Music Rehearsal Research Articles

Contemporary Music Rehearsal Discourse and Its Application in Liberal Arts Education

최근 우리의 ìŒì• êµì–‘êµìœ¡ì— 있어서 í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• ì„ 다루는 교과목이 ì ì  ëŠ˜ê³ ìžˆëŠ” 추세이다. 하지만 í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• ì´ ê°€ì§€ê³ ìžˆëŠ” ë‚´ìž¬ì ì¸ 복잡함과 생소함으로 인하여 교육의 효과를 크게 기대하기는 íž˜ë“ ìƒí™©ì´ë‹¤. 이에, 본 연구자는 학습자 중심의 ìˆ˜ì— ëª¨í˜•ì„ ê°œë°œí•˜ê³ ìž 한다. ìš°ì„ , 뉴욕과 ì‹œì¹´ê³ ì˜ ICE(International Contemporary Ensemble)에서 ì‹¤ì‹œí•˜ê³ ìžˆëŠ” 공교육 프로그램 <듣는 ë°©>(The Listening Room)에서 아이디어를 착안하여 ì „ë¬¸ê°€ ì°¸ì—¬ì ì´ë©´ì„œë„ ì²´í—˜ì ì´ê³ ìœµí•©ì ì¸ 교수법을 ëª¨ìƒ‰í•˜ê³ ìž 하였다. 대학 교양교육은 ê²°êµ­ 공교육의 ì—°ì†ì„ ìƒì— 있기 때문이다. 이에, ì „ë¬¸ í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• ê°€ê°€ 공연에 앞서 진행하는 ‘리허설’, ê·¸ë¦¬ê³ ê·¸ 리허설에서 생성되는 ‘리허설 ë‹´ë¡ â€™ì„ ìˆ˜ì— ì˜ 자료로 í™œìš©í•˜ê³ ìž 한다.연구자는 2012ë „ë¶€í„° 왕성하게 í™œë™í•˜ê³ ìžˆëŠ” 한국 í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• ì•™ìƒë¸” project21AND의 리허설에 참관하여 리허설 ê³¼ì •ì„ ë ¹í™”í•˜ì˜€ìœ¼ë©°, ê·¸ 속에서 생성되는 ë‹´ë¡ ì„ 분석하였다. ë ¼ë¬¸ì—ì„œëŠ” ê·¸ 중 두 사례를 소개한다. 첫 번째는 ê¹€ì •í›ˆì˜ <Chorus>(2016)이며 두 번째는 ì „í˜„ì„ì˜ <De Tuin der Lusten>(2018)이다. 두 경우 모두 초연이었기에 작곡가는 리허설이 진행되는 동안 줄곧 ì ê·¹ì ìœ¼ë¡œ 지휘자 및 연주자와 소통하는 모습을 보였다. 이들의 리허설 ë‹´ë¡ ì—ì„œ 도출해낸 í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• ë¦¬í—ˆì„¤ì˜ 특성은 소통방식이 매우 ë¯¼ì£¼ì ì´ë¼ëŠ” 것, ì• ê¸° 주법 및 음향에 관한 ë ¼ì˜ê°€ 두드러졌다는 것, 지휘자-작곡가-연주자 간의 요구하는 사항이나 방식이 달랐다는 것으로 요약되어진다. 이것은 새로움과 실험성을 추구하는 í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• ì˜ 특성의 ê²°ê³¼ë¼ê³ ë³´ì¸ë‹¤.그런 다음, 연구자는 사례분석의 결과를 ê°€ì§€ê³ ì„œ 교양교육을 위한 í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• ê°ìƒìˆ˜ì— ì„ 설계하였다. 첫 번째 모형은 â€˜ì²´í—˜ì  ê°ìƒìˆ˜ì— â€™ì´ë©° 두 번째 모형은 â€˜ì„œì‚¬ì  ê°ìƒìˆ˜ì— â€™ì´ë‹¤. 리허설 ë‹´ë¡ ìžì²´ê°€ ì²´í—˜ì  성격과 ì„œì‚¬ì  성격을 모두 ê°–ê³ ìžˆê¸° 때문에 가능한 것이다. 단지, ì—­ì ì„ 어디에 두느냐에 따라 편의상 구분했을 뿐이다. 두 경우 모두 학습자는 리허설 동영상을 ì‹œì²­í•˜ê³ ê·¸ 속에서 이루어지는 대화를 면밀히 관찰한다. 다만, ì²´í—˜ì  ê°ìƒìˆ˜ì— ì—ì„œëŠ” 학습자가 ì§ì ‘ 지휘자, 작곡가, 연주자의 ìž ìž¥ì„ 이해한 후 ì—­í• ê·¹ì„ 통하여 ê°„ì ‘ì ìœ¼ë¡œ ìŒì• ë§Œë“¤ê¸°ì˜ 체험을 표현하는 것이며, ì„œì‚¬ì  ê°ìƒìˆ˜ì— ì—ì„œëŠ” 학습자가 리허설 ë‹´ë¡ ì˜ 서사를 이해한 후, ìƒìƒë ¥ì„ 발휘하여 ê¶ê·¹ì ìœ¼ë¡œëŠ” í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• ì— 대한 가치평가 및 ê°ì •ì„ 생성하게 되는 것이다. 요컨대, 본 연구에서 ì œì•ˆí•˜ê³ ìž 하는 í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• ì˜ 교양교육 ìˆ˜ì— ëª¨ë¸ì€ 리허설 ë‹´ë¡ ì„ 활용한 ì „ë¬¸ê°€ 연계 ê°ìƒìˆ˜ì— ìœ¼ë¡œì¨ ì²´í—˜ì ì´ë©´ì„œë„ ìœµí•©ì ì¸ 성격을 가지기 때문에 학생들의 í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• ì— 대한 거부감을 í•´ì†Œí•˜ê³ ë‚˜ì•„ê°€ í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• í•™ìŠµì— 대한 ë™ê¸°ìœ ë°œì„ ì´‰ë°œí• ìˆ˜ 있을 것으로 기대한다. ì£¼ì œì–´: í˜„ëŒ€ìŒì• ; 교양교육; 리허설 ë‹´ë¡ ; 감상교육; ì„œì‚¬ì  ìƒìƒë ¥

