Digital Commons Network^™

Muse, Bettina L. Campomanes

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Artist’s Satement:

Bettina Campomanes is a Filmmaker and Music Producer specializing in online content creation and short form narrative film. Her films and music videos have garnered viral success and have earned multiple festival selections for categories such as best student director, best short, and best music video. As an electronic producer, she performs under the stage name “Valiant Vermin” and continues to mix or produce for other musical acts.

Muse is a short film about a writer who is unable to live in the present when his authorial …

To Conceive Of Consonance In Chaos: The Influence Of The Harmonic Series On The Perception Of A New Musical System, Luke Sandbank

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Uncovering Alice Bag: An Alternative Punk History, Emily Macune

Scripps Senior Theses

The intention of this thesis is to provide an alternative counter-narrative to the mainstream histories of punk that center white men. By focusing on the contributions of fem queer and POC punks, I aim to legitimize punk music as a form of resistance against systems of oppression that are oppositional to the commodified forms of mainstream punk. Using Alice Bag, as my central case study as a fem queer punk that is often left out of punk historical narratives, I contextualize her work through feminist, queer, and media studies lenses to bridge the gap between academia and forgotten personal experience.

Distillation Of Sound: Dub In Jamaica And The Creation Of Culture, Eric J. Abbey

Wayne State University Dissertations

In the early 1970s, the culture of Jamaica shifted politically and culturally with the introduction of the mixing board in music. This writing centers on the ways in which technology created a culture of dub reggae that has gone on to affect the world. The major albums and engineers that influenced this change are the focus here. By doing so, we can view how large changes in technology affected the society of Jamaica and how this led to significant cultural development. With Raymond Williams’ definition of culture and Thomas Vendrys’ structure of Dub music, the culture is defined, furthered, and …

Movement Opportunities Through Vestibular Engagement To Rhythm (Mover), Lindsay B. Williams

Occupational Therapy Doctorate Capstone Projects

Background: Across the United States, school systems have decreased the amount of proprioceptive activities and vestibular-based movement opportunities within the school day to focus on academic skills and test score improvement (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Stemming from this curriculum modification, children’s free play and movement opportunities are being replaced by more sedentary experiences such as structured academic activities and screen time. As a result, elementary school students with attention deficits, especially those who have a history of prenatal drug exposure, are not receiving sufficient movement opportunities needed during the day to maximize their attention and to regulate …

The Master And His Master, Kristýna Petišková

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Stormy Waters And Une Derniere Fois, Kathryn Elizabeth Blaine

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Impact Of Music On Categorical Facial Perceptions, Andrew Segre

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores the effect music has on inducing an emotion that impacts a person’s perception of facial expressions through two experiments. Previous research suggests that music has a significant impact on a person’s mood and a vast amount of research has been conducted analyzing facial perception. Extending previous literature, this study will investigate how the impact music has on a person’s mood can affect the way a person perceives the facial expression of another. Experiment 1 uses the anchor effect to highlight the ability music has to anchor a person’s mood powerfully enough to influence that person’s perception of …

Consonant And Dissonant Music Chords Improve Visual Attention Capture, Graham Spurrier

CMC Senior Theses

Recent research has suggested that music may enhance or reduce cognitive interference, depending on whether it is tonally consonant or dissonant. Tonal consonance is often described as being pleasant and agreeable, while tonal dissonance is often described as being unpleasant and harsh. However, the exact cognitive mechanisms underlying these effects remain unclear. We hypothesize that tonal dissonance may increase cognitive interference through its effects on attentional cueing. We predict that (a) consonant musical chords are attentionally demanding, but (b) dissonant musical chords are more attentionally demanding than consonant musical chords. Using a Posner cueing task, a standard measure of attention …

Role Of Spatial Ability In Musical Instrument Choice: Implications For Music Education, Tevis L. Tucker

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The intent of this thesis is to explore the relationship between spatial ability and the wide range of musical instruments musicians play. Existing literature has established a link between musicianship and improved spatial ability, but researchers have yet to look at how the spatial makeup of different musical instruments may, in turn, reveal unique levels of spatial proficiency from one instrumentalist to the next. This study was formatted as an online survey that included a music experience scale, a demographics scale, and two measures of spatial ability: the Card Rotations Test (CRT) and the Paper Folding Test (PFT). Participants who …

Applying “El Sistema”: An Analysis Of The People’S Music School In Chicago, Illinois, Elizabeth Schmidt

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

"Founded in 1975 by José Antonio Abreu in Venezuela, El Sistema is a music education program that gives underprivileged children the opportunity to learn to play a string instrument in a youth orchestra setting. The mission of the program is to promote long-term social change through the character development that accompanies instrumental music education. El Sistema has since grown to include over one million students in Venezuela, and its mission has inspired educators in the United States to create similar programs. These El Sistema-inspired programs serve students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, aiming to provide students with hope and teach lifelong …

Eye Movements Reveal The Visual Component Of Music Expertise : Evidence From A Visual Search Task, Kinnera Savitri Maturi

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

An important component of expertise is the ability to rapidly recognize domain-related perceptual patterns. To explore this ability in the domain of music reading, a unique visual search paradigm was used to compare the eye movements of 30 expert musicians (with at least 10 years of music reading skill) and 30 novices (who could not read music). Participants had to match a section of a piece of sheet music (search template) to its identical counterpart within a larger music score (search array). Both the search template and array were presented on the screen simultaneously, which allowed for visual comparisons between …

