Musical Melodies Research Articles

Music Melodies Suited to Multiple Users' Feelings Composed by Asynchronous Distributed Interactive Genetic Algorithm

This article aims to compose music melody suited for multiple users' feelings by employing parallel Distributed Interactive Genetic Algorithm (DIGA). In the DIGA, each user proceeds into a general Interactive Genetic Algorithm (IGA) process by evaluating solution candidates subjectively. In some generations, individuals in IGA are exchanged between the users. With the exchange, each of the users is affected by other users' feelings. As a result, obtaining good solutions suited for all users is expected. The authors conducted listening experiments for investigating the efficiency of the DIGA for composition of a music melody. Two experimental conditions with and without the exchange were employed. Ten people participated in the experiment as subjects, and were paired for the IGA task. The experimental results showed that a higher fitness was obtained in the final generation and similar melodies were obtained with the exchange.

Sung melody enhances verbal learning and recall after stroke.

Coupling novel verbal material with a musical melody can potentially aid in its learning and recall in healthy subjects, but this has never been systematically studied in stroke patients with cognitive deficits. In a counterbalanced design, we presented novel verbal material (short narrative stories) in both spoken and sung formats to stroke patients at the acute poststroke stage and 6 months poststroke. The task comprised three learning trials and a delayed recall trial. Memory performance on the spoken and sung tasks did not differ at the acute stage, whereas sung stories were learned and recalled significantly better compared with spoken stories at the 6 months poststroke stage. Interestingly, this pattern of results was evident especially in patients with mild aphasia, in whom the learning of sung versus spoken stories improved more from the acute to the 6-month stages compared with nonaphasic patients. Overall, these findings suggest that singing could be used as a mnemonic aid in the learning of novel verbal material in later stages of recovery after stroke.

Tone-tune association in Tommo So (Dogon) folk songs

This article explores the relationship between linguistic tone and musical melody in Tommo So, a Dogon language of Mali. Most fundamentally, contrary mappings (rising tone on falling music, or vice versa) are strongly penalized, while oblique mappings (flat tone on changing music, or vice versa) are largely tolerated. Strictness of mapping is further modulated by several factors, including whether the tones straddle a word boundary, whether their source is lexical or grammatical, what the position is in the line, and so forth. We model these conditions using weighted, stringent constraints and conclude that tone-tune setting bears more in common with metrics than previously recognized, setting the groundwork for a more general theory of phonological mapping across modalities.

Palyatif Bakım Hastalarına Müziğin Etkisi: Türk Müziği ile Tedavinin Tarihsel Gelişimi

Music is a universal language, and is the best way of cultural interaction, communication and share feelings. Different musical melodies have different influences on mind states of individuals. Musical therapy is a special type of therapy in which verbal communication is coupled with musical interaction and communication styles. Selection of person specific and therapeutic music styles will result in the alleviation of several symptoms in patients under palliative care. Musical therapy is a significant supportive tool for the treatment of cognitive, physical, social, environmental and spiritual needs of palliative care patients of all ages. Furthermore, it prevents the disturbances caused by cancer treatment. The use of musical therapy in Turkish history has first been mentioned in Uyghur rock inscriptions. Ottoman music is a sophisticated and developed synthesis of the makam music. Ottomans would use different instrumental and vocal musical pieces to cure certain medical and psychological conditions. In more recent times however, ethnomusicology was not included in the curriculum as a teaching or means of therapy in Turkish medicine, that is why it did not become a routine treatment modality, the applications were limited to the disciplines of psychiatry, anesthesiology, intensive care, surgery and pediatric medicine as well as to the academic studies of the physicians who had an interest in this field. Despite the fact that it is a significant contributor to the control of symptoms in palliative care patients, there have not been studies emphasizing the importance of its use in such patients until recently. Together with reentry into agenda of the treatment efficacy of music in Turkey and worldwide, Ministry of Health of Turkey initiated a ''Musical Therapy Training Certificate Program'' For health professionals in 2016. In addition to this intervention, professional musicians should also have an interest in this topic and should collaborate with the physicians academically in the treatment process. This review emphasizes the need for initiating routine clinical applications, academic studies and trainings with cultural, ethnic and individualized Turkish music therapy on palliative care patients as a means of efficient palliation.

