Ben Duinker
Biographic Data
| ID | 1379604 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ben Duinker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ben |
| FAMILY NAME | Duinker |
| SIGNATURE | BEN DUINKER |
| AFFILIATIONS | McGill University |
| ORCID | 0009-0009-3896-9611 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Post-Quantization and Glitch in the Music of Nicole Lizée. Nicole Lizée in Conversation with Ben Duinker
Award-winning composer and video artist Nicole Lizée creates new music inspired by an eclectic mix of influences including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Alexander McQueen, thrash metal, early video game culture, 1960s psychedelia, and 1960s modernism. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology and captures these glitches, notates them and integrates them into live performa…
Response to Trevor de Clercq (2025)
Theoretically informed training improves accent production in percussion
Theories of accent production lack empirical data supporting how notes are marked as accented in performance. The present study used percussion performance as a lens to investigate how movements of the performer’s mallets, hands, and wrists contribute to marking notes as accented and how such movements may be refined via training. Experienced percussionists completed a single experimental session where they practiced an excerpt scored for multipl…
Please unmute your microphone: Comparing the effectiveness of remote versus in-person percussion training
Although remote music training has its limitations, the use of technology can lower barriers to its accessibility. This exploratory study compared the effects of remote and in-person percussion training on motor performance, performance quality, and students’ enjoyment. The training involved the motor aspects of playing legato on percussion instruments. Twenty percussionists received the training either remotely from an instructor using videoconf…
Diversity in Music Corpus Studies
Auto-Tune as instrument: Trap Music's Embrace of a Repurposed Technology
This article explores Auto-Tune's importance to the production, perception and reception of trap music, a sub-genre of hip hop. Central to this exploration is the observation that Auto-Tuned trap vocals are readily audible as such because the software's pitch correction function is applied unnaturally quickly to the vocal audio signal, a feature herein termed 'zero-onset Auto-Tune'. First, I posit that although Auto-Tune is ostensibly a pitch-cor…
Engaging Analysis and Performance
Rebonds: Structural Affordances, Negotiation, and Creation
This paper presents a comparative recording analysis of the seminal work for solo percussion Rebonds (Iannis Xenakis, 1989), in order to demonstrate how performances of a musical work can reveal-or even create-aspects of musical structure that score-centered analysis cannot illuminate. In doing so I engage with the following questions. What does a pluralistic, dynamic conception of structure look like for Rebonds? How do interpretive decisions re…
Plateau Loops and Hybrid Tonics in Recent Pop Music
This paper investigates harmonic progressions built around two major chords and one minor chord, all related by step. In many pop/rock songs, these chords can be analyzed as Aeolian progressions-VI, VII, and i-(Moore 1992; Biamonte 2010; Richards 2017a). Recent songs by Bon Iver, The Chainsmokers, and others, however, use chord loops where the harmonies can be interpreted as IV, V, and vi, which I call theplateau loopfor its plateau-like activity…
Good things come in threes: Triplet Flow in Recent Hip-Hop Music
MCs (rappers) such as Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Big Sean and Young Thug use triplet rhythms in their rapping, a practice that is known as triplet flow. This paper argues that the prevalence of triplet flow is one of the most aurally salient features of contemporary hip hop, and exemplifies the popularity and influence of the Atlanta-centred genre of trap music through its sparse, slow beats. Three types of triplet flow are defined - mixed, …
Changing Content in Flagship Music Theory Journals, 1979-2014
Since the founding of the Society for Music Theory in 1977, the Anglophone music theory discipline has extensively diversified, now encompassing manifold subfields. A pertinent question arises: how does the music theory discipline balance this diversity with a sense of unity and cohesiveness? An investigation into journal articles-one of the main ways music theory presents itself to the world-can serve as a useful entry point for this question. W…
Good things come in threes: Triplet Flow in Recent Hip-Hop Music
MCs (rappers) such as Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Big Sean and Young Thug use triplet rhythms in their rapping, a practice that is known as triplet flow. This paper argues that the prevalence of triplet flow is one of the most aurally salient features of contemporary hip hop, and exemplifies the popularity and influence of the Atlanta-centred genre of trap music through its sparse, slow beats. Three types of triplet flow are defined - mixed, …
Plateau Loops and Hybrid Tonics in Recent Pop Music
