Music Theory Commons^™

Harmonic Data: Ai Music, Edm Transcription, & Minimalist Jazz, Trevor Freed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents research in the domains of music theory and music technology. The topics of the three chapters are as follows: (1) the technical and artistic limitations of artificial intelligence when generating music, (2) the transcription of electronic dance music (EDM) using a hybrid notation system, and (3) the effective convergence of jazz and minimalism in the music of Joe Hisaishi from Studio Ghibli. Each topic investigates a different aspect of harmony and the modern ways in which humans communicate in terms of harmony. The first chapter surveys the latest research projects in AI-generated music and proposes ideas for …

Blending European And Latin Sounds: A Study Of French Horn Repertoire In Mexico, Aj Bernal

Theses and Dissertations--Music

As a first generation Mexican-American, it is crucial that I advocate and promote music of the culture I grew up in. This project aims to unearth Mexican compositional techniques that derive from the fusion of European and Indigenous roots in an effort to promote diversity within the realm of Western Classical music. Music in Mexico is characterized by a unique blend of indigenous rhythms, European classical structures, and regional folk influences. This project will discuss how the bold timbre of the French horn intertwines with traditional Mexican and indigenous melodies, rhythms, and forms that create a unique style. The horn’s …

A View From Within: Timbre As An Analytical Tool In Contemporary Viola Music, Ash Mach

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Timbre is an elusive musical parameter that musicians, physicists, and cognitive scientists have been grappling with for centuries. While timbre can roughly be defined as an auditory attribute that distinguishes one tone color from another, this definition does not capture the complexities of sound and our perceptions thereof. Research on timbre has flourished since the 20th century, however, timbre studies has largely gone unnoticed within the viola community. This study, “A View from Within,” helps close the gap between timbre studies and viola repertoire scholarship by presenting analyses of three pieces from the 20th and 21st centuries through a timbre …

Practical Podcasting: A Technical Guide To Producing Studio-Quality Podcasts, Jacob Sarmiento

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

Podcasting exists at the intersection of the technical aspects of audio engineering and disciplines such as journalism and story-telling. Podcasts at KCPR, the student radio station, cover a wide range of topics including the soundscape of the DIY music scene in San Luis Obispo (SLO) on SLO-Fi, the intricacies of navigating SLO on Cal Poly 101, the best of Cal Poly Athletics on The Gallop, and the voices of underrepresented populations on campus on Different Matters. KCPR utilizes podcasts to entertain and inform its audience of the various experiences possible as a Cal Poly student. As a student-run entity, KCPR …

Play Makes Perfect: An Exploration Of Game And Play Elements In Composition And Performance, Gabrielle Chou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to explore the intersection of play and games in Western classical music and define a new category of pieces, “ludic pieces,” which contain play structures and game mechanics within their composition. Starting with surveying perspectives in ludology and ludomusicology, including those by Roger Caillois, Johan Huizinga, Jesper Juul, Katie Salen, and Eric Zimmerman, I will examine various definitions of a “game” and what its qualifying aspects are. I will then turn to music and consider pieces that interact with play and games without containing game structures, including examples of musical humor and pieces which evoke the imagery …

Give The Drummer Some: A Dive Into Drum Breaks And Drum Break Production, Kyle Kaldhusdal

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper traces the history of hip-hop culture through the evolution of the drum break, the original context of drum breaks in funk and soul music, their influence on DJ culture, and the subsequent impact of drum breaks on music and music production. It follows the development of breakbeat compilations in the 1970s and 1980s, parallel to the development of turntablism and sampling techniques. It also examines in detail how copyright litigation in the 1990s shaped the development of sample-based music genres and created a niche market for originally-recorded drum breaks over the subsequent decades.

The Impressionist Impact: How Claude Debussy Influenced Non-Western Composers And Music, Ragan Love

University Honors Theses

Achille-Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a French composer and a pioneer in Impressionist music and experimented with an original system of harmony which would shape music for the rest of the 20th century. His work would go on to impact the compositional style of two other composers, Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), a Japanese composer, and Herbie Hancock (1940- ), a jazz performer and composer. Throughout this project you will see the influence that Debussy had on these other composers through a multimedia experience with scores and recordings. Debussy's use of chromaticism and modal melodies are big contributors to the music of Takemitsu …