A Qualitative Study of the Effects of Hearing Loss and Hearing Aid Use on Music Perception in Performing Musicians.

Hearing aids (HAs) are important for the rehabilitation of individuals with hearing loss. Although the rehabilitation of speech communication is well understood, less attention has been devoted to understanding hearing-impaired instrumentalists' needs to actively participate in music. Despite efforts to adjust HA settings for music acoustics, there lacks an understanding of instrumentalists' needs and if those HA adjustments satisfy their needs. The purpose of the current study was to explore the challenges that adult HA-wearing instrumentalists face, which prevent them from listening, responding to, and performing music. A qualitative methodology was employed with the use of semistructured interviews conducted with adult amateur instrumentalists. Twelve HA users who were amateur ensemble instrumentalists (playing instruments from the percussion, wind, reed, brass, and string families) and between the ages of 55 and 83 years (seven men and five women) provided data for analysis in this study. Amateur in this context was defined as one who engaged mindfully in pursuit of an activity. Semistructured interviews were conducted using an open-ended interview guide. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were analyzed using conventional qualitative content analysis. Three categories emerged from the data: (1) participatory needs, (2) effects of HA use, and (3) effects of hearing loss. Participants primarily used HAs to hear the conductor's instructions to meaningfully participate in music rehearsals. Effects of HA use fell within two subcategories: HA music sound quality and use of an HA music program. The effects of hearing loss fell within three subcategories: inability to identify missing information, affected music components, and nonauditory music perception strategies. Not surprisingly, hearing-impaired instrumentalists face challenges participating in their music activities. However, although participants articulated ways in which HAs and hearing loss affect music perception, which in turn revealed perspectives toward listening using the auditory system and other sensory systems, the primary motivation for their HA use was the need to hear the conductor's directions. These findings suggest that providing hearing-impaired instrumentalists access to musical experience via participation should be prioritized above restoring the perception of musical descriptors. Future research is needed with instrumentalists who no longer listen to or perform music because of hearing loss, so that the relationship between musical auditory deficiencies and participation can be better explored.

