Music Commons^™

Jesus Music Movement, Gabby Armitage

Student Scholar Symposium

Jesus Music and how it has influenced Christian Contemporary Music today.

Listen To The Birds: Sound Ecology At The Piano, Anna Showalter

Dissertations, 2020-current

This document explores the intersection between birdsong and piano music using four cases studies from the piano repertoire in the Western classical tradition. Using Jeff Titon’s framework of “sound ecology” as a lens, I ask whether the following pieces of music could in some way function as an “acoustic tissue among human and bird communities that becomes the basis for a healthy economy and a just community.” After exploring the history of birdsong in the piano literature as a microcosm of shifting attitudes toward birdsong in Western art music this study focuses on four pieces as case studies for analysis—Amy …

Típica Style Vs. Latin Jazz: A Comparison Of Traditional Salsa Piano Accompaniment And Latin Jazz Comping, Victorino C. Perez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Salsa is a popular Latin American musical genre that combines dance and vocal music with a unique rhythmic style that draws influences from jazz and African rhythms. Salsa shares characteristics with Latin jazz. Traditional salsa, or típica style, features traditional tonal harmonies with few alterations, whereas Latin jazz typically employs complex harmonies including tritone substitutions, chord extensions, and chords with extensions and alterations. The primary argument of this research is that Latin jazz pianists maintain the functions of the traditional salsa while infusing it with jazz harmonic, rhythmic, and textural elements. This thesis compares accompanying (“comping”) traits, including form, harmony, …

From Inside The Recording Studio, Mckayla J. Adkison

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This project documents the historical, technical, and creative significance of recording studios through both industry examples and the design and construction of a personal backyard studio. By examining iconic studios such as Abbey Road and Capitol Records, the paper highlights how technological innovation, acoustic engineering, and architectural design have shaped the evolution of recorded music. These concepts are then applied to the planning and construction of a custom-built recording studio, emphasizing room dimensions, sound isolation techniques, acoustic treatment, lighting, and sustainable design choices. In addition, the project addresses the importance of aesthetics and emotional comfort in creating a space that …

Recording Alternative Rock Guitar: Gear, Techniques, And Implementation, Alberto De Jesus Garcia Padilla

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper examines the tools, techniques, and creative decisions involved in recording alternative rock guitar, with particular attention to how genre defining sounds are achieved through gear choice, signal chains, microphone placement, and digital workflows. Drawing on historical context and influential alternative rock artists, the study outlines common guitars, amplifiers, pedals, and recording practices associated with the genre. These concepts are then applied to a practical case study: the recording of guitar parts for the band Phone Booth. By combining traditional amplifier recording with modern digital amp modeling, this project demonstrates how alternative rock guitar tones can be achieved without …

Democratizing Music Production Through Technology, Jacob W. Alfaro

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper explores the history of recording technology and the effects of innovations on recording contemporary music. It follows the changing roles and relationships between artist and producer, as well as a brief look into the recording of our album as a real-time example.

How Experiencing Eudaimonic Emotions Through Music Shapes Prosocial And Altruistic Behavior: Introducing A Unified Model Of Music-Listening-Induced Eudaimonia (Ummie), Rebecca Tukachinsky Forster, Daniel H. Spitz, Tal-Chen Rabinowitch, Roni Granot

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

This paper introduces the Unified Model of Music-Listening Induced Eudaimonia (UMMIE), which offers an integrated novel theoretical framework to explain how music listening promotes prosocial and altruistic outcomes. Drawing on communication and psychology research, UMMIE maintains that elicitation of eudaimonic emotions can be appraised inwards, towards oneself, and thus contribute to the individual's personal growth, wellbeing, and development, or outwards, by connecting to something bigger than oneself, to humanity in general, which could possibly then lead to enhanced prosocial and altruistic attitudes and behaviors. The model specifies musical, situational, and individual variables that serve as moderators and increase the likelihood …

Black On Black Sounds: Music, Migration, And The ‘Nu-K Blak’ Identity Formation In Early 21st Century Britain, Monique Charles

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Examining literature on the under researched areas of Afrobeats and African migration to Britain, this article identifies significant internal shifts in the ethnic diversity of Black Britain —i.e., from Caribbean (predominantly Jamaican) to West African (Nigerian, Ghanaian) (ONS 2011). Interpreting literature and applying to the British context, it highlights how Afrobeats reshapes Blackness in Britain, particularly the incorporation of desirable Africanness through Afrobeats music. It argues that demographic and musical shifts in Britain result in a renegotiation of the Caribbean and US dominant 20th century Black Britishness — ‘UK Blak’ identity (as identified by Bradley 2013, Gilroy 1993 & Palmer …

