Musical Scale Research Articles

Tuning Features of Chinese Folk Song Singing: A Case Study of Hua'er Music

The learning and teaching of different singing styles, such as operatic and Chinese folk singing, was often found to be very challenging in professional music education because of the complexity of varied musical properties and vocalizations. By studying the acoustical and musical parameters of the singing voice, this study identified distinctive tuning characteristics of a particular folk music in China-Hua'er music-to inform the ineffective folk singing practices, which were hampered by the neglect of inherent tuning issues in music. Thirteen unaccompanied folk song examples from four folk singers were digitally audio recorded in a sound studio. Using an analyzing toolkit consisting of Praat, PeakFit, and MS Excel, the fundamental frequencies (F0) of these song examples were extracted into sets of "anchor pitches" mostly used, which were further divided into 253 F0 clusters. The interval structures of anchor pitches within each song were analyzed and then compared across 13 examples providing parameters that indicate the tuning preference of this particular singing style. The data analyses demonstrated that all singers used a tuning pattern consisting of five major anchor pitches suggesting a nonequal-tempered bias in singing. This partly verified the pentatonic scale proposed in previous empirical research but also argued a potential misunderstanding of the studied folk music scale that failed to take intrinsic tuning issues into consideration. This study suggests that, in professional music training, any tuning strategy should be considered in terms of the reference pitch and likely tuning systems. Any accompanying instruments would need to be tuned to match the underlying tuning bias.

The Heritage Central Asian Turkish Music Culture Left to Anatolian Music Culture: Similar Elements in Central Asian-anatolian Turkish Music Cultures

In this research, it is aimed to present the elements which are thought to be left as a musical cultural heritage by Central Asia to Anatolian Turkish music culture within the context of similarities among the musical cultures shaped in the respective geography. It can be observed that Turkish music, which gained a new structure and identity, preserved the effects of Central Asia and brought them to the present despite the various musical culture elements it encountered in Anatolia. It can be noted that some similar elements which were in a sense conveyed as “a musical cultural heritage” from Central Asian Turkish music culture to Anatolian Turkish music culture and included in this origin served as a model in the context of music for acculturation between Central Asia and Anatolia. It is possible to list these similar elements as follows: “The Minstrelsy tradition”, the origin of which dates back to pre-Islamic period in the Central Asia and the name and function of which changed in Anatolian territories and which is in a sense a different form of Shamanism tradition; Rhythm similarities in musics; Modes as a method of processing musical scales in Turkish music system, their names and use; Musical instruments and similarities encountered in the names and structures of the instruments.

Validation of the Individual and Community Empowerment Inventory: A Measure of Rap Music Engagement among First-Year College Students

Amid robust debates about the impact of music on the lives of young people, empirically validated measures of music engagement are absent. The present study builds on the construction of the Individual and Community Empowerment (ICE) inventory, a measure to capture different types of empowerment and different types of risk potential from rap music engagement. The scientific intent of the scale development and the present validation study was to test the simultaneous presence of empowerment and risk associated with music engagement and its application to the individual and community. A unique sample existed for the present study in comparison to the original, with the bulk of respondents being first-year college students and White. Results of the present study suggest that the ICE inventory is an effective and comparative measure of risk and empowerment. Major findings about the instrument’s utility were replicated, but results were divergent from original research on certain demographic trends with respect to gender, age, and race/ethnicity. Empowering and risky music engagement scale means were higher among male and younger respondents. White respondents had significantly lower mean scores than all other groups on empowerment scales, and African Americans had lower scores on the individual risk scale than other groups. Each result suggests the need for additional research. The validation of the ICE inventory offers promise for helping to collect, organize, and interpret new data on associations between music engagement and desirable health and well-being outcomes.

