Incidental Music: Locating Musicality in Social Media Content
Social media has provided numerous opportunities to recontextualise content as music. Instagram posts from accounts like ScoreFollower and charlescornellstudio exemplify the ways in which transcription can locate musicality in otherwise non-musical contexts – including speech, animal sounds, or mechanical noise. They present these transcriptions with two different methods: by using staff notation, or by accompanying the source material with another instrumental layer – harmonising the content with a sequence of piano chords, for example.
This paper examines the capacity of these two epistemologies to extrapolate and represent musical detail by analysing the transcriptions in terms of accuracy and musicality. The existing literature on social media interactivity and cultural phenomena also informs the way I evaluate these methods. I then reflect on the way each one situates its source material, and any aesthetic or cultural implications associated with the positioning in question.
Dr Chris Gendall
Chris Gendall’s works have graced the programmes of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, NZTrio, Mark Menzies and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Saar Berger, and the New Zealand String Quartet. He studied composition at Victoria University of Wellington before completing a doctoral degree at Cornell University with Roberto Sierra and Steven Stucky. He has participated in a number of festivals and conferences including the Wellesley Composers’ Conference, the Aspen Music Festival, the Royaumont Voix nouvelles Composition Course, and the Aldeburgh Festival – bringing him in contact with such figures as Magnus Lindberg, Brian Ferneyhough, Mario Davidovsky, Oliver Knussen, and Anders Hillborg.
Chris was a 2018 Civitella Ranieri Fellow, Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago, and resident composer with Orchestra Wellington and at the New Zealand School of Music. He won the 2008 SOUNZ Contemporary Award for his work Wax Lyrical, and his debut portrait album Tones was released on the Rattle label in 2019. He teaches composition at the University of Auckland.
University of Auckland