Dr George Reid

Module leader

MU4201 – Synthesis, Sampling, and Sequencing

• This module develops skills and practice in synthesiser programming, sampling, sequencing, electronic composition and orchestration within digital audio workstations. Through hands-on instruction, students learn methods for crafting their own unique approaches to sound design, arrangement, and music production, covering the musical concepts of melody, rhythm, harmony, and form.

MU4204 – Sonic Environments

• This module provides an introduction to the science and aesthetics of real and imagined environments, their acoustics and spatial phenomena. Students engage in creative practice research that will consider a wide range of inter-connected practices: from location recording and measuring impulse responses in real environments, to examining how sound behaves in virtual spaces, soundtracks and soundscapes. Students also learn the fundamentals of acoustics, sound diffusion and absorption, and get to grips with the basic operation of physical modelling software applications.

MU6312 – Professional Project

• In this module students produce a substantial creative piece of work which develops their skills in a specific area marking the culmination of their degree work. It is designed to enable them to work independently in an area that excites and interests them. Students may choose to create your work within performance, composition/production or a research dissertation, and they will be supported by themed group seminar meetings as a whole cohort, supplemented by individual tutorials.

MU7001 – Researching Music

• This module develops the academic skills of students, such as locating relevant information from a variety of sources, evaluating their relevance and quality, weighing evidence, critical and introspective reflection, and communicating effectively. Within this module, students engage with both historical and contemporary issues in musicology and popular culture including, but not limited to, music and multimedia, music subcultures, music and politics, and perspectives on music & identity.

MU7016 – Critical Aspects of Performance Presentation

• This module is core for MMus Performance and is offered as an option for other level 7 Music programmes. The module will consider the art of musical performance from the perspectives of aesthetics, psychology, and gesture. This will include the psychology of performance presentation and musical learning and the psychology of performance anxiety. Practical strategies for developing strong mental health in relation to both areas will also be considered and in particular relaxation techniques and neuro-linguistic programming, a form of mental and practical rehearsal, will be investigated.

Lecturer

MU4205 – Navigating Music Technology

• This module develops professional identity and active citizenship through exploring concepts including understanding ethical issues and values, design thinking, and commercial awareness. These concepts and associated activities will support students in planning their own personal and professional development, developing creative practice and reflective skills. This is supported through active engagement with the Navigate programme, developing a design thinking approach to future skills development.

MU5205 – Exploring Music Technology

• This module explores careers in the music industry for the music technology graduate and encourages students to continue to plan their own personal and professional development, nurturing independent thinking and the ability to consciously develop their own skillsets, through shaping their own values and ambitions whilst developing a comprehensive understanding of the business of music.

MU5204 – Performing With Technology

• This module explores the uses of digital audio software and hardware in live performances. Students will look at ways of integrating studio tools within a live environment. Throughout this module, they will be introduced to the Ableton Live software and all its uses within live performance 

MU7005 – Constructing Music Education in the UK

• This module examines the roles of national and local bodies responsible for music provision in the UK maintained sector and the position of schools, communities and professional organisations within regulatory frameworks. Students trace the evolution of value systems underpinning aesthetic education today, and explore the influence of this discourse on schools and music classroom culture. In doing so, they explore the complex transactional character of school-based music pedagogy, the diversity of practice engendered and some of the consequences for research. 


MU7012 – Major Project

• This module supports the development of a major piece of research, creative work, or performance which is focused on the subject of the student’s programme of study. Depending upon the course in which the student is enrolled, the nature of the project will be one of the following: a dissertation; a folio of produced popular music compositions/covers; a folio of sonic arts work; a folio of compositions to moving image; a folio of compositions; or a performance. In the case of the creative work and performance, students will also undertake related research which culminates in a paper or critical commentary to complement and support their creative work. The module is taught through seminars and individual and group tutorials.

Qualifications

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Course director

• Composing for Film and Television MMus

Courses taught

• Music Technology BA (Hons)
• Music Education MA
• Music MA
• Music Performance MMus
• Composing for Film and Television MMus

My interdisciplinary research is situated in the burgeoning field of ludomusicology, and I am particularly interested in the ways in which the timbral qualities of early video game music – known as 'chiptune' – have become reappropriated as a means of shaping identity and community. My Ph.D. thesis developed a framework for the analysis of identity and its trans*formation in relation to ludomusicality, in which chiptune formed the main case study, and brought together lenses from critical feminist theory, affect theory, (ludo)musicology, and new media theory.

I am currently researching how musical aesthetics such as these relate to the production of queer subjectivity, with a practice-as-research methodology informing the project.

In addition to ludomusicology, my research interests also include the relationship between multimedia and nostalgia; music, identity, fandom and (sub)culture, and the remediation of obsolete music technologies and aesthetics.

Specialisms

• Ludomusicology
• Popular Musicology
• (Sub)cultural & Fan studies
• Affect Theory
• Queer Theory

Scholarly affiliations

• University of Northampton
• The Ludomusicology Research Group
• The Queer Video Game Audio Research Network
• Sonic Scope Journal
• The Journal of Sound and Music in Games

Professional and scholarly affiliations

• University of Northampton

University responsibilities

• Senior Lecturer in Music
• Module Leader
• Course Leader
• Research Degree Supervision
• Admissions Tutor
• Personal Tutor