Music Research Research Articles

Life-history in musical research. Leo Brouwer: A case study

The life-history method as a scientific research method in music gains prominence in the twentieth century and grows even more in the present. Its usefulness is appreciated when writing about referent characters in artistic practices for the human being, cultural exchanges, study of personalities, and their effects in the training of new generations of musicians, among others. This method motivated this work, which had as an objective to elucidate the steps that constituted the methodological strategy of application of life-history in musical research, rooted in a study of the artistic output of Leo Brouwer. From a predominantly qualitative approach, interviews and an analysis of documents were combined, which made possible a reflection on the life- history method and its implementation in music research.

Inheritance and Innovation of National Music Culture in Music Education

In the context of globalization, national music culture has become the focus of academic circles. How to protect, inherit and innovate the excellent national music culture is an important problem facing the current music education theory and practice research. This study argues that music education needs to keep a proper balance between “globalization” and “localization”, reasonably use the teaching materials of national music, and maintain the “root” and “uniqueness” of national culture, so as to better inherit and innovate national music culture. Thus, in this study, based on the summary of the concept of national music, the integrated teaching method of “teaching-practice-scientific research” is put forward from the perspective of inheritance, and the idea of integrating international music teaching method and national music culture is proposed from the perspective of innovation.

Encouraging Guidelines in Neuromusicological Research Regarding Classical Music’s Usage in Sonic Therapy - When Science Becomes Magic

"In systematic musicology as a branch of music psychology we found an intriguing orientation called cognitive neuroscience of music, or neuromusicology. It studies the function of the brain in music processing, the way music perception and production manifests in brain. Compared to other analytical models of music cognition, the mapping of the brain’s functioning serves to examine the outcome of music rather than its process, and as the music therapy methods discussed reflect, most approaches follow this ontological direction. As recent scientific researches shows, the brain mapping technique differentiates moment of listening, playing classical music or improvising. In the light of the research findings, our main focus was to get to know and understand how our musical brains functions during classical music audition so we could argue from a scientific approach not only the existing therapeutic methods used in music therapy, but the perception of classical music in the present. In the master class “Dialogue of the Arts”, we explore with our students in all grades the possible links between music and other artistic and scientific disciplines. One of the most exciting aspects of this is music and brain research, an incredibly fast-developing field whose results could reinforce the place and role of classical music in contemporary society, reinforcing existing broad-based promotion of classical music education (Kodály, El sistema etc.) Keywords: music cognition, neuromusicology, sonic therapy, classical music, models of therapy. "

Desain Penelitian Musik di Era Digital (Sebuah Tinjauan Studi Literatur)

This article seeks to investigate various literatures that address the issue of music research methodology, discussed in the case of Indonesia. The main background in writing is a lack of sources on music research methods. Especially in the digital age, when there is an abundance of data. A separate investigation is required into the procedures for conducting research, managing data, and understanding the research methods to be used. This article is a review of the literature that employs the exposition method to present general and specific concepts from previous research. The sources used include the outcomes of debates about art and music research. Music research concepts are discussed and reviewed in reference materials, resulting in a new understanding of the subject. The aim is to expand conceptual ideas about music research paradigms and their relevance in the digital age. The principles of art and music research methodology are addressed. Following that, we'll talk about how to design music research in the digital age. The result suggest, the rapid technological advancements are forcing music researchers to revise how data is collected and validated. Data from the internet is no longer used as a complement, but rather as the primary source of capital for digital-based music research design. The components of research in a coherent and logistical way to find answers to research problems are the focus of music research design in the digital age. Make use of relevant apps and websites, as well as big data.

Evaluating the Vocal Music Teaching Using Backpropagation Neural Network

The vocal music teaching for evaluating performers is affected by multiple factors. Evaluators are greatly influenced by subjective factors in scoring outputs. The backpropagation (BP) neural network provides a novel technology that can theoretically simulate any nonlinear continuous function within a certain accuracy range. The backpropagation neural network is composed of adaptive feedforward learning network that is widely used in artificial intelligence (AI). In addition, the backpropagation neural network can simulate the nonlinear mapping composed of various factors. The novelty of the neural network is that it can model the nonlinear process without knowing the cause of the data, which can overcome the human subjective arbitrariness and make the evaluation outcomes. Furthermore, accurate and effective scoring systems can be designed using neural networks. In this paper, we establish a vocal music evaluation research system in order to objectivize each vocal music teaching evaluation index. To do so, we use the score vector as the input and obtain a reasonable and objective output score through the backpropagation neural network. Moreover, according to the characteristics of the backpropagation neural network, the factors of vocal music teaching evaluation are analyzed, and a backpropagation neural network model for vocal music teaching evaluation and evaluation is constructed. The experimental outcomes demonstrate that the trained backpropagation network can simulate a stable vocal music teaching evaluation research system. Furthermore, we observed that the backpropagation neural network can be well utilized for vocal music teaching evaluation research.