Pal(l)adian Arithmetic as Revealed in the Palazzo Della Torre, Verona

Room ratios in Palladio’s design for the Palazzo Della Torre mostly ignore his own canonical recommendations and none of the rooms exemplify his rules for room heights. Proportionately, however, the scheme, in plan and elevation, is a brilliant celebration of the cube root, just three years after Cardano published the solution to the cubic equation using methods passed to him by Tartaglia. Daniele Barbaro, Tartaglia and Cardano were all known to each other, and it seems most likely that Palladio would have taken a personal interest in the matter. The cube root that underpins the proportional scheme is Delian, that is, the cube root of 2 cited in Vitruvius. Palladio derives other roots of 2 in anticipation of the arithmetics which emerged in the early seventeenth century for the equal temperament musical scale. Of course, it must be understood that only rational convergents to the cube root of 2 are used. The relationship of room plan and elevation ratios in Palazzo Della Torre is illustrated by using the technique shown in Barbaro La Practica della Perspecttiva in which three-dimensional objects are unfolded to make two-dimensional “nets”, but figures are not used.

Measuring Supportive Music and Imagery Interventions: The Development of the Music Therapy Self-Rating Scale.

Previous research has demonstrated modest benefits from music-based interventions, specifically music and imagery interventions, during cancer care. However, little attention has been paid to measuring the benefits of music-based interventions using measurement instruments specifically designed to account for the multidimensional nature of music-imagery experiences. The purpose of this study was to describe the development of, and psychometrically evaluate, the Music Therapy Self-Rating Scale (MTSRS) as a measure for cancer patients engaged in supportive music and imagery interventions. An exploratory factor analysis using baseline data from 76 patients who consented to participate in a music-based intervention study during chemotherapy. Factor analysis of 14 items revealed four domains: Awareness of Body, Emotionally Focused, Personal Resources, and Treatment Specific. Internal reliability was excellent (Cronbach alphas ranging from 0.75 to 0.88) and construct and divergent-discriminant validity supported. The MTSRS is a psychometrically sound, brief instrument that captures essential elements of patient experience during music and imagery interventions.

Music Performance Anxiety Scale for High School Students: Validity and Reliability Study

This study aims to develop a Music Performance Anxiety Scale (MPAS) for high school students, and to conduct a validity and reliability study. In this respect, a scale will be developed to be used for high school students (adolescents), and differences between the genders will be examined. The study was conducted on 546 high school students. Of these students, 185 (33.9%) were male, 361 (66.1%) were female, and the average age was 16.81 with the ages ranging from 15 to 20. Correlational values of the scale items among themselves and with item totals were examined as a preliminary analysis. As a result of the EFA’s principal components technique, promax rotation technique and the analyses, a construct with three factors explaining a total of 42.74% of the total variance was attained. The structure attained was validated by CFA, and fit indices were found to be within the acceptance interval. In the reliability study, Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient was calculated as .86 for the entire scale, 27% for the lower-upper group comparison and test-retest analyses were conducted. The t-test was performed to attain the difference between genders. As a result of the study, a valid and reliable scale was seen to have been developed and a difference between the genders was apparent.

Students’ Attitudes towards Individual Musical Instrument Courses in Music Education Graduate Programs in Turkey

The Individual Musical Instrument course is a compulsory part of the curriculum, in the Music Education Departments of universities in Turkey. The main purpose of the course is to ensure that each student is able to play a musical instrument and, use the instrument once they become music teachers. This study aims to determine the attitudes of students enrolled in the Music Education Department towards the course within the program. Participants included 334 students studying Music Education at four different Universities in Turkey. The study adopted the “Attitudes towards Individual Musical Instrument Course Scale” (Topoğlu & Erden,2012). No statistically significant difference in students’ attitude towards the course was identified related to gender, the type of high schools they graduated and the total period of education they received. In contrast, a statistically significant difference in students’ attitudes was identified related to grade levels, the types of instruments they learned, and the time allocated each day for practice.