Preservice and Inservice Teachers’ Perceptions of Pacing

The purpose of this study was to examine preservice and inservice teachers’ perceptions of pacing in ensemble rehearsal settings. We used Silveira’s definition of pacing as our conceptual framework: “the continuous flow of instruction without unnecessary interruptions and/or unnecessary sounds and without presentation of irrelevant material.” Participants were 23 preservice and 25 inservice music teachers. They viewed four excerpts of ensemble rehearsals and moved a Continuous Response Digital Interface dial to indicate their perceptions of fast and slow pacing. Based on our findings, we largely confirmed Silveira’s definition regarding pacing but suggest amending the definition for music rehearsal contexts to include student engagement and teacher talk. We propose the following revised definition of pacing: “the continuous flow of instruction without unnecessary interruptions and/or unnecessary sounds, without excessive teacher talk, and with presentation of relevant material while maintaining student engagement.”

A range of large music rehearsal spaces: 3 case studies

A rehearsal room for a large music ensemble must strike a balance between acoustic support and loudness control. Typically Kirkegaard approaches this by capturing a large volume and treating it with a mix of reflective and absorptive surfaces, plus some movable absorption. The size of the room’s volume, the treatment of the reflective and absorptive surfaces, and the location and extent of the adjustable absorption responds to the types of ensembles and music that the room serves. Three examples: At University of Virginia’s Hunter Smith Band Building, the main user was the 250-person marching band. This new construction used generous height and deep absorption to control loudness, despite extensive glazing. At University of Southern California’s Schoenfeld Symphonic Hall, a former soundstage was adapted into the primary rehearsal room for the Thornton School’s orchestra, wind ensemble, and percussion ensembles, with secondary use as a recording space. The renovation had to compensate for limited acoustic volume and directly adjacent mechanical room while transforming the room architecturally. At Oregon Bach Festival’s purpose-built Berwick Hall the focus was on early music—rehearsal, instruction, and performance. Our response was a moderate volume with little fixed absorption, creating an unusually reverberant rehearsal room with an extraordinarily beautiful sound.

Vertical campus planning impacts on sound isolation and room acoustics design in New Trier High School’s large music rehearsal spaces

By 2015, New Trier High School’s student body of 4000 had outgrown its 117-year old campus. With no available land on which to construct new facilities, existing facilities were demolished to allow a vertical campus building to be nestled between the remaining structures. The LEED-Gold certified addition houses the campus' performing arts facilities, a library, cafeteria, applied arts/maker spaces, a culinary lab, interconnected visual arts studios, a technology support bar, STEM laboratories, and flexible classrooms. The performing arts spaces, including five large music rehearsal rooms, are continuously programmed throughout the school day and well into the evening hours, placing high performance requirements on the isolation systems employed in the compact, steel-framed building. The rehearsal rooms employ two distinct sound isolation techniques and room acoustic design approaches as a result of their location within the building and the pre-determined structural spans.By 2015, New Trier High School’s student body of 4000 had outgrown its 117-year old campus. With no available land on which to construct new facilities, existing facilities were demolished to allow a vertical campus building to be nestled between the remaining structures. The LEED-Gold certified addition houses the campus' performing arts facilities, a library, cafeteria, applied arts/maker spaces, a culinary lab, interconnected visual arts studios, a technology support bar, STEM laboratories, and flexible classrooms. The performing arts spaces, including five large music rehearsal rooms, are continuously programmed throughout the school day and well into the evening hours, placing high performance requirements on the isolation systems employed in the compact, steel-framed building. The rehearsal rooms employ two distinct sound isolation techniques and room acoustic design approaches as a result of their location within the building and the pre-determined structural spans.

The acoustic design of higher education music rehearsal spaces

This paper will update our paper presented in 2007 in New Orleans which analyzed our firm's acoustic design parameters for instrumental, band and choral rehearsal rooms along with measured results. In the subsequent 12 years, we have designed and opened numerous more facilities to add to the databakse of knowledge. Acoustic design parameters such as ideal room size per ensemble type, room dimensions, room height and volume, size and openess of any reflecting clouds, permanent absorption, adjustable acoustic systems, reverberation time and client specific user preferences will be examined. Project examples will be discussed to illustrate the discussion.