Atonal Music as a Model for Investigating Exploratory Behavior.

Atonal music is often characterized by low predictability stemming from the absence of tonal or metrical hierarchies. In contrast, Western tonal music exhibits intrinsic predictability due to its hierarchical structure and therefore, offers a directly accessible predictive model to the listener. In consequence, a specific challenge of atonal music is that listeners must generate a variety of new predictive models. Listeners must not only refrain from applying available tonal models to the heard music, but they must also search for statistical regularities and build new rules that may be related to musical properties other than pitch, such as timbre or dynamics. In this article, we propose that the generation of such new predictive models and the aesthetic experience of atonal music are characterized by internal states related to exploration. This is a behavior well characterized in behavioral neuroscience as fulfilling an innate drive to reduce uncertainty but which has received little attention in empirical music research. We support our proposal with emerging evidence that the hedonic value is associated with the recognition of patterns in low-predictability sound sequences and that atonal music elicits distinct behavioral responses in listeners. We end by outlining new research avenues that might both deepen our understanding of the aesthetic experience of atonal music in particular, and reveal core qualities of the aesthetic experience in general.

Kansanmusiikin keruu ja kansallinen katse

Folk Music Collecting and the National Gaze: The Documentation Work of Erkki Ala-Könni During the Second Republic of Finland, 1941–1974
 Outi Valo’s doctoral dissertation explores the ideologies and guiding principles for the collection of traditional folk music in Finland from the beginning of the twentieth century until the 1970s. It focuses on the work of folk music scholar and collector Erkki Ala-Könni (1911–1996), who was a leading authority on Finnish folk music research. It takes its analytical stance from the concept of methodological nationalism, adopting a national gaze to scrutinise how the concept of Finnish folk music was constructed. The analysis concentrates on how nation-building and a national gaze guided data collection practices and what characteristics of methodological nationalism were involved in the collection of archive materials in Finland.

‘The Victim of Death-Rays from Mars’: An Evaluation of ‘gap-filling’ in Tchaikovsky Biographies

This article assesses the perils of biography through two contentious events in the life of nineteenth-century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–93). Investigations into the historical often mandate that biographers ‘fill the gap’ in the narratives they are to construct when met with an absence of unequivocal traces, thus rendering the prized truth rather elusive. This has been particularly so for Tchaikovsky whose death – the first of the events studied in this article – has sparked an immediate debate that remains unabated in modern-day music research. The second exploration concerns the sudden cessation of Tchaikovsky’s patron Nadezhda von Meck which had implications for biographers’ narrative rendering of the relationship dynamics between composer and patron. Rather than seeking to establish the ‘truth’, this article concerns itself with the function that the events serve in the overarching narrative presented by the numerous biographers.

Habilidades musicales y cognitivas en niños/as de entornos desfavorecidos

Human beings are born with several abilities which are amenable to change. A growing number of studies have focused on the relations between musical and cognitive abilities but research with children from disadvantaged communities is scarce. This study explored the relations between musical and cognitive abilities in disadvantaged children. Participants were 169 children from deprived neighborhoods, attending the second year of primary education in public schools that do not offer music education. Children’s musical abilities (perception) were measured with the Melody, Rhythm, and Memory tests of Montreal Battery for the Evaluation of Musical Abilities and their cognitive abilities, with five WISC-III subtests (Similarities, Vocabulary, Cubes, Picture Arrangement, and Digits). Parental level of education was obtained from a questionnaire on the socio-economic status of children’s families. Results revealed (1) few and weak correlations between musical and cognitive abilities; (2) stronger correlations of Socioeconomic Status (SES) with cognitive than with musical abilities; (3) digit span predicts all musical abilities; 4) a clear factorial distinction between musical and cognitive abilities. Overall, results suggest that disadvantaged children’s musical and cognitive abilities, as measured by the present instruments, are partly independent regarding processing components.