Therapeutic Acupunctural Resonance: The Original Research

The Chinese managed to interpret not only the natural rhythms of cosmic and seasonal cycles but the chrono-biological rhythms present in human body. What since long ago was merely taken to be a pre-scientific tradition has currently become a tangible reality. Nowadays, the specific frequencies pulsating along each meridian can be measured in hertz—according to its own resonance—as Acupuncture determined thousands of years ago. Their effort to establish a taxonomic classification of all environmental and human phenomena is closely related to Mathematics propositions of Euclid Five Regular Polyhedra, in order to consolidate the axiomatic-deductive model which we can now relate to the Chinese Theory of the Five Elements and their constant changes. As presented in OMICS Group Traditional Medicine-2015 Conference in Birmingham, it could be also proved that there also exists an inescapable relationship between Pythagoras and the Mathematical foundation of the Pentatonic Chinese Musical Scale. A simple way to incorporate the ideal frequency rhythm for each channel to correct its unbalanced situation is to insert said frequencies through the needles, by way of “antennae”, restructuring the meridian’s resonance affected and through it, of the Element it belongs to. Therapeutic Acupunctural Resonance therefore finds effective application when pins are used as “resonators”, putting the frequency of said Element of the channel in line, so that they transmit by means of punctures pure vibratory patterns which shall recondition the Qi flow frequency which has been altered by the Chinese syndrome diagnosed to be treated.

Modeling Melody Similarity Using Music Synthesis and Perception

Melody similarity in music is a perception of listeners based on cognitive method. Thus, the algorithms should be based on perceptually oriented computational model. We have used computer generated synthesized tune of popular song and its variations to understand similarity notion. We have generated variations of a tune by changing musical scale or relative duration of notes or notes itself and combination of them. The proposed approach to calculate similarity relationship between two tunes will be useful to model the melody similarity notion for various applications such as QBH (Query by humming), music classification and retrieval, music plagiarism etc.

Measuring the Sources of Self-Efficacy Among Secondary School Music Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the four sources of self-efficacy in music performance and examine responses from the Music Performance Self-Efficacy Scale (MPSES). Participants ( N = 290) were middle and high school music students from 10 schools in two regions of the United States. Questions included the following: (1) How much influence does each source have on self-efficacy? (2) Are there differences among band, chorus, and string students? (3) Are there differences between middle and high school students? (4) Does music aptitude predict self-efficacy, and (5) Does evidence support the MPSES as a valid and reliable scale? Results indicated that mastery experience exerted the strongest influence, no differences were found among ensemble types or grade levels, and music aptitude scores predicted modest increases in self-efficacy, β = .16 (.07). Examination of test content, response process, internal structure, and relationships with other variables provided evidence of validity, while internal consistency and test-retest values provided evidence of reliability. Recommendations for further research included examining the development of self-efficacy at different ages, measuring the relationships between the sources of self-efficacy and music achievement, and using the MPSES to assist in the investigations of other psychological constructs, such as self-identity and motivation.

Automatic processing of abstract musical tonality.

Music perception builds on expectancy in harmony, melody, and rhythm. Neural responses to the violations of such expectations are observed in event-related potentials (ERPs) measured using electroencephalography. Most previous ERP studies demonstrating sensitivity to musical violations used stimuli that were temporally regular and musically structured, with less-frequent deviant events that differed from a specific expectation in some feature such as pitch, harmony, or rhythm. Here, we asked whether expectancies about Western musical scale are strong enough to elicit ERP deviance components. Specifically, we explored whether pitches inconsistent with an established scale context elicit deviant components even though equally rare pitches that fit into the established context do not, and even when their timing is unpredictable. We used Markov chains to create temporally irregular pseudo-random sequences of notes chosen from one of two diatonic scales. The Markov pitch-transition probabilities resulted in sequences that favored notes within the scale, but that lacked clear melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic structure. At the random positions, the sequence contained probe tones that were either within the established scale or were out of key. Our subjects ignored the note sequences, watching a self-selected silent movie with subtitles. Compared to the in-key probes, the out-of-key probes elicited a significantly larger P2 ERP component. Results show that random note sequences establish expectations of the “first-order” statistical property of musical key, even in listeners not actively monitoring the sequences.