This paper investigates harmonic progressions built around two major chords and one minor chord, all related by step. In many pop/rock songs, these chords can be analyzed as Aeolian progressions-VI, VII, and i-(Moore 1992; Biamonte 2010; Richards 2017a). Recent songs by Bon Iver, The Chainsmokers, and others, however, use chord loops where the harmonies can be interpreted as IV, V, and vi, which I call theplateau loopfor its plateau-like activity…
Changing Content in Flagship Music Theory Journals, 1979-2014
Since the founding of the Society for Music Theory in 1977, the Anglophone music theory discipline has extensively diversified, now encompassing manifold subfields. A pertinent question arises: how does the music theory discipline balance this diversity with a sense of unity and cohesiveness? An investigation into journal articles-one of the main ways music theory presents itself to the world-can serve as a useful entry point for this question. W…
Changing Content in Flagship Music Theory Journals, 1979-2014
Since the founding of the Society for Music Theory in 1977, the Anglophone music theory discipline has extensively diversified, now encompassing manifold subfields. A pertinent question arises: how does the music theory discipline balance this diversity with a sense of unity and cohesiveness? An investigation into journal articles-one of the main ways music theory presents itself to the world-can serve as a useful entry point for this question. W…
Plateau Loops and Hybrid Tonics in Recent Pop Music
This paper investigates harmonic progressions built around two major chords and one minor chord, all related by step. In many pop/rock songs, these chords can be analyzed as Aeolian progressions-VI, VII, and i-(Moore 1992; Biamonte 2010; Richards 2017a). Recent songs by Bon Iver, The Chainsmokers, and others, however, use chord loops where the harmonies can be interpreted as IV, V, and vi, which I call theplateau loopfor its plateau-like activity…
Good things come in threes: Triplet Flow in Recent Hip-Hop Music
MCs (rappers) such as Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Big Sean and Young Thug use triplet rhythms in their rapping, a practice that is known as triplet flow. This paper argues that the prevalence of triplet flow is one of the most aurally salient features of contemporary hip hop, and exemplifies the popularity and influence of the Atlanta-centred genre of trap music through its sparse, slow beats. Three types of triplet flow are defined - mixed, …
Rebonds: Structural Affordances, Negotiation, and Creation
This paper presents a comparative recording analysis of the seminal work for solo percussion Rebonds (Iannis Xenakis, 1989), in order to demonstrate how performances of a musical work can reveal-or even create-aspects of musical structure that score-centered analysis cannot illuminate. In doing so I engage with the following questions. What does a pluralistic, dynamic conception of structure look like for Rebonds? How do interpretive decisions re…
Engaging Analysis and Performance
Please unmute your microphone: Comparing the effectiveness of remote versus in-person percussion training
Although remote music training has its limitations, the use of technology can lower barriers to its accessibility. This exploratory study compared the effects of remote and in-person percussion training on motor performance, performance quality, and students’ enjoyment. The training involved the motor aspects of playing legato on percussion instruments. Twenty percussionists received the training either remotely from an instructor using videoconf…
Diversity in Music Corpus Studies
Auto-Tune as instrument: Trap Music's Embrace of a Repurposed Technology
This article explores Auto-Tune's importance to the production, perception and reception of trap music, a sub-genre of hip hop. Central to this exploration is the observation that Auto-Tuned trap vocals are readily audible as such because the software's pitch correction function is applied unnaturally quickly to the vocal audio signal, a feature herein termed 'zero-onset Auto-Tune'. First, I posit that although Auto-Tune is ostensibly a pitch-cor…
Post-Quantization and Glitch in the Music of Nicole Lizée. Nicole Lizée in Conversation with Ben Duinker
Award-winning composer and video artist Nicole Lizée creates new music inspired by an eclectic mix of influences including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Alexander McQueen, thrash metal, early video game culture, 1960s psychedelia, and 1960s modernism. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology and captures these glitches, notates them and integrates them into live performa…
Response to Trevor de Clercq (2025)
Theoretically informed training improves accent production in percussion
Theories of accent production lack empirical data supporting how notes are marked as accented in performance. The present study used percussion performance as a lens to investigate how movements of the performer’s mallets, hands, and wrists contribute to marking notes as accented and how such movements may be refined via training. Experienced percussionists completed a single experimental session where they practiced an excerpt scored for multipl…
Art (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Neuroscience and Music Perception (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Music Technology and Sound Studies (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Visual arts (4 works) · Linguistics (3 works) · Literature (3 works)