A Walk In The Woods, Matthew Paul Macari

Senior Projects Spring 2023

A Walk in the Woods is a piece of experimental multimedia consisting visually of images of the Hudson Valley processed through mid-90s computer graphics and aurally of field recordings, monologues, musical motifs, and songs. All of these elements are combined with the use of a game engine to create an interactive experience reminiscent of the MS-DOS video games of the mid to late-90s. Working on this project allowed me to both turn away from the discouragement caused by my unrealized musical plans and return to a place where I had once felt comfortable exploring my curiosity in the topics of …

An Analysis Of Allan Holdsworth’S Techniques And Their Application To Fundamental Melodic Devices, James Dasilva

Recital Papers

This thesis analyzes Allan Holdsworth's improvisational style for the purpose of applying his techniques, such as string skipping and omnidirectional fretboard movement, beyond the jazz-rock idiom and expanding the melodic potential of the guitar.

Wordmuse, John M. Nelson

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Wordmuse is an application that allows users to enter a song and a list of keywords to create a new song. Built on Spotify's API, this project showcases the fusion of music composition and artificial intelligence. This paper also discusses the motivation, design, and creation of Wordmuse.

Analysis Of Robert Schumann’S “Fantasy Pieces For Clarinet And Piano”, Opus 73, For A Greater Understanding Of A Standard In Western Classical Solo Repertory, Kaleigh Alwood

Music Undergraduate Honors Theses

In a mere two days, Robert Schumann composed a duet that would become a lasting symbol of romanticism in chamber music. “Fantasy Pieces for Clarinet and Piano”, Op. 73 is now a standard in clarinet repertoire. As such, the piece is frequently performed and analyzed. Schumann and his “Fantasy Pieces” are well known and broadly discussed, which leads one to wonder: how does one contribute to and interpret such a standard? To answer this question, it is proposed that research is utilized to examine the history surrounding the composer and the work alongside theoretical analysis to find and interpret key …

The Significance Of Sonic Branding To Strategically Stimulate Consumer Behavior: Content Analysis Of Four Interviews From Jeanna Isham’S “Sound In Marketing” Podcast, Ina Beilina

Student Theses and Dissertations

Purpose:
Sonic branding is not just about composing jingles like McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It.” Sonic branding is an industry that strategically designs a cohesive auditory component of a brand’s corporate identity. This paper examines the psychological impact of music and sound on consumer behavior reviewing studies from the past 40 years and investigates the significance of stimulating auditory perception by infusing sound in consumer experience in the modern 2020s.

Design/methodology/approach:
Qualitative content analysis of audio media was used to test two hypotheses. Four archival oral interview recordings from Jeanna Isham’s podcast “Sound in Marketing” featuring the sonic branding experts …

The Mathematical Foundation Of The Musical Scales And Overtones, Michaela Dubose-Schmitt

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses the question of mathematical involvement in music, a topic long discussed going all the way back to Plato. It details the mathematical construction of the three main tuning systems (Pythagorean, just intonation, and equal temperament), the methods by which they were built and the mathematics that drives them through the lens of a historical perspective. It also briefly touches on the philosophical aspects of the tuning systems and whether their differences affect listeners. It further details the invention of the Fourier Series and their relation to the sound wave to explain the concept of overtones within the …

Shape-Note Music Traditions Of The Shenandoah Valley, Tyler Brinkerhoff

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Though over the years documents about shape-note music from Joseph Funk and Sons and the Ruebush-Kieffer companies have been spread throughout many archives, they are now being brought back together online in one digital archive. Interpreting the information contained in these documents and the ledger book of subscribers for The Southern Musical Advocate and Singer’s Friend magazine through graphs and maps makes the information contained in them easier to access for researchers. The collaboration between a physical museum site, a website, and a Omeka site allow for multiple ways to learn about the history of shape-note music in the Shenandoah …

A Poet's Voice: Music In Service To Poetry: Elements Of Text Painting In Juliana Hall's Song Cycle "How Do I Love Thee?", Hayley Z. Coughin

Dissertations, 2020-current

American composer Juliana Hall has established a reputation as one of the leading composers of contemporary American art songs, having composed over 60 song cycles, totaling over 300 works for the voice. Hall’s song cycle How Do I Love Thee? expresses a narrative arc told through five selections from Victorian-era poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. The poems selected include Sonnet 3: “Unlike,” Sonnet 43: “How Do I Love Thee?,” Sonnet 37: “Pardon,” Sonnet 21: “Say Over,” and Sonnet 41: “Thank You.” Hall’s cycle describes the relationship between the lover and the object of their love, including …