Anomia for musical entities

ABSTRACTBackground: Previous work has investigated extensively the neuroanatomical correlates of lexical retrieval of words for concrete entities. Musical entities, such as musical instruments, are often included in studies of category-specific naming deficits but have rarely been the focus of such work.Aims: This article reviews a program of research investigating the neuroanatomical basis for lexical retrieval of words for unique (i.e., melodies) and nonunique (i.e., musical instruments) musical entities.Main Contribution: We begin by reporting findings on the retrieval of words for unique musical entities, including musical melodies. We then consider work focusing on retrieval of words for nonunique musical entities, specifically musical instruments. We highlight similarities between the two lines of work and then report results from new analyses including direct comparisons between the two. These comparisons suggest that impairments in naming musical melodies and in naming musical instruments are both associated with damage to the left temporal pole (LTP). However, musical instrument naming appears to rely on a more distributed set of brain regions, possibly including those relating to sensorimotor interactions with such instruments, whereas melody naming relies more exclusively on the LTP.Conclusions: Retrieval of names for musical melodies appears to rely on similar neuroanatomical correlates as for other proper nouns, namely the LTP. Musical instrument naming seems to rely on a broader network of regions, including the LTP and sensorimotor areas. Overall, melody naming seems to coincide with naming of other proper nouns, while musical instrument naming appears distinct from other categories of nonunique items.

Generation of 1/f noise from a broken-symmetry model for the arbitrary absolute pitch of musical melodies.

A model is presented to generate power spectrum noise with intensity proportional to 1/f as a function of frequency f. The model arises from a broken-symmetry variable, which corresponds to absolute pitch, where fluctuations occur in an attempt to restore that symmetry, influenced by interactions in the creation of musical melodies.

A Study on Moderate Expression and Westernization of Indian Music

문화와 음악의 전지구화 현상 속에서 인도의 음악 또한 영향권에 진입하였다. 영화음악으로 점유되고 있는 현대의 인도음악 양식은 서구적 관점으로 해석해도 큰 무리가 없는 형식으로 변모하였다. 신시사이저를 바탕으로 한 팝 음악 풍미를 느낄 수 있는 사운드 구성과 BPM으로 계산 가능한 규칙적인 템포 등이 변화의 중심이 되었다. 화성이 단순하고, 선법적으로 강한 색채를 드러내며, 독특한 선율 전개를 통해 그나마도 전통성을 유지하였었던 형태도 이제는 위태롭다. 본 논문에서는 전통적으로 인도음악 선율이 지니는 특징을 탐구해보고, 그러한 선율들이 현대의 음악 속에서 어떠한 형식으로 서구화가 진행되었는지 살펴보고, 나아가 선율의 서구화가 지니는 함의를 고찰해보고자 한다. 분석을 위한 작품으로는 21세기 전후에 인도의 모차르트라 불리는 음악감독 A. R. 라만 작품 중에서 “루카 추피(Luka Chuppi)”, “카리예 나(Kariye na)”, “테레 빈나(Tere Bina)”를 선정하였으며, 이에 표현된 절제된 미분음을 통한 세계성과 사르감 가창을 통한 전통성의 혼용이 시사하는 바를 드러내고자 한다.In the globalization of culture and music, Indian music has also entered into influence. Contemporary Indian music style, which is occupied by film music, has been transformed into a form that does not seem to be large enough even if it is interpreted from a Western point of view. The composition of the sound that can feel the western pop music flavor based on synthesizer and the regular tempo that can be calculated by BPM became the center of change. It is now at stake for harmony to maintain simple, preconceived colors, and maintain its traditional style through unique melody development. In this research, we will explored the characteristics of Indian music melodies traditionally then examine how these melodies westernize within contemporary music, including the implications of westernization of melody. The works for analysis include “Luka Chuppi”, “Kariye na” and “Tere Bina” among the A. R. Rahman works of music director ‘Mozart’, India, before and after the 21st century. Also, this dissertation is shown the implication of the mixture of the world through the tempered differential sound expressed in this way and the traditionality through the sargam singing.

