Hello everyone! I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many of you in the ACTOR community already, but to those for whom I’m a new name or face, I’m Ben Duinker, one of the two new ACTOR postdocs (2022–2024).

Hello! As usual, lots going on here, but this month is an especially exciting one as we gear up for our ACTOR Year 3 Workshop, which will be held virtually the week of July 12. The annual workshops are an opportunity for ACTOR members to connect, collaborate, and plan for the upcoming year. We are looking forward to discussing updates on projects that have been rolling along for a few years now…

Hi, all! Lots to report in terms of ACTOR activities in the past months, so I thought I’d write about some of our ongoing projects and what I’ve been working on as the ACTOR Analysis postdoc—and take the opportunity to share some photos from my favorite Spring hobby: gardening!

Hi, everyone! It’s been a great first two and a half months or so post-doc-ing up here at McGill, though we’ve been in pandemic shut-down mode for most of that time.

Lindsey here, reporting on a fantastic virtual conference that took place last week, September 3–4, “Timbre 2020.” While it was certainly disappointing not to be gathering in Greece as planned, this second international conference on timbre was still a golden opportunity for #timbregeeks around the world to gather together and share their latest discoveries.

I am Matthew Zeller, one of the new ACTOR postdocs (along with Lindsey Reymore) here at McGill. I’ll be working in the Output Innovation Axis to develop music- theoretic frameworks of timbre’s role in music, pedagogical tools, as well as musical and cultural exchanges through the lens of timbre studies.

Hello, all! My name is Lindsey Reymore, and I am one of the new post-docs at McGill on the ACTOR project along with Matt Zeller. I’ll be working in the Analysis Axis, helping to create new projects while continuing my research on timbre semantics, cross-modal correspondences, and timbre/orchestration-focused musical analysis.

What a summer! One of the busiest of my life, with no clear beginning or end: the barrage of projects rolled from the spring straight into summer and through to the fall, as though it was just one continuous end-of-semester crunch. While there was nothing like an actual break to speak of, there was certainly a lot of travel. My ACTOR-related activities brought me to amazing events in four different countries, with fascinating people from all around the world….

Between Speech and Music: Composing for the Guitar with Dialectal Patterns

Before my PhD, I played guitar a little bit: enough to accompany myself at open mic, but not enough to compose for it seriously. I never really felt like I got the instrument: I found it hard to visualize what is possible in terms of fingering, and I didn’t have a clear mental image of the vast range of timbral variations of which the instrument is capable….

Hi there, my name is Julie Delisle, and I recently began to work on the ACTOR project as a post-doc on the Analysis Axis with Stephen McAdams and Bob Hasegawa. I feel very lucky to be part of this ambitious and really exciting research project!

Hey folks, Jason Noble here.  I’m one of the postdocs with the ACTOR project, working with Bob Hasegawa and Stephen McAdams on the Output Innovation axis.  I’m thrilled to be part of this project!   

I’ve been part of the Music Perception and Cognition Lab at McGill for several years now,