Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Musical Sound: A Mathematical Approach To Timbre, Timothy Weiss (Class Of 2016)

Writing Across the Curriculum

What is the mathematical reasoning behind the ear’s ability to distinguish two completely different musical sounds? In answering this question, one must call to mind a fundamental term with regards to music: timbre.

A Study Of Chemistry: For Wind Ensemble, Morgan Duff

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Many musicians have a limited understanding of chemistry, while many chemists aren't familiar with details of music theory or composition. Through the composition of a four-part musical work based entirely on several broad areas of chemistry, certain relationships have been shown between music and chemistry. Because of the overlap between certain scientific concepts and many aspects of music theory, it is possible for members of both fields to use what they already know in order to gain a deeper understanding of the other, very different, subject. Because everyone has learning strengths in differing areas, I believe the use of disciplinary …

Musical Behaviours: Algorithmic Composition Via Plug-Ins, Bruno Degazio

Publications and Scholarship

The author’s recent software research addresses a deficiency in commercial musical composition software: the limited ability to apply algorithmic processes to the practice of musical composition. The remedy takes the form of a software plug-in design called “musical behaviours” — compositional algorithms of limited scope that can be applied cumulatively and in real time to MIDI performance data. The software runs on the author’s software composition platform, The Transformation Engine.

The Acoustics Of Harmon Mutes, Zachary T. Armstrong

Summer Research

The acoustic properties of trumpets have been studied thoroughly, but little to no previous work has been done regarding the acoustics of trumpet mutes. Harmon mutes have a distinctively "buzzy" sound when they are used in performance and it is the opinion of a large number of trumpet players who use Harmon mutes that they should be dented before they are used in performance. The work presented here is an attempt to determine the acoustical properties of Harmon mutes and how they change when the mute is dented. If Harmon mutes are better understood, then a more informed decision as …

Deathcore, Creativity, And Scientific Thinking, David G. Angeler, Shana M. Sundstrom, Craig R. Allen

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Background Major scientific breakthroughs are generally the result of materializing creative ideas, the result of an inductive process that sometimes spontaneously and unexpectedly generates a link between thoughts and/or objects that did not exist before. Creativity is the cornerstone of scientific thinking, but scientists in academia are judged by metrics of quantification that often leave little room for creative thinking. In many scientific fields, reductionist approaches are rewarded and new ideas viewed skeptically. As a result, scientific inquiry is often confined to narrow but safe disciplinary ivory towers, effectively preventing profoundly creative explorations that could yield unexpected benefits.

This paper …

Learn Piano With Bach: An Adaptive Learning Interface That Adjusts Task Difficulty Based On Brain State, Beste F. Yuksel, Kurt B. Oleson, Lane Harrison, Evan M. Peck, Daniel Afergan, Remco Chang, Robert Jk Jacob

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

We present Brain Automated Chorales (BACh), an adaptive brain-computer system that dynamically increases the levels of difficulty in a musical learning task based on pianists' cognitive workload measured by functional near-infrared spectroscopy. As users' cognitive workload fell below a certain threshold, suggesting that they had mastered the material and could handle more cognitive information, BACh automatically increased the difficulty of the learning task. We found that learners played with significantly increased accuracy and speed in the brain-based adaptive task compared to our control condition. Participant feedback indicated that they felt they learned better with BACh and they liked the timings …