Music Commons^™

"Beyond The Score: Music As Performance" By Nicholas Cook, Aron Edidin

Performance Practice Review

Aron Edidin reviews and discusses Nicholas Cook's 2013 work. Cook, Nicholas. Beyond the Score: Music as Performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-19-935740-6.

Mastering Up-Bow And Down-Bow Staccato, Tomás Cotik

School of Music + Theater Faculty Publications and Presentations

Dr Tomas Cotik gives an introduction to the bow stroke and demonstrates techniques and exercises.

Studio Magic: The Process, Value, And Ethics Of Remastering, Julian D. Anderson

Honors Projects

ABSTRACT

Due to the growth of recording technology, recorded music has become the most common form of music listening. Having high-fidelity audio is as important on audience perception of the music as the composition and the musical interpretation. As the process of recording and the final medium of the recording have advanced, the fidelity of the audio has increased, thus decreasing the listener’s awareness of the recording itself and bringing their attention to the music. However, older media is reparable to the extent that it can be remastered to decrease scrutiny on the product. What is worth remastering? What is …

Die Meistersinger, New York City, And The Metropolitan Opera: The Intersection Of Art And Politics During Two World Wars, Gwen L. D'Amico

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1945, after a five-year hiatus, the Metropolitan Opera returned Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg to its stage. It had been the only one of Wagner’s operas that had been banned during World War II, ostensibly because of its German nationalism and association with the Third Reich. But was it the German nationalism or Wagner’s own anti-Semitism that caused the unease? What resounded with the audiences? World War II stands at an historic cross roads in the reception of Die Meistersinger in America. This is where the present day “problem” with this work begins. The Metropolitan Opera’s decision created …

Searching For Sounds: Instrumental Agency And Modularity In Electroacoustic Improvisation, Stephen (Red) Wierenga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In their radical departure from conventional instrumental technique and standardized instruments themselves, the practices of electroacoustic improvisation present a particular challenge to prevalent Western concepts of musical instruments. These concepts—which generally treat instruments as fixed objects—are ill-equipped to account for the ways in which electroacoustic improvisers foreground the agency of their instruments and abandon the quest for “mastery” typical especially of classical attitudes. Additionally, electroacoustic improvisers often approach instruments not as singular, self-contained, and static in their materiality, but rather as modular instrumentaria capable of myriad states and ever in flux, similarly problematizing conventional conceptions that view the physical constitutions …

A Method For Structural Analysis Of Ottoman-Turkish Makam Music Scores, Sertan Senturk, Xavier Serra

Papers

From a computational perspective, structural analysis of Ottoman- Turkish makam music (OTMM) is a research topic that has not been addressed thoroughly. In this paper we propose a method, which processes machine-readable music scores of OTMM to extract and semiotically describe the melodic and lyrical organization of the music piece automatically using basic string similarity and graph analysis techniques. The proposed method is used to identify around 50000 phrases in 1300 music scores and 21500 sections in 1770 scores, respectively. The obtained information may be useful for relevant research in music education and musicology, and it has already been used …

A Pattern Mining Approach To Study A Collection Of Dutch Folk-Songs, Peter Van Kranenburg, Darrell Conklin

Papers

No abstract provided.

Automatic Alignment Of Long Syllables In A Cappella Beijing Opera, Georgi Dzhambazov, Yile Yang, Rafael Caro Repetto, Xavier Serra

Papers

In this study we propose how to modify a standard approach for text-to-speech alignment to apply in the case of alignment of lyrics and singing voice. We model phoneme durations by means of a duration-explicit hidden Markov model (DHMM) phonetic recognizer based on MFCCs. The phoneme durations are empirically set in a probabilistic way, based on prior knowledge about the lyrics structure and metric principles, specific for the Beijing opera music tradition. Phoneme models are GMMs trained directly on a small corpus of annotated singing voice. The alignment is evaluated on a cappella material from Beijing opera, which is characterized …

Towards Flamenco Style Recognition: The Challenge Of Modelling The Aficionado, Nadine Kroher, José-Miguel Díaz-Báñez

Papers

No abstract provided.

