Able Audio

Matt McLaren is a musician, music producer, and sound designer based in Australia. Since 2010, Matt has run his own recording studio, S&M Productions, and has been busy recording and producing local and national artists, providing services ranging from producing, scoring, multimedia, jingles, and songwriting.   Beyond his production work, Matt can regularly be seen around Newcastle with his keyboard and a microphone performing at a range of local venues, weddings, corporate events, and functions.   In this episode, Matt discusses his use of music technology and the way he navigates those experiences as someone who is blind. Matt discusses using various digital audio workstations, approaches to using analog hardware, among much more.

This episode looks at Gareth Pring from Sychronised Music Creation based in Aotearoa New Zealand. Gareth works with disabled and non-disabled young people giving them the opportunity and encouragment to experiment and play with multiple creative tools. Inspired by the work in of Drake Music in accessible music technology, Synchronised Music Creation uses a range of types of music technology to make it quick and easy for people to engage collaboratively with eachother in music making. Gareth runs various sessions which aim to give autonomy to participants over their musical experience where people may explore DJ turntables, drum percussion pads, writing lyrics, playing instruments, and much more. 

Chris Ankin works a lot engaging with audio workstations and, in particular, works with Native Instruments’ Komplete Kontrol Keyboards as an accessible midi controller. Chris runs a website called KK-ACCESS that provides resources on how to get started with the Komplete Kontrol and his advocacy works towards encouraging music technology companies to make their products increasingly accessible.

Megan Steinberg is an experimental composer and abstract turntablist based in London. She works with found sound, chance procedures, graphic scores, quietness and microtonality.    Originally a jazz guitarist, Megan studied Composition at Brunel University where she fell into experimental music. After discovering free improv using objects, violin, and cello, in 2016 she began performing free improv and experimental music for single-deck analogue turntable.   As a free improv abstract turntablist, Megan is interested in furthering the repertoire and exploring performance techniques for the instrument. In 2018 she embarked on a Finnish tour with solo turntable material, and has performed with other musicians including Elliot Galvin, Benedict Taylor and Jenn Kirby.   Megan is currently studying a PhD at Royal Northern College of Music, where she has been appointed the Lucy Hale Doctoral Composer in Association with Drake Music, from 2021. Her project is focused on the creation of works for Disabled musicians, new instruments and AI, placing accessibility at the beginning of the compositional process.

Amble Skuse is a musician and artist, working with found sound, voices, electronic processing, and site specific locations. She works with oral history archives, interviews, community memories, radio interviews, found sounds and site specific compositions to explore myriad identities in myriad locations.   She explores these ideas of identity and power through a lens of intersectional feminism. Her focus is on disability, and she is currently studying for a PhD looking at ways in which a disabled composer / performer can ustilise technology as a tool for composing, improvising and performing. In 2021, Amble’s work We Ask These Questions of Everybody premiered which was a 50-minute live and digital operatic event sharing disabled people’s experiences under austerity in the UK, performed by an exceptional cross-genre, all-disabled ensemble. 

Dr Anthea Skinner is musicologist, researcher, and academic with lived experience of disability who works at the University of Melbourne in Australia. As a child growing up with disability, the school band was a place where Anthea could compete on a level playing field with her non-disabled peers and make like-minded friends.   Despite her musical success, Anthea was often the only disabled student in any band or orchestra she played in. It was clear that her disabled peers did not have the same access to music education that she enjoyed.   Today, Anthea’s work at the University of Melbourne aims to help those with disabilities access the benefits of music education. Her latest research project, the Adaptive Music Bridging Program, is connecting disabled students with the latest in adaptive music technologies so they can enjoy the art of learning a musical instrument, regardless of disabililty.