A graph-based approach to ememes identification and tracking in Social Media streams

A meme, as defined by Richard Dawkins, is a unit of information, a concept or an idea that spreads from person to person within a culture. Examples of memes can be a musical melody, a catchy phrase, trending news, behavioral patterns, etc. In this article the task of identifying potential memes in a stream of texts is addressed: in particular, the content generated by users of Social Media is considered as a rich source of information offering an updated window on the world happenings and on opinions of people. A textual electronic meme, a.k.a. ememe, is here considered as a frequently replicated set of related words that propagates through the Web over time. In this article an approach is proposed that aims to identify ememes in Social Media streams represented as graph of words. Furthermore, a set of measures is defined to track the change of information in time.

A Novel Method of Plagiarism Detection for Music Melodies

A Novel Method of Plagiarism Detection for Music Melodies

What Vowels Can Tell Us about the Evolution of Music.

Whether music and language evolved independently of each other or whether both evolved from a common precursor remains a hotly debated topic. We here emphasize the role of vowels in the language-music relationship, arguing for a shared heritage of music and speech. Vowels play a decisive role in generating the sound or sonority of syllables, the main vehicles for transporting prosodic information in speech and singing. Timbre is, beyond question, the primary parameter that allows us to discriminate between different vowels, but vowels also have intrinsic pitch, intensity, and duration. There are striking correspondences between the number of vowels and the number of pitches in musical scales across cultures: an upper limit of roughly 12 elements, a lower limit of 2, and a frequency peak at 5–7 elements. Moreover, there is evidence for correspondences between vowels and scales even in specific cultures, e.g., cultures with three vowels tend to have tritonic scales. We report a match between vowel pitch and musical pitch in meaningless syllables of Alpine yodelers, and highlight the relevance of vocal timbre in the music of many non-Western cultures, in which vocal timbre/vowel timbre and musical melody are often intertwined. Studies showing the pivotal role of vowels and their musical qualities in the ontogeny of language and in infant directed speech, will be used as further arguments supporting the hypothesis that music and speech evolved from a common prosodic precursor, where the vowels exhibited both pitch and timbre variations.

On the complex network structure of musical pieces: analysis of some use cases from different music genres

This paper focuses on the modeling of musical melodies as networks. Notes of a melody can be treated as nodes of a network. Connections are created whenever notes are played in sequence. We analyze some main tracks coming from different music genres, with melodies played using different musical instruments. We find out that the considered networks are, in general, scale free networks and exhibit the small world property. We measure the main metrics and assess whether these networks can be considered as formed by sub-communities. Outcomes confirm that peculiar features of the tracks can be extracted from this analysis methodology. This approach can have an impact in several multimedia applications such as music didactics, multimedia entertainment, and digital music generation.

Intonation in Iraqi Musical Melodies

This paper deals with intonation in Iraqi musical melodies (MMs). As such, it aims to analyze the intonational patterns in the Iraqi music. The main musical melodies in the Iraqi music are Rast, Dasht, Hijaaz, Kurd, and Bayaat. In this vein, the current study attempts to answer the following questions: the current paper attempts to answer the following questions: (i) What are the intonational patterns of Iraqi MMs? And (ii) What is the additional function of intonation in MMs? In the light of these questions, the corner hypothesis is that Iraqi MMs have their own specific definable intonational patterns. On the basis of the analysis, it is concluded that intonation can be a useful tool for analyzing musical variations in the basic Iraqi MMs. Moreover, musical intonation, which is the task of musicologists, is accompanied by phonological intonation to create the final form of the melody. Finally, in addition to previous functions of intonation, such as grammatical, semantic, and so on, intonation has a new one, namely ‘musical function’ because it gives music special effects and evaluations.

The Research of the Salar Folk Music Characteristics Under the Statistical Theory

Why does a form of folk music have its special music form? The answer lies in the musicology theory. In order to prove the accuracy of the conclusion, we will make a sample investigation and research on a region’s folk music from a new viewpoint and with a new study method. Then we will compare the result with the result from musicology theory to illustrate the typicality of the regional folk music form. The task is to make a digital analysis by recording the Salar folk music melody waveform through spectrum technology and to give Salar music rotation a typical probability statistical classification by a mathematical statistical method.