A more thoughtful approach to the acoustical design of music rehearsal halls

With insufficient volume, one must choose between a rehearsal hall that is either too loud or too dead. Increasing room volume helps to reduce this conflict but adds to the cost of construction. Achieving the proper balance between reverberation time, room strength and cost can be challenging. The new 70 733 GSF Music Activities Center for the at Texas A&M University (TAMU) offers four large, purpose-built rehearsal halls for musicians who participate in TAMU bands, choirs, orchestras, and jazz bands, respectively. The design was aimed at creating a balanced acoustic environment with a focus on an acoustically “safe” environment for each of the respective ensembles. The design of these halls was informed by the new Norwegian standard for music facility design, NS 8178, modelling, and close collaboration among design team members.With insufficient volume, one must choose between a rehearsal hall that is either too loud or too dead. Increasing room volume helps to reduce this conflict but adds to the cost of construction. Achieving the proper balance between reverberation time, room strength and cost can be challenging. The new 70 733 GSF Music Activities Center for the at Texas A&M University (TAMU) offers four large, purpose-built rehearsal halls for musicians who participate in TAMU bands, choirs, orchestras, and jazz bands, respectively. The design was aimed at creating a balanced acoustic environment with a focus on an acoustically “safe” environment for each of the respective ensembles. The design of these halls was informed by the new Norwegian standard for music facility design, NS 8178, modelling, and close collaboration among design team members.

University of Colorado, Colorado Springs—Ent center for the arts

The UCCS Ent Center for the Arts is a transformational five-venue center; an innovative collaboration involving the university, six community arts partners and three local school districts. Jaffe Holden provided acoustic and audio/video systems design services for a wide range of spaces including a multi-use hall, recital hall, art gallery, drama theaters, art lab, recording studio, music rehearsal room, teaching studios and practice rooms. Our acoustic focus within the Shockley-Zalabak Theater was on making a successful multi-use hall to support a wide range of programming including full orchestra ensembles and small chamber groups. The acoustic response can be adjusted by a motorized system of drapes and acoustic banners concealed above a partially sound-transparent ceiling. A stage lift allows changes to be made to seating configuration and provides a stage extension. An acoustical shell can be configured to accommodate both large and small group performance. The Chapman Foundation Recital Hall’s acoustics can also be tailored to suit various musical ensembles, thanks to an adjustable acoustic curtain system hidden above the partially sound-transparent ceiling and slatted wood wall at the rear of the stage. One of the biggest challenges was to successfully isolate a dance studio directly above a recording studio control room.

Thinking Outside the Bus: Revitalizing the Role of a Teacher's Standard of Care During After-School Hours

A staggering 14 million school children are left unaccompanied every afternoon on America’s elementary, middle, and high school campuses. While some loiter around waiting for a parent to pick them up, still others wait for a ride home after finishing up an athletic practice or music rehearsal later into the evening. When something goes wrong and an unsupervised child ends up injuring themselves or damaging property during after-school hours, who is responsible? Is the school liable for not monitoring these students or do parents bear the burden of making sure their child arrives home safely and out of trouble? Such questions have few answers from a compulsory education system wrought with nationwide inconsistencies, contradictory jurisprudence, and one-sided immunity practices. In its present condition, this custodial blame game does little to make after-school environments safer for America’s schoolchildren. Fortunately, a legislative opportunity to clarify these liability concerns will immensely benefit teachers, parents, and students alike. In my analysis, I present an original catalogue of state education codes that offers insight into the best practices of how states handle the delicate transition of custodial powers from school to parent. A unique cross section of case law accompanies that catalogue to further examine how our country’s legal system has attempted to rectify such uncertainty in the past. While the topic of after-school liability has often gone unreported and unresolved in many of America’s courts and state houses, a brave few have taken up the issue, and the solution is clear: model legislation must be drafted to provide a standardized approach that benefits students everywhere. The model legislation I propose includes (1) an elevated professional standard for teachers monitoring campuses after school, (2) bright-line education code that requires school districts statewide to adhere to standardized language, and (3) recommendations for schools to better engage their local communities in hopes of offering clear solutions for getting kids home safely. Alongside such model legislation is a practical analysis of the resources involved in such reform, and an acknowledgement that much of the infrastructure already exists to make this solution a practical reality. In the end, our school children deserve clearly defined practices determining who has supervisory liability upon the conclusion of the school day.

