Dr Scott Mclaughlin
- Position: Lecturer in Composition and Music Technology
- Areas of expertise: Composition; Materiality; agency; Indeterminacy; Experimental Music; Spectral music; microtonality; chaos theory; ambiguity; Emergent and self-organising structures.
- Email: S.McLaughlin@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 2545
- Location: 1.14 Music
- Website: Soundcloud | Personal website | Twitter | Researchgate | ORCID
Profile
I was born in Ireland (Co. Clare) in 1975. I played in an indie-rock bands until my mid-twenties, I then studied music at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown where I gained a BMus degree in 2001. I completed a PhD (Strange Attractors: A Commentary on Applications of Indeterminacy in my Recent) at the University of Huddersfield with Pierre Alexandre Tremblay and Bryn Harrison in 2009.
I attended the Ostrava New Music Days summer school (2005, 2007), and the Irish Composers Summer School (1999—2001). I have previously lectured at the University of Huddersfield, and Brunel University.
In 2019–21 I was awarded an AHRC Leadership Fellowship for a compositional project on the indeterminacy of the clarinet.
Current Research Students
- Ed Cooper (2020–) ‘From the in-between: portfolio of original compositions and commentary’ (Practice Research)
- Jenni Hogan (2019–) ‘music and performer movement (Practice Research)
- Murray Royston-Ward (2019–) ‘vital materials in contemporary improvised music’ (Practice Research)
- Hannah Firmin (2018–) ‘translation as composition’ (Practice Research)
- Michele Abondano (2018–21) ‘composition: timbre, light and darkness’ (Practice Research)
- Federico Pozzer (2018–21) ‘breath as musical regulator in composition and performance’ (Practice Research)
- Jacob Randell (2017–) ‘composition strategies for decoupled organ pipes’ (Practice Research)
- Martin Loridan (2017–) ‘Souffle: air and breath as a composition material’ (Practice Research)
- Manuel Farolfi (2017–) ‘John Cage in Italy: 1949–59’
- Stuart Mellor (2016–) ‘Site-specific composition using acoustic feature segmentation: An exploration into the timbre of space‘ (Practice Research)
- Caitlin Mockridge-Rice (2015–) ‘Creative practice and its modes of dissemination in the soundings of Hugh Davies’
Completed Research Students
- Samuel Ridout (2017–21) ‘Musique concrète and the Language of Things 1948–1958’
- Max Erwin (2017–20) ‘Ghosts in the machine: A secret history of total serialism’.
- Symeon Yovev (2014–19) ‘Soundcastles: Playing with soundscapes, social spaces and composition’ (Practice Research)
- Timo Tukhanen (2016–20) ‘Mixed Signals: composition and touch’ (Practice Research)
- Alex De Little (2014–2019) [composition] ‘Spatial Listening’ (Practice Research)
- Arne Sanders (2014–2018) ‘composition and heterophony’ (Practice Research)
Responsibilities
- Deputy Director of Centre for Practice Research in the Arts, & Centre for Audio Visual Experimental
- Director of Impact and Innovation
Research interests
I am a practice researcher in composition, focussing on materiality and indeterminacy. My current research uses different methods to excite resonance in sounding bodies to exploit physical non-linearities to generate musical patterns/structures.
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>Qualifications
- PhD (practice-based), University of Huddersfield 2009
- MA Composition, University of Huddersfield 2005
- BMus University of Ulster (Jordanstown) 2001
Professional memberships
- Association of Irish Composers
- RMA (Royal Musical Association)
Student education
Most of my teaching is on composition modules, and some music technology. I have a particular interest in helping composers develop into new areas and question the musical ideas they have inherited; while understanding that the ideas they've grown up with will always be the basis of their understanding.
I also have a special interest in interdisciplinarity (I made a MOOC), and different ways that disciplinary boundaries affect collaborative research.
Research groups and institutes
- Making Music