International Music Preferences: An Analysis Of The Determinants Of Song Popularity On Spotify For The U.S., Norway, Taiwan, Ecuador, And Costa Rica, Brendan Joseph Suh

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines data from Spotify’s API for 2017-2018 to determine the effects of song attributes on the success of tracks on Spotify’s Top 200 Chart across five different countries: the U.S., Norway, Taiwan, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. Two dependent variables are used to measure the success of a song – a track’s peak position on the charts and the number of days it survives on a country’s Top 200 Chart. Using ten separate regressions, one for each dependent variable in all five countries, it is concluded that the presence of a featured guest on a track increases a song’s …

Core Curriculum For Orchestra, Andrew Thomas Aycoth

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Core Curriculum draws inspiration from the idea of a sound collage that incorporates many specific pieces and techniques that I have encountered or studied during my time in music academia. Nearly everything is derived from something else, often being transformed or altered in some way. From my own private teaching of guitar lessons to analyses of 20th century art music, I tried to represent as much music as possible from these formative years. There are two main features that continue throughout the piece. The first is the repetitive rhythmic figure based on eighth notes that are out of phase, which …

An Approach To Jazz Improvisation For Intermediate Saxophonists, Justin Evangelist

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project is an organization of the author’s thoughts on teaching jazz improvisational concepts to saxophonists at a beginning to intermediate level of playing ability. Firstly, it discusses the skills students should acquire before studying jazz improvisation. It will focus primarily on building good practice habits through the development of desirable jazz tone and technique. Additionally, this project will offer explanations for understanding how jazz standards are constructed in terms of form and how they are performed. Lastly, this project will introduce several basic concepts the student can use to construct improvised melodies, such as modal scales, blues scales, seventh …

Queue: A Mobile Application For Collaborative Music Playlists, Vlad Mirea

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper focuses on the design and development of the mobile application “Queue”. Queue is an app for creating music playlists that anyone can add songs to while a host controls playback. The app connects to music streaming services such as Spotify to allow users access to their favorite songs while providing functionality not found in those services.

Practice Room Acoustics: What Matters To Musicians About The Practice Space, Yu-Tien Chou

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Why do people always prefer the practice room in the corner on the second floor than the others? What’s the reason why string players often go for the “dryer” room than the wind players? Wondering why brass players often occupy the resonant room? This paper is here to decipher all the mysteries behind all of the questions above by the acoustic analysis suggested by Bonnelo and the other supplying papers on sound absorbing materials. The question to be answered is how the rooms are different from each other in terms of their dimensions and damping surfaces. Eventually, construct a criteria …

The Effects Of Mindfulness Practice With Music Listening On Working Memory, Emily Irene Messick

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate mindfulness strategies and their influence on working memory. The potential role of music in facilitating mindfulness practice is explored. Various listening exercises were investigated along with their influence on working memory (i.e. attention control). Thirty-four individuals were randomly assigned to participate in one of four listening groups: 1) mindfulness with music, 2) mindfulness without music, 3) music only, and 4) silence. Thirty-four participants engaged in a computerized digit-span task before and after the listening exercise to assess pre- and post-test working memory performance. Thirty participants were included in data-analysis due to …

Acoustics Of Vowel Articulation In Flute Playing, Jose Fernando Ramirez

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Through an experiment and series of acoustic analysis, this thesis evaluates if vowel articulation modifies flute sound. It is an initial investigation in a sequence of research on linguistics solving major questions in flute performance and teaching, and is a continuation of a previous pilot project called “Acoustics and Perception of Speech Sound on the Flute,” where participants attempt to distinguish vowel articulation of the mouth while playing the flute. In this thesis, the flute sound is tested acoustically to provide evidence of how vowels alter the timbre. To this end, a professional flutist recorded A=440 Hz in the three …

Peru's Musical Heritage Of The Viceroyalty: The Creation Of A National Identity, Fabiola Yupari

WWU Graduate School Collection

The music of Peru evolved through the centuries. The conquest of Peru introduced European polyphony to the natives. Since the natives found enthusiasm towards the music of the Spaniards, missionaries utilized and integrated musical instruction as part of the catechization of the natives. The First, Second, and Third Lima Councils standardized the conversion process and enforced restrictions on sacred music. Like Lima, Arequipa also had a vibrant musical culture but the music remains lost. The music during the colonial era transitioned from three phases: early Spanish, Italian, and Nationalism. Church music dominated nearly the entire epoch of the Viceroyalty. The …

The Effect Of Music Characteristics On The Novelty And Usefulness Of Creative Ideas., Kathleen Keeler

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between music and creativity. Prior research has conflicting results with some finding that music does influence creativity and some reporting no relationship and others finding that music is harmful to creativity. All of these studies, however, have largely focused on the presence vs. absence of music without consideration for the characteristics (i.e., musical key, tempo, etc.) that make up the sound we identify as music and their unique effects on us emotionally, physically, and cognitively. This dissertation contends that different characteristics of music influence different components of creativity (i.e., novelty and usefulness) through their effects …