SU Studio Talk 60: Aaron Wyatt – Virtual Performance Environments

Aaron Wyatt is a multifaceted musician; a violist, programmer, composer and conductor, recognised as the first Australian First Nations person to conduct one of the major Symphony Orchestras in Australia. He is the director of Ensemble Dhutala, a group founded by Yorta Yorta soprano and composer Deborah Cheetham AO to bring together Indigenous classical musicians from around the country, and a core member of the award-winning Decibel New Music ensemble. Aaron is also the developer behind the Decibel ScorePlayer app, the ensemble’s cutting edge, animated graphic notation software for the iPad.

Aaron’s Sounds Unheard Studio Talk series, “Playing Music Online”, takes a look at his innovative work in programming, telematic music and how internet technologies can be used in music performance.

In the first episode of this series, “Virtual Performance Environments”, Aaron discusses his background in both music and programming – and how these threads came together in two key projects. The first, Decibel’s ScorePlayer, is a ground-breaking app designed to coordinate the reading of graphic notation scores. The second, JackTrip, is a free, open source program from Stanford University that enables real-time musical collaboration over the internet, allowing musicians to play with one another across thousands of miles with very low total latency.

Thank you for joining us for the first episode of Aaron’s Studio Talks series. Join us next Wednesday for a closer look at the technology behind JackTrip. For more information on Aaron’s work with JackTrip and the Decibel ScorePlayer app, visit https://www.psi-borg.org/.