Digital Commons Network^™

Fostering Music Performers In The 21st Century: A Contemporary Professional Perspective Toward A New Curricular Agenda For Graduate Study In Music, Andre Januario

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

What if the core curriculum for graduate students in music performance were designed to prepare students to succeed in the world of the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

This dissertation offers a hypothetical answer: a structured and systematic academic curricular framework for music graduate students of performance of concert music (especially those in terminal degrees, such as doctoral students), along with music instructors, professional music performers, school administrators, and college professors, seeking to prepare such students for achieving and maintaining a music career more in keeping with the current work environment, especially those skills demanded by the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the …

Faith, Hope, And Torture: Music In The Prisoner-Of-War Camps Of North Vietnam, Angela Michelle Brunson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

North Vietnams cruel treatment of captured American pilots included music torture which rivaled the CIAs program in Guantnamo Bay, but the aural persecution suffered for nearly a decade by the American prisoners of war has never been documented. Unlike other victims of music torture, the prisoners consistently turned to music as a healing, empowering, and unifying force, which raises several questions. Why did the POWs fare better than Guantnamo detainees? Can music reverse the trauma that music torture caused? How do we determine which music will cause harm and which music will heal? Through numerous interviews with repatriated POWs and …

Content Adaption And Design In Mobile Learning Of Wind Instruments, Neha Priyadarshani

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

People in today's world seek things that are simple to use. Learning is one of the most crucial aspects of the ongoing digital transformation. Everything is now accessible with a single click on mobile devices, making access to instructional materials faster, easier, and more comfortable. It takes time and effort to build abilities and become an expert in the fields of learning, training, and teaching; and music learning demands a great deal of both practice and mentoring. Initially, music teachers and band directors must maintain a steady attention and devote a significant amount of time to manually teaching materials. This …

The Matusiflute: A Bi-Timbral Flute Modification And The Cultural Influences That Inform Its Performance Practice And Repertoire, Joshua Gabriel Mcmahon

Theses : Honours

A product of flute modification and experimentation, the Matusiflute is a headjoint that allows the performer to alter the timbre of the western concert flute. This thesis examines this bi-timbral instrument, invented by Swiss flautist Professor Matthias Ziegler, and explores its capabilities to shift to a buzzing timbral colour which is similar to that of the dizi (Chinese end-blown flute). Composers may use the instrument for its unique textural timbral colour or to imitate the culturally-informed performance style of the dízi. Though reflective performance practice, music analysis and an interview with the inventor, the thesis examines the Matusiflute to …

I’Ve Always Been A Rambler: An Exploration Of Authenticity In Contemporary Folk Music, Bernard Elliot Cohen

Senior Projects Spring 2021

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

Anticipated Futures: An Oral Archive On Bard Students’ Pandemic Experiences In The Fall Of 2020, Arlo Tomecek

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Anticipated Futures is a podcast that examines Bard College students’ pandemic hardships.

Some students who were included in this series are recent graduates of Spring 2020. The podcast can be found on Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Bandcamp, and more. It is also made available on Tomecek’s personal website:" arlotomecek.com" In this intimate podcasting series, Tomecek provides a space for healing for individuals’ to speak on their difficulties over the initial peak of the pandemic. Students discussed a wide array of topics, including but not limited to: mental health, the Black Lives Matter Movement and rise of protests in Summer 2020, …

Changes In Cardiovascular, Respiratory, And Neural Activity By Music: Effects Of Breathing Pathway On Feeling Emotions, Mohammad Javad Mollakazemi

Theses and Dissertations--Biomedical Engineering

Listening to music can induce emotional and physiological changes. Increasing recognition of the palliative effects of music has led to its use as an adjuvant therapeutic tool in the treatment of various diseases. It is also well known that autonomic nervous activities and some cardiorespiratory rhythms change in correspondence with music. However, less is known about how these effects triggered by music come about. Listening to music affects synchronization between electroencephalograms (EEGs) and cardiac rhythmic activity. This interaction between cardiac and electrical responses led us to investigate whether EEG segments synchronized to different portions of the cardiac cycle can better …

Playing Music As A Nursing Intervention To Reduce Distress In Neonatal And Pediatric Acute Care Patients: A Literature Review, Seren E. Özoğlu

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Pediatric and neonatal patients are especially vulnerable to suffering from distress. This literature review identifies research which applies passive music listening to distressed neonatal and pediatric acute care patients. Databases searched to find relevant studies include CINAHL plus with full text, MEDLINE, Alt HealthWatch, APA PsycArticles, and APA PsycInfo from EBSCOhost. Six studies were identified to meet search criteria. The studies that supported music listening with the neonatal and pediatric populations had a positive effect in reducing distress levels. Additional research is warranted to further validate these findings. Music listening with neonatal and pediatric patients is a simple, cost-effective intervention …

“The Soul Is Symphonic”: Lessons On Practicing Music As Ecological Philosophy From Hildegard Of Bingen, Daniel Cottle