Passive Listening: Exploring Interpassivity In Ambient Music, David Chechelashvili, Alan Brown

Staff Scholarship - New Zealand

The landscape of ambient music presents unique challenges for critique and classification due to its wide range of subgenres, functions and goals. Often defined by its atmospheric and immersive qualities, ambient music is traditionally seen as providing a backdrop for relaxation or as a means to block out the harsh reality of the outside world. This dominant theory, while valuable in certain contexts, tends to oversimplify the multifaceted nature of ambient music and ignores the potential for more nuanced listening experiences. The proposed alternative theory of interpassivity challenges existing understandings of ambient music production and consumption modes. Drawing on psychoanalytic …

Shame On You, Cultural Appropriation! Rethinking Dvořák’S ‘Gypsy Songs, Op. 55, Ana Molano

Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) at UNI

This paper investigates the portrayal of Romani, “gypsy,” people in Western music, with Antonín Dvořák’s song cycle “Gypsy Songs, Op. 55” as a central case study. It explores the view of cultural appropriation as cultural borrowing, examining how this concept intersects with musical exoticism and orientalism, and how these musical traits shaped Dvořák’s portrayal of Bohemian Romani culture. Drawing on historical and socio-musical methodologies, the study analyzes the Bohemian Romani and Hungarian influences in Dvořák’s cycle. It discusses the ecological impact of the Gypsy Songs within its cultural environment and implications for performance reception. By situating Dvořák’s work within broader …

The Art Of Selection - Telling Stories Through Sound, Alexander Foley

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

The presentation set out to educate novice and intermediate DJs the importance of track selection in a DJ set.  This is a skill that elevates a good DJ to a great DJ. It addresses issues that some DJs have when trying to read a crowd or curate a pre planned set.  The presentation was given at SAE Dubai's annual DJ symposium to a live audience using slides and audio examples.  The presentation was well received and many of the audience had questions and seemed to take away a better understanding of an often underrated element of being a successful DJ. …

Learning How To Practice Takes Practice, Micah Killion, Robert Duke

John J. Cali School of Music Scholarship and Creative Works

Effective music learning depends on effective music practice. Although time spent with teachers is an important component of young musicians’ development, time spent alone practicing is perhaps even more consequential. Researchers and teachers have offered many prescriptions about effective music practice, yet observations of young musicians’ actual practice reveal that their behavior in the practice room is often quite unlike what teachers envision. The most important aspects of effective practice are the thinking, perceiving, and decision-making that serve to organize how musicians spend their time. We discuss how to help students focus their attention in ways that lead to the …

Round The Tárrega Bend, Julian Bream

Soundboard Scholar

In this previously unpublished talk from 2004, delivered two years after his retirement from public performance, Julian Bream traces his own career in relation to the evolution of the modern guitar, recounting his early encounters with nineteenth-century guitars, the introduction of nylon strings to replace gut, innovations in guitar construction, and a transformative meeting with Andrés Segovia. But at the heart of the talk is his approach to sound. Bream discusses the essential elements of his tone production, including his right-hand position with its characteristic “three-quarter Tárrega bend” of the wrist, and his strong preference for the rest stroke. He …

Between Sound And Theology: Timbral Performativity In Brazilian Religious Musicking, Marcell Silva Steuernagel

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article explores the performativity of timbre, summarizing key perspectives from the English-language scholarship on the topic and setting them in conversation with Latin American perspectives on timbre. In addition, it examines a performance of “500 Graus” (500 degrees), a song performed by Brazilian Pentecostal artists Cassiane and Shirley Carvalhaes, to demonstrate how the performativity of timbre unfolds within a particular expression of Latin American religious musicking. In doing so, it investigates the phenomenon of timbre between music and sound studies, and theology and church music studies, providing insights relevant to the study of timbre and the study of religious …

Timbre — A Transcendent Paradox?, Eugenia Siegel Conte

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Timbre, as ethnomusicologist Cornelia Fales writes, is “paradoxical” precisely because it is one of the most exacting processes in which the human body may sense and comprehend the source of a sound even as that comprehended sound is impossible to describe outside of metaphor or comparison. As one of the more recognizable qualities of sound but the most difficult to describe, timbre allows us to consider physical/emotional (affective) experiences of sound as a key aspect of faith and meditation. In this article, I examine physical-affective intersections of faith and meditation that often are key to praxes of worship, and show …

