Musical Sense Research Articles

Jazz in Lampung: Community’s perspective, social practices, cultural performance, organization, and consequences

This article attempts to reveal the perspectives of the Lampung jazz community members dealing with organizational issues related to members’ perceptions or administrators. The cause is an extramusical issue that leads to the ulun Lappung (indigenous Lampung people) social characteristics. In general, problems uncommon in the jazz community arise in this communal setting. This article focuses on the Lampung jazz community’s perspective, cultural performances, social practices, and consequences. The data for this study came from immersive fieldwork conducted in Lampung jazz circles between 2017 and 2021. In addition to in-person data collection, field sites and apps were used. The research participants include senior musicians with over 20 years of experience, music scholars, music entrepreneurs, and jazz activists. Each participant has a unique perspective on group organization, jazz culture and knowledge, and socially musical practices. The significance of Lampung’s musical sense of community is discussed.

The effect of choir-singing on self-reported embodied cognition in persons with dementia. A pilot study.

With an understanding of dementia through the lens of embodied cognition and a musical sense of the dynamics of the body, a fundamental continuity of personhood is possible. With music and singing, body and mind are positively affected for persons with dementia, and with promising evidence on emotional wellbeing during choir-singing. Based on this, we carried out a pilot-study to explore the effect of choir-singing on self-reported embodied cognition in persons with dementia. As part of a Danish TV documentary on choir-singing, 17 participants with a mean age of 71years took part in choir rehearsals and a concert. The majority of the participants had moderate/severe dementia, and 29% mild dementia. Altogether 164 self-report forms were analysed and showed a highly significant increase in embodied cognition from before to after choir-singing. The results provide initial evidence that choir-singing for persons with dementia positively influence the participants' self-reported embodied cognition. Further, the positive effect seemed to increase in line with increasing level of dementia. The 8-item Embodied Cognition in Dementia Assessment Scales (EmDAS) showed good internal reliability and promising properties for evaluating the effect of embodied cognition. For future research, controlled trials with larger samples are needed to provide evidence of choir-singing for persons in various stages of dementia.

Comparative analysis of musicality in the works of Kandinsky and Zhu Dequn

The object of the study is the works of the founder of abstract expressionism, Vasily Kandinsky, and the Chinese artist Zhu Dequn. The subject of the study is musicality in the works of Vasily Kandinsky and Zhu Dequn. The author conducts a detailed comparative analysis of abstract ideas and works of two artists in order to study their emotions and sources of inspiration. Special attention is paid to the influence of V. Kandinsky's works on Zhu Dequn's work, as a result of which the Chinese artist tried to combine Western music with the rhythms of Chinese calligraphy, giving his works a deeper meaning. In addition, from the standpoint of a sense of musicality, Zhu Dequn's works such as "The Rhythm of Rebirth" and "Pacification" are considered in the article. It is noted that Zhu Dequn's work is focused on reflecting the spirit, culture and emotions. To achieve the goal set in the research process, approaches and methods of modern philosophy, cultural studies, and art criticism were used. The main conclusions of the study are that under the influence of V. Kandinsky's theory, Zhu Dequn became more musical in his abstract paintings. Despite the fact that Zhu Dequn was not very experienced in music theory and performance, he could accurately capture the melody and rhythm of instruments such as traditional Chinese guzheng, as well as feel the light and color created by a musical composition. The author's main contribution to the study is to demonstrate the influence of V. Kandinsky on the works of Zhu Dequn, who managed to incorporate philosophical ideas and elements of local culture into his works under the influence of music, thereby creating a unique Chinese abstract art. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the author described how Zhu Dequn's paintings reflected a combination of Chinese and Western painting, which is a valuable example for the exchange and development of Chinese and Western culture and art.

