About

Gregory Bruce is interested in how performance innovation can occur within a post-digital aesthetic, focusing on analogue electronic media, and investigates appropriate methods for carrying out such creative work in a research context. In the TaPIR Lab, Greg created an Arduino-based random tone generator which he controls with guitar pedals; he led a workshop on research-creation methodology which featured the work of Dr. Sandeep Bhagwati; and most recently presented a paper entitled “Tough Questions, Better Answers: The Centrality of Creative Practice in a DMA Thesis” at the X-Disciplinary Congress, online. Greg continues to explore how ‘old’ technologies can deliver new musical experiences when combined with acoustic instruments and strives to document and disseminate this work in effective ways.

Projects

Inframince: Feedback Variations (2022) by Kevin Gironnay

Part of Greg Bruce’s research involves first principles of knowledge generation, which includes methodologies for research-creation. In this presentation, Greg discusses how research-creation compliments conventional forms of research and illustrates his ‘problem-practice-exegesis’ methodology for carrying out large-scale research-creation projects, such as a DMA thesis. This research provides a useful framework for artist-scholars who wish to employ their own creative practice as a primary means of investigation.

Presented at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) Live@CIRMMT concert series, McGill University, Dec 9, 2022.

Event page

Tough Questions Better Answers: the centrality of creative practice in a DMA thesis

Part of Greg Bruce’s research involves first principles of knowledge generation, which includes methodologies for research-creation. In this presentation, Greg discusses how research-creation compliments conventional forms of research and illustrates his ‘problem-practice-exegesis’ methodology for carrying out large-scale research-creation projects, such as a DMA thesis. This research provides a useful framework for artist-scholars who wish to employ their own creative practice as a primary means of investigation.

 

Download Presentation Slides

Third Etude for Feedback Saxophone

Group Projects

Randomipity

Greg created a semi-autonomous tone generator from his Arduino UNO unit. The unit has five settings of random note generation, with corresponding LEDs, starting at silence and increasing in range and rhythmic density from “low and fast” all the way up to “lessest low and fasterest.” Greg improvised with these varying states of tone generation using three guitar pedals: a Boss GE-7 graphic EQ, a Boss PS-5 ‘super shifter’, and an MXR carbon copy delay.

 

Click here for more information on TaPIR Lab’s MUGIC workshop with Mari Kimura