ABSTRACT
In the 2001/2 academic year, I used handheld computers to teach music composition to undergraduate and graduate students in a grant-funded project at Central Washington University. The purpose of the project, which was called Handheld Composing: Reconceptualizing Artistic Practice with Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), was to see how mobile computing devices could be used to teach music composition. The assumption of the project was that if handheld use could guide students to think critically about composing then it could also help students to reconceptualize artistic process, that is, to see it differently than they would have without the use of PDAs. The point of asking students to reconceptualize their composing process was not to create a new or better way of writing music but, rather, to help students to take a broad look at how interfaces influence artistic process and technique. Therefore, the key question was could handhelds lead composition students to discover techniques that exceeded the bounds of usual practice?
