for Musical Research, London, 19–21 September 2013). An online version (slides and recorded narration) can be viewed at http://www.james-mooney.co.uk/davies_sep13.

Les Musiques Electroacoustiques: Construction of a Discipline

My hypothesis in this paper is that Hugh Davies redefined what electronic music was via his resea... more My hypothesis in this paper is that Hugh Davies redefined what electronic music was via his research and documentation work in the 1960s, and, that his definition of electronic music still holds true today (at least as far as electronic music in an academic context is concerned). My argument, in other words, is that Hugh Davies constructed the discipline of what is now known as electroacoustic music. Two questions are as follows. First of all, how did Davies go about constructing a discipline of electroacoustic music? To answer that question I examine Davies’s published and unpublished research work from 1961–1968. Second, to what extent was he successful? Or, to put it another way, to what extent has Davies’s definition of electronic music been accepted? To answer this second question I examine subsequent published literature and projects from 1968–2012 that have cited or been based on Davies’s work, and show how the structure of Davies’s model of electronic music is reflected in t...

Frameworks and affordances: Understanding the tools of music-making

Journal of Music, Technology and Education, 2011

This article presents a simple and flexible model in which the tools of music-making ('frameworks... more This article presents a simple and flexible model in which the tools of music-making ('frameworks') are viewed in terms of what they allow us to do (their 'affordances'). The model has analytical and pedagogical applications in any discipline that involves interactions with tools. This article focuses on musical applications and will therefore be of particular interest to music educators, composers, performers and researchers seeking an alternative perspective on the relationship between music and the tools used to compose and perform it. The model deals with technology in a broad sense that includes traditional acoustic instruments and other non-electronic tools as well as electronic and computer technologies. An account of how the frameworks and affordances model could be usefully applied in teaching and research, with specific examples, is given.

Hugh Davies’s Electronic Music Documentation 1961–1968

Organised Sound, 2015

This paper provides an account and interpretation of Hugh Davies’s electronic music research and ... more This paper provides an account and interpretation of Hugh Davies’s electronic music research and documentation from the period 1961–1968. It is argued that Davies, particularly via his International Electronic Music Catalog (published 1968), characterised electronic music for the first time as a truly international, interdisciplinary praxis, whereas in the preceding literature the full extent of that international, interdisciplinary scope had been represented only partially, and in a way that was heavily biased in favour of the ostensibly ‘main’ Western European and North American schools. This argument is demonstrated by referring to a range of published sources dating from 1952 to 1962, which represented the praxis of electronic music as somewhat fragmented and parochial, and to a range of Davies’s published and unpublished writings, which conveyed a sense of the various international, aesthetic and disciplinary threads coalescing into an apparently coherent whole. An interpretati...

Spatial Composition in the Multi-Channel Domain: Aesthetics and Techniques

This paper outlines technical and aesthetic approaches to sound spatialisation for electroacousti... more This paper outlines technical and aesthetic approaches to sound spatialisation for electroacoustic music composition. In particular, the paper discusses how spatialisation (sound diffusion) is used to realise specific musical objectives. Technological solutions to problems associated with adapting multichannel compositions for live spatialisation are explored, with particular reference to the open-source Resound system [2, 3]. Examples of Resound applications are provided to illustrate the potential of the system for controlling complex spatial behaviour during live performance.