Live Wires: The Angelus Temple And The Timbre Of Power, Catherine Provenzano

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article is a media history and contemporary case study of The Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in 1923. My analysis of the Angelus insists upon the centrality of a hyperaudible paradigm of worship that uses media to maximize the legibility of a Christian message, and, more than this, imagines that media itself as a living soul in need of redemption. Many contemporary megachurches employ savvy applications of sound and sound transmission as instruments of belonging as well as action, and these rely on high-budget investments in church infrastructure, software and personnel. I argue that …

From The Heaviest, Dirtiest Depths To The Washy Ambient Clouds: Guitar Timbre In/As Schismogenesis In North American Christianity, Joshua K. Busman, Nathan Myrick

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This essay argues that within the socio-cultural context of North American Christianity, the timbral qualities of electric guitar, with its long lineage as a site of cultural values conflict and identity negotiation, serves a theological function in the emerging and cohering sonority of digital worship. Using as comparative case studies the timbral qualities of delay and ambience as promoted and sold by Worship Tutorials as representing normative sonic values for these Christians, on the one hand, and the dialectic and schismatic deployment of distortion by the band My Epic on the other, we suggest that these timbral qualities become important …

Sounds Like 'Saudade': Eschatological Echoes In Brazilian 'Gospel' Music, Fernando Berwig Silva

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This paper analyzes the song “Saudade” by the Brazilian gospel singer Stella Laura. In the song, I argue that Stella Laura uses Brazilian timbral markers from the Sertanejo and Gospel Brazilian music genres to articulate a unique perspective on eschatology, one that is based on the affective structure of the Lusophone word ‘saudade.’ Furthermore, I contend that the song, rooted in the Brazilian nostalgic sertanejo music tradition, leans on stylistic and timbral tools to communicate the idea of saudade from heaven. Beyond lyrics that feature theological notions of origin, identity, and nostalgia, Stella Laura’s song employs timbral, poetic, …

Dream A Little Dream Of Licensing: Jazz And The § 115 Compulsory Music Reproduction License, Jackson S. Roberg

Northwestern University Law Review

The compulsory music reproduction license codified at 17 U.S.C. § 115 allows anyone to obtain the right to record another version of, or “cover,” a previously published musical work. Invoking the compulsory license, however, comes at a dramatic cost. Under § 115(a)(2), the licensee cannot copyright any original musical material they compose for the cover without express permission from the underlying copyright owner, even if that material would otherwise be copyrightable. This limitation gravely harms jazz music, as jazz relies on dynamic recompositions of preexisting music. Jazz musicians depend on compulsory licenses to record the reinterpretative covers essential to the …

From Altamont To Astroworld: An Analysis Of Management Issues In Large Scale Music Festivals, Jennifer Morriss

Honors College Theses

The most common problems in music festivals can largely be broken into two categories: risks to the individual and risks on a grand scale. It is the responsibility of event managers to consider how to best keep everyone safe and maintain proper organization. Risks to the individual are often things like substance use and abuse, harm reduction, and sexual assault or harassment. Meanwhile, broad risks tend to be issues of evacuation and emergency management, crowd safety, stampedes, and casualties or violence. It is crucial to reflect on prior common safety and security issues when setting out to produce a large …

Examining Stress And Anxiety Levels Among Undergraduate Music Majors At The University Of South Carolina, Elise F. Halbig

Senior Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the stress and anxiety levels among undergraduate music majors at the University of South Carolina (USC) and identify potential stressors that might be unique or more prevalent among that specific population. To evaluate this, a questionnaire consisting of 42 questions was administered to participants. Most of the questions were carefully developed by the researcher; however, the Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al, 1983) was used to examine participants' stress levels, and 13 selected questions from the Burns Anxiety Inventory (Burns, 1989) were used to examine their anxiety levels. A total of 45 …

Capturing Magic: Recording Emily Lubitz’S Two Black Horses At Mix Artist Studio – A Reflective Case Study In Contemporary Recording Practice, Jan Muths

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This paper reflects on the recording of Emily Lubitz’s album Two Black Horses at Mix Artist Studio in early 2024. It outlines how I applied my core engineering values, technical precision, sensitivity to the musicians’ needs, and anticipatory readiness, to capture the energy of a live band with high acoustic separation. Beyond the technical aspects, it demonstrates how ongoing studio practice directly informs and enhances my teaching, keeping lessons current and relevant. The aim is to connect industry experience with teaching practice, showing how staying active in the field strengthens classroom delivery.