A Proposal for Distributed Interactive Genetic Algorithm for Composition of Musical Melody

This study proposes an Interactive Evolutionary Computation that creates sound contents for multiple users. Sound contents including music piece and sign sound are often used for creating common atmosphere and transmitting a certain message to everyone. The proposed method is based on parallel distributed Interactive Genetic Algorithm (IGA). As a special property of this method, in some generations, solution candidates are exchanged between the users. With the exchange, each of the users is affected by other users’ feelings: good solutions for all of the users are expected to be obtained. Based on the proposed method, we constructed an IGA system for fundamentally investigating efficiencies of the proposed method. Aim of the IGA system is to create a short music melody commonly affording bright image to multiple users. Key of the notes was treated as gene of the IGA. Music chord progression is attached to the melody when it is presented to the subjects. In listening experiment, sixteen subjects divided into eight pairs, and two subjects participated in the evaluation process simultaneously. Experimental results showed increase in mean fitness values between the subjects.

Representations of Pitch and Timbre Variation in Human Auditory Cortex.

Pitch and timbre are two crucial aspects of auditory perception. Pitch governs our perception of musical melodies and harmonies, and conveys both prosodic and (in tone languages) lexical information in speech. Brightness-an aspect of timbre or sound quality-allows us to distinguish different musical instruments and speech sounds. Frequency-mapping studies have revealed tonotopic organization in primary auditory cortex, but the use of pure tones or noise bands has precluded the possibility of dissociating pitch from brightness. Our results suggest a distributed code, with no clear anatomical distinctions between auditory cortical regions responsive to changes in either pitch or timbre, but also reveal a population code that can differentiate between changes in either dimension within the same cortical regions.

Phonetic dimensions of tone language effects on musical melody perception.

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)Language and music are interesting to psychology because they have been claimed to be two of the few uniquely human abilities. Much has been made of both their similarities and differences, and despite the many ways in which language and music have been demonstrated to be modular, cases of overlap or influence between the two abound. Understanding this influence is key to understanding the function of each, and will perhaps lend more general insight into the architecture of the human perceptual system.This study focuses on crossover between language and music at the auditory or phonetic level, examining the use of pitch in music and lexical tone language. Recent evidence suggests that crossover effects between these domains are bidirectional (Bidelman, Hutka, & Moreno, 2013); musicianship influences the perception of tone, and tone language experience influences music perception. The experiment presented here aims to contribute additional evidence for the latter direction, as well as to go beyond already demonstrated effects by describing the nature of such crossover based on perceptual features of lexical tone and musical melody.BackgroundScope of Language-Music OverlapThe OPERA hypothesis (Patel, 2011) explains the influence of music on speech perception as resulting from a combination of the neural overlap of acoustic processing and the task demands of musical training (e.g., repetition). These acoustic and task characteristics, however, are not unique to music, so OPERA does not rule out bidirectional effects, but rather points out why in some cases one direction of influence (as described by Patel, 2011, music to language) may be more prevalent; but whichever domain is more cognitively demanding in some aspect (e.g., precision of acoustic or temporal categories) may be expected to influence the other.OPERA and similar models assert that music and language share neural resources for processing and learning common features, such as sound categories and hierarchical structures, rather than of musical or linguistic categories per se. Besson, Chobert, and Marie (2011) make a distinction between shared acoustic processing and memory- or attention-driven training effects, and although it is likely that there is more than one way in which language and music influence one another, even higherlevel effects related to specific linguistic or musical knowledge involve perceptual (rather than abstract) representations, or the way in which perceptual resources are deployed in musical and linguistic tasks. The common thread of such models is that they do not necessitate a total overlap between perceptual resource networks for musical and linguistic pitch, nor that crossover effects be entirely symmetrical. Instead, they predict that crossover effects occur in ways predictable from the content and context of learning (Bradley, 2013).Although the mechanisms of transfer are not fully understood, several neural processes have been proposed to explain how such crossover takes place, notably Reverse Hierarchy Theory (RHT) (Ahissar & Hochstein, 2004; Ahissar, Nahum, Nelken, & Hochstein, 2009), invoked by Kraus and Banai (2007), and tuning via the corticofugal pathway (Wong, Skoe, Russo, Dees, & Kraus, 2007). The key features of such models are that rather different cognitive tasks may share a reliance on similar sensory input, and top-down feedback tunes sensory resources which are domaingeneral, and therefore available to other tasks in the absence of direct training (Bradley, 2014). These principles are supported by the overlap of speech and song activation in temporal cortical areas (associated with the encoding basic properties of stimuli), relative to frontal and parietal regions associated with task-specific representations (Merrill et al., 2012). This diverges from some earlier models in which pitch processing for music diverges early from that of other auditory tasks (Peretz & Coltheart, 2003; Zatorre, Belin, & Penhune, 2002), but is consistent with developmental theories linking music and language learning to more general learning mechanisms (McMullen & Saffran, 2004; Trehub & Hannon, 2006). …