Music, Religion and Health; A Scientific Perspective on the Origin of Our Relationship to Music

Why do we react emotionally to music? Does music appreciation have an adaptive value? What is the role of music in spiritual and healing practices? Music is a fascinating area of research for evolutionary theory, psychological development, and emotional perception and elicitation. It is a highly valued feature of all known living cultures and societies, pervading many aspects of daily and devotional life and playing many roles. The question that still lingers among music researchers however is why is this so. This paper will discuss the influence of music on our emotional life, psychological wellbeing, spiritual practices and finally on physiological processes present in our body. The aim is to examine the origin of our relationship to music through the mentioned perspectives and to attempt to link the various theoretical perspectives on this subject across two major domains; health and spirituality.

Analysis of Sentiment and Personalised Recommendation in Musical Performance.

Music performance research is a comprehensive study of aspects such as emotional analysis and personalisation in music performance, which help to add richness and creativity to the art of music performance. The labels in this paper in collaborative annotation contain rich personalised descriptive information as well as item content information and can therefore be used to help provide better recommendations. The algorithm is based on bipartite graph node structure similarity and restarted random wandering. It analyses the connection between users, items, and tags in the music social network, firstly constructs the adjacency relationship between music and tags, obtains the music recommendation list and indirectly associated music collection, then fuses the results according to the proposed algorithm, and reorders them to obtain the final recommendation list, thus realising the personalised music recommendation algorithm. The experiments show that the proposed method can meet the personalised demand of users for music on this dataset.

Music Research Data Management – by Amy S. Jackson and Sean Luyk (Book)

CAML Review is published three times per year. It is concerned with music and music materials and strives to promote a better understanding of the cultural importance of music libraries, archives and documentation centres locally, regionally and nationally.

Contributors’ Notes

Contributors’ Notes

방탄소년단 앨범 시리즈에 표현된 순수 욕망을 찾는 과정 - 「LOVE YOURSELF」 시리즈를 중심으로 -

This paper is studied for the purpose of exploring how to interpret popular music from a new perspective. For this purpose, this paper analyzes the lyrics and video expressions in BTS’s「LOVE YOURSELF」series based on the theory of pure desire in Lacan’s psychoanalysis. Pure desire refers to the inherent desire embodied in the form of life that exists to deviate from being equal to others, which is what Lacan says in the ethics of desire. The ethics of desire is a theory that informs the imperfections inherent in the universality or rationality based on our lives. The research method is to conduct a qualitative study to analyze the music video of 「LOVE YOURSELF」 based on the theory of pure desire shown in Lacan’s 『Seminar 7: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis』. Through the meaning inherent in the song lyrics of 「LOVE YOURSELF」, this paper figures out the correlation between the album trilogy and Lacan’s Imaginary Stage, Symbolic Order, and Real Order and analyzes the meaning of pure desire. The necessity of this study is to show that a certain area of popular music aims for pure desire, and suggest that popular music researchers pay more attention to pure desire.

Music students’ experienced workload in higher education: A systematic review and recommendations for good practice

While there is extensive research on student workload in higher education, research-based findings relating to music students’ workloads are, to a great extent, lacking. In this study, we aim to review the literature systematically (a) to identify the factors that have an impact on students’ experiences of workload ( experienced workload) and (b) to better understand music students’ experiences of their workloads in relation to their studies. The overall aim is to offer recommendations for students, teachers, administrators, and student health and well-being services as to how to deal with music students’ workload. We conducted a systematic search of literature in 23 electronic databases and 19 music research journals following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews guidelines. Eligibility criteria consisted of design, sample, phenomenon of interest, evaluation, and type of research. Twenty-nine qualitative, quantitative, and multistrategy studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Data were extracted and the quality of the studies was appraised. Extended meta-ethnography was used to create a synthesis revealing specific themes offering recommendations for good practice to (a) increase music students’ ability to cope with their workload, (b) provide tools for teachers to support music students to manage and cope with workload, and (c) develop learner-centered environments in higher music education. In addition to presenting recommendations for good practice, we conclude that more research using high-quality designs is needed to investigate music students’ discipline-specific experienced workload.

