Conference Themes​

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Across the musical spectrum, from Arvo Pärt to Orange Juice, starting from zero is a common occurrence in the world of music.  

 

Whether we’re starting with a blank slate, writing the rules over again, making it up as we go along, or coming up with a grand plan, the history of music is also a history of innovation. How often do we get the chance to build something exactly the way we want it, to make all those fine grained adjustments that will make a project just right. The perfectly structured track, the perfectly balanced mix, the perfectly designed and executed performance. The new piece of technology that does exactly what we designed it to do.

 

For Innovation In Music 2025, we want to explore what happens when you get the chance to start something new or when you get to start something over, by rebooting or resetting things. Our call this year is broad, here are some perspectives to think about ‘New Beginnings’...

 

• Innovating from the ground up.

• Taking a fresh look in order to improve on what’s gone before. 

• ‘Fail better’. How do we really learn from past projects and past mistakes to take a great idea forward? What happens when the walls come crashing down, but we want the project to keep moving forward? 

• Circuit bending as ‘musical hotwiring’. When we inherit a project that someone else has made, and we want to take it off in a new direction… how can we take the hotwiring approach and apply it to other areas of musical practice - in composition, performance and production? And how can we do this at scale?

• As AI promises / threatens to give the music industry a near-total makeover, what would a new industry look like? What kind of checks and balances might we need to safeguard a new industry?

• As spatial audio continues to open up new perspectives for listening and production, how will this technology create a new beginning in how we approach the composition of music?

 

This conference theme can be broadly interpreted, and we encourage presentations on all kinds of ‘innovation in music’, related to topics such as:

 

• Innovative production, recording, mixing and mastering techniques

• Innovative approaches to composition, songwriting and performance

• Innovative approaches to music business, events, management and enterprise

• Innovations in music technology

• Innovative approaches to music research

• Innovative approaches to promoting diversity, equality and representation in music

• Innovative approaches to sustainability and sustainable practices in music

Presentations are by default in the format of 15-minute talks, followed by 5 minutes Q&A. Abstracts should give a summary of original research and an outline of the presentation to be given, and be 300-500 words. 

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Book Chapter Submission

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Authors who presented at InMusic25 are now optionally invited to submit a Chapter for the Book of Proceedings of InMusic25, which will be published in two volumes by Routledge. Please note the following requirements for submitting a chapter:

 

• Please prepare your article using the InMusic paper template. We cannot review or accept submissions that do not use the template.

 

• Chapters should be presented to a high academic standard and between 4,000 - 6,000 words. We expect all submissions to fit the conference theme of ‘innovation in music’, present new and original research, and provide a clear context and background of prior or related work.

 

• Please use a formal third-person academic writing style, unless your research is explicitly autoethnographic.

 

• Submissions must be in Microsoft Word (.docx) format using the template (see links later). You should also include a version in pdf format to be used during the review process. As per template instructions, please make sure that the .docx images are stored at Routledge-specified resolution in a separate folder with only textual callouts, but are included in-situ in the pdf version that will be used for peer review.

 

• Image files should be supplied at the time of submission, in jpg or png format, and use the filename format 'figure 01.png'

 

• You can reference your own online media in your chapter, but if you require to submit other forms of media with your article, please get in touch at publications@innovationinmusic.uk

 

• The author's contributor agreement form must be completed and signed (link to form below)

 

• If primary interviews are incorporated in your work, an interview release form should be submitted for each contributor (link to form below)

 

• If you use any images or other assets that you do not own the copyright to, then you must also include the necessary copyright permission forms (link to form below)

 

• The chapter submission deadline is 31 July 2025.

 

To submit your article, please upload it as a .zip folder attachment to your original InMusic25 Easychair submission. To do this, you need to sign back in to Easychair and review your original abstract submission, then select 'Add File' from the menu on the right-hand side of the submission information page.

 

The Easychair submission portal is here:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=inmusic25

 

All submitted papers must adhere to the InMusic Paper Template, which can be downloaded here

 

All forms referred to can be accessed from the following GDrive folder: 

InMusic GDrive Folder with Forms

 

Please email publications@innovationinmusic.uk if you have any questions about gaining necessary permissions. 

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Venues

Bath Spa University is hosting Innovation in Music 2025 across two venues in Bath: our beautiful campus at Newton Park and Burdall’s Yard, a great venue in Bath city centre.

 

Discover Bath

Known as the ‘Original Wellbeing Destination’, Bath is an elegant city full of traditional heritage, contemporary culture and green spaces.

Bath has been a wellbeing destination since Roman times, and the waters at the ancient Roman Baths and the modern Thermae Bath Spa (the only natural thermal hot springs in the UK you can bathe in) are still a big draw today. It’s a compact, welcoming city centre with many places to eat and drink, and a wide range of independent shops, museums and galleries.

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Newton Park

Situated at the edge of Bath, Newton Park is steeped in history. It was designed by the
well-known landscape architect Capability Brown in the 18th century, laid out on land
containing the 14th century keep and gateway of St Loe's Castle, a fortified medieval
manor house.

We will be running a coach on Saturday and Sunday mornings to pick up all conference
delegates from Bath city centre and bring everyone to Newton Park for 9am

 

If you are planning to drive to the conference, there will be plenty of parking available to you at the Newton Park campus. Please ignore the parking signs / ticketing instructions as we have turned our carpark monitoring cameras off for the weekend to enable you to park for free.

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Burdall’s Yard

The conference will start with a concert at Burdall’s Yard in the city centre of Bath. https://www.burdallsyard.co.uk
See ‘Concert’ tab for more information.

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Schedule​

 

The conference schedule can be accessed as a live online spreadsheet, or downloaded as a pdf document.

 

(Note that any necessary last minute schedule changes will be implemented immediately in the online spreadsheet, but may not immediately be reflected in the downloadable pdf)

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