Statistical analysis of melody lengths, note probabilities and note transitions of a bandish in raga Bihag

Melody refers to a succession of musical notes that can be regarded as complete in a musical sense. For example, a line of a song or a raga bandish is a melody as it is complete. The number of notes in a melody is called its length. Unfortunately, the analysis of melody lengths is a neglected area in music research. Given that the significance of a melody in monophonic music (single melody line), such as Indian classical music is quantified by the product of the length of the melody and its frequency (number of occurrences in the musical piece), the novelty of our research lies in analysing the statistical features of lengths of a well-known bandish in raga Bihag. Additionally, the probability distribution of the notes is presented and a count of rising and falling note transitions in the sthayi and antara of the bandish is also taken. The experimental results are encouraging.

Capaian Pembelajaran Seni Musik Pada Kurikulum Merdeka Sebagai Wujud Merdeka Belajar

Purpose: Curriculum development in Indonesia has become a polemic with the existence of the Kurikulum Merdeka, which discusses learning outcomes that should be one of the answers to overcome learning objectives that have not been achieved in the previous curriculum. This article seeks to provide an overview of learning outcomes, especially in music subjects in the Kurikulum Merdeka, as a form of independent learning in schools, which is expected to be an understanding that educators can internalize about the importance of learning outcomes in music subjects. Method: The literature study is used in this research by collecting data through online media, articles, and books related to music learning outcomes in the Merdeka Curriculum in schools. Result and Discussion: This research describes the learning outcomes of music as a form of independent learning. The discussion reviewed includes learning outcomes, objectives, and characteristics of music learning in the Merdeka Curriculum. Music teaching in the Merdeka Curriculum is divided into phases A to F, and there are five elements included in music learning, including experiencing, reflecting, thinking and working artistically, creating, and impacting students and others. Music art subjects aim for students to be able to express, be sensitive, develop a sense of musicality, and be aware of their musicality.

Perilaku Bermusik dalam Repertoar Rabab Pasisia Kaba Gadih Basanai

Kaba Gadih Basanai is a very popular story for the Minangkabau people and gives a very deep meaning in life because there is a historical background to the life of the people in the colonial era which was full of twists and turns of heartbreaking struggles. The purpose of this study is to examine how music behaves in conveying Rabab Pasisie kaba Gadih Basanai. This research is research with a descriptive qualitative approach, the researcher makes observations, describes then gives meaning to the symbols found. The Gadih Basanai song has traditional musical elements played by all the artists all of these artists have a different musical taste for the quality of each talent they have, and different characteristics when the performers of the Rabab (Violin) arts serve it. The method used in this study is a qualitative method with a descriptive analysis approach. Musical behaviour is presented in various forms and musical variants created by each Rabab (violin) maker based on the artist's level of intelligence, to be able to give a musical sense that is presented during performances of Gadih Basanai singing or songs. Then the behaviour of the Rabab makers seems clear that the Rabab which is played through the instrument instrumental melodies often give or brings up new melodies through inspiration by the players themselves, who always synergize between instruments to become an interesting work and not out of frames the melody on the coastal Rabab itself.

Музыка и язык: мышление–восприятие–практика

The article aims to shed light on some recent empirical neuroscience and psychology researches, which target music perception and cognition. The explosive growth of data collected and the measurement preciseness should correlate with the clarity of conclusions made on their basis. However, for the skilled music practitioners, such correlation is not obvious. The author propose a definition of the term musician, based on the concept of musical cognitive status. The purpose is to provide the adequate support and refinement of the experiment design procedures for the cross-disciplinary researches, dealing with selection of music stimuli material, conceptual theoretical foundations, and cultural-dependent cognitive backgrounds of the participants. The author considers that music cognition of performers is framed by the specific music idea, represented in the acoustically certain sound image, transformed to the appropriate gesture. This clear image is generated successfully when the performer has a clear artistic idea of musical sense and content. The specific types of perception determine the content-consuming habits. The degree of perceptual accessibility of sounding musical phenomena is also determined by the peculiarities of both musical and linguistic perception matrix, rooted in culture. In order to avoid the waste of research resources, author considers several investigation paths, coming from the methodology of philosophic anthropology, focused on the cultural and language-dependent dimension of music discourse.

