Vickery, L. and James, S. (2019). Representations of Decay in the Works of Cat Hope, Tempo, 73(287) January 2019 , pp. 18-32.

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This article considers the ‘representation of decay’ in selected concert works by the Australian composer Cat Hope. It draws on a mixed-method research methodology, comparing the conceptual aspects of Hope's oeuvre with analyses of studio and live recordings of Hope's work and discussing how such ideas of ‘decay’ may play out in the sonic world. Two forms of spectral analysis are employed: firstly the analysis of spectral parameters roughness, noisiness, brightness, pitch, and centroid, and secondly a visualisation of the music as a spectrogram. The data for the spectral analyses are derived from Alexander Harker's spectral descriptor tools for MaxMSP which record a value for each parameter every 25 milliseconds. At times, values are normalised within a range of 0 and 1, as representative of how listeners experience parametrical changes (i.e. dynamics, in relative terms rather than absolutes in relation to other sounds in the work). Importantly, perception of noisiness is more acute at frequencies in which the auditory critical bands are wider, below 250 Hz (roughly below middle C), precisely the upper range specified by Hope to define instruments suitable for the Australian Bass Orchestra.

Wyatt, A., Vickery, L. and James, S. (2019). Unlocking the Decibel Scoreplayer, (in review).

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This paper discusses recent developments in the Decibel ScorePlayer project, including the introduction of a canvas mode, python ScorePlayer externals and enhancements of the ScoreCreator application. The canvas mode allows for other applications (like MaxMSP) to send drawing commands to the player via OSC. An object model has been developed to allow for the creation of hierarchies of drawn objects, the commands that can be used to create and control these, and the way in which scores can be developed to take advantage of this new mode. A python scoreplayer-external library has been created, defining two python classes: scorePlayerExternal that makes a connection to the iPad, opening a UDP listening socket and letting the iPad know which port to send its replies to and scoreObject which is designed to represent the objects that populate the canvas. It acts as a wrapper to the raw OSC commands so that programming can be done using object-oriented paradigms. The scoreCreator application (OS X) has been expanded to include support for defining a range of score types and functionalities.

Vickery, L. (2018).  ​The expansion of compositional mobility in Cage’s Variations I-III

Vickery, L. and James, S. (2018). Temporal dissonance in Charles Ives' "Putnam's Camp”

Vickery, L.  The Influence of Surrealism on the Development of John Cage’s Techniques of Indeterminacy