Music Commons^™

The Role Of Music In Storytelling, Eliot Z. Tenberg

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Music is often thought of as a background element in storytelling, something that enhances a scene but is not essential to its meaning. However, this perspective overlooks the powerful role music plays in shaping how stories are understood and experienced. Across film, theater, and even interactive media, music does far more than accompany images or dialogue. It actively guides emotional response, constructs narrative meaning, and connects audiences to stories on a deeper psychological level. Unlike visual or verbal storytelling alone, music has the unique ability to communicate emotion without explicit explanation. A shift in melody, harmony, or rhythm can signal …

Scholarship As A Means For Musical Performance: An Exploration Of Johannes Brahms Violin Sonata In G Major, Op. 78, Josh Zallar

Masters Theses

Developing a quality musical performance is a complicated and time-consuming endeavor. Endless hours are spent learning a musical instrument, developing technique, and growing into a mature sound. Learning the notes, rhythms, dynamics, and basic musical markings of a score compound this task, not to mention the preparation for performing by managing nerves, among other areas of concern. Amidst the undoubtedly enormous amount of work, however, often focus gets lost. Musicians forget that, despite the inherent fact that our inner voice is heard when we perform, that it is ultimately the composer whose voice and musical meaning must be conveyed in …

Volume 17, Christian O’Neill, Kyara Greene, Savva Sidorov, Laura Bisaillon, Luke Clemmer, Hannah Gordon, Kitt Benson, Taylor Blount, Rachel Danzitz, Nicholas Duellman, Chase Gionis, Hima Fernando, Seth Franzyshen, Onyx Gonzalez, Bryan Lin, Samantha Start, Ysabel Wells, Maggie Duncan

Incite: The Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Introduction Dr. Amorette Barber, Director, Office of Student Research

From the Editor Dr. Hannah Dudley-Shotwell

Cover Artist’s Statement Maggie Duncan

On Mentoring Dr. Yulia Uryadova

Ukrainian Resistance in the Face of Russification: Nestor Makhno and Anarchism

by Christian O’Neill

Life Vest by Kyara Greene

Isolation and 16S rRNA Identification of Bacteria from Fire Department Connection Pipe by Savva Sidorov

The Effectiveness of Planned Exercise in Reducing ADHD Symptoms in Children by Laura Bisaillon & Luke Clemmer

Linguistic Analysis on Confidence and Communication Strategies with Disparities Between Sign Fluency and Hearing Impairment by Hannah Gordon

Freedmen in Indian Territory by Kitt …

Beyond The Canon: From Classical Foundations To Contemporary Relevance In Shaping Tomorrow's Musicians, Lauren N. Tougas

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Undergraduate music programs in the United States have historically centered ensemble-based instruction on the Western classical canon in order to cultivate technical mastery, stylistic fluency, and disciplined collaborative musicianship. This pedagogical model has proven durable and remains foundational to professional orchestral and choral performance practice. Canonical repertoire continues to anchor audition requirements, institutional programming, and degree structures across institutions of higher education. Yet the contemporary professional landscape has evolved into a far more diversified artistic ecosystem characterized by stylistic hybridity, living composer integration, interdisciplinary collaboration, constrained rehearsal models, and portfolio-based career trajectories.

This Honors Capstone investigates the relationship between undergraduate …

The Harvey Pittel Saxophone Quartet: Its History And Legacy In American Saxophone Quartet Performance, James M. Lawhn

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

The saxophone quartet has emerged as a legitimate chamber ensemble in the United States through the sustained efforts of a small number of pioneering professional groups. Despite the central role these ensembles have played in shaping repertoire, performance standards, and public perception, their histories have often gone undocumented. Among the most influential of these groups is the Harvey Pittel Saxophone Quartet, an ensemble that maintained an unusually active national and international touring career for nearly four decades and helped establish the saxophone quartet as a viable professional model.

