ACTOR Project

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Summary

Objectives

• Acquire, exchange, and explore new knowledge of orchestration practice and the resulting perception by listeners to develop a theory grounded in perception and cognition.
• Develop new, innovative digital tools for studying, learning, and creating orchestration.
• Mobilize the knowledge generated through the Partnership to transform academic music pedagogy, professional training of musicians, composers, arrangers, orchestrators and sound designers, and the awareness and appreciation of orchestration by young and more general audiences.

Timeline

Approach

1. Strategic Projects: Research-focused initiatives.
2. Research-Creation Projects: Combining creative practice with scholarly research.
3. Student Collaborative Projects: Interdisciplinary efforts involving students from two different institutions.

Outcomes & Impact

• Key outcomes included joint publications, new modules for the Timbre and Orchestration Resource (TOR), public presentations of ACTOR research, and the creation, premiere, or recording of musical compositions. Priority was given to interdisciplinary projects aligned with the ACTOR project’s mandate.
• Emergence of a highly skilled, knowledgeable, and networked cohort of scholars and practitioners.
• Advancement of knowledge across disciplines and expanded body of analyzed orchestration data.
• Development of novel tools for computer-aided orchestral simulation and composition, sound synthesis, and analysis of timbre-based research.
• Greater awareness, understanding, and appreciation of timbre and orchestration
• TONE: the Timbre and Orchestration Network Partnership project will be a follow up from ACTOR focusing on orchestration defined as broadly as possible. Rather than limiting the term to the symphony orchestra or even other large ensembles of Western instruments, orchestration will be considered as the art of combining of timbres towards a musical end in any sonic context, from acousmatic music to rock bands, gamelan ensembles, or Chinese orchestras. In TONE, the focus will shift to build explicitly on two of ACTOR’s most successful research areas: 
  1. creative practice, including research-creation projects and laboratory ensembles for collaboratively studying specific orchestration problems among composer, performers, and analysts, and
  2. the comparison of varying approaches to orchestration across differentcultural traditions, styles, and musical contexts.

People Involved

*CIRMMT Regular members

Project Director & Associate Project Direc

• Stephen McAdams, McGill University*
• Robert Hasegawa, McGill University*

Workgroup Leaders

• Acoustics of Musical Instruments and Performance Rooms - Malte Kob, Caroline Traube*, Martha de Francisco*, Jithin Thilakan
• Artificial intelligence and computational tools for orchestration - Philippe Esling
• Arts, Humanities, and Interdisciplinary Methodologies - Moe Touizrar, Jason Noble, and Rebecca Moranis
• Composer-performer orchestration research ensembles (CORE) - Stephen McAdams*, Roger Reynolds, Caroline Traube*
• Computer-aided and target-based orchestration (Orchidea) - Carmine Cella
• Orchestration analysis taxonomies and the Orchestration Analysis and Research Database - Stephen McAdams*, Kit Soden, Félix Baril
• OrchView - Félix Baril
• Timbre and Orchestration Analysis Workgroup - Robert Hasegawa*
  
• Timbre and Orchestration Resource (TOR) - Kit Soden, Ben Duinker, Andrés Gutiérrez Martínez
  
• Timbre Semantics - Lindsey Reymore, Lena Heng and Jason Noble
  
• Timbre, Orchestration, and the Human Voice - Juanita Marchand Knight
  
• Timbre in Afrological Music Workgroup - Jason Winikoff, J. Marchand-Knight, Joshua Rosner, Danielle Davis, Chidi Obijiaku
  

Other involved CIRMMT members

Partners 

Granting Agencies / Funding Sponsors

• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

Resources

• Performances and recordings at McGill/CIRMMT’s MMR (as part of the CFI8 grant)
• ACTOR Project - Amazing Moments in Orchestration
• ACTOR Project - Research, Workgroups, and Outputs
• CORE Project Video recordings and archive: Research Ensembles Archive
• CORE Documentary (Round 1 at McGill and UdeM): CORE Project Documentary
• The Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration Project publishes peer-reviewed articles, essays, and project reports on its Timbre and Orchestration Resource
• Publications and references can be viewed on the website: https://www.actorproject.org/external-publications

Keywords

Learn More

• ACTOR website
• CORE website
• TOR website
• ACTOR project social media:
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