Double Linear Transformer for Background Music Generation from Videos

Many music generation research works have achieved effective performance, while rarely combining music with given videos. We propose a model with two linear Transformers to generate background music according to a given video. To enhance the melodic quality of the generated music, we firstly input note-related and rhythm-related music features separately into each Transformer network. In particular, we pay attention to the connection and the independence of music features. Then, in order to generate the music that matches the given video, the current state-of-the-art cross-modal inference method is set up to establish the relationship between visual mode and sound mode. Subjective and objective experiment indicate that the generated background music matches the video well and is also melodious.

Idiosyncratic Audio Feedback Networks for Music Creation

This article presents practical and artistic contributions to the field of computer music systems based on audio feedback networks. The ideas that oriented the conception of two digital music instruments and examples of their use in the author's music practice are discussed. The article begins with a general conceptualization of feedback systems as well as a brief historical review of its use in experimental music. Later, a more specific contextualization of its application in recent computer music research and artwork is made, and two contributions are presented: the first is a network of cross-modulated sinusoidal oscillators (by frequency modulation), and the second is a network of algorithms for playing and transforming pre-recorded sound samples. In conclusion, examples of the artistic usage of the described systems to the creation of electroacoustic music are discussed.

Idiosyncratic Audio Feedback Networks for Music Creation

This article presents practical and artistic contributions to the field of computer music systems based on audio feedback networks. The ideas that oriented the conception of two digital music instruments and examples of their use in the author's music practice are discussed. The article begins with a general conceptualization of feedback systems as well as a brief historical review of its use in experimental music. Later, a more specific contextualization of its application in recent computer music research and artwork is made, and two contributions are presented: the first is a network of cross-modulated sinusoidal oscillators (by frequency modulation), and the second is a network of algorithms for playing and transforming pre-recorded sound samples. In conclusion, examples of the artistic usage of the described systems to the creation of electroacoustic music are discussed.

Mediale Inszenierung geteilter Autor*innenschaften: Pauline Viardot-Garcìas Rollenporträts als Orphée (Paris, Disdéri, 1859)

AbstractThe methodology and subject matter of this essay venture into the disciplinary borderlands of musicology. Taking Disdéri’s carte-de-visite portraits of the singer Pauline Viardot-Garcìa as a starting point, it attempts to broaden the notion of of the author for a historical period that quintessentially stood for the establishment of the concept of genius and thus for a definition and limitation of authorship as individual and singular. The article combines an interdisciplinary approach by considering image and media theory, theories of art and its practices, alongside historical musicological methods. Its theoretical perspective is situated at the intersection of performativity and media theory via the concepts of the ›messenger figure‹ (Botenfigur) and the ›reading of traces‹ (Spurenlesen) both according to Krämer, thus opening up a historical resonance space for contemporary music practices. As a consequence, the re-perspectivization goes beyond the basic understanding that multiple authorships are at work in every form of sounding music. Instead, it fixes diverse facets of the term authorship on a concrete example and reframes them methodologically. Thus, as a basis for a systematic generalization in music research, a model is proposed that makes medial transitions in performatively negotiated authorships describable, categorizable, and at the same time historicizable. With these interdisciplinary concerns in mind, Viardot-Garcìa’s photographic portraits in her role as Orphée in Gluck’s opera of the same name from 1859 appear to have been instrumentalized in a multilayered representational way: as images standing for a performance, as a photographic image reminiscent of a painting, as a depiction of classical Greek costume that takes on meaning for the present, as the visual standing in for the acoustic, as a depiction of a female singer embodying a man, and finally also of a title role standing in for an opera as a whole. How exactly these relations of representation are to be grasped – both in the French Gluck opera revival and in the photographic images discussed – has not yet been explored in depth. To attempt to entangle all these meanings is not motivated by trying to identify the ›actual‹ portions of the musical adaptations made by different persons to Gluck’s opera in the course of its 1859 revivals. Rather, this new perspective on the carte-de-visite photographs is intended to outline Viardot-Garcìa’s figure with the help of the numerous functions the singer assumed in the production. The essay thus looks at a blind spot that is still dominant in music research, namely the question of the methodological framing of performative authorship in historical perspective. It questions the critical concepts of ›messenger figure‹ and of the ›reading of traces‹ not only for their suitability to grasp the basic questions of the example dealt with in the text, but also for their potential for generalization.

Diminishing Dreams

Diminishing Dreams