This document addresses a significant gap in the scholarly literature by presenting …

The Voice As A Coordinated Bodily System: Embodied Learning, Anatomy, And Vocal Pedagogy, Ge Hope Tian

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This reflective article examines the limitations of control-based approaches in traditional vocal training and proposes a shift toward understanding the voice as an integrated, coordinated bodily system. Drawing on personal experience, the author highlights how common instructional language - focused on outcomes such as resonance, support, and projection - often leads singers to apply excessive effort, resulting in tension, inefficiency, and vocal strain. By distinguishing between localized control and whole-body coordination, the reflection illustrates how sustainable vocal function emerges not through muscular manipulation but through balanced, dynamic organization of breath, posture, and sound. The author traces a transformative learning process …

The Secret Science Of Songs. Created By All Children Everywhere, Paul G. Morehouse Phd

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This field article introduces The Secret Science of Songs, a research-informed, practice-based framework that reconceptualizes songs as powerful, transdisciplinary tools in early childhood education. Drawing on over 40 years of classroom-based action research alongside established findings in cognitive science and music perception, the framework argues that young children’s engagement with songs is rooted not primarily in performance skill, but in their innate capacity to perceive and process auditory patterns in music and language. These pattern-based experiences constitute a rich aesthetic and cognitive domain through which children construct meaning, long before mastery of melody or verbal precision emerges.

The article …

Fractsynth: Exploring Glitch Timbres With Chaos Theory, Aidan Roach

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

In this paper, I explore how chaos theory can be used to design a new kind of synthesizer with the primary focus of producing glitchy, unpredictable sounds. Glitch music embraces abstract sound design, malfunctioning electronics, and randomness as the main compositional elements. However, most synthesizers rely on stable, repetitive oscillators that often sound too controlled. To challenge this, I developed FractSynth, a real-time synthesizer that uses chaotic attractors–including the Logistic Map, Henon Map, and Lorenz System–as modulation sources for frequency, amplitude, and tone. The software also features real-time Lyapunov Exponent Tracking, which gives users a direct visual of how …

From Vibration To Visualization: Building An Real-Time Audio Visualization System For Learning And Exploration Using Pyqt5, Aidan Roach

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This paper presents the design, development, and analysis of my real-time audio visualization system created entirely in Python using PyQt5, called WaveCatcher. The system captures live audio input from a microphone and provides simultaneous visual feedback through multiple signal representations: including a time-domain waveform, a frequency-domain FFT spectrum, a scrolling spectrogram, harmonic peak visualization, dynamic range, amplitude envelope, spectral centroid, and spectral bandwidth. These features offer insight not just into the raw structure of sound, but into how humans perceive its qualities–like timbre! This terminology may seem intimidating—it certainly was when I first began learning it—but I’ll explain all of …

Amor, Art, And Advocacy: Un Conversación With Chicanx Mother, Grammy Award Artivist, Macarthur Fellow, And Scripps Professor Martha Gonzalez, Belén S. Yudess

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This Spotlight features a conversation with Professor Martha Gonzalez, a Chicana artivista (artist/activist) musician, feminist music theorist, and Associate Professor and Chair of the Intercollegiate Department of Chicana/o Latina/o Studies (CLS) at Scripps/Claremont College. The conversation draws from Prof. Gonzalez’s background as a Chicana, and the  Chicanxs, Mexicanxs, Latinxs, and Indigenous communities in Mexico and Los Angeles that have shaped her work. She shares her practice in teaching and engaging with collective songwriting, her critique of western paradigms, and explorations of boundary crossing that music facilitates as part of championing the hope and flourishing that comes from within communities and …

Understanding Modern American Politics Through Identity And Pop Music Between 2018 And 2025: A Musicological Analysis, Emilyn Bedell

Ramifications

This project studies how music impacts our society by examining the ways popular musicians (Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, and Hozier) imbue their songs with their identity. Their music engages their authentic self and social interests, effectively communicating their artistic and social values to their audience. This study examines three artists who recently became popular, so there is less established musicological research focused on them. To explore them deeper, I draw on cultural sources such as newspapers and magazines, in addition to academic journals. I also analyze their music and videos alongside recorded interviews to understand the sociopolitical issues for which …

Off The Rails: A Fusion Project Combining Bluegrass And Celtic Fiddle Music, Kate Ward

Composition/Recording Projects

The American culture of fiddle playing is rooted in fiddle styles from Ireland, Scotland, and England as a result of fiddle tunes being brought to America via immigrants from the British Isles.  Despite many of the fiddling styles prevalent today being rooted in the same traditions, each has unique technical and compositional distinctions.  This paper explores the technical, compositional, and cultural components of bluegrass and Celtic music and how they can be fused together. This project combines elements of both styles in unique ways to create a natural fusion born out of submersion in each genre.