Actor-Musicianship by Jeremy Harrison

Reviewed by: Actor-Musicianship by Jeremy Harrison Adam D. Howard Actor-Musicianship. By Jeremy Harrison. Performance Books series. London: Bloomsbury Meuthen Drama, 2016; pp. 232. Whether the odd lute or drum in Shakespeare, Doody with his guitar in Grease, or the eponymous Fiddler on the Roof, the ability to play an instrument is frequently a concern for casting directors throughout the world. What has changed since the late twentieth century, however, is the advent of the actor-musician as a new specialized kind of performer. Triple threats have been around for generations, but the actor who can sing, dance, and play an instrument at a professional level as part of their character is something entirely new and has during the last thirty years risen to a high profile of prominence in the United Kingdom and now the United States. Author Jeremy Harrison is a veteran of the actor-musician movement and company member in the watershed actor-musician production of Sweeny Todd at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, England, directed by fellow actor-musician John Doyle. In his book Actor-Musicianship, Harrison provides a much-needed text to serve the rapidly growing need for the training of these kinds of performers. The text is divided into roughly one-third a history of the actor-musician movement and two-thirds a course in actor-musician theory and practice, making the book a timely reference for performers, directors, and historians alike. First, Harrison takes the reader on a time-traveling tour of notable evolutionary moments in the actor-musician theatre. Starting with the Bubble Theatre and its productions of From a Jack to a King and Return to the Forbidden Planet— actor-musician adaptations of Macbeth and The Tempest respectively—the text underlines the significant differences between audience reactions to traditional theatre and actor-musician productions. Harrison then discusses the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, famous for its role in actor-musician productions in the past, as well as its annual Rock ‘n’ Roll Pantomimes today. He continues his narrative with the ever-increasing frequency and innovation in British actor-musician productions in biopic actor-musician jukebox musicals like Buddy, and concludes with the transfer of Sweeny from the Watermill, to Trafalgar Studios, to the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, for which it received a Tony Award. Throughout his discussion of the development of the actor-musician production with its revelatory creativity and sold-out-crowd buzz, Harrison reminds the reader that these productions were often born out of financial need, since the actors doubled as musicians. After this brief though entrancing history of the development of the actor-musician phenomenon as a primarily British innovation, the book continues into a chapter on theory. In “Jack and Master,” Harrison discusses the duality of the actor-musician being like a “personality disorder” (41). Actor-musician productions tend to make use of less “high art” instruments and instead rely upon guitars and drums more than orchestral instruments. Actor-musicians face numerous problems within the duality of being completely actor and completely musician, such as playing with proper technique and expression while maintaining character and dramatic context, the relative difficulty [End Page 189] changing with each instrument. This section expands beyond these challenges of identity and outlines the praxes used by actor-musicians in relationship to the audience and the text. Harrison states that since the actor and audience are in a semi-contractual relationship with certain conditioned responses, the audience accepts the conventions of a given performance, including that of the actor-musician (48). As Harrison further outlines theory, he touches on: instruments as representational objects or even characters; music rehearsals as character exploration; the dual and triple roles of actor, musician, and arranger or musical supervisor; ensemble acting; and more. He includes context for the drastic differences between the actor-musician scene in the United States versus the United Kingdom, and suggests that the phenomenon in Britain is more than simply actors adding a specialized skill to their resumes, but instead that the actor-musician is a new kind of performer. In his discussion of training methodology, Harrison includes a large collection of exercises that put the theory and method into practice for students and...

The acoustics of rooms for music rehearsal and performance—The Norwegian approach

Each week, local music groups in Norway use more than 10,000 rooms for rehearsal and concert; many of the rooms are in schools. The size of the rooms vary from under 100 m3 to over 10,000 m3. The users cover a broad variety of music ensembles, mostly wind bands, choirs, and other amateur ensembles. Since 2009, the Norwegian Council for Music Organizations («Norsk musikkråd») has completed more than 500 room acoustical measurement reports on rooms used for rehearsal and concert. The measurements include reverberation time, the strength parameter G, and background noise. All the reports are made available online in a Google Map. The analysis shows that 85% of the rooms do not comply with the Norwegian Standard NS 8178:2014 and are evaluated more or less unsuitable for the purpose for acoustical reasons. The important criteria are volume, room dimensions, reverberation, acoustic treatment of surfaces, and background noise. In particular, the importance of volume is clearly documented. Analysis of room strength indicates that this also is an essential factor for this type of rooms. The systematic collection of acoustic reports gives important background for recommendations on how to build or refurbish rooms for music in schools and cultural buildings.

