Music Practice Commons^™

A Quiet Mind: The Key To Musical Performance, Rebecca Ann Percy

University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects

No abstract provided.

Meaning Beyond Words: A Musical Analysis Of Afro-Cuban Batá Drumming, Javier Diaz

All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of a musical analysis of Afro-Cuban batá drumming. Current scholarship focuses on ethnographic research, descriptive analysis, transcriptions, and studies on the language encoding capabilities of batá. However, this artistically sophisticated tradition demands a more in-depth study of its musical manufacture. Drawing from experience as a ritual batá player and as an oricha priest, I have completed the current study by following three primary analytical modalities: (1) sonic landscape, which encompasses: sound vocabulary, form, individual drum parts, and balance of musical elements; (2) timbral design, how the different batá sounds articulate meaningful and functionally distinguishable structures; (3) the ...

Ukrainian Folklore Influences In The Music Of Myroslav Skoryk: Historical Background And Performance Guide To Selected Violin Works, Iuliia Alyeksyeyeva

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Myroslav Skoryk is one of the most influential Ukrainian composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His works draw extensively on the folk traditions of Ukraine to evoke various aspects of the country’s cultural legacy.

The violin holds a special place in the cultural, societal, and historical heritage of Ukraine. Skoryk’s works for violin draw on both Ukrainian folk traditions as well as classical performance traditions. The intricacies of Skoryk’s folk-inspired classical pieces of music are rooted in the oral traditions of Ukrainian folk music.

This document provides background information on certain Ukrainian folk music traditions and ...

The Challenges And Limitations Of Adapting Mozart's Così Fan Tutte For A Small University Setting, Christopher Lovely

Dissertations

In this dissertation, challenges and limitations related to presenting Così fan tutte within a small university setting are conveyed, as well as offering innovative ideas to create a manageable presentation. I recall my personal experience as Korepititor/Vocal Coach for The University of Southern Mississippi’s 2014 production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte. This document presents topics on the various workings of an opera production: pre-rehearsal preparation, language issues, rehearsal preparation, selection of singers, and production issues. It offers practical solutions to overcome various challenges a small university may encounter. Smaller university opera programs were surveyed regarding their adaptations ...

A Pedagogical Guide To Selected Intermediate And Early-Advanced Piano Works By Sergei Prokofiev: Developing Technical Skills To Master His Advanced Repertoire, Kaleb Davis

Dissertations

This dissertation provides the piano instructor and performer with a pedagogical guide to selected pieces by Prokofiev ranging in difficulty from intermediate to early-advanced. The pieces chosen for this guide help to address a variety of technical challenges that are essential to studying and performing Prokofiev’s more advanced works.

Chapter I offers an overview of Prokofiev’s musical style and addresses prominent technical challenges from his advanced piano repertoire. Chapter II is a pedagogical guide to the selected pieces, arranged into three levels of difficulty. For ease of reference, tables outlining the pieces with their technical challenges are placed ...

Midi: A Standard For Music In The Ever Changing Digital Age, Taylor Romo

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is the technology that allows synthesizers and controllers to communicate and manipulate other pieces of gear as well as computer software. This technology has permanently changed the way music is produced and performed. This paper will explore the importance of MIDI technology as a tool for music production as well as for music performance. This will be done by first examining the history and development of MIDI technology, including the reasons why it was created. Many examples will be given of how MIDI is a crucial component in recording studios, music production studios, and live ...

Tasman Connections Through Song: Engaging In Classrooms And In Community, Dawn Joseph Dr, Robyn Trinick Mrs

The Qualitative Report

Community is an overarching word that encompasses people in formal and informal settings covering a broad range of activities. Engaging through sound “in community” and “as community” provides the opportunity for participants to come together making and sharing music through song. This paper focuses on voice (singing) across the Tasman within formal and informal locations. Author One draws on interview data within an “informal” space with three community choirs in regional Victoria (Australia) from her wider study Spirituality and Wellbeing: Music in the Community. The data shows that choir members use voice to connect with their local community around issues ...