Appreciative Commoning; Musical Knowledge-Sharing In Earhouse Songwriting Club, Arya J. P. Adyuta

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

This article develops the concept of “appreciative commoning” to focus on the importance of appreciation in musical community practices. By examining the practices of musical knowledge-sharing in the Earhouse Songwriting Club (ESC), a songwriting community, this article argues that greater attention should be paid to the roles of appreciation and support in facilitating media and cultural commoning in Indonesia. The article draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Earhouse, an initiative space located in Pamulang, South Tangerang, established by the musician duo Endah N Rhesa. Exploring three main activities of the community: weekly meetings, monthly showcases, and afterparties, I show how embracing …

Lmu Concert Band Spring 2026 Performance, Benjamin Bruflat, Dma

Band Programs

No abstract provided.

Culturally Responsive Tent: An Architectural Journey, Marcos Amado Petroli, Elmira Ebadi

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Culturally responsive teaching in architecture encourages students to connect design thinking with identity, culture, and lived experience. This studio assignment introduced the tent as an archetypal architectural form and weaving as a generative tectonic strategy, allowing students to explore how lightweight structures can respond to social needs, cultural narratives, and material expression.

Using “Ticket Out” To Create A Continuous Feedback Loop For Student Learning, Jacob D. Skousen

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

This presentation highlights the use of a brief end-of-class “Ticket Out” to create a continuous feedback loop for student learning. Students reflect on learning targets and provide feedback on the class experience, which is then analyzed and used to guide instructor response, follow-up communication, and instructional adjustments. The practice supports reflective teaching, student voice, and timely, responsive instruction.

The Changed Woman: Analyzing Narrative Parallels In The Stories Of Biblical Women And Musical Theatre Heroines, Finleigh Klein

Honors Projects

Musical theatre has become popular with audiences around the world. Many musicals contain stories of hope and overcoming obstacles, especially in narratives concerning young women. Since the Bible also contains a wealth of stories that focus on strong women, it is interesting to consider what connections may be found between the women represented in this ancient text and the female characters in various musical theatre productions.

With these potential connections in mind, I ask the question: how is the Biblical trope of the uplifting of women represented in songs sung by female characters in musical theatre? Furthermore, how can the …

Learning Spaces As Pedagogy In Audio Education: Designing For Collaboration, Listening, And Mixing In Higher Education, Dean Belcastro

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

The rapid transformation of the music and audio production industries has significantly altered how people engage with audio creation and learning. While technologies for music production have become more accessible and decentralised, the pedagogical challenge of developing critical listening and audio mixing skills remains ongoing. This paper reflects on the design principles underpinning group learning environments intended to support the teaching of critical listening and audio mixing within higher education. Drawing on practice-led reflection, learning-space literature, and industry change, the paper argues that intentional learning-space design plays an active pedagogical role in fostering engagement, collaboration, and the development of shared …

Isu University Band: April 29, 2026, Lauren N. Bobarsky, Wesley Anderson, Madison Mueller-Howell, Colby Powers, Alexandra Karafotias, Michael Hammon, Sam Kapus, Gunnar Tejes, Jessica Wenc

School of Music Programs

This is the two hundred and fifth program of the 2025-2026 season.

Center for the Performing Arts

April 29. 2026

Wednesday Evening

8:00 p.m.

Sister Suite, Evan Lebouef

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Sister Suite is a large ensemble work for a 17-piece jazz orchestra, double string quartet, 3 vocalists, and media. This piece is informed by the historical significance of music in the lives of three sisters and by how their musical choices each reflect their personalities, societal roles, and effects on their children and loved ones. In this work, themes, interpretations, and motivic development shape the soundscape for the audience. Using interviews and detailed musical research, I have created a substantial work that highlights the effectiveness of music and how siblings can influence one another and those outside their families.