Problems in the Designing of Acoustic Properties of Musical Rehearsals

Content of the post is to describe the creation of building structures, typology, internal environment, and internal wall coverings music rehearsal for optimal acoustic performance. One of the aspects of its internal environment is reverberation time. For this variable there are several methods of calculation. Article gives an indication of how the music was the laboratory building in the center of the music created and what problems the authors in its proposal met. Article contents and solving spatial and building acoustics model music musical rehearsal building downtown. Calculation fully respects Slovak standards valid for the design of room acoustics, as well as hygiene regulations on noise pollution. Acoustically treated room should serve as a laboratory for musical performance. If the building is more proof is needed to solve the sound insulation (building acoustics) that these areas do not interfere with each other. In addressing acoustics of testing can’t talk about bad or good acoustics, but rather on the season and out of corresponding with room acoustics, respectively, with activities in it.

Energy analysis of techniques and materials used in sound insulation of music rehearsal rooms

En este proyecto se realizó un análisis acústico y de energía de los materiales comúnmente utilizados para el aislamiento acústico de las salas de ensayo de música. El objetivo principal fue identificar el impacto en las ganancias de calor debido al aislamiento de la habitación, y, por lo tanto, el aumento resultante de las necesidades de energía de aire acondicionado. El método consistió primero en la construcción de un modelo 3D del actual edificio del College of Music (COM) de la Universidad de San Francisco. Este modelo se realizó en Design Builder. Una vez construido el caso base, se desarrolló un nuevo modelo con una solución de aislamiento acústico eficaz que se denominó “simple”. La solución consistió en materiales de aislamiento comunes, de manera que se obtuvo un nuevo requerimiento de energía para la refrigeración, diferentes de la del caso base. Después se realizó otro modelo con una solución que se denominó “compleja” en el que, además de materiales de aislamiento de sonido, se implementó técnicas modernas y elementos mecánicos que eliminan el impacto de ruido y vibraciones. Se obtuvo un nuevo requisito de energía de aire acondicionado, diferente de la del caso base. Una vez que se obtuvieron los diferentes requerimientos de energía, se compararon y finalmente se demostró que aunque la solución “compleja” para el aislamiento acústico implicó una mayor masa térmica esto fue compensado por un coeficiente global de transferencia de calor más alta; por lo tanto, no hay aumento considerable de consumo de energía de aire acondicionado. Como resultado, los costos operativos debido al consumo de energía del aire acondicionado serán los mismos para ambas soluciones.

Low-cost redesign of a music rehearsal space for high school ensembles

This presentation describes the redesign of an existing multi-purpose practice room used by high school concert bands, drumlines, and choral groups. Resource and cost restrictions limited the redesign and evaluation process for surface finishes only. The existing space had minimal early reflections and reverberation due to copious amounts of thick acoustic wall panels, resulting in a dead sound for choral and band use. The biggest challenge was to reposition the wall panels by distributing them in a checkerboard pattern, thereby balancing them with the reflective surfaces of the painted cinderblock underneath. In addition, one third of the absorptive suspended ceiling tile was replaced with 5/8” gypsum panels, and one third of the ceiling tile was removed altogether in order to couple the interstitial space above the suspended ceiling and increase the effective volume of the space. Odeon was used to create auralizations of various configurations by convolving anechoic recordings of a snare drum with the c...

Doing (things with) sounds: introduction to the special issue

This special issue aims at analyzing music as a site of social semiosis, i.e., at investigating the manifold ways in which music is constituted as a socially shared event. The papers collected here follow three main threads, considered as central aspects of music making: studying the kind of coordination and participation required to make music together; looking at the semiotic resources employed by musicians to construct their roles in interaction; examining the relationship between language and music. A variety of perspectives is adopted, ranging from social semiotics to conversation analysis, anthropology, multimodal analysis, and critical discourse analysis. Such a variety is also reflected in the musical traditions – Western art music, jazz, gospel, church hymns, pop music – and in the settings under examination, which comprise instructional activities like musical classes and rehearsals, as well as ordinary conversations and written accounts of musicians' biographies. Issues of epistemicity and authority, intersubjectivity, correction of musical action, solidarity, and ideology are thereby addressed. The issue thus aims at exploring the richness and complexity of music making as a social practice, and documents how the integration of different disciplinary perspectives can offer fruitful insights on music as a domain of sociality which lies at the intersection of aurality and writing, norm and creativity, individuality and collectiveness.