On The Benefit Of Larynx-Microphone Field Recordings For The Documentation And Analysis Of Polyphonic Vocal Music, Frank Scherbaum

Papers

In a previous study Scherbaum et al. (2015) have demonstrated that recordings of body vibrations during singing contain all the essential information of a singer ́s voice regarding pitch, intonation, and voice intensity, but are practically unaffected by the voices of other singers (except for extreme situations). This allows the recording of the contribution of each singer while they are singing together. Because of these characteristics, Scherbaum et al. (2015) proposed the utilization of body vibrations recorded as an additional source of information for the documentation and analysis of traditional polyphonic vocal music. Questions remained, however, regarding the applicability of …

Note, Cut And Strike Detection For Traditional Irish Flute Recordings, Islah Ali-Maclachlan, Maciej Tomczak, Carl Southall, Jason Hockman

Papers

This paper addresses the topic of note, cut and strike detection in Irish traditional music (ITM). In order to do this we first evaluate state of the art onset detection methods for identifying note boundaries. Our method utilises the results from manually and automatically segmented flute recordings. We then demonstrate how this information may be utilised for the detection of notes and single note articulations idiomatic of this genre for the purposes of player style identification. Results for manually annotated onsets achieve 86%, 70% and 74% accuracies for note, cut and strike classification respectively. Results for automatically segmented recordings are …

Constructing Proximity Graphs To Explore Similarities In Large-Scale Melodic Datasets, Chris Walshaw

Papers

This paper investigates the construction of proximity graphs in order to allow users to explore similarities in melodic datasets. A key part of this investigation is the use of a multilevel framework for measuring similarity in symbolic musical representations. The basis of the framework is straightforward: initially each tune is normalised and then recursively coarsened, typically by removing weaker off-beats, until the tune is reduced to a skeleton representation with just one note per bar. Melodic matching can then take place at every level: the multilevel matching implemented here uses recursive variants of local alignment algorithms, but in principle a …

A Revaluation Of Learning Practices In Indian Classical Music Using Technological Tools, Julien Debove, Dorian Cazau, Olivier Adam

Papers

Each khyāl performance of Indian classical music is unique and unreproducible because it is mainly based on improvisation. As for most orally transmitted musical repertoires, learning practices are essential as they guarantee that the musical codes are properly reproduced from one generation to another. In Indian classical music, practice, tightly imbricated in the pupil – teacher relation, favors clearly the imitation. Students tend to reproduce more or less successfully their master’s style. That’s why in order to be creative, it is necessary that each musician develops his own skills of understanding, experimentation and invention. Today, technological tools have considerably transformed …

Proceedings Of The 6th International Workshop On Folk Music Analysis, 15-17 June, 2016, Pierre Beauguitte, Bryan Duggan, John D. Kelleher

Papers

The Folk Music Analysis Workshop brings together computational music analysis and ethnomusicology. Both symbolic and audio representations of music are considered, with a broad range of scientific approaches being applied (signal processing, graph theory, deep learning). The workshop features a range of interesting talks from international researchers in areas such as Indian classical music, Iranian singing, Ottoman-Turkish Makam music scores, Flamenco singing, Irish traditional music, Georgian traditional music and Dutch folk songs. Invited guest speakers were Anja Volk, Utrecht University and Peter Browne, Technological University Dublin.

Closed Patterns In Folk Music And Other Genres, Iris Yuping Ren

Papers

In this extended abstract, we would like to present the concept of the ‘closed pattern’ from computer science and use it to investigate patterns in folk music. We also show how the quantity of patterns can be different comparing to other genres. We use three symbolic music databases: The Essen Folksong Collection (Schaffrath & Huron, 1995), The Jazz Tune Collection (Rodr´ıguez L´opez et al., 2015), and Bach’s chorales (Sapp, 2005).

Segmentation Of Folk Songs With A Probabilistic Model, Ciril Bohak, Matija Marolt

Papers

Structure is an important aspect of music. Musical structure can be recognized in different musical modalities such as rhythm, melody, harmony or lyrics and plays a crucial role in our appreciation of music. In recent years many researchers have addressed the problem of music segmentation, mainly for popular and classical music. Some of the more recent approaches are Mauch et al. (2009), Foote (2000), Serr`a et al. (2012) and McFee & Ellis (2014). Last three are included in the music structure analysis framework MSAF Nieto & Bello (2015). None of the mentioned approaches however, addresses the specifics of folk music. …

Neomi: A New Environment For The Organization Of Musical Instruments, Carolien Hulshof, Xavier Siebert, Hadrien Melot

Papers

No abstract provided.

Formalising Cross-Cultural Vocal Production, Polina Proutskova, Christophe Rhodes, Tim Crawford, Geraint Wiggins

Papers

No abstract provided.

Publishing The James Goodman Irish Music Manuscript Collection: How Modern Technology Facilitated The Editors' Task, Lisa Shields

Papers

The paper gives a description of an important mid nineteenth-century manuscript Irish music collection. It outlines the history of the edition and the work involved. The use of modern technology in the editorial process is considered. Undoubtedly these technological advances have been very helpful. However, they have also enlarged the scope of the project, creating new kinds of work which are seen as adding value to the product.

