I have two major areas of interest in musical research.  The first is the evolving world of portable, multi-touch, digital music applications and new developments for controlling these applications. There has never been a time in history when a musician could literally purchase a new instrument each month for around five dollars. With the release of the iPad and an endless stream of music apps, musicians have unprecedented access to low cost tools with which to generate music. I plan to survey users of portable touch devices to determine if these new tools are making an impact on their musical output with a particular focus on non-traditional interfaces.

The product of my master’s thesis was the creation of an electronic textbook. The process opened my eyes to the possibilities the eBook format offers to educators, especially in Music Technology pedagogy. The interactive, intuitive qualities of using a multi-touch device to digest information are on full display when the textual content is reinforced with embedded multimedia. I would like to continue the research that began with my master’s thesis into effective development and deployment of electronic textbooks featuring multimedia. Investigating the effectiveness of media-rich electronic textbooks specifically focused on topics in Music Technology is an area that continues to fascinate me and inspire my creativity and imagination.

In addition to scholarly research, I also am continually creating new music and documents with general music technology information. You can find examples of these Sounds and Documents here on my website.