Dr. Robert Pritchard has filled many roles at the School of Music as a educator, composer and advocate for music technology. We caught up with “Dr. Bob” to collect his thoughts on technology in the music industry, advice for students today, and how it all started with taking Greyhound bus trips from Vernon to UBC for composition lessons with Cortland Hultberg.
What is your origin story as a composer and/or teacher? Who were your mentors?
I remember as a small child before I started school putting notes on paper and asking my mother to play them on piano. During high school I played in a couple of rock bands, but my real composition journey began when I attended Courtenay Youth Music Camp (CYMC) for a few years. I recall hearing the western Canada premiere of Harry Freedman’s Graphic II by the Purcell string quartet, and I was fascinated by that. The next summer I attended Freedman’s composition seminars at the CYMC, and from then on I became quite focused on composing, writing for groups of friends and even for my high school band. I used to take the Greyhound bus from Vernon down to Vancouver every couple of months to get a composition lesson with UBC professor Cortland Hultberg.
Credit: [unknown]. 1972. “Cortland Hultberg.” P. UBC Archives Photograph Collection. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0150366.
Tell us about your days as a student. What parallels do you see between when you were a student, and being a student today?
During my undergraduate studies at UBC the curriculum seemed less rigorous, and being on the West Coast of Canada we were somewhat isolated from new musical ideas in eastern North America but there seemed to be a greater involvement by most students in performances and music activities. Back then there was a set registration fee for the BMus, so you didn’t pay by the number of credits being taken, you just paid for a year of studies. As a result, you could load up on courses that you were interested in. So during my Music studies I also took a few lower-level courses in geophysics, astronomy, math, physics, and German, and I audited a graduate course in audiology and pathology as part of my research into absolute pitch and tempered tuning. I also took a fourth-year geophysics course so that I could use the observatory up at Mt. Kobau in the Okanagan for my studies of aurora and flaming coronae. Today it would be very difficult to fit that into a BMus degree, both for the scheduling and for having professors across the university who would be supportive of that. Additionally, today’s BMus students are overloaded with the time and content demands of their courses.
What are you most passionate about now as a musician?
I’m very enthusiastic about including new technologies in interactive performance, especially for composed works rather than completely improvised works. I think it is very important that composers and performers learn how to work with audio, video, lighting, virtual reality, etc. so that they can create and perform works that have depth and subtlety, rather than only a “wow” factor. This doesn’t mean that all pieces have to use technology; it means that we learn how to judge and possibly use appropriate technologies for the work being created.
Doshite? (どうして?)
Megumi Masaki performing
Ecdysis
Performed by Emmalena Fredriksson
Synapses
Turning Point Ensemble
In performance
Turning Point Ensemble with Emmalena Fredriksson
What advice do you have for students pursuing a career in composing, music technology or teaching? What is it that you wish someone had told you?
If you decide to pursue a career in music it is very important to have a real passion for your activities (not just a liking), and to find people with similar or complementary ideas, skills, and/or passions. Part of that involves attending as many concerts as possible, with different types of music, and meeting with the performers and composers—you need to become involved in your particular area of interest. This is something I wish I had been emphasized more during my undergraduate studies. However, at the time this was difficult, because the new music scene was not very active in Vancouver, which is why many of us left for Toronto or Montreal after we finished our undergraduate degrees. During my Masters studies in Toronto I became involved with Bill Buxton’s Structured Sound Synthesis Project, using the computers of the U of T Computer Systems Research Group. That was a group of coders, engineers, and composers all passionate about the use of computers and new audio technology in music, and we were very supportive of each other in terms of developing new software and hardware, and creating new works.
“I think it is very important that composers and performers learn how to work with audio, video, lighting, virtual reality, etc. so that they can create and perform works that have depth and subtlety, rather than only a “wow” factor.”
What are your thoughts on the current musical landscape?
Today’s musical opportunities are both huge and highly restrictive. It is not difficult to make a decent, basic recording of something you create, and then upload it to the internet to share. However, it is difficult to get live concert opportunities, it can be difficult to get proper rehearsal time, and if you upload something that you create and record you may need to deal with copyright and performance licensing. Because there is so much music available on so many online platforms, it is very easy for your work to have little impact because it isn’t noticed. However, the ability to share and access millions of works online means that it can be easier to track and critique new trends, techniques, ideas, and collaborations.