정수문자집합에 대한 문자열의 δ-근사주기와 γ-근사주기

정수로 표현된 문자열에 대한 (δ, γ)-매칭은 음악서열이나 주가 연구에 응용될 수 있다. 본 논문에서는 정수문자집합에 대한 문자열의 δ-근사주기와 γ-근사주기의 개념을 제시한다. 또한 최소 δ-근사주기와 최소 γ-근사주기를 각각 O(n²) 시간에 찾는 알고리즘들을 제시하고 수행시간을 측정한 결과를 보인다. (δ, γ)-matching for strings over integer alphabets can be applied to such fields as musical melody and share prices on stock markets. In this paper, we define δ-approximate periods and γ-approximate periods of strings over integer alphabets. We also present two O(n²) - time algorithms, each of which finds minimum δ-approximate periods and minimum γ-approximate periods, respectively. Then, we provide the experimental results of execution times of both algorithms.

Recognizing musical melodies: Effects of audio and visual representations of emotion

Memory for music was tested with a set of emotionally valenced melodies encoded with and without an accompanying visual scene. The music consisted of original melodies that were normed for their emotional valence. During the training phase, participants were presented a set of happy, neutral, and sad musical melodies. Half of the melodies were presented with an affective, visual stimulus, depicting a scene consistent with emotional expression of the melody. After a distraction period, participants were tested in an audio-only recognition task. The recognition task included a mix of melodies from the training phase (with equal representation of audiovisual and audio conditions and each of the affective conditions) and emotionally-matched novel solo guitar melodies. Using signal detection analyses participants were found to be more sensitive to stimuli for which they had been trained in the Auditory-only conditions than in the Audiovisual conditions. Sensitivity also tended to be highest with the neutral affective melodies and lowest with the sad melodies. These findings show the potential for distraction with visual imagery to musical memory formation—despite the consistency of that emotional content to the melody. Moreover, less emotionally valenced music tended to be more effectively encoded.

Editorial: Overlap of Neural Systems for Processing Language and Music.

