Dr Mark Slater

Dr Mark Slater

Reader in Music

Faculty and Department

  • Faculty of Arts Cultures and Education
  • School of The Arts

Summary

Mark Slater is a composer, producer and musicologist with an interest in the processes of how music is made, usually including uses of technology and improvisation in some way.

Whether working as a composer or producer, Dr Slater's work is fuelled by an exploration of spontaneity and collaboration - regardless of style. The focus of his music-making is on celebrating the abilities and idiosyncrasies of the musicians he works with.

As a writer, he interrogates the patterns and processes of music-making from theoretical and philosophical perspectives to understand something about what's going on when people make music.

Recent outputs

View more outputs

Book Chapter

Performing in the Studio

Slater, M. (2022). Performing in the Studio. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Music Performance, Vol.1 (510-527). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190056285.013.31

Processes of learning in the project studio

Slater, M. (2016). Processes of learning in the project studio. In A. King, & E. Himonides (Eds.), Music, Technology, and Education : Critical Perspectives (9-26). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315596945

Digital Artefact

Nightports, 'Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne'

Slater, M., Martin, A., & Bourne, M. (2018). Nightports, 'Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne'. [https://nightports.bandcamp.com/album/nightports-w-matthew-bourne]

Nightports, 'Depart'

Slater, M., & Martin, A. (2015). Nightports, 'Depart'. [https://nightports.bandcamp.com/album/depart]

Journal Article

Locating project studios and studio projects

Slater, M. (2016). Locating project studios and studio projects. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 141(1), 167-202. https://doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2016.1151241

Research interests

The overriding theme of my research and practice-as-research activity is the ‘poetics of recorded music’. All my work, whether practical creative outputs or scholarly publications, is concerned with how new music is made collaboratively and with some form of technology. Outputs include scholarly journal articles, book chapters, and interview pieces as well as recordings, broadcasts, and performances of original works. My work is both research and practice-as-research in which critical, conceptual, philosophical issues are explored from intellectual, creative and practical perspectives. The ideological implications of self-imposed constraint and the multiplicity of simultaneous resonances are the two most recurrent issues at stake in my work. As my work focusses on process, my musical outputs tend not to fit into neat stylistic categories of genre. Instead, my work is equally experimental in nature as it can be commercially oriented.

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Slater welcomes applications for PhD research in the areas of composition, production, the aesthetics and poetics of record production, and collaborative creativity.

Completed PhDs:

- George Marshall, Constraint and Creative Decision Making in the Composition of Concert Works, Film and Video-game Soundtracks (composition)

- Michael Betteridge, Inclusion, Visibility and Giving Communities a Voice: Social Contexts and Social Processes in my Vocal and Music Theatre Work 2016-2018 (composition)

- Brice Catherin, Transmission Strategies and Blossoming Participants in My Composed Music (composition)

- Stuart McCallum, Making Music in the Real World: a Professional Practice Portfolio with Reflective Commentary (composition & production; 2020)

- Lewis Kennedy, Functions of Genre in Metal and Hardcore Music (musicology; 2018)

- Jamie Moore, Robert Glasper's Black Radio: Issues of Style and Identity, University of Hull, 2017 (performance element).

- Rowan Oliver, Rebecoming Analogue: Groove, Breakbeats and Sampling, University of Hull, 2015 (2nd supervisor).

- Niall Thomas, How Has the Development of Technology Influenced Recorded Heavy Metal, University of Hull, 2015 (2nd supervisor).

- Adam Martin, Music Producers in 21st Century Britain: an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, University of Hull, 2014

- Sandy Clark, The Siren: Towards Accessibility in the Composition of a Multimedia Episodic Opera (composition)

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