WHAT tunes your world? It might sound an odd sort of question until Hugh Nankivell explains.

Hugh is a freelance musician and composer who lives with his family in Torquay.

Until about five years ago, they lived in Huddersfield which is why he was delighted to be back spending time in the area again to work on a project with Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf).

It’s not a first. Over the years, Hugh has worked in many creative and performance situations.

He has played world music and jazz in various bands, worked with dancers, opera companies and theatre companies including both site specific theatre specialists Wilson + Wilson and animation company Faulty Optic, both of which were rooted in the Huddersfield area.

Hugh has also worked for more than five years with the Japanese composer Makoto Nomura, which has resulted in Whaletone Opera a new score and approach to music-making developed with communities in Japan and England.

Last year, Hugh worked on Keyboard Choreography Collection, a music and dance project for hcmf.

Now he has been back to use the festival as a launch pad for an improvisation project called Tuningworlds which he is working on with another composer, Richard Povall and a Dartmoor based organisation called Aune Head Arts.

It’s expected to run until the summer of 2013 and Hugh has been in Huddersfield working with children in local schools and also buttonholing people at hcmf.

“We’ve had a music box built. It plays like a drone, a single note,” he said.

“We’ve been asking people to use this pitch as a starting point and we record their response.

“It could be a single person humming in a field, a class of schoolchildren playing recorders, a solo dancer dancing with the pitch in her mind. It may be a full symphony orchestra or a massed group of singers.

“There are no stylistic rules, no content rules, no length rules. It’s just a sharing of a musical pitch as a starting point.

“We will try to bring as many performances together in a shared worldwide performance sometime in 2012 or 2013 – but that is only one of many things that will happen during the project.

“Next year for example, we’re hoping to be at the UNESCO Geoparks Conference in Japan, where we will encourage all of the world’s 47 Geoparks to become involved.”

Nearer home, students at Scissett Middle School and at Crosland Moor Junior School got involved in the Tuningworlds project.

Hugh took his musical skills and his recording kit into the schools to get children working with sound. And during the festival, he was out and about asking people for their response to that single note.

If you are inspired and want to get involved or simply want to know more go to www.tuningworlds.net.

“Everything we collect from this point on will be gathered on to our website which will be the online nexus of the project with mash-ups, broadcasts, live network improvisation and other things that grow from the project,” he said.

And failing all of that, Hugh promises to be back at next year’s festival, “bigger, better and louder” – or softer. It all depends apparently, on what tunes your world.