Dr Martin Parker
Job title:
Senior Lecturer, Sound Design
Role:
Director of Postgraduate Research, School of Music
Office:
3.04, Alison House
Research Output:
Edinburgh Research Explorer linkBiography
I am a composer, sonic artist and sound designer working at the crossroads where people, places and things meet with computers.
I was programme director for the MSc Sound Design between its inauguration in 2003 until 2024.
Between 2014-16 I was ECA's Director of Outreach and I was Head of Music between 2000 and 2025. I have been a GAIL fellow since 2025.
For many years I ran the Dialogues Festival of experimental music, regularly inviting the world's most exciting experimental musicians to Edinburgh.
I studied composition at the University of Manchester and completed a Ph.D in Composition at the University of Edinburgh in 2003.
Research interests
- Computer Music - composition with computers
- Sonic Art - encounters between people, places and technologies
- Sound Design - the quest for new sounds in the right contexts
- Music AI - from custom model making to interactive inference
- Responsible AI across the arts, in particular archives and heritage
I teach across the following programmes
- MSc Sound Design
- MMus Composition a
- MSc Acoustics and Music Technology.
I supervise undergraduate and postgraduate students in dissertation, creative practice projects and portfolio of compositions.
I have been course organiser for the following courses in the last 10 years:
- Sound Design Media
- Audio Crafting
- Creative Coding for Sound
- Interactive Sound Environments
- Sound and Fixed Media
Digital Media Studio Project
Music Masters Final Project
I have supervised over 200 Masters final projects to successful completion.
Research
Research
The recent surge of interest in Artificial Intelligence lead me towards an AHRC-funded fellowship with Bridging Responsible AI Divides called Machining Sonic Identities. In this project I have been working with a contemporary music ensemble, a museum and youth music group to create and produce new creative compositional work while exploring new modes of expression made accessible through recent developments in machine learning technologies. Part of this work has been in close collaboration with audio software company Datamind Audio Ltd.
Current PhD students
Liam Peacock
Inaudible Complexity: Musical Meaning and Adaptive Systems in Video Games
PhD Supervision Topics
- Composition (instrumental composition, computer music, live electronics, spatial audio)
- Digital Organology (the crafting of digital musical instruments and related interactions)
- New Music and Responsible AI
- Sound Design (sound in relation to game audio, film, television, radio)
- Sonic Art (sound installation and related sound practices)
- Musical computing