Singing in “another” language: how pronunciation matters in the organisation of choral rehearsals

In this paper, I analyse the rehearsals of a choir and focus on sequences during which participants correct and practise the pronunciation of an item. In order to sing in a choir, singers orient both to musical relevancies (such as melody, pitch and rhythm) and to the linguistic features of the words they sing (such as articulation of consonants or vowels, cutting of the syllables, accent): these features are fundamental to singing and can be the object of correction. I hereby take into consideration “second language” singing and show that, during this activity, the correction of a word pronunciation can be initiated and realised either by the director or by the singers themselves. I analyse the structure of these sequences and show their implication for the organisation of the activity and for the participatory dynamics of the rehearsals. Based on the video-recordings of the rehearsals of the choir of a music school, my analyses take into account both the audible and visible resources participants orient to; they thus contribute to a conversation analytical and multimodal perspective on the interactional and institutional activity of music rehearsals.

Rehearsal Characteristics of “Superior” Band Directors

The purpose of this study was to investigate the rehearsal characteristics of “superior” middle and high school band directors. A total of 131 respondents from Florida, Kentucky, and North Carolina who received a “superior” rating for 4 out of the past 5 years, completed an open-ended essay question online asking them to describe which aspects and/or elements they considered to be the most important during their music rehearsal. Using a previously established descriptive approach consisting of qualitative coding techniques, responses were analyzed and placed into a taxonomic structure according to similar themes that emerged from the data. Results from the 792 comments listed indicate that both middle and high school directors spend the most time working on “Music Fundamentals,” with “Tone Quality/Production” listed as the most frequent response for both groups. Additionally, directors placed importance on “Conductor/Teacher Behaviors,” “Teaching Techniques,” “Classroom Environment/Behavior,” “Use of Specific Warm-ups to Teach,” “Selecting Literature,” and “Good Relations with Students.”

Scheduling a music rehearsal problem with unequal music piece length

This paper studies a music rehearsal scheduling where music pieces require different sets of players and different rehearsal durations. The rehearsal is arranged in multiple days. The players need to show up only on the day that the pieces they play are scheduled. They must show up before the first piece they involve starts and leave after the last one ends. The objectives are to assign music pieces to the rehearsal days to minimize the total number of days that all players have to show up and sequence the music pieces within each day to minimize the total waiting time of the players. We propose a 2-stage methodology to schedule music pieces, which is a combination of a cell formation technique and an integer-programming model. From 77 test problems, the solutions from the proposed method are as good as the optimal solutions from MIP models and are better than the best founds in all the test problems. The computational time is also significantly less.

Internet rooms from internet audio

Music rehearsal and concert performance at a distance over long-haul optical fiber is a reality because of expanding network capacity to support low-latency, uncompressed audio streaming. Multichannel sound exchanged across the globe in real time creates “rooms” for synchronous performance. Nearby connections work well and musicians feel like they are playing together in the same room. Larger, continental-size, distances remain a challenge because of transmission delay and seemingly subtle but perceptually important cues which are in conflict with qualities expected of natural rooms. Establishing plausible, room-like reverberation between the endpoints helps mitigate these difficulties and expand the distance across which remotely located musicians perform together comfortably. The paper presents a working implementation for distributed reverberation and qualitative evaluations of reverberated versus non-reverberated conditions over the same long-haul connection.

Forte Fortissimo for Amateur Musicians: No Effect on Otoacoustic Emissions

Many amateur musicians are likely to be exposed to high sound levels during rehearsals. Measuring otoacoustic emissions (OAE) is an objective technique to assess hearing ability and can be used as an early predictor of hearing loss. This study aimed to record sound levels at an amateur brass band rehearsal and to examine the cochlear function of the musicians by evaluating distortion product (DP) OAE amplitudes before and after sound exposure. Twenty-four brass band musicians and 10 office workers were examined with personal noise measurements and DPOAE tests before and after a music rehearsal or one office workday, respectively. The sound levels in the brass band ranged from 92 to 100 dBA, LaEQ 96 dBA. However, the amateur brass band members had no change in DPOAEs after this exposure compared to pre-exposure levels and compared to office workers.