Generating High Coherence Monophonic Music Using Monte-Carlo Tree Search

Music generation task is commonly considered as a note-by-note prediction problem. Moreover, prediction models generating one musical note at a time may ignore the overall coherence because the music phrase is incomplete and unable to demonstrate musicality. To address these issues, in this study, we propose a feasible monophonic music generation framework that can simulate subsequent trends for each predicted musical note. The framework generates a musical note mainly in three steps: 1) a sequence prediction model is used to predict the most potential candidates, 2) the subsequent trends for each candidate are modeled and evaluated, and 3) the best candidate is selected as the final result. We use the Monte-Carlo tree search algorithm because of its great capability of discovering near-optimal results. We establish a method of training a value network that can assess musical coherence to evaluate the simulated sequences. Further, we used a smoothed polynomial upper confidence trees algorithm to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the search process. An accurate dataset labeled by us, which contains 36 transcribed samples from real-world pop songs, was used to validate our framework. Compared with the note-by-note sequence prediction model, our framework exhibits a better sense of musicality. Our framework can be applied to generate symbolic monophonic music, particularly the main melody track in pop music.

A brief analysis of emotional expression in vocal music performance

In vocal music performance, the singer put emotion that echoes the theme into singing which can be said the finishing touch in vocal music performance .However, they usually only pay attention to the training of vocal methods and vocal skills in learning of vocal music, and do not fully aware that the ultimate expression of music is the artistic expression triggered by their own musical sense and inner emotion, so it can move the audience and let the audience form emotional resonance in the performance. Based on this, this article takes "Motherland, Kindly Mother" as an example to explore the emotional expression in vocal singing and discusses the methods of emotional expression in singing from the two aspects of lyrics and melody in the end, hopefully that will help us to understand the connotation of "Motherland, Kindly Mother", the use of singing skills, emotional expression better.

Music Aesthetics as Philosophy of Music: Genesis and Topical Contemporaneity of Musicology

The purpose of this work is to reveal the natural principle of the precedence of the philosophy of music in music science, which removed musical aesthetics with its basis of the traditional philosophical and rationalist system of Cartesianism. ‘Culturologisation’ of modern musicology testifies to the absorption of non-logical properties of associative knowledge, which, according to Yu. Krysteva, is no longer rejected by science, being called the ‘hermeneutic-interpretive’ meaning of the object of the study. The methodological basis of the research is the intonation approach of the B. Asafiev school in Ukraine, as it was in the works of O. Zosim, O. Markova, O. Muravska, O. Kozarenko, Liu Bingjian, O. Roschenko with an emphasis on hermeneutic and stylistic-comparative analytical search engine. The scientific novelty of the work is due to the theoretical primacy in the musicology of Ukraine of the statement of the philosophy of music as a substitute for the sphere of musical aesthetics, which has prevailed since the 18th century, as a "speculative theory of music” relative to the traditional core of musicology, the theory and history of music. Conclusions. The movement of musical aesthetics into the bosom of the philosophy of music was carried out by the displacement, following practice, in musical science of the theatrical-secularised expression of general aesthetic antitheses in favor of the all-encompassing lyric as a specifically musical embodiment of beauty, and the dramatic and the comic appear in the degrees of incompleteness of the lyric presentation, which delimits the “aesthetic-sensual” in the musical sense. The focus of musical expressiveness on the aestheticism of the beautiful and lyrical in this approach generalises, despite its direct ecclesiasticism, the experience of spiritual music, for which the beauty of the lyrical, in the syncresis of the suprapersonal and personal, expression (compare with the “spiritual beauty” of music in Mikhail Psellus, 11th century) displaces meaningful antitheses, which theoretically coincides with the symbolism of Pythagoreanism-Neoplatonism in the philosophical-mental understanding of music as a touch to the Eternal.
 Key words: musical aesthetics, philosophy of music, traditional musicology, modern culture-oriented musicology, genesis of music science.

