Designing Sound Futures is a York University funded research project focusing on sound, technology, inclusive design, and transdisciplinary learning.

DSF Research and Publications

Research

Read about the diverse research we have going on at DSF

Publications

Access articles, books and other published work.

Modular Synthesis: Patching Machines and People, Routledge

Edited by Andreas Kitzmann (DSF ) and Ezra Teboul (DSF, RA)

Features chapters by Designing Sound Futures team members, Kurt Thumlert, Jason Nolan, Melanie McBride (RA), and Heidi Chan (RA). 

Modular Synthesis: Patching Machines and People brings together scholars, artists, composers, and musical instrument designers in an exploration of modular synthesis, an unusually multifaceted musical instrument that opens up many avenues for exploration and insight, particularly with respect to technological use, practice, and resistance.

Through historical, technical, social, aesthetic, and other perspectives, this volume offers a collective reflection on the powerful connections between technology, creativity, culture, and personal agency. Ultimately, this collection is about creativity in a technoscientific world and speaks to issues fundamental to our everyday lives and experiences, by providing insights into the complex relationships between content creators, the technologies they use, and the individuals and communities who design and engage with them.

Check it out!

The disconnected keyboard: Inclusive learning and musicking practice with modular synthesis

Journal of Popular Music Education

Kurt Thumlert (DSF, YorkU), Jason Nolan (DSF, TMU), and Stefan Sunandan Honisch (CAMIN, UBC)

Since the 1960s, electronic sound synthesis and the keyboard interface have been so closely associated that many young musicians have come to see them as inseparable components, if not interchangeable terms. In this article, we ‘disconnect the keyboard’ and explore an alternative history of electronic sound synthesis – modular synthesis – that has remained largely overshadowed by keyboard-based synthesizers since the Minimoog. Researchers in music education signal that Eurocentric aesthetic norms, ableist performance ideals and exclusionary practices are interwoven in keyboard technologies, creating barriers that extend into popular music education. Drawing upon critical discussions in music education and science and technology studies (STS), we examine the underexplored opportunities of using modular synthesizers for music learning. We examine how modular synthesis, liberated from the keyboard-controller, serves as a basis for exploring an alternative model for sound-based inquiry and for rethinking the possibilities of instrument design and ways of musiking that are more inclusive.  Check it out!

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Designing Sound Futures was made possible by a York University Catalyzing Interdisciplinary Research Clusters (CIRC) Grant and the support of our many academic, community and industry partners.
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