Music Generated Narratives: Elaborating The Da Capo Interview Technique, Martin Cortazzi, Nick Pilcher, Lixian Jin

The Qualitative Report

This paper shows how we played researcher-selected extracts of music to participants in “the Da Capo technique,” to elicit narratives of their learning experiences. Previously, we used music alongside other techniques in an interview about learning; here we explore the Da Capo technique as a standalone technique to study its potential for narrative recall. To do this, we played 10 one-minute long extracts of classical music (five “Western” and five “Chinese”) to 20 participants (10 “Western” and 10 “Chinese”). After hearing each piece, participants were asked if the music recalled for them any experiences of learning. When it did so ...

Aural Skills I-Iv (Ksu), Jeffrey Yunek, Benjamin Wadsworth

Fine Arts Grants Collections

This Grants Collection for Aural Skills I-IV was created under a Round Ten ALG Textbook Transformation Grant. The course transformation included the creation and revision of materials on the instructors' Free Music Dictations website.

Affordable Learning Georgia Grants Collections are intended to provide faculty with the frameworks to quickly implement or revise the same materials as a Textbook Transformation Grants team, along with the aims and lessons learned from project teams during the implementation process.

Documents are in .pdf format, with a separate .docx (Word) version available for download. Each collection contains the following materials:

• Linked Syllabus
• Initial Proposal
• Final ...

Complex Personalities: An Original Composition For Virtual Wind Ensemble And An Accompanying Exploration Of The Effects Of The Internet On Music Collaboration And Composition, Chris Kamerling

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the impact that the internet has had on the esprit de corps of the musical community. As a mechanism for that exploration, it also includes an original composition comprised of three character pieces. The exegesis of the piece will describe the basis of these musical representations and explore the application of the piece as a vehicle for a shared musical experience across the internet. A virtual ensemble was created by crowd-sourcing from social media. Participants played different parts that were combined by computer manipulation into a final product.

Teaching Music To Immigrant And Refugee Students In American Music Classrooms, Sameerah Jabrhamdan

Music Education Theses

The purpose of this study is to explore what music teachers of refugee and immigrant students in the Western New York area are doing to include this population within their music classrooms. This is a qualitative multiple case study, with the purpose of finding out as much information possible from three participants who teach music to immigrant and refugee students. The three participants teach across different musical contexts, including middle school general music in an urban setting, elementary general music in a suburban setting, and elementary through high school strings in an afterschool urban setting. This study sought to find ...

A Content Analysis Of Flow And Music: Teaching, Performance, And Consumption, Lindsey Keay

Dissertations

Positive psychologist Csikszentmihalyi (2008) describes flow as a state of heightened concentration and arousal where a balance of skill and challenge cause someone to be so absorbed in a task that everything else seems to disappear. The result of the experience can be one of immense enjoyment and satisfaction. Musical activities lend themselves well to the flow experience due to the multifaceted tasks of listening, practicing, performing, or teaching music. With flow being an ideal creator of intrinsic motivation, music teachers and performers should consider flow and its implications for music making and music instruction.

The purpose of this study ...

Chihsuan Yang Interview, Omar Dyette

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Winner of the 3Arts Award in 2015 and the 2016 Camargo Foundation Fellow in France. Chihsuan was born and raised in Taiwan and moved to the United States at the age of 15. Being a Classically-trained violinist/pianist her whole life, Chihsuan acquired the skills to expand horizons beyond tradition, and it also granted her fluency in the universal language of music. As an eclectic and versatile violinist, erhu player, and pianist, actively engaged in the music scene around the globe, Chihsuan’s body of work spans across a multitude of genres and reaches beyond borders. Chihsuan has performed ...

Electronics And The Music Of Miles Davis, Darren E. Shekailo

School of Arts & Sciences Theses

Miles Davis produced a wealth of music relying on the use of electronic instruments and new technology. With their adoption, the famous trumpeter began his “electric” period. Examining the electric period of Davis’s career helps us trace the profound impact of electronic instruments and technological advances on his music.