Small band rooms for large bands: Balancing loudness and musicality

When band rooms are smaller than ideal for the ensembles they support, there are safety concerns due to loudness. In the case study presented, students have experienced excessive loudness and difficult ensemble conditions due to inadequate ceiling height, absorption, and volume. This paper will discuss the strategies explored to increase acoustic volume to the extent possible within floorplate boundaries while finishing the space with a combination of absorption and diffusion. The goal of these interventions is to preserve ensemble and a sense of musicality to assure students and faculty they are working in a space designed for music rather than simply the control of loudness.

Potential of Composition Market: Public acceptance in translated musical works on YouTube platform

Due to the worldwide demand for music consumption, more songs are translated into several languages. However, it remains a question whether the public i) prefers a loosely translated version, or ii) prefers a word-by-word translated version. Inspired by online data mining in business analytics, this quantitative research studied the public’s sentiments on two translated versions of Disney’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” song on the YouTube platform. Through semantic analysis, the researchers had found that the public prefers loosely, poetically, translated songs whilst preferring the harmony, melody, and musical sense of the songs to be retained. Keywords: translation techniques; compositional market; public acceptance; online data mining. eISSN: 2398-4287© 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA CE-Bs by E-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians), and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7iSI7%20(Special%20Issue).3765

Aesthetics of the musical and rhythmic sense and its relation to Arabic poetry

Music and poetry played an important role in life and created its own space. Also, they crystallized more clearly and their role have became more effective with the evolution of human civilizations. From Greeks Era to this time, the relationship between them has become coherent and continuous and it's not limited to celebrations, anniversaries, feasts or rituals, but rather took their place on stage and contributed in building and developing society. The Arabic language sciences student cannot separate sounds, performances, prose, grammar, rhetoric, not even morphology , literature or criticism, as they are coherent elements and cannot be separated, and all of them seek an important purpose, which is to understand the Holy Qur'an and the noble Prophetic hadiths in addition to Arabic poetry. The researcher believes that there is a relationship between rhythm in music and rhythm in Arabic language (the science of performances) in Arabic poetry. The study summarizes the rhythmic and musical sense in Arabic language and the relationship between them, since they represent one unit in the history and course of modern Arab culture.

Between Nationalism, Exoticism, and Social Distinction: The Spanish Lyric Drama in the 19th Century

AbstractAttempts to create a national opera in Spain repeatedly failed throughout the 19th century. Some authors have attributed this phenomenon to a deficit in the nationalization process. Others, to the contrary, have proved that there was a strong sense of Spanish national musicality from the middle of the 19th century onward. This article tries to explain this paradox underlining some essential elements that are not always attended by specialists: the importance of transnational, social, and economic dynamics that interfered in the process of the cultural construction of modern national identities. The projects of the Spanish nationalist intellectuals of the 19th century in relation to the definition of a national music were marked by the Romantic construction of Spanish musical exoticism, the new industry of entertainment, the existential situation of Spanish musicians, the formation of new artistic and musical fields, and the appearance of new forms of social distinction in the aftermath of the Spanish Liberal Revolution of the 1830s.

SISTEM PELARASAN PADA DUA PERANGKAT GAMELAN JAWA DI DESA PLANGKRONGAN MAGETAN

Javanese gamelan music is an integral part of society 's lives in Plangkrongan Villag e, Poncol, Magetan, but musical data records on tuning have never existed. Musical data records can be used as an archipelagic strategy for today's millennial generation to introduce the sound heritage of the archipelago's civilization to the next generation. Therefore, this study aims to determine: 1) knowing the tuning system, and 2) the embat used on several gamelan devices in the village. This study uses an ethnomusicological approach. The methods used include: 1) interviews and measurements; 2) comparative analysis and inductive inference; and 3) narrative descriptions with pictures and tables. This study collects musical data such as the tone, range, and embat systems of the gamelan Nugroho Mulyo and Gong Mbarang belonging to two well-known artists in Plangkrongan Village. Based on the data, it can be concluded that: 1) Gamelan is tuned in one gembyang from low nem to high nem; 2) Gamelan is tuned in the middle register so that it is easy to voice and listen; 3) The pelog barrel has the longest range of 486 cents, while the shortest range is 99 cents. While the slendro barrel has the longest range of approximately 310 cents, the average range is between 243 to 260 cents and the shortest range is 206 cents; and 4) The term structure states that the embat used is Sundari embat so as to produce a complete musical sense. This musical data record can be an important archive for ethnomusicologists, musicians and musicians, and observers of musical art in the archipelago in general and in Magetan in particular.

