Led by Khyam Allami

Modern music-making tools have taken sound and audio manipulation into wild and exciting experimental frontiers. Whether they are hardware/software synthesisers or audio effects, computer-based DAWs, notation programmes, audio-manipulation tools, or even A.I. and machine learning models, these tools have all become an intrinsic part of making music today, regardless of the genre or instrumentation. But what all these tools also share, in their fundamental construction and programming, is an innate and inherited bias towards Western music theory and Western music culture.

Although the varied technologies allow for the exploration of non-western musical systems, this functionality is either rarely implemented or often implemented tokenistically. As a result, this has repressed creative possibilities for music-makers from non-western music cultures by imposing the hegemony of twelve-tone equal-temperament on pitch, and grid-based expression on rhythm.

Tools for countering this cultural asymmetry do exist, but they are often complex and involve frustrating workarounds and sonic limitations. They are also tools made for activities in which the creator has an idea or end-result in mind, as opposed to allowing for a creative process, an urge, a feeling, a “blank-canvas” from which to explore unknown musical territory.

In this two-hour online workshop, Iraqi-British musician/composer/researcher Khyam Allami will focus primarily on the subject of tuning (microtonality). Through a presentation, discussion and practical exercises, he will present his ideas and technological-solutions in-progress, towards more liberated, creative, inclusive and culturally balanced music-making processes.

About Khyam Allami