Music Is The "Noise Of Remembering" Tracing The Origins, Influences, And Connectivities Of West African Music, Adam Friedman

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The popularity and universal reach of music genres such as Jazz and Hip Hop attest to the idea that these forms have been long established as a vital part of global musical culture. For people who are familiar with Afrocentric music, it is clear that styles such as Jazz and Hip Hop are rooted in, and inextricably linked with, African culture and history. What is more difficult to make sense of, however, is how and why transplanted African culture came to have such wide reaching impact in the new contexts in which it was taken up – because the stories behind ...

Santería In A Globalized World: A Study In Afro-Cuban Folkloric Music, Nathan Montgomery

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The Yoruban people of modern-day Nigeria worship many deities called orichas by means of singing, drumming, and dancing. Their aurally preserved artistic traditions are intrinsically connected to both religious ceremony and everyday life. These forms of worship traveled to the Americas during the colonial era through the brutal transatlantic slave trade and continued to evolve beneath racist societal hierarchies implemented by western European nations. Despite severe oppression, Yoruban slaves in Cuba were able to disguise orichas behind Catholic saints so that they could still actively worship in public. This initial guise led to a synthesis of religious practice, language, and ...

Mari Folk Music Influences On Andrei Eshpai's Viola Concerto, Vengerskie Napevy (Hungarian Tunes), And A Transcription Of Hungarian Tunes For Viola In The Viola Repertoire, Anna Petrovna Ivanova

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Andrei Eshpai was one of the most renown composers who drew on the Mari folk music traditions, within the confines of Western classical music. One of the main purposes of the research is to show how the Mari folk music was applied in Eshpai’s compositions for the viola. In the current research, I will explain the similarity between folk music of Mari and Hungary because the researched composition Hungarian Tunes by Eshpai is based on Mari tunes, however is called Hungarian Tunes. Another purpose of this research is to provide musical analysis and a performance guide for the compositions ...

A Quiet Mind: The Key To Musical Performance, Rebecca Ann Percy

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

In this day and age, many people believe they can multitask. From texting and driving to watching television while studying for a test, we always want to accomplish many things at once. Musicians often try to multitask while practicing their instruments. They think about breathing, articulation, jaw movement, finger technique, and more. However, research has proven that multitasking is impossible. According to Christine Rosen in “The Myth of Multitasking,” time and efficiency are actually lost while the brain decides which task to perform. Practicing with a “quiet mind” will lead to peak performance and avoid the detrimental effects of trying ...

Resources And Exercises For Expanding Your Approaches In Teaching The Bach Cello Suites To The High School Violist, Dragana Loncar

Strings Graduate Theses & Dissertations

This paper is a useful resource for teaching Bach’s cello suites to young violists age 13-18. The first part contains background information on the six suites and suggested uses of the four manuscripts in teaching. Seven excerpts, four copies and three published editions of the first eight measures of the Sarabande from Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007 are included as an example of the different edition markings that the teacher/student can refer to. The second part explores key affekts and Karen Tuttle’s Emotion list as possible teaching tools for expression. At the end of ...

Cowboy Art Song: A Contextual And Musical Analysis Of Libby Larsen's "Cowboy Songs", Ann Gabrielle Richardson

Dissertations

This dissertation sprang from a combination of two personal interests: cowboy culture and classical art song. The union of my cowgirl heritage with my career as a classical vocalist has long fueled an interest in a particular niche of repertoire: soprano art song with thematic connections to the North American cowboy. A conducted state of research reveals no scholarly literature exploring this specific topic. Libby Larsen’s collection, Cowboy Songs, fulfills the aforementioned niche, successfully capturing the spirit, musical idioms, and cultural themes of the North American cowboy.

Chapter I lays a contextual foundation for cowboy song, providing a catalogue ...