A Poet's Voice: Music In Service To Poetry: Elements Of Text Painting In Juliana Hall's Song Cycle "How Do I Love Thee?", Hayley Z. Coughin

Dissertations, 2020-current

American composer Juliana Hall has established a reputation as one of the leading composers of contemporary American art songs, having composed over 60 song cycles, totaling over 300 works for the voice. Hall’s song cycle How Do I Love Thee? expresses a narrative arc told through five selections from Victorian-era poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. The poems selected include Sonnet 3: “Unlike,” Sonnet 43: “How Do I Love Thee?,” Sonnet 37: “Pardon,” Sonnet 21: “Say Over,” and Sonnet 41: “Thank You.” Hall’s cycle describes the relationship between the lover and the object of their love, including …

Constructing A Cultural Bridge: The Compositional Approach And International Impact Of Albert Mangelsdorff’S Now Jazz Ramwong, Michael Desousa

Theses and Dissertations--Music

In the period following World War II, countries such as Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand were under constant intellectual bombardment from global superpowers vying for political influence. West Germany, a newly established ally of Western democracy, was a small part of a global effort to spread this democracy to Asia. Working alongside Joachim-Ernst Berendt and the Goethe Institute, the jazz trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff arranged an album which sought to merge both Western European and Asian music. The album, Now Jazz Ramwong (1964), and accompanying fifty-concert tour helped pioneer a lasting cultural connection between Western Europe and Asia. The methodology behind Now …

Getting Under Your Skin Until You Jump Out Of It: The Psychological Effects Of Music On The Experience Of Film, Clare Ellen Herzog

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Music is like magic. It can sweep you off your feet and spirit you away to places you never thought possible: it can serve as a teleportation device, achieve time travel, and let us read minds. Some pieces of music exist for their own sake, like Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead, while others accompany different forms of media: ballets such as The Nutcracker and operas like La Bohème are instantly recognizable for their grandiose and immersive scores. For a moment in time, audiences can really believe that they are traveling to a magical world with Clara, and even without the …

Momentary Musics: How Spotify And The Attention Economy Transformed Music From Art Form To Affect, Tobias Hess

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The rise of music streaming platforms such as Spotify, and the concurrent emergence of what is broadly known as "the attention economy" have radically shifted the aesthetics of the music industry, as well as the artistic subjectivities of artists that operate within this paradigm. Through a formal analysis of Spotify's recommendation algorithm, I argue that algorithmic curation systems such as Spotify's create a new cultural paradigm that has replaced Adorno's conception "culture industry." What has replaced it is a dispersed meritocracy where success is determined by how well individual cultural actors conform to the preferred aesthetics of algorithmic platforms. Using …

Villa-Lobos’S Segunda Sonata-Fantasia For Violin And Piano: An Analysis And Performance Guide, Maira Braga Cabral

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study focuses on Villa-Lobos’s Segunda Sonata-Fantasia for Violin and Piano, written between 1913 and 1914. A brief biography of Villa-Lobos until 1915 provides the context of the period during which he composed the piece. Next, Villa-Lobos’s main influences are presented, a list that includes European nineteenth-century aesthetics, Impressionism, Brazilian popular music, Wagner’s motivic treatment, and Brazilian indigenous music. Next, the main compositional devices used by the composer are discussed, providing examples from the Segunda Sonata-Fantasia and from other pieces by Villa-Lobos. A structural analysis of the piece is presented, focusing on the form, thematic approach, and harmonic processes.

The …

Signal To Noise: Harmonic Temperaments And Patterns Of Interference, Dylan A. Marcheschi

Theses and Dissertations

An audio/visual exploration of historical tuning systems. Most contemporary Western audiences will seldom if ever encounter harmony outside of post-Renaissance tuning conventions. This presentation highlights some of those pre-orthodox harmonic relationships which existed throughout most of history. The corresponding paper documents correlates in recent advances of acoustic ecology.

