Honorary Fellows
Robert Dow
Senior Research Fellow
Email: r.dow@ed.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)131 650 9352
Location:
Rm G03, Alison HouseOutline Biography
Robert Dow BSc BMus LLM MSc (Edin) MA PhD (Birm) (b.1964) is a composer of electroacoustic music working in Scotland. He graduated with degrees in Science, Music, Law and Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and holds both an MA and a PhD (2003) from the University of Birmingham where he studied under Jonty Harrison. Formerly, he was a member of BEAST - Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre - and with them, has participated in numerous concerts of electroacoustic music throughout Britain.
As a composer, his work is well received internationally, and has been presented at major festivals of electroacoustic music in, for example, Belgium, Bra zil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Sweden, Spain, the UK and the US. His work has had numerous performances (in twenty-three countries) and has had a number of radio broadcasts, for example on BBC Radio Scotland, Radio nan Gaidheal, BBC Radio 3, Swedish Radio, Magyar Radio III (Hungary) and Dutch National Radio. Several of his works appear on commercial CDs: When all is silent and L'esprit conforme (Sargasso SCD28046, 2004); and Riff (published as part of Blind Sight Salty Press, Finland, 2003).
He has benefited from a number of awards, for example those from the Scottish Arts Council, the Carnegie Trust, the DAAD, the AHRC, the Swedish Institute, the Hinrichsen Foundation, the Cross Trust, the Hope Scott Trust, the Barber Institute and The University of Edinburgh. Recently, he has been guest composer at both the TU-Berlin and the Swedish Institute for Electroacoustic Music in Stockholm. He has been important in establishing electroacoustic music in Scotland: as founding member of the Scottish collective InvisibleArts, as the Director of the annual Soundings... festival of electroacoustic music, which takes place in Edinburgh, and by working regularly with groups such as the BBC SSO, the SCO, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio Scotland, the Dunedin Ensemble, the Paragon Ensemble, One Voice and ECAT.
His present output is predominately acousmatic in nature, concentrating principally on the use of strongly associative sounds whose origin may be easily discerned, for example environmental sounds, instrumental sounds and vocal sounds. He is also concerned with the aesthetic and technical problems that the performance of electroacoustic music brings, particularly where real-time spatialisation of such music is involved.
Robert Dow is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh specialising in sound theory and the composition and performance of electroacoustic music.
Research interests
- Electroacoustic Music Composition
- Electroacoustic Music Performance
- Aesthetics and Theory of Acousmatic Music
- Digital Signal Processing
- Sound Theory
- Film Sound
- Sound Recording
- Spatial Audio
Research activity
Research Grants
- 2011 Roberts Funding, University of Edinburgh: 'Sound Tools: sound processing tools for researchers in music and sound design'
- 2009 Scottish Arts Council, Creating New Music Grant (Creative Development): 'Creation of a new piece of electroacoustic music which explores the potential of urban sound sources'
- 2004 Carnegie Research Grant: 'Multichannel sound in electroacoustic composition'
- 2004 University of Edinburgh Development Trust, Small Project Grant: 'Provision of an 8-channel facility for electroacoustic composition'
- 2003 DAAD, Study visits for Senior Academics: 'Multichannel sound in electroacoustic composition'
- 2003 Scottish Arts Council, Creative Development Bursary: 'The creation of a new piece of electroacoustic music which investigates the use of 'natural' instrumental sounds within this medium'
- 2003 AHRB, Small Grants in the Creative and Performing Arts: 'The use of spatially rich source material in multi-channel electroacoustic composition and performance'
Publications
Publications list for Robert Dow
Supervision
Projects supervised by Robert Dow
Teaching
Undergraduate
- Sound Recording (course coordinator)
- Creative Music Technology (course coordinator)
- Electroacoustic Composition 3 (course coordinator)
- Portfolio of Electroacoustic Compositions (course coordinator)
- Music 2D (contributor)
- Music 1B (contributor)
- Music Technology Project (supervisor)
- Project Week: Wagner Week (contributor)
Postgraduate
- Electroacoustic Composition and Performance (course coordinator)
- Digital Composition and Performance Final Project (supervisor)
- MMus in Composition (supervisor)
This article was published on Oct 30, 2012