What excites you about music technology and where it is headed?
The technologies used in music are now far easier to obtain, understand, and implement in works than they were fifty years ago. There are thousands of software packages for audio and coding, hundreds of hardware interfaces, and thousands of online tutorials. As a graduate student at U of Toronto, I recall building our own myoelectric sensors for triggering sound from dancer’s movements. That took several weeks. Today I can go online and have a complete set of myoelectric sensors delivered the next day and then in an hour download and edit code to use those sensors in a new piece. So, the ease of acquisition of music technologies is quite exciting, because it allows for more time to be spent on understanding the application and strengths and weaknesses of your chosen technologies—you can concentrate on the music, rather than on the software or hardware.
“The ease of acquisition of music technologies is quite exciting, because it allows for more time to be spent on understanding the application and strengths and weaknesses of your chosen technologies—you can concentrate on the music, rather than on the software or hardware.”
Looking back, what’s been the biggest challenge of your career? Your biggest successes?
One of the biggest challenges of my academic career was quitting my fulltime job at Brock University to return to UBC to complete my DMA. My wife, three kids, and I pulled up stakes and returned to the West Coast. This was a bit of a gamble, because there was no job waiting for my wife, and I was a full time Doctoral student. After graduation I started doing sessional teaching at Douglas College and UBC, and my wife was teaching in the Burnaby school system, but that was a challenging time as well. In terms of successes, I have twice been tenured at UBC (that’s a long story!) and I have been involved in some very important research projects. Obtaining significant funding for those projects has allowed me to support students and professionals in various ways and has also supported my creative work. I am pleased that my work Strength for alto saxophone and video received a Unique Award of Merit from the Canadian Society of Cinematographers, and that award led to a commission to create a short film for C. Robertson’s breast cancer documentary, which was nominated for five Leos. I’ve also been fortunate to have my works performed by some of the world’s top performers, in various venues around the world.
Below: Strength performed by Julia Nolan, alto saxophone
What are some of your most memorable experiences teaching at UBC School of Music?
I am particularly proud of the Minor in Applied Music Technology that we created. The minor includes four core courses in music tech, along with related electives and a couple of prerequisites. To date we have had 53 students complete the minor, and 26 of those students identify as women, a ratio that is unusual in most music technology programs. Many students have gone on to very interesting and influential careers in creation and performance, software development, etc. Other students have gone on to well-funded graduate studies involving music tech, and some now work with technology companies such as EA and Avid, while one former student is now a professor at a Toronto university.
Over the past ten years, I have been able to arrange for our digital performance ensemble to undertake four international two-week residencies, collaborating with university students in Belgium, England, and the Philippines. Supportive funding for these trips came from UBC’s GoGlobal program, and the experiences have been very important for the development of our students’ creativity and collaborative skills. The way the digital performance ensemble course works owes much of its approach to CreativeArts courses I first developed in 2005, in which students from Music, Film, Theatre, Visual Arts, and Creative Writing were placed in rotating groups to collaborate on performance works. That course was quite memorable for me, and had a strong influence on how I approached teaching group creative work since then.
UBC Music Technology students at University of the Philippines College of Music
What projects are you working on now? What are you excited about?
I’m currently working on an interactive piece for solo flute, using detachable sensors that I have developed over the past few years. As part of this, I’m hoping to have the flute data control the lighting on a new dual spine for a dancer. This is the second spine I’ve created, with the first being a single light spine used in my piece Synapses (below) as well as in several other performances and a film. I’m also thinking about writing a new interactive piece for viola, and I continue taking Cantonese lessons as an attempt to understand the proper tones needed when setting Cantonese texts for voice.
Below: Synapses performed by Turning Point Ensemble
What music are you listening to and what are you reading these days?
I’m listening to a broader selection of art music and I’m revisiting contemporary works that I haven’t heard for several years. I also find that I now have time to watch more films, since I’m not spending hours every week marking and planning lectures. In terms of reading, because it is summer I spend more time reading hiking and mountaineering guides, trying to plan trips that won’t get compromised by the coming summer drought and forest fires, and also working on fly fishing trips as well. But as usual, I have a stack of books next to my bed that constantly beckon me!