The relationship between musical training and speech perception has intrigued researchers in language and music for decades, from Bever and Chiarello's (1974) work emphasizing hemispheric specialization to Tallal and Gaab's (2006) findings of shared neural circuitry. Recent studies demonstrating neural overlap for processing speech and music, and enhanced speech perception and production in musicians, suggest that these regions may be inextricably intertwined (Sammler et al., 2007; Wong P.C. et al., 2007; Wong P. et al., 2007; Rogalsky et al., 2011; Schulze et al., 2011). Patel's OPERA hypothesis and Hickok and Poeppel's (2000, 2007) neuroanatomical models continue to evolve and guide this field of research. However, the extent of neural overlap between music and speech remains hotly debated (Norman-Haignere et al., 2015; Peretz et al., 2015), with surprisingly little empirical research exploring specific neural homologs and analogs. Emerging evidence suggests that shared processes likely exist throughout development, depend upon an individual's acoustic experiences, and are affected by developmental trajectories. Moreover, developing theories that address the neural and developmental interaction between music and language processing in conjunction with the broad availability of sophisticated tools for quantifying brain activity and dynamics offer the perfect opportunity for researchers to address these key empirical questions. Taken together, this field of research has begun to elucidate the complex dynamics of overlapping neural areas for processing language and music. This special issue highlights the development of this overlap in early childhood and explores how the interaction between language and musical training enhances cognitive functioning in adults. This E-Book comprises 10 opinion, perspective, and research papers that focus on the overlap of neural systems for processing language and music. Eight of these papers report original research and new findings that support overlapping neural systems for processing language and music. LaCroix et al. performed a meta-analysis of 171 neuroimaging studies to examine the role of context in processing music and language. Their findings suggest that observed neural overlaps for speech and music might be task-dependent. Fogel et al. developed a novel method for studying and quantifying predictions in musical tasks that is consistent with language tasks. Their melodic cloze probability task can be used to test computational models of melodic expectation and allows for a more precise examination of the relationship between predictive mechanisms in music and language. Using a garden-path design, Jung et al. demonstrated that rhythmic expectancy is crucial to the interaction of processing musical and linguistic syntax. Additionally, their findings support the incorporation of dynamic models of attentional entrainment into existing theories of musical and linguistic syntactical processing. Margulis et al. used the speech-to-song illusion to examine the role of pronunciation difficulty and temporal regularity. Their finding—that difficult to pronounce languages, not differing temporal intervals, elicited a stronger speech-to-song illusion—suggests a stronger speech representation for native and easy to pronounce languages. Miles et al. demonstrated that females have an advantage for recognizing familiar musical melodies. They believe this advantage is related to superior declarative memory, which may underlie the storage and knowledge of both the mental lexicon in language (e.g., Ullman, 2001) and some aspects of familiar melodies in music (Miranda and Ullman, 2007). Two papers report finding that musical training during development enhances literacy skills, including phonological awareness and reading fluency, via neural mechanisms for both language and music (Dege et al.; Gordon et al.). Moreover, Dege and colleagues provide evidence that music production and music perception are associated with multiple precursors of reading. Finally, Lolli et al. examined the effect of sound frequency on judgments of emotion in speech by congenital amusics. Using both high and low-pass filtered speech in a pitch discrimination and emotion identification task, their findings demonstrate the important role of low frequency information in identifying the emotional content of speech. In addition to these eight research papers there are two perspective and opinion papers that emphasize the affective and emotive commonalities between music and language (Lehmann and Paquette; Omigie). Lehmann and Paquette provide a neurobehavioral approach for examining cross-domain processing of musical and vocal emotions, suggesting that studying cochlear implant users may allow for a richer understanding of neural overlap between music and language. Omigie (2015) provides evolutionary evidence for shared underlying neural mechanisms for our emotive responses to music and literature. This E-Book provides a comprehensive snapshot of the research examining the complex overlap of neural systems for processing language and music. Both musical experience and training enhance the development of linguistic representations, emotion perception, and other cognitive skills. Furthermore, the research presented here contributes to current knowledge of neuroplastic reorganization and repair in clinical populations, and may aid in the design of new and more effective rehabilitative protocols.

Musical Bodies: Corporeality, Emergent Subjectivity, and Improvisational Spaces

Interactive improvisational musical spaces (which is to say, nearly all musical spaces) involve affective relations among bodies: between the bodies of human performers, between performers and active listeners, between the sonic "bodies" that comprise the multiple overlapping events that constitute a musical performance’s unfolding. Music scholarship tends to focus on either music’s sonic materialities (the sensible; what can be heard) or the cultural resonances that locate in and through music (the political or hermeneutic; how meaning is inscribed in and for a listening subject). An embodied turn, however, has recently been manifesting, bringing music scholarship into communication with feminist theory, queer theory, and approaches that foreground subjectivity and embodiment. Exemplary in this area are works by Naomi Cumming (who asks a critical question, “does the self form the sound, or the sound the self?;” Cumming 7), Suzanne Cusick, Marion Guck, Fred Maus, and Susan McClary. All of these scholars, in various ways, thematise the performative—what it feels like to make or experience music, and what effect that making or experiencing has on subject-formation. All of these authors strive to foreground the role of the performer and performativity in the context of the extended Western art music tradition. While each makes persuasive, significant points, my contention in this paper is that improvised music is a more fruitful starting place for thinking about embodiment and the co-constitutive relationship between performer and sound. That is, while (nearly) all music is improvised to a greater or lesser degree, the more radical contexts, in which paths are being selected and large-scale shapes drawn in the “heat of the moment,” can bring these issues into stark relief and serve as more productive entry points for thinking through crucial questions of embodiment, perspective, identity, and emergent meaning.