The Role Of A Polyrhythm’S Pitch Interval In Music-Dependent Memory, Hadley R. Parum

Senior Projects Spring 2021

When listening to music, humans can easily and often automatically assess the perceptual similarity of different moments in music. However, it is difficult to rigorously define the way in which we determine exactly how similar we find to moments to be. This problem has driven inquiry in music cognition, musicology, and music theory alike, but previous results have depended on behaviorally mediated responses and/or recursive analytic strategies by music scholars. The present work employs the context-dependent memory paradigm as a novel way to investigate the extent to which listeners consider two musical examples to be similar. After incidentally learning words …

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 …

A Foundation For Collaboration: An Analysis Of Robert Schumann’S Dichterliebe, Op. 48, Kailang Zhan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This paper provides an analysis of Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe offering historical information and insights into each of the sixteen songs. The analysis includes the English translation of the texts and discussion of the form of each song as well as highlights of the special moments of harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic structure in relation to Schumann’s setting of each poem. The analysis provides a foundation for collaborative skills for the singer and pianist for the study and performance of Dichterliebe. In addition, the paper includes brief biographies of Robert Schumann and Heinrich Heine and background information on the poetry and …

Corporeal Analysis: The Performing Body As Analytic Site, Laura Cocks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A framework of corporeal analysis posits that the physicality of the performer can be construed as a primary analytical parameter in a work. This dissertation seeks to set up such a method of analysis largely through anecdata and autoethnography with the aim of eliciting a deeper space for additional performer-driven analyses that prioritize the bodily knowledge of performers and their physical understandings of a work. Centering around David Bird’s 2013 work for solo piccolo and “no-less-than twenty-nine spatialized piccolos,” Atolls, three main aspects of corporeal analysis will be explored. These are: performance physicality as expressive connective tissue between flutist …

Escaping Time: Messiaen’S Musical Language, Religious Symbolism, And Undermining Time In Quatour Pour La Fin Du Temps, Sarra Elizabeth Hey-Folick

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Scholars, including Robert Fallon and Wilfred Mellers, understand Olivier Messiaen’s Quatour pour la fin du Temps through the lens of war and captivity. Written during Messiaen’s imprisonment in the German prisoner of war camp Stalag VIII A during World War II, Quatour portrays the biblical “end of time” described in the book of Revelations. Messiaen drew connections between Quatour and the apocalypse with references to the angel of the apocalypse, the abyss, and the end of time. Messiaen, along with Étienne Pasquier, Jean Le Boulaire, and Henri Akoka premiered Quatour on January, 15th 1941, for their fellow prisoners and guards …

A Conductor's Guide To Amass By Jocelyn Hagen, Matthew J. Myers

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Contemporary American composer Jocelyn Hagen grew up in Valley City, North Dakota, where she found an early love for singing, playing instruments, and composing. After completing degrees at St. Olaf College and the University of Minnesota, Hagen began a career as a full-time composer. Her appointment as Composer-in-Residence for The Singers led to her first major multimovement work, amass (2011).

Though Hagen planned to write a traditional setting of the Catholic Mass, she struggled to accept the text of the “Credo” as the only path to salvation. Thus, she substituted spiritual poems from a variety of faith traditions to create …

Dynamic Procedural Music Generation From Npc Attributes, Megan E. Washburn

Master's Theses

Procedural content generation for video games (PCGG) has seen a steep increase in the past decade, aiming to foster emergent gameplay as well as to address the challenge of producing large amounts of engaging content quickly. Most work in PCGG has been focused on generating art and assets such as levels, textures, and models, or on narrative design to generate storylines and progression paths. Given the difficulty of generating harmonically pleasing and interesting music, procedural music generation for games (PMGG) has not seen as much attention during this time.

Music in video games is essential for establishing developers' intended mood …

Exercises In Developing Bebop Scale Language For Collegiate Jazz Students, Lars Swanson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

In this document, major, dominant and minor bebop scales are introduced and engaged through a series of etudes for C instruments, Alto Sax, Tenor Sax, Trumpet, Trombone and Bass. The methodology used is derived from a series of private lessons in which bebop scales were introduced and then engaged over chord progressions. Backing tracks are utilized and linked.

The Roman Catholic Ordinary Mass From Circa 1750 To Circa 1820: A Selected Bibliography, Letícia Gabriele Grützmann Januario

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Orchestrated masses from the 18th century and early years of the 19th century provide a valuable source of repertoire for contemporary choral conductors. This project will explore composers and works from circa 1750 to 1820 to provide choral conductors with a list of works suitable for programming based on the practical size of vocal and instrumental forces.

Western choral music was born in a church setting. Among all choral genres, the mass is the only genre composed throughout all eras, from medieval until the 20th century. The mass remained a prominent genre during the 18th century despite the secularizing influence …