Analysis of Erhu Performance Effect in Public Health Music Works Based on Artificial Intelligence Technology.

With the rise of Erhu teaching in recent years, a large number of people have joined the team to learn Erhu playing. However, due to the high cost of teaching and the unique one-to-one teaching mode between teachers and students, Erhu education resources are very scarce. Learning Erhu performance has become a luxury activity. Nowadays, with the rise of artificial intelligence, computer music is developing rapidly. Music has two important aspects: composition and performance. Different kinds of instruments convey different styles, and players inject different rhythms and dynamics into their performance, thus producing rich expressive force. The development of image style conversion, which opens people's evaluation of music performance, is an important issue in many fields of artificial intelligence (it is also known as intelligence, machine intelligence, referring to the intelligence shown by the machine made by people. Usually, artificial intelligence refers to the technique of presenting human intelligence through ordinary computer programs). For an Erhu song, there are various factors that affect its effectiveness, and there are many indexes to evaluate it, such as sense of rhythm, expressive force, musical sense, style, and so on. Using a computer to simulate the evaluation process is essential to find out the mathematical relationship between the factors that affect the performance of music and the evaluation indexes. Neural network is a kind of mathematical model proposed by simulating the way of thinking of human brain in artificial intelligence. It has the advantages of not having strict requirements on data distribution, nonlinear data processing method, strong robustness, and dynamics and is very suitable for the mathematical model of evaluation system. In addition, the neural network also has a strong theoretical basis, and their application in various industries has developed basically mature. This paper tries to introduce a deep neural network mathematical model into the evaluation system of Erhu performance, and the experimental results prove the reliability and practicality of the method in this paper. It can provide a method basis and theoretical reference for evaluation of Erhu performance effect.

THE PHENOMENON OF MUSICAL IDENTIFICATION. A VIEW FROM HEIDEGGER’S EARLY PHENOMENOLOGY

The starting point of the following article are statements by various prominent musical performers of the 20th century who have testified to the life-experience of musical identification, i.e. the experience of unity and oneness with music. The purpose of the article is to explore the phenomenological implications of this experience on the basis of Martin Heidegger’s early phenomenological work. The article compares Heidegger’s early view of phenomenal givenness with that of Edmund Husserl. While Husserl sees phenomenal givenness as constituted by (transcendental) consciousness, Heidegger finds primary givenness in the resonance (Mitschwingen) between the I and its lifeworld. I argue that in Heidegger’s early phenomenology it is not the subject, but rather the relatio between I and world, which “constitutes” givenness. This viewpoint allows for the exploration of musical identification as a life-experience. Musical identification suspends the difference between subject and object. In musical identification, it is the relation between “I” and music, which is constitutive of both. Thus, music cannot be adequately grasped in phenomenological terms if it is regarded simply as an object, which is the premise of more traditional phenomenological approaches to music such as Roman Ingarden’s and Mikel Dufrenne’s. Ingarden and Dufrenne both position music at a distance from the subject, as something to be explored in its objective characteristics, without presupposing the constitutive relation between them. Contrary to them, Hans-Heinrich Eggebrecht, Günther Anders and Ilya Yonchev all recognize that the subject-object divide is insufficient for the exploration of musical experience. However, while Eggebrecht ultimately remains within the subject-object-dichotomy, Anders and Yonchev both develop the idea of musical Mitsein, or Being-with-music, which dispenses with the subject-object premise altogether and interprets musical life-experience as a mode of Being within which the sense of the I and musical sense coincide.

