Mark J. Butler is assistant professor of music at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a music theorist whose research on popular music integrates theoretical, historical, and anthropological approaches, with particular emphasis on the use of ethnographic methodology to address music-theoretical questions. His book
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=22576 _blank external-link-new-window "Unlocking the Groove">Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music (Indiana University Press, 2006) explores the rhythmic and metrical organization of electronic dance music from the measure to the complete DJ set, drawing up on field research with audiences and creators of electronic dance music as well as musical analysis. His work on this topic has received awards from Indiana University, the Society for American Music, and the Association for Recorded Sounds Collections. Other publications appear in journals such as Theoria, Music Theory Online, Semiotica, Twentieth-Century Music, and Popular Music. Butler holds a Bachelor of Music with Honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in Music Theory from Indiana University.

During his time at the Academy, Butler will continue working on his current book, which explores the relationships between technology, improvisation, and composition in electronic-music performance. His project, which was recently supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, involves extensive fieldwork with the many internationally active DJs and laptop musicians based in Berlin. As the laptop set becomes increasingly common, music analysts find themselves asking just how they are to approach such performances. “What” is being performed? What is the boundary between performance and composition in this context? Which of the musician’s actions are “structural,” and which are “interpretive” or “expressive”?