New methodologies were central to the original IRiMaS proposal and have remained so. Traditionally the results of musicological inquiry have usually been printed on paper, verbal accounts with the addition charts and diagrams. (Hans Keller’s functional analyses and Heinrich Schenker’s graphical representations are rare exceptions). This was perhaps inevitable in the past but technology now enables us to incorporate direct engagement with aural and visual material into both the methodology of music research and the presentation of its findings. Musicologists have increasingly been linking their texts to online audio examples but this is far from the level of integration and interaction that we are seeking to develop. Researchers have also increasingly employed software to extract statistical data from scores or recordings, and also to work with Big Data from across large repertoires using AI and other algorithms to discover new trends and features. All this can indeed be valuable, but the originality of IRiMaS is to use computers in a different way (though we may incorporate aspects of some of these approaches): IRiMaS uses software so that musical sound, and the experience of hearing this sound, can become central to the research methodology and its presentation. Musical sound is continuous, flowing and temporal whereas scores, words and data extracted from recordings are static and discrete, and whilst they may provide useful insights, isolated from sound, they may also distort or limit the investigation. So, building on earlier work relating to the analysis of electroacoustic music, IRiMaS aims to expand an innovative ‘interactive aural’ methodology for music analysis to a much wider repertoire. In doing so it focuses especially on those musics that do not fit so comfortably with traditional Western notation. For example, improvised music, oral/aural traditions in world music, and contemporary music in which the use of extended playing techniques and concern with timbre stretch traditional notation to its limit. These areas underpin the three main Case Studies for the project, but our research also incorporates some traditionally notated music and has been investigating how such an approach might facilitate deeper consideration of aspects of such repertoire that are often neglected such as timbre, texture, articulation, and dynamics.
The IRiMaS software, TIAALS, is intended to be of use to any musicologist without the need for specialist computing skills. This is important because our ambition is that these tools will become a standard approach. Such software also has the potential to change the working relationship between the musicologist and their audience. If the materials are interactive there is more potential, more encouragement, for readers to explore for themselves, to develop additional or alternative interpretations of the music. A leading music researcher, Kofi Agawu, has promoted the idea of music analysis as ‘a mode of composition or a mode of performance’ and encouraged analysis as ‘play’. We aim for our interactive software to encourage a creative, playful approach to music analysis both by the researchers and their audiences. This is something we already see in work we have completed and something that we hope will continue to grow in importance as our TIAALS software is used by others.