Spectrographic analysis of the effect of vocal warm-up on the voice of choir girls

Purpose To analyse the immediate effect of a vocal warm-up program on children that sang in a choir by means of spectrographic analysis. Methods Experimental study consisting of 14 girls from an amateur children’s choir, aged 9 to 12 years. Acoustic spectrographic analyses were performed before and after a specific vocal warm-up program, consisting of a hierarchical sequence of body exercises, respiratory and articulation training, vocal exercises, ascending and descending musical scales and facilitating sounds. The speech material for spectrographic analysis was the sustained /Ɛ:/ vowel, pre and post warm-up program. The selected acoustic parameters were instability of trace, noise at low and high frequencies, frequency bifurcation, harmonics series, presence of a hard vocal attack, pitch and voice breaks, and mean fundamental frequency. Results No significant differences were found regarding the effect of the vocal warm-up when pre and post data were compared. However, there was a negative correlation between the level of harmonics and noise in the high frequencies post warm-up. Conclusion The vocal warm-up program implemented for children that sang in choirs produced a richer acoustic spectrum that may indicate enhanced glottic closure or vocal tract adjustment.

Musical Emotions Predicted by Feelings of Entrainment

In our study, two groups of participants (n = 61 and n = 58) listened to nine pieces for solo violin and rated how they felt along an affect dimension and along the nine Geneva Emotional Music Scale dimensions. After each piece, they completed a 12-item questionnaire corresponding to subjective entrainment reports. A factorial analysis of this Musical Entrainment Questionnaire revealed a two-factor solution, with Visceral Entrainment (VE) corresponding to sensations of internal bodily entrainment and Motor Entrainment (ME) reflecting participants’ inclination to move to the beat. These findings represent, to the best of our knowledge, the first empirical evidence for the existence of two components underlying entrainment capable of predicting specific emotional responses to music. Indeed, although both factors predicted Affect, Joyful activation, Transcendence, Wonder, Power, and Tenderness dimensions, only VE predicted Nostalgia and Sadness. Moreover, Peacefulness was mostly predicted by ME, whereas Tension was mostly predicted by VE.

Religious and demographic indicators of music preference in a Turkish sample

The attitude of people with various religious and faith orientations towards music is likely to be influenced by the teaching of their religion and the way they hold their faith. In this study, the connections of music preference with religiosity and with the way faith was held by participants were surveyed. The sample consisted of 259 university students (140 men [54%] and 119 women [46%], Mage = 20.29 years). Participants listened to 10 pieces from different music genres. Next, their music preference was measured using music feeling scales and single-item music-liking questions. In addition, participants also completed the scales of religious attitude and faith development. Demographic variables included gender, age, income, residency type, and frequency of listening to music. Factor analyses determined 5 music types from 10 musical genres, including Western sophisticated (jazz and classical), Western energetic (rock and metal), Western pop, traditional (Turkish folk, Turkish classical, religious music), and melancholic-rebellious (arabesk and rap). It was found that religious attitude correlated positively with traditional music and negatively with some of the Western music, including rock-metal and jazz. It revealed no correlation with Western classical music. In contrast, faith development correlated positively with Western classical, jazz, and rock-metal music but negatively with religious music, Turkish folk, and arabesk music. It was found that religiosity had an effect on music preference. In terms of demographic variables, women tended to prefer pop and rock-metal more than men, and men tended to prefer Turkish folk, arabesk, and rap more than women. More sophisticated musical genres were favoured more by somewhat older participants. In addition, whereas Western classical, Turkish classical, and jazz music tended to be preferred by participants from urban areas, arabesk and rap music tended to be liked more by participants from rural areas.

