My current post is as Professor of Creative Music Technology (CMT) at Bath Spa University. I was one of the founders of the CMT undergraduate programme – the first of its kind globally – in 2000. I was Course Leader for several years. CMT innovated two key features: an agnosticism across traditional musical academia, commercial production and creative industries; and a determination to site music technology within a broader media context. Alongside studies in music and production technology, students engaged with other media and disciplines such as programming and engineering. We developed key strengths in sound design for moving image, gaming, and creative coding, with many student success stories in all these areas.
From 2005 I focused on the development of a postgraduate/research community in this area – new to the department at Bath Spa, and world-leading in a broader context. I developed a suite of MA courses, and recruited a substantial number of PhDs (I personally have supervised over 40). An MA in Creative Music Technology was rapidly joined by our MA in Creative Sound and Media Technology, which expressly focused on interdisciplinary and multimedia work. Here again, we have many graduate success stories, and many of our postgrads have gone on to lead courses following the Bath Spa CMT model. My PhDs went on to lead the undergraduate CMT course itself and to found our BA Commercial Music and BA Creative Computing. MA graduates went on to lead BA Music Production and BA Songwriting at BIMM Bristol, BA Music and Sound for Film & TV at dBs Bristol and MA Creative Music Production at dBs Berlin. Most recently, one of my PhDs was a founder of boomsatsuma in Bristol.
I have been highly active in research, both in research leadership and in producing my own outputs. I have led several research centres and groups at the University, most recently the Sounds Arts and Visual Music research group. I also direct Seeing Sound, the world-leading symposium on Visual Music (sound-led multimedia practice). This has run since 2009, with 7 editions to date. The most recent had over 300 delegates registered from over 40 countries across all 7 continents.