Predicting Music Origin With Deep Learning, Fruzsina Ladanyi

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This project explores the usage of a late fusion deep learning architecture to predict the geographic origin of music. Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) and the language of the music sample are used as features. MFCCs were extracted from audio files to capture sound features. The language was identified using OpenAI’s Whisper model to provide additional context. A late fusion neural network architecture combining Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) layers for sequential MFCC input and dense layers for non-sequential language features were employed to support both classification and regression tasks. The classification model achieved an accuracy of 33.03% across 56 countries or …

In Search Of A Granada School Of Lutherie, James Westbrook

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Alberto Cuéllar et al., La guitarra tradicional en Granada = Granada and the Traditional Guitar (Granada: Diputación Provincial de Granada, 2024).

Preserving The Groove: Identifying & Preserving Grooved Media, Michael Bean, Michael Bean

LWLC Faculty Research

Preserving the Groove” is an introductory workshop on the identification, handling, and preservation of grooved sound media. The session covers three primary formats shellac, acetate, and vinyl while also touching on lesser-known and historically significant discs such as transcription discs, Bone Records, and Vitaphone soundtracks. Attendees will learn how to distinguish between formats, understand their playback requirements, and apply best practices for cleaning, storage, and digitization. Emphasis is placed on the physical vulnerabilities of each medium and the importance of preservation in archival and personal collections alike.

Reimagining Musical Collaboration: Ai And Music Real-Time Communication (M-Rtc), The Future Of Musical Creativity, Dana Kemack Goot

Journal of the Association for Technology in Music Instruction

This project explored the intersection of Music Real-Time Communication (M-RTC), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) in online musical collaboration. Presented at the 2023 National CMS/ATMI conference, the project served as a preliminary inquiry into how online musicking technologies impact human-to-human interactions and sought out the capabilities in creativity in music technology. The live performance featured three musicians performing from different geographic locations using an AI-generated composition and an AI-powered accompaniment application. The project demonstrated the creative potential of integrating AI and ML into M-RTC, expanding the possibilities for remote collaboration, composition, and performance. The musicians navigated both the …

"Constructing Music" By Teresa Nakra. Book Review., Jorge E. Variego

Journal of the Association for Technology in Music Instruction

Technology is a crucial tool for enhancing music creativity and pedagogy, enriching learning rather than posing a threat to traditional educational means. The integration of computers into music pedagogy allows educators to access numerous resources, refining teaching methodologies and inspiring students' musical pursuits. Embracing technology in music education enables dynamic exploration of composition, production, and performance, fostering an interactive and engaging learning environment. Computers and AI offer opportunities for revitalizing music instruction and deepening students' appreciation for the art form.

Teresa M. Nakra's Constructing Music presents an innovative approach to music theory instruction by substituting traditional Western notation with principles …

Multi-Label Classification Of Acoustic And Electronic Drum Sounds Using Machine Learning, Sean Perman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents a system for multi-class classification of drum sounds using audio signal processing and machine learning techniques. The project utilizes a diverse dataset of both acoustic and electronic drum samples and extracts ten distinct audio features to capture the timbral and temporal characteristics of each sound. The methodology includes signal preprocessing, feature extraction, and the application of supervised classification algorithms to distinguish between multiple drum classes. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that the selected features significantly enhance classification accuracy across a varied dataset. These findings underscore the effectiveness of combining traditional audio processing with modern machine learning, offering promising applications …

Diy Music Career, Griffin Schmeltzer

University Honors Theses

As we know, the music industry is changing. Where artists once needed access to extremely expensive gear, we now have access to tech that can create professional quality music at a fraction of the price. And where artists once needed labels to back and distribute their music, we're entering into an age where anyone can upload a song directly to the primary platforms consumers use to listen to music. This has led to an era where songs written and recorded in bedrooms are winning grammys (Billie Eilish). But for all the upsides of anyone being able to make and release …

What Happened To Hip-Hop?, Matt M. Didomenico

Capstones

Hip-hop, coming from one of the most exciting periods in its existence, is now experiencing a disappointing comedown. After becoming the U.S.'s most popular genre for the first time in 2017, the genre began to see declines both artistically and commercially, but why is that?

https://mdidom2000.medium.com/what-happened-to-hip-hop-6b3369e7bb04