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In this thesis I seek to understand how music may be practiced as an embodied form of ecological philosophy; that is, how it might help us attain ecological wisdom and lead sustainable lives. In the first chapter, I explore the concept of askesis: the spiritual exercises by which ancient Greek and Roman thinkers practiced philosophy as a way of life. I introduce a simple model for the practice of askesis which is taken from accounts of ancient Stoic spiritual exercise. I also consider evidence for art as a form of askesis. In the second chapter, I describe the influence of …

Impromptune: Symbolic Music Generation With Relative Attention Mechanisms, Connor J. Lennox

Honors Theses and Capstones

By combining attention-based mechanisms that have proved beneficial in the field of natural language processing with domain-specific knowledge about the structure of music, better predictions about piece continuations can be made. The goal of this work is to adapt current natural language processing techniques to a musical domain, and to generate new music by predicting continuations on a sequence of notes. An adaptation of traditional attention mechanisms to create a single prediction from sequential input is used to extend musical pieces by appending new elements repeatedly.

Enneasongs, Colton Whitted

West Chester University Master’s Theses

“Enneasongs” is a collection of nine original songs composed, performed, recorded, mixed, and mastered by myself, based off of the nine personality types within the psychological personality structure known as the Enneagram. The Enneagram is a nine-sided symbol that expresses the full range of basic human core fears, desires, weaknesses, and longings. Each of the nine personality ego structures (named, accordingly, “One,” “Two,” Three,” etc.) functions primarily from either the head, the heart, or the body. The nine songs each accompany a different personality type through the journey from living out of disintegrated coping mechanisms to living wholeheartedly and authentically, …

Representations Of Chronic Migraine And Therapy Through New Electronic Music Composition, Peter Mcavan

Theses : Honours

This thesis explores compositional techniques in electronic music that depict and explore chronic migraine and the therapies that manage the condition. Migraines are typically described as a destructive, violent force or a hopeless ailment, but research shows that this perception is damaging for new patients learning to manage migraine. Furthermore, evidence suggests that better understanding of how pain works can be instrumental in reducing pain (a process called Therapeutic Neuroscience Education). Drawing from this literature and my experience as an electronic musician suffering from chronic migraine, I utilise a practice-led research methodology to explore current scientific understandings of migraine and …

Content Adaption And Design In Mobile Learning Of Wind Instruments, Neha Priyadarshani

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

People in today's world seek things that are simple to use. Learning is one of the most crucial aspects of the ongoing digital transformation. Everything is now accessible with a single click on mobile devices, making access to instructional materials faster, easier, and more comfortable. It takes time and effort to build abilities and become an expert in the fields of learning, training, and teaching; and music learning demands a great deal of both practice and mentoring. Initially, music teachers and band directors must maintain a steady attention and devote a significant amount of time to manually teaching materials. This …

On The Total Communicative Efficacy Of Music And Its Synthesis To Written Word Through Bob Dylan And Kendrick Lamar, Skyler Addison

CMC Senior Theses

In a social conversation, words spoken carry less than 35% of the interaction’s social meeting, with 65% conveyed by the non-verbal. While poetry relies on the word and it's subtext, songwriting may also weld the other 65%. By dissecting the dynamic communicative aspects of song, modern poets may find useful ways in which they can make their lines have more staying power with the listener, encompassing both the rhythmic catchiness of their lines to an all-encompassing emotive transfer. We may isolate the interwoven components of a song that dictate how a story is told in order to better understand how …

Hearing Ourselves Speak: Finding The Trans Sound In The Ohio River Valley, Gwendolyn Patricia Saporito-Emler

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This thesis discusses at length the experiences of four interviewees, selected for being both musicians as well as transgender people. From the author’s shared perspective as a trans woman, this work addresses the issues and boons of being trans musicians. It reflects their experiences, both positive and negative, as well as provides conjectural analyses of the respondents’ shared stories. It identifies common themes, issues regularly experienced by trans people, and offers arguments on why ending this hate is so vitally essential.

Surface, Depth And The Ephemeral Experience, Naghmeh Hachempour

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Music has long been an important medium for fulfilling and expressing emotional needs. In fact, music can become a powerful tool to create emotional responses in humans, such as happiness, sadness, awareness, as we see in recent decades in cinema, social media and advertisement. Today, a combination of different media is used to arouse our emotion and feeling, but often music has been used to accompany a visual realization, rather than vice versa. In my work I explore new modes of communication between people and sound by transfiguring music notation to a visual graphic. The scope and scale of my …

Jigs, Reels, And “Realness”: An Investigation Of Ideas Of Authenticity And Tradition In New England French Canadian Music, Lowell Ruck

Honors Projects

Franco-American culture is increasingly recognized as an integral part of the heritage of Maine and New England, and has attracted growing academic attention in recent years. But while many scholars and cultural promoters focus on the French language in their work on this subject, few studies have considered the position of traditional music in Franco-American communities in the 21^st century. This thesis examines French Canadian traditional music as it is played in New England and the ways in which musicians think about authenticity and tradition in their art. Using material from ethnographic interviews, it illuminates how musicians draw from …