​Pedersen, C., Vickery, L., and James, S. (2026). Comparing Text Score strategies for on-line music making, Journal of Networked Music and Arts, Vol. 8 , Issue 1. pp 1-17

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This paper investigates a range of approaches to using text scores in online and networked music performance, focusing on their alignment with strategies proposed by Wilson (2020) for aesthetic and technical approaches to networked music performance. Text scores, emerging from the experimental music movement of the 1960s, communicate musical ideas through words rather than traditional notation, taking instructional, allusive, and hybrid forms. Although there are many aesthetic and pragmatic approaches to text score composition, the temporal openness of many such works makes the
medium well-suited to the latency-challenged practice of telematic performance. The study evaluates four text scores—Craig Pedersen’s July 22, 2019 (2019) and September 26, 2023 (2023); Lindsay Vickery’s Salmon Hats (2024); and Stuart James’ Transformation in the Present (2025)—performed by a geographically distributed networked ensemble across Perth, Western Australia, and Stanthorpe, Queensland, Australia.
Analyses of recordings demonstrate that scores with open interpretive frameworks can accommodate network latency and telepresence challenges, while allusive scores are more sensitive to network instability but support collective interpretive interaction. The results suggest that text scores, whether instructional, allusive, or hybrid, can effectively support creative outcomes in networked contexts, particularly when they exploit openness, multiple interpretations, and digital mediation. These findings highlight the potential of text-based notation to enhance telematic collaboration and expand
compositional strategies in contemporary experimental music.

Vickery, L. (2026). An Exploration of Audio-Score Techniques and Practices,  Tenor2026 , University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna / Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.

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This paper discusses the emergence of the Audio Score as a distinct compositional practice in which auditory communication, rather than visual notation, is the primary medium through which compositional information is conveyed to performers. Drawing on recent theoretical formulations by Bhagwati, Sdraulig and Lortie, Schimana, and d’Heudières, the study situates Audio Scores within the evolution of technological, aesthetic, and ideological developments.
The discussion proposes a framework distinguishing three core roles of auditory material in Audio Scores— orientation, emulation, and instruction—and seeks to clarify the boundaries between Audio Scores and adjacent practices. The analysis foregrounds performer experience as a critical site of evidence through detailed case studies of works by d’Heudières, Schimana, and the author, all performed by the Australian ensemble GreyWing. 

Vickery, L. Bray, M., Gillies, S. Griswold, E., Hope, C., James, S., Koszolko, M., Pedersen, C., Rapp, M., Tomlinson, V., Wyatt, A. (2026). Evaluating the effectiveness of coordinating telematic performance with a range of score types.

​This project explored and evaluated a range of score types and performance approaches in the telematic context. A series of works were created by the authors exemplifying different approaches to performance coordination: common practice notation, animated notation, graphic notation, text score, action-based and interactive scores. The works were rehearsed and performed telematically with participants in Melbourne (Monash University) Cat Hope - flute/bass guitar, Aaron Wyatt - viola, Martin Koszolko - electronics, Sam Gillies - laptop, and Matthew Bray - laptop, Erik Griswold - piano and Vanessa Tomlinson - percussion (Griffith University) and Perth (Edith Cowan University) Lindsay Vickery - bass clarinet/soprano saxophone, Stuart James - laptop/piano, Craig Pedersen - trumpet/bass guitar and Mary Rapp - cello/double bass The project compared the performer audio experience in each physical location as well as the combined audience stream, measured the data latency as the basis for a series of analyses evaluating the effectiveness of the different strategies in regard to telepresence, synchronisation, score fidelity and the composers' aesthetic goals.

Vickery, L. (2021). Approaches to the creation of large-scale site-specific works for ensemble and electronics,  

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This paper discusses works created for the Limited Hangout: in the field project (2018/19), a series of site-specific long form compositions responding to the sonic/physical environment of a chosen locale, using tools such as acoustic measurement and analysis, topographical mapping, physical structures and weather conditions of specific spaces and times.
Six works, by Sage Pbbbt, Lindsay Vickery, Olivia Davies, Josten Myburgh, Pippin Kenworthy and Vanessa Tomlinson, were created for the project. A variety of location around Perth were chosen: below the Narrows bridge, a spit jutting into Njookenbooro (Herdsman) Lake, an underpass below Winthrop Avenue, the Swan River Foreshore, Eric Singleton Bird Sanctuary and the University of Western Australia Tropical Grove. The works greatly varied in number of performers (between two and forty), and duration (between twenty three and fifty three minutes).
This paper discusses and compares the composers’ approaches to establishing connections and interaction between sound and site, including the use of field recordings, electronics, topographical information, transcriptions, acoustic measurement and analysis, mobile spatialisation and interaction with environmental sounds.It also considers the methods employed in the creation and performance of the works for the generation of scores, coordination and deployment of performers, use of electronic audio components and approaches to creating spatial audio environments within existing ambient natural environments.

Vickery, L. (2026). The Emergence of the Audio Score

The term Audio Score has recently been adopted to describe the use of recorded or transmitted sound to communicate and coordinate essential components of a musical composition, as opposed to visual systems such as common practice notation, graphic notation, and text scores. While the oral transmission of musical ideas is likely the oldest and remains the most widespread forms of musical communication, audio-based technologies introduced distinctive affordances, including repetition, synchronisation, precision, editability, and the ability to coordinate performers across time and space.
This paper traces the development of requisite technologies such as headphones, portable tape recorders, and interruptible foldback systems and their adoption in commercial coordinative practices such as motion picture click tracks, cueing systems, and studio communication networks. It explores how these practices crossed into art music through the necessity of coordinating live performers with fixed media and the ideological expansion of “music” material to encompass all sound associated with Futurism, Musique Concrète, John Cage, and others.
This paper proposes that these simultaneous developments enabled the creation of works that  exploited communicative and coordinative capacities of audio transmission, including Stockhausen’s Kontakte (1960) and Spiral (1968), Tenney’s Ergodos II (1964), and Erickson’s Pacific Sirens (1968) and led to the first unambiguous Audio Scores such as Bryars’s 1, 2, 1–2–3–4 (1971) and Lucier’s Carbon Copies (1989). These works were both the culmination of these evolutions and the antecedents of a new approach that reconfigured compositional authority from the visual score (back) to the medium of sound itself.

Vickery, L., Hope, C., Wyatt, A., and James, S. (2026). The Decibel Scoreplayer: An Overview of Expanding Capabilities (under review)

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This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of the Decibel ScorePlayer software, a network- synchronised scrolling of proportional colour music scores and audio playback on multiple computers that was first conceptualised in 2010. The software is designed to coordinate the reading of scores, in particular graphic and non-standard notation in rehearsal and performance. It features scrolling and ‘tracking’ modes for reading, and can receive drawing commands for realtime score generation. The paper tracks the continual enhancement of performance-driven interoperability and networking beyond its function as a “score-reading” App, to allow for communication and synchronisation with external computers and other devices. These capabilities permit coordination between physically present and remote live performers, audio processing, spatial audio, video and physical devices.
The app ships with five scores by ensemble members Hope and Vickery and countdown clock function on both the Apple App and Google Play stores, and works with a companion ScoreCreator software available from the ensembles website. Conceptualised in Max, then realised in iOS for iPad, the software became truly platform agnostic in 2025. The ongoing development of the software has been driven by the composers and performers in the Decibel new music ensemble, an Australian new music group that performs music where acoustic and electronic sounds are combined.