The journey of a question — finding my creative inquiry.
“The usefulness of the knowledge we acquire and the effectiveness of the actions we take depend on the quality of the questions we ask. Questions open the door to dialogue and discovery.They are an invitation to creativity and breakthrough thinking. Questions can lead to movement and action on key issues; by generating creative insights, they can ignite change.” (Vogt et al, 2003, p.1)
Focus has proven to be one of the biggest challenges in defining my research question for this module in my MCI. Lack of focus, accompanied by overthinking and too broad a range surely is a recipe for a flawed Masters thesis.
The beauty and challenge of any Masters program is the balance of focused research and the discovery of new information that subsequently leads to new questions which then spirals into more focus and questions and eventually black hole of unachievable research within your defined time period.
What inspired my question?
My quest with this inquiry started with a thought into how my hearing differs from a person who displays hyper sensitivity? When I was studying Audio Engineering, a friend of mine would often flinch away or get upset by loud sounds. He was a drummer and this intrigued me. Fast forward a “good” couple of years and I now have a 7-year-old ASD girl in my life who cannot handle loud or sudden sounds, traffic and, interestingly a group of people singing “Happy Birthday” slightly out of tune. Hyper Sensory hearing is particularly common within the ASD community, and one of the defining conditions of the diagnosis, is the ability to really focus on a certain theme, topic or task, so I am interested in what the world sounds like through the ears of ASD.
The purpose of my Research?
Initially I had the idea to create an Instrument within “Ableton” that will give an ASD person the opportunity to be able to create a soundscape from sounds that he/she had picked and recorded. The Instrument will be based on my friend, Trent Crawford’s Instrument rack that he built for his Master’s project at the Sydney Conservatory of Music.
“…use a selection of captured audio …, and utilise them in the creation of a digital sample-based keyboard instrument. Each audio file will be placed inside Ableton Live’s Sampler device (an open platform digital plugin device supplied with the digital audio workstation), then layered parallel to each other in the creation of a new playable instrument rack device. This device enables the user to layer soundscapes recordings for the purpose of recomposing sound to pitch.” Crawford, 2017.
My main goal was to focus purely on how I can make a simplified user interface so that anyone can have fun and play around to create a soundscape of the spaces and surroundings that inspire them.

My first attempt, at a question?!
“How can I engage a non-traditional ASD performer in an immersive soundscape experience?” …Wow, talk about a mouth full?
My mind map (fig. 1) illustrates the basic ideas and concepts I imagined for my project and evolved around; ASD students, interactivity, creative expression, immersive sound and therapeutic outcomes.
At first this seemed focussed, but I was planning on creating a great experience rather than focussing on my research so this proved to be the downfall of my initial attempt.
After some discussions and advice from peers and my course advisor, I established that there are too many undefinable and broad concepts in that question.
What is a non-traditional performer?
What makes an ASD performer different from a non-ASD Performer?
Define Immersive Audio Experience?
As I mentioned before, we are limited by our time and the scope of our project, and my initial question proved to be too broad and would encompass far too many subjects of study.
Back to the Drawing board!
What was it that I was really trying to research? What did I want to achieve?
Playability and personalisation was the main objective with this project. How could I allow someone to capture their own sounds and create a sound art piece that may allow for some form of creative outlet that could perhaps lead to therapy.
Currently there are some great examples of “playable” interfaces, that will allow for creative expression but few allowed the inclusion of your own sounds. Those that did include the recording of sounds were very limited in output.
This type of interaction is slightly too advanced for my target group and so I realised that I will have to create my own simplified performance template within Ableton. And this helped rephrase my angle to simplify my research question and process.
And here is a example of a online Sampler with recording ability:
https://ericrosenbaum.github.io/MK-1/
“How do I create playability in Ableton?”
Playability seems to be the one factor that will be able to consolidate the main topics in my mind map allowing me to still achieve my initial quest whilst focusing my research and approach better.
Ableton as a DAW, is inherently made for performance and there are quite a few hardware controllers that make this an, even more, fun experience.
So why not focus on the strengths of the programs and the controllers that are already freely available in the market place?
Let’s create a playable tool that anyone can have fun with. This will form a solid foundation for me to explore this further and aim it towards music therapy at a later stage.
How now Brown Cow?

At first my idea was to use the APC 20, an Ableton specific controller/launcher made by Akai. This controller is a great starting point as it has launch buttons and faders that will encourage interaction and improvised play. Ableton has a unique feature called session view where we have a grid of clips that can be filled with a wide range of loops and sounds. This is the foundation for many artists that use Ableton to perform their original music.
My first session consisted of drums, bass, percussion and a lead line. The drums, bass and percussion did not vary but the lead was broken into different notes within a scale so that when played it would improvise a melodic interpretation but remain technically correct.