Human Pattern Recognition In Data Sonification, Charlie Cullen, William Coleman

Papers

Computational music analysis investigates the relevant features required for the detection and classification of musical content, features which do not always directly overlap with musical composition concepts. Human perception of music is also an active area of research, with existing work considering the role of perceptual schema in musical pattern recognition. Data sonification investigates the use of non-speech audio to convey information, and it is in this context that some potential guidelines for human pattern recognition are presented for discussion in this paper. Previous research into the role of musical contour (shape) in data sonification shows that it has a …

A Graph-Theoretical Approach To The Harmonic Analysis Of Georgian Vocal Polyphonic Music, Frank Scherbaum, Simha Arom, Frank Kane

Papers

The present paper proposes a computational approach to the comparative analysis and visualization of the harmonic structure of three-voiced vocal music. The dataset which has been used in this study is the same as in Scherbaum et al. (2015), a corpus of polyphonic songs from Svaneti (Akhobadze, 1957). Similar to the earlier work, a song is treated as a discrete temporal process in which harmonic or melodic states change according to unknown rules which are implicitely contained in the song itself. In contrast to the prior study, however, there are no assumptions regarding their probabilistic or deterministic nature.

After The Harmonie Universelle By Marin Mersenne (1636), What Fingering For The Chabrette In 2016?, Philippe Randonneix

Papers

No abstract provided.

The Georgian Musical System, Malkhaz Erkvanidze

Papers

No abstract provided.

A Search Through Time: Connecting Live Playing To Archive Recordings Of Traditional Music, Bryan Duggan, Jianghan Xu, Lise Denbrok, Breandan Knowlton

Papers

This poster describes new developments in the popular Tunepal project. Tunepal is a query-by-playing music score search engine used primarily by musicians on smartphones in traditional music sessions and classes. Using Tunepal, a musician can quickly identify the name of a melody being played and download the score for later study. Since 2009, there has also been a version of Tunepal that runs in a web browser that allows a musician to play a tune extract and find the name of the tune. Over the summer of 2015, we embarked on a project to redevelop the Tunepal website in HTML5. …

Detection Of Melodic Patterns In Automatic Transcriptions Of Flamenco Singing, Aggelos Pikrakis, Nadine Kroher, José-Miguel Díaz-Báñez

Papers

The spontaneous expressive interpretation of melodic templates is a fundamental concept in flamenco music. Consequently, the automatic detection of such patterns in music collections sets the basis for a number of challenging analysis and retrieval tasks. We present a novel algorithm for the automatic detection of manually defined melodies within a corpus of automatic transcriptions of flamenco recordings. We evaluate the performance on the example of five characteristic patterns from the fandango de Valverde style and demonstrate that the algorithm is capable of retrieving ornamented instances of query patterns. Furthermore, we discuss limitations, possible extensions and applications of the proposed …

Analysis Of Tahreer In Traditional Iranian Singing, Parham Bahadoran

Papers

Iranian tradition singing is based on a rich musical heritage and contains styles and techniques distinct to the region, which differentiate it from other styles of Middle Eastern singing. In this paper I aim to highlight the specific characteristics of a traditional Iranian vocal technique called Tahreer by analysing its features using computational tools and methods.

A Comparative History And The Importance Of Chamber Music, Aaron M. Sacks

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone presentation focuses on the role of chamber music in both social and academic contexts. Using examples from the past five centuries and including local examples, parallels and divergences are drawn to points of most import. The spotlight is upon three areas: a) what the role of chamber music was in the past, compared to today; b) why it is an important genre, to both musicians, as well as non-musicians, and c) in what ways more exposure to the form can be built. Much of the focus is on composers and their influence, but the impact of and upon …

A Theory Of Associations: An Explanation And Applications To Wagner's Das Rheingold, Parker T. Gordon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis posits an interdisciplinary theory of associations. Within inter- and intra-textual texts, there exists a presence that points toward an originating source, which audience members may or may not consciously recognize. This presence accumulates associations from surrounding materials through abstract and subtle references or through direct quotations. These associations, once examined in relation to one another in the context of the narrative, may help readers discover additional insights and uncover new information about a text. My theory draws upon literary scholarship primarily grounded in intertextual theory and adaptation theory. Inspired by the intertextual insertion of pre-existing music in film …

This Machine Kills Fascists: Music, Speech And War, Robert J. Crisler

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

This thesis examines the history and persuasive power of rhetoric through the mass medium of popular music from Woody Guthrie to the modern era. It focuses on the Vietnam War era as a particularly significant and prolific era of topical (“protest”) music. Through interviews with media observers, historians and veterans of the Vietnam war, it seeks to understand the relevance of rhetorical speech in music within an overall mass media context, both within that era and extending to the present day. Through contemporaneous accounts of the intent of the songwriters and artists, an understanding is gained of the intent to …

Influence Of Background Music On Reading Speed And Comprehension Of Elementary-Age Students, Spencer Sullivan, Kimberly Nettleton

Celebration of Student Scholarship Poster Sessions Archive

No abstract provided.