Dr Eve Klein

Dr Eve Klein is a Senior Lecturer in Popular Music and Technology in the School of Music.

Eve will use her Fellowship to complete the first draft of a book, Network Timed Ensembles: Musical Performance and Composition in the Interconnections of Apps and Devices, analysing the musical affordances of mobile technologies and apps. This book is a qualitative and analytical enquiry featuring two primary case studies. The first case study details the perspectives of key personnel within music software company Ableton AG during the release of Ableton Link, a networked audio software protocol which allows musicians to play in-time with each other across compatible apps. This case study reveals the design choices, user testing protocols, and user feedback cycles which contribute to audio software development. The second case study is the documented experiences of students performing in a mobile device ensemble. These students primarily considered themselves repertoire performers, but were asked to sustain a collaborative music creation project that culminated in an original performance involving unfamiliar networked musical apps and devices. The students reconfigured their musical identities to encompass composition, improvisation and production skills. The experience of student musicians will be compared to the user testing and design protocols of software developers to identify how apps and mobile devices are recasting aspects of ensemble music performance including time, gesture, co-ordination and the related musical concepts such as notation and arrangement.