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03 / Music

Sound is my first language.

Thirty years of performance, two decades of teaching, and now a PhD on what happens in the body when music plays. The thread runs through everything.

A performer's path

I have been a musician since my mother first gave me piano lessons at a very young age. I took classical guitar lessons at around 10, drifted away from it for a while, then came back seriously at about 16 through private lessons with Dev Gopalasamy, a jazz guitarist, educator, and session musician who had a major influence on my learning, guitar playing, and improvisation at that age.

I began performing live in bands at 18. I was also teaching guitar at a number of private schools, including Oxley College and Chevalier College in Bowral, Frensham Ladies College in Mittagong, The King's School Tudor House in Moss Vale, and St Joseph's College at Hunters Hill. I even taught guitar to prisoners at Berrima Correctional Centre for a while.

In 1991 I started studying at the University of New South Wales and graduated in 1994 with a Bachelor of Music and a Bachelor of Education, specialising in performance and music education. Music has stayed with me ever since, linking education, my own performing, and now the academic work on music perception.

  • B.Mus.
    Performance and Education, UNSW 1994
  • B.Ed.
    Music Education, UNSW 1994
  • Tutor
    School of Psychology, UoW
  • Active
    30+ years performing
  • ORCID
    0000-0003-3617-7994

Live Performance

The Works live, circa 1983
The Works live, c. 1983
The Works group portrait
The Works group portrait
The Works group band shot
The Works group band shot
The Works on tour in NSW
The Works on tour in NSW
The Works live performance
The Works duo shot
Original band Honeytung live vocal performance
Original band Honeytung vocal
Original band Honeytung live guitar performance
Original band Honeytung guitar

Honeytung recordings

Mr Whitey

Evil Funky Woman

How Ya Gonna Dance

The original Honeytung website from 1999 is now archived, including the recovered band biography, gig reviews, recordings, and surviving photographs. Visit the Honeytung archive here.

Where music meets research

The PhD work is explicitly about music. Heart rate variability and EEG measured during music listening. Autonomic responses to unexpected rhythm. Skin conductance and musical complexity. The body's involuntary reactions to musical structure are not metaphor, they are physiology, and they are measurable.

  • PhD topic
    Cardiovascular measures of cognition in music listening
  • Methods
    HRV, EEG/ERP, EDA, controlled musical stimuli
  • Related
    Research detail →

Timeline