Project Detail

TITLE  Australian voice portraits 
INTRODUCTION  We all make melody every time we speak. I am listening to the speech intonation of notable Australians and using the melody of their speech to compose music for performance by my ensemble Topology. The musical works I call voice portraits, and they are attempts to capture some essential aspect of the speaker in an abstracted musical form. 
DESCRIPTION  Speech intonation may be seen as a form of melody (and has been the focus of a burgeoning body of research in evolutionary musicology, cognitive psychology and empirical musicology). I am interested in framing unintended melodies in speech and playing the resulting works live with my ensemble Topology. The musical result is intended as a form of portraiture, distilling some musically essential and distinctive property of the speech of each individual. In Australian Voice Portraits, I am making voice portraits of a large collection of notable Australians whose voices have been preserved in the National Film and Sound Archive. The approach is an attempt to find some distinctive Australian music. 
TYPE Cross-media 
INSTITUTION  Queensland University of Technology 
EMAIL  topologyrob@gmail.com 
URL  http://www.topologymusic.com/ 
RESOURCES
KEYWORDS  intonation, prosody, melody, empirical musicology, oral history, personality, composition, music  
 
List of Researchers

Total Researchers:  1 

RESEARCHER   ROLE   INSTITUTION DEPARTMENT 
Robert Davidson  Chief Investigator   Queensland University of Technology Creative Industries Faculty 
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