Musical Creativity & The Composition Engine: A Portfolio of Songs with Written Commentary

Gordon, James

Musical Creativity & The Composition Engine: A Portfolio of Songs with Written Commentary

Publication Date

July 28, 2025

Creator

Gordon, James

Abstract

This practice-based PhD project documents the development of a Creativity Support Tool (CST) – The Composition Engine – and its use in the composition and production of two albums of original music in the accompanying portfolio. The Composition Engine synthesises multiple models of creativity from the literature into a map of the creative process and organises them into stages that a composer can move through (or jump around within) while writing or producing music. The model incorporates two principal modes of creativity, "divergent" and "convergent", and includes process guides, prompts-for-action, and sources of raw material to select from. This research is contextualised within the field of Practice-as-Research (PaR), where the creative practice itself is a primary form of research evidence.

Item Type

ethesis

Thesis Type

PhD

Supervisors

Kelly, Elizabeth

MacLeod, Duncan

Subjects (LC)

M Music

Associated Schools / Departments

School of Humanities

eprints ID

81044

UoN Repository URI

https://repository.nottingham.ac.uk/handle/123456789/53006

Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Name

Commentary - Gordon, James, 20405287, corrections.pdf

Type

Full-text

Description

Examined. Thesis - Post-Viva corrections

Size

8.38 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

Checksum (MD5)

48630233b1a78ccf2456682af108cc92

Name

Portfolio - The Composition Engine.pdf