I was purposefully not engaging in any other more advanced features like send automation or instrument parameter envelopes as this tool initially just focussed on engaging students to have a play and get excited by making music.
What I hoped to achieve?
I have noticed how music and interaction with music have built confidence, bridged race and age gaps and assisted people with a myriad of disorders to integrate into regular social interaction, and I hope that my instrument will be able to create a bit of joy for anyone who may need a splash of improvised fun through music.
“Music therapy endeavours to urge the system to adapt (Repattern brain circuits) and employ new, more functionally accommodating interpretation of sensory stimuli” (Berger, 2002. p.58)
There are vast amounts of papers that have been done on music therapy and the benefits of this for many different types of medical diagnosis. I am not attempting to broach the formalities of music therapy, …just yet, for now I aim to experiment with the software and hardware to establish a workflow and interactivity with my Instrument.
First Trail.
I set up a test session and invited 3 young people to come have a play, so I
could identify any issues. I used my Ableton PUSH2 controller and had 4 tracks that were playing pre programmed material (coloured Red) and one track that was split into different tones that could then be triggered at will to create a melodic line that would work with the music.


First I invited the 7 year old ASD girl with Dyspraxia, She struggled to comprehend that only the one “row” of buttons was to be played and it was obvious that there wasn’t enough “result” as she couldn’t comprehend the actions she was playing. I do believe she is very musical so this could have been a result of several different factors, like distraction or lack of focus on the day.
I then offered to record her voice and chopped up the sentence so she could re play the sentence along with the music (fig.2). This had a much more engaging effect and she loved mashing up the sentence and jamming to the music.
I also then asked a 10 and 8 year old whether they preferred the melodic or recorded interaction and they both preferred the recorded interaction.
This immediately forced me to rethink the way that I am going to design a interface as I will now need recording capabilities with a playable keyboard and not just a launch setup.
This was a great result and I got some other good suggestions from the girls, like recording all the sounds!
I will need to refine my idea and rethink the interface or even how I can make a playable interface (or Instrument) with the ability to remix and replay recorded material.
There is a whole world of DIY and sensor interactivity that hosts within Ableton and this is a different angle to explore in terms of creating a custom “instrument”
This DIY “Arduino” based technology, may be the best avenue to pursue as I can create a custom compact instrument that can record and be played, via headphones, on the run.
This angle could be exactly what I have been needing for this project as this will allow me to create a playable instrument that can be enjoyed by anyone and used for anything, inviting people to interact and create their own sounds.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! LET THE FUN BEGIN!
REFERENCE LIST:
Vogt Eric E., Brown J., Isaacs D., (2003). The Art of Powerful Questions: Catalyzing Insight, Innovation, and Action. Mill Valley, CA: Whole Systems Associates.
Berger DS., (2002).Music Therapy, Sensory Integration and the Autistic Child. London, England: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Crawford, T. (2017).Exploring electroacoustic compositional structure through urban underground acoustic environments.[Masters Dissertation] Sydney Conservatorium of Music The University of Sydney.
APC20 Image, Akai limited retrieved from www.akaipro.com n.d
NovationTV, 2013, February 28. Novation / Launchpad for iOS — iPad Performance retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2AcRiaIBI8
Saved by Technology, 2014, December 18. Trigger Ableton Live with a banana! (Makey Makey demo) retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChQ1unsQZA0
Morris, S. (2014) Skatehack: Sonify your skate tricks retrieved from http://makezine.com/projects/skatehack-sonify-your-skate-tricks/
feelyoursoundHQ, 2013 November 5th. Building your own DIY MIDI controller? Easy as pie! retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-YOMhfSHiI
Bibliography:
Bijsterveld K., van Dijck J., (2009) Sound Souvenirs. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam.
Simpson, K. Keen, D: Music Interventions for Children with Autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders November 2011, Volume 41, Issue 11, pp 1507–1514.
Pandya,J Z. Hansuvadha, N. Pagdilao, K C. Multimodal, Digital Composition for Children with Autism: Lessons on Process, Product, and Assessment. Language Arts, Volume 93, Number 6, July 2016
Levitin, D. This is your brain on music. 2006 Plume Publishing.
Klickstein, G. The Musicians Way. 2009, Oxford University Press
Mullin, J. Drawing Autism. 2009, Mark Batty Publishers.