Musicology Commons^™

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 …

Listening To The World: A Brief Survey Of World Music, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

A short and engaging introduction to music around the world.

Listen to the world. Explore music from around the globe. Acquaint yourself with a variety of international music styles and traditions. Investigate issues in popular music from both a social perspective (such as race, religion, language, economics, gender, diaspora, and politics), as well as an intrinsically musical position (beat, pitch, meter, rhythm, form, timbre, texture). Learn about how music reinforces values and negotiates tradition with innovation; how rural and urban contexts inform musical experiences; how soundscapes shape identity. Learn how to collect sounds and ask questions: what is this instrument’s …

Etcètera Ii: Notes Sobre Música, Art I Literatura (2020-2022), Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

A compilation of essays on music, the arts, and literature previously published in Bellver, the arts section of Diario de Mallorca (2020-2022). This is the second part of ETCETERA.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Msc 3032 (Electronic Music), Ted Gordon

Open Educational Resources

This class surveys the musical practices, technological instruments, and scientific concepts associated with electronic music from the 19th century to the present in institutional, amateur, and commercial environments, drawing from a wide range of musical traditions and styles from around the world. It develops practical skills of recording, editing, listening to, analyzing, and writing about music with electronic instruments and media.

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 …

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.

Electronics And The Music Of Miles Davis, Darren E. Shekailo

Theses and Dissertations

Miles Davis produced a wealth of music relying on the use of electronic instruments and new technology. With their adoption, the famous trumpeter began his “electric” period. Examining the electric period of Davis’s career helps us trace the profound impact of electronic instruments and technological advances on his music.

Leonard Bernstein's Piano Music: A Comparative Study Of Selected Works, Leann Osterkamp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Much of Leonard Bernstein’s piano music is incorporated in his orchestral and theatrical works. The comparison and understanding of how the piano works relate to the orchestral manifestations validates the independence of the piano works, provides new insights into Bernstein’s compositional process, and presents several significant issues of notation and interpretation that can influence the performance practice of both musical versions.

The chronological and historical significance of his piano music has been sometimes inaccurately recorded and/or generalized. In understanding the factual chronological, social, and political relationships behind the piano works and their orchestral manifestations, I argue that the piano works, …

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 …

Rock Music Scholarship, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

My challenge is to take my master’s thesis, a lengthy annotated bibliography of academic monographs on rock in American culture, and make it come alive and, in the process, provide a sense of how the academic rock discourse has evolved.