David Brian Williams and Peter Richard Webster have partnered for more than 30 years providing leadership to the music profession in technology applications; workshops on the integration of technology to music and music education; and presentations for state, national, and international conferences, including ATMI, CMS, ISME, NAfME, NASM, and TI:ME. Their textbook, Experiencing Music Technology, a leading textbook for tertiary music education, has gone through five revisions since first published in the late 1990s, with the latest 4th Edition with Oxford University Press in print and ebook form.
Peter Webster is Emeritus Professor of Music Education and Technology, Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He was also a professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He most recently served as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California and is now an adjunct instructor at the School of Music, University of Florida-Gainesville. Webster was the 2014 recipient of the Senior Researcher Award from the Society of Research in Music Education of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME).
During his career in higher education, Webster served as an administrator, teacher, and doctoral dissertation advisor (35 dissertations—5 awarded the Outstanding Dissertation of the Year by the Council of Research in Music Education). He is an authority on creativity in music teaching and is the author of Measures of Creative Thinking in Music, an assessment tool designed for children aged 6–10. Webster has published 4 books and over 100 articles and chapters in numerous professional publications in and outside of music education, including Music Educators Journal, Journal of Research in Music Education, CRME Bulletin, Contributions to Music Education, Arts Education and Policy Review, Research Studies in Music Education, Music Education Research, Psychomusicology, and Journal of Music, Technology and Education. He is an editorial board member for several national and international journals and has severed as an editor for several projects, including the MENC Handbook of Research on Music Learning (2012) and The Musical Experience: Rethinking Music Teaching and Learning (2014), both published by Oxford University Press.
Among his writings are many chapters for Oxford University Press handbooks in music teaching and learning. Webster has served as the editor for Contributions to Music Education, College Music Society Symposium: Instructional Technologies and Methodologies (ITAM) section, and the music content editor of International Journal of Education and the Arts (IJEA). He has taught in adjunct positions for the doctoral programs at the School of Music, University of North Carolina, Greensboro and Boston University.
Webster holds an undergraduate degree in music education from the University of Southern Maine and was awarded a Distinguished Alumni Award from that school. He has advanced degrees from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester and has taught in the public schools of Maine, Massachusetts, and New York.
David Williams is Emeritus Professor of Music and Arts Technology at Illinois State University. Dr. Williams founded one of the first nationally recognized integrated arts technology programs (now the Creative Technologies program). He has enjoyed experimenting with new hardware and software in support of music teaching and learning since designing programmed instruction drills with a tape recording for ear training in the late 1960s, programming an AI simulation for music concept formation on a CDC 6400 mainframe, developing the first DAC card and music composing software for the Apple II computer, designing various multimedia solutions for the Macintosh through and beyond Hypercard, and most recently designing websites for music and other applications.
He is currently a consultant on computer and music technology (coach4technology.net), provides leadership for the Music Technology Leadership Academy project (musiccreativity.org), and is active as a composer and instrumentalist in community organizations. In the late 1970s, he cofounded Micro Music, Inc., and developed numerous music-education titles for the Apple II and the MMI DAC sound card. He has written extensively in the areas of music education, music psychology, music and arts technology, and instructional development and is published in such journals as the Campus Wide Information Systems, CAUSE/EFFECT Journal, EDUCAUSE, Educational Quarterly, International Schools Journal, Music Educators Journal, Journal of Research in Music Education, CRME Bulletin, Psychomusicology, Psychology of Music, and Journal of Music, Technology and Education. His recent interest is promoting music technology in support of "The Other 80%" of secondary school students (musiccreativity.org) who are non-participants in traditional school music ensembles.
Dr. Williams is the founding editor of the journal, Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, and has served on the boards of ATMI, CMS, Illinois Music Educators Association, NAfME, TI:ME, and is a past-president of The College Music Society. He chaired the NAfME task force for developing Opportunity-to-Learn Standards for Music Technology and, in 2001, received the Illinois Music Educators Association Distinguished Service Award for his work in music technology. Williams has a BMEd degree in instrumental music and a Master of Music Theory and Composition from Northwestern State University of Louisiana and a PhD in Systematic Musicology from the University of Washington, Seattle.
