Research Group

To listeners educated in Western classical tradition one of the most striking features of gagaku music is its foremost emphasis on timbre. Unlike Western classical orchestral works, which use functional harmony and instrumental sound fusion gagaku music employs fixed harmony and non-fusion. This original sound results both from the acoustical properties of instruments comprising the ensemble, as well as from compositional techniques used to mix them together. This research focuses on orchestration in one of the three principal bodies of gagaku music: kangen. Its aim is to assist listeners who would like to understand better how to listen to gagaku music, and composers who would like to add new works to its repertoire.

Computers are becoming smaller and advanced sensing technologies are becoming more accessible to musicians. These trends allow musicians to create novel interfaces that promote the development of new music performance, new musical practices, and new art forms in general. Besides studying the practical aspects of prototyping new interfaces, we also research theory for conceiving of new interfaces and classifying them.

Research and Education in Interdisciplinary Art.

The Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO) is a new repertoire-based ensemble using mobile phones (e.g., iPhones) as the primary musical instrument. Far beyond ring-tones, MoPhO's interactive musical works take advantage of the unique technological capabilities of today's hardware and software, transforming multi-touch screens, built-in accelerometers, built-in microphones, GPS, data networks, and computation into powerful and yet mobile chamber meta-instruments.

MoPhO was instantiated in 2007 at CCRMA, Stanford University, by faculty member and director Ge Wang, Deutsche Telekom senior research scientist (now Michigan faculty member) Georg Essl, and visiting CCRMA researcher Henri Penttinen, with CCRMA Artistic Coordinator Chryssie Nanou, 2007-2008 MA/MST students, and generous support from Nokia. MoPhO performed its first public concert in January 2008.