Nonsense Madrigals by György Ligeti: The Musical Sense of Nonsense between Chaos and Order

The study examines Ligeti’s “stylistic revolution” as well as the nonsense aspects of the composition and introduces an original analysis of Ligeti’s musical nonsense inspired by the literary analysis of nonsense by Susan Stewart.The Nonsense Madrigals by György Ligeti take part in a kind of “stylistic revolution” in Ligeti’s style and are the result of his passionate research on African polyrhythms and its contribution to his music. What Ligeti intended to create in those periods was a superimposition of different rhythmic and melodic patterns in such a way that they could fuse together in an illusory chaos. However, there is also an ancient order that governs this new approach: the old masters such as Philippe de Vitry, Johannes Okeghem or Johannes Ciconia and their compositional techniques became the base of mixing the old western styles with the traditional music of Central Africa, so that the new and authentic compositional idea could blossom. The copious sketches of the Nonsense Madrigals, stored at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, reveal that the preparatory brainstorming involved also many other inspirations such as Balkan and oriental music, jazz, and some of Ligeti’s own compositions. The combination of the old and the new without using concrete models but just drawing inspiration marks a new approach among Ligeti’s contemporaries.

Аспекты духовного смысла в опере Франсиса Пуленка «Диалоги кармелиток»

The author of the article examines the aspects of the spiritual meaning in Francis Poulenc’s opera Dialogues of the Carmelites as the elements fundamentally systemic to its spiritual dimension. The research contains the hypothesis that the spiritual meaning of the opera is revealed on the basis of the interaction of its particular aspects. The development of each one of them is subservient to the idea of synthesis of time and eternity. The spiritual sense of the opera is centered around the image of Christ (λόγος). The author analyzes the tints (or the undertones) of the musical sense and meaning implemented by Poulenc in characterizing the Carmelite nuns – first of all, the spiritual traits of the main heroine, Sister Blanche, as well as both of the superiors of the Carmelite monastery, as well. The scheme in the final part of the article presents in a provisional manner the connection between the aspects of the spiritual meaning in Poulenc’s opera with the Christian idea of the synthesis of time and eternity. The following conclusions are arrived at: the artistic world of this work includes a broad spectrum of semantic “overtones” which indicate at the composer’s implementation of the fundamental principles of the Catholic teachings of grace, the order of grace and the transfer of grace of the Holy Spirit; by formulating the image of the main heroine and the other Carmelite nuns by means of vocal and symphonic development, Poulenc marked out in his musical score the nuances of the musical meaning which characterize the opera’s spiritual dimension; elaboration of the aspects of spiritual meaning characterize the opera’s unified spiritual dimension as a mystery of grace. Keywords: Dialogues of the Carmelites, Christianity, Latin, martyrdom, Saints, asceticism, spirituality, Poulenc, grace

Sibelius as a Tool to Improve Student’s Ability of Making Counterpoint Melody

As a subject for music students, counterpoint contributes to the ability to create a melody. The melody in counterpoint usually consists of two or more layers. In order to make a counterpoint melody, students must acknowledge the rules to construct the counterpoint melody. A good counterpoint melody involves two important things: the flow of the melody in a vertical and horizontal in vertical line (interval) and the musical texture of the melody. As a beginner in learning counterpoint, writing a counterpoint melody might be difficult at first. Learning counterpoint investigation was found that students spent a lot of their time following the counterpoint rules. They particularly did not focus on the musical sense of the counterpoint melody causing the melody loses its musical senses. Sibelius was used here as a tool to solve the problem. Sibelius is a music software which commonly used in writing musical scores. This study examined Sibelius in making a counterpoint melody in learning counterpoint. The data were gathered through observation and interviews with students during learning counterpoint course. The result showed that by using Sibelius, making counterpoint melody more efficient, and it helped student not only focused on the counterpoint rules but also the musical senses of the counterpoint melody. Furthermore, students also showed the improvement of their skills in making a counterpoint melody.