Music as touch: rethinking the Composer-Performer-Audience hierarchy through a practice-based exploration of tactile approaches to music making and en

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I will complete a practice-based composition PhD which will explore new ways to notate and musically interrogate the relationship between touch and performance. The resulting compositions will be guided by three interrelated aims: 1) encouraging substantive and sustained contributions from performers and the audience; 2) breaking down the barriers of participation with respect to performative complexity, and; 3) engendering wider community engagement within contemporary music. This will be achieved through conducting workshops where both professional performers and members of different communities can collaborate, developing non-traditional western notation strategies centred around tactile interaction and producing and disseminating original compositions which can be performed by both professional and nonprofessional musicians through touch-centric music making. This project will include a portfolio of practice-based works informed by workshops with people of varying levels of musical knowledge and experience in either performance or improvisation. More specifically, these pieces will focus on:1. The corporeal/tactile elements of musical engagements.2. Rethinking hierarchies in music making by reappraising the composer-performer-audience hierarchy within a practice-based context. A tactile focus will be developed to give composers, performers, and audiences the opportunity to explore how our physical actions are linked to sound as well as how sharing performative objects in a common space creates a sense of intimacy and connection. This approach will ensure that value is not only placed on a 'finished' work, but the process of musicking itself.3. Develop innovative/bespoke notational strategies which foreground tactile intervention and elicit performer/audience contribution and reflective practice. 4. Use of touch-based musical interfaces to break down barriers of participation and engender wider participation.It will be necessary to investigate how notation achieves a balance between encouraging participation, contribution, and the score as an object to be 'read'. It will also be important to look at the extent the notation methods used allow performers to explore and generate new musical performance techniques and frameworks that successfully transfer onto a touch-based approach. Finally, I want to ensure that the use of technology creates a minimal barrier to music making and is used only to help provide tactile feedback and engender imaginative interpretation. Overly focusing on elaborate technological systems and hybrid instruments may result in works that are not easily reproducible and, in turn, may undermine the objectives of this project.To address these questions, I will employ the following research methods:1. Reviewing relevant literature and musical works as well as examining outputs from different artistic disciplines including dance, theatre, and visual art. This will then be used to iteratively develop music through studio-based experimentation.2. Workshops with performers: solo, small and larger groups with diverse backgrounds and experiences of touch-based practice, score notation and improvisation with feedback from performers and participants in the form of interviews and real time feedback throughout the workshop.3. Review notes and recordings from workshops and experimentation to reflect upon and shape new work.The dissemination of this project will include written compositions, organising live performances, written documentation, publication of an online blog-style website, and a catalogue of recordings of workshops and studio experiments.