Mathematical aspects of musical scales and series

Musical scales may be interpreted as specific increasing sequences of real numbers. Periodic scales, i.e. musical scales whose pattern is periodic, feature in this article. Of special interest are regular scales of which are given seven properties in four theorems which are new results, engaging the concepts of: the period of scale, the length of period of scale, the pattern, being homomorphous, a transposition and having the same key. This paper considers the idea of musical scales in general, hence it is possible to consider more complex musical scales not only in the twelve-tone equal temperament, and also proposes tools to investigate traditional musical scales as Messiaen’s Modes of limited transposition [4, p.58], the major and the minor scales as well as ancient Greek scales inherited by medieval Western music. The paper also goes beyond the notion of musical scale and contains new interesting result which gives way to determine when one can form a series from a shorter sequence of sounds by transposing the sequence.

A pentatonic classification of extreme events

In this paper we present a classification of the extreme events – very small and very large outcomes – of positive-valued random variables. The classification distinguishes five different categories of randomness, ranging from the very ‘mild’ to the very ‘wild’. In analogy with the common five-tone musical scale we term the classification ‘pentatonic’. The classification is based on the analysis of the inherent Gibbsian ‘forces’ and ‘temperatures’ existing on the logarithmic scale of the random variables under consideration, and provides a statistical-physics insight regarding the nature of these random variables. The practical application of the pentatonic classification is remarkably straightforward, it can be performed by non-experts, and it is demonstrated via an array of examples.

The Genevan Psalter in Eighteenth-Century Indonesia and Sri Lanka

ABSTRACTThe spread of Protestant Christianity to Indonesia and Sri Lanka in the early modern period involved large-scale translation projects and, from the beginning of the eighteenth century, the publication of metrical psalms in languages spoken by local communities: Portuguese, Malay, Tamil and Sinhala. Selected psalms from the Genevan Psalter, as well as complete versions, were translated and published in South and Southeast Asia on several occasions in the eighteenth century, representing the earliest printing of Western staff notation in Jakarta and Colombo. These psalters were issued in numerous editions, and some were prefaced with a short explanation of the musical scale. Christian communities in Indonesia and Sri Lanka appear to have used the psalters regularly in religious devotions and services. This article explores the processes involved in the translation, production and distribution of these psalters, considering musical and cultural aspects of their adoption into local communities.

Playing beautifully when you have to be fast: spatial and temporal symmetries of movement patterns in skilled piano performance at different tempi.

Humans are capable of learning a variety of motor skills such as playing the piano. Performance of these skills is subject to multiple constraints, such as musical phrasing or speed requirements, and these constraints vary from one context to another. In order to understand how the brain controls highly skilled movements, we investigated pianists playing musical scales with their left or right hand at various speeds. Pianists showed systematic temporal deviations away from regularity. At slow tempi, pianists slowed down at the beginning and end of the movement (which we call phrasal template). At fast tempi, temporal deviation traces consisted of three peak delays caused by a thumb-under manoeuvre (which we call neuromuscular template). Intermediate tempi were a linear combination trade-off between these two. We introduce and cross-validate a simple four-parameter model that predicted the timing deviation of each individual note across tempi (R(2) = 0.70). The model can be fitted on the data of individual pianists, providing a novel quantification of expert performance. The present study shows that the motor system can generate complex movements through a dynamic combination of simple movement templates. This provides insight into how the motor system flexibly adapts to varying contextual constraints.

광고음악의 음계(scale) 변화가 인지력에 미치는 영향 : 음계 변화에 따른 뇌파(EEG) 측정 실험결과를 중심으로 -

광고음악의 음계(scale) 변화가 인지력에 미치는 영향 : 음계 변화에 따른 뇌파(EEG) 측정 실험결과를 중심으로 -

Individuality in music performance: introduction to the research topic

Individuality in music performance: introduction to the research topic