Music Staff Research Articles

Automatizing Sight Reading: Contingency Proportion and Task Relevance in the Music Contingency Learning Procedure

Learning to read and play music written in standard notation, termed sight reading, is an important yet difficult aspect of early music education. However, the music contingency learning procedure produces rapid and robust early learning of the motor execution associated with note positions. In this task, nonmusicians identify a note name (e.g., “do”) written inside a note in one of the vertical positions of the musical staff with a keyboard response. Each note position is presented frequently with the matching (congruent) note name and rarely with the incongruent note names. The present work further explores this novel learning paradigm. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the proportion of congruent trials from 50 to 100%. The contingency effect, along with contingency awareness (i.e., verbalizable knowledge of note meanings), increased with a stronger contingency manipulation. In Experiment 2, half of the participants responded to the note positions (instead of the note names) with a keyboard response. A learning effect was also observed for this task, though contingency awareness was reduced in this group. These results shed more light on the properties of incidental music learning and further suggest more ideal parameters for future practical applications to supplement traditional instruction in real-world music education.

A Suggested Method for the Musical Notation of Basic Arabic Percussion Instruments

Objectives: The study aimed to propose a standardized method for musical notation of Arabic percussion instruments, following the model of other musical instruments, as well as to provide examples of the method for notation of Arabic percussion instruments.
 Methods: This study follows the developmental approach, which involves studying a specific phenomenon and searching for solutions in order to develop effective outcomes for teaching. A musical notation was developed for the basic Arab percussion instruments used in modern Arab music ensembles, including the dhol, katem, riq, and tabla. Proposed models were developed in four lines, and each instrument was used in a way that corresponded to the selected rhythm, using a musical staff consisting of five lines and four spaces. Abbreviations and symbols were also developed to facilitate reading of the fast-paced shapes.
 Results: The results showed that a special rhythmic notation line can be assigned to each of the basic Arabic percussion instruments in modern Arab music bands. The rhythmic notation of the group of Arabic percussion instruments is represented in four lines. To ensure clarity and purity of rhythm, the instruments (dahola and katam) can be used to perform basic stress positions, while the instruments (riq and tabla) can be used to play percussive ornaments in addition to the basic rhythmic stresses.
 Conclusions: The study emphasizes the important role of Arabic rhythms, and the importance of educating musicians playing them, and not leaving them to improvise without specific musical notation, similar to other musical instruments, in order to control the performance.

MUSIC OF NAMES IN EDGAR ALAN POE’S WORKS

This paper is an attempt to survey aesthetic potential of E. Poe’s anthroponomy and to analyse the author’s unique strategy in the process of creating the names of his characters. This study aims at explicating the functioning of literary names in the works of American romanticist and at defining the specific features of their semantic content. The writer worked out theory of musicality within the frames of his own concept of “unity of effect”. Masterly balancing the sounds as figure melodies of a musical staff became the basis of his nomination principle, adding special emotional content both to the name itself and the tale or the poem, mobilizing reader’s emotional intelligence in the process of poetic reception. As a result, several kinds of Poe’s musical devices have been sorted out. Among the most widely used components of writer’s musical approach to anthroponomy are sonority (phonetic musical level); symbolic content of sounds or psychological parallelism (sematic musical level); rhythm (repetition of sounds in the nominative segments, acoustic symmetry); melodiousness (as a tendency towards elegiac, muted beauty); connection with visual arts. The above characteristics became the markers of Poe’s idiostyle, demonstrated the unity of “sound and thought” as a prerequisite for creating new meanings. These factors help to underline the specific features of E. Poe’s aesthetic and philosophical perception. Such an approach may be used for investigation of modern technique in the works of contemporary writers and poets as it helps to delve into some principles of synthesis of Arts in Post-modern paradigm.

Romanizing Chinese: word–tone relations in Athanasius Kircher’s China illustrata

Abstract When Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit missionaries landed in China in the late 16th century, they heard a language they could not readily reproduce in their own tongue. Unlike Latin and the Romance languages, Chinese is a tone language, in which the meaning of a word varies according to its relative pitch level. In order to Romanize Chinese, the Jesuits applied their knowledge of music theory and assigned solmization syllables to the Chinese tones. Although their manuscript musical dictionary remains lost, the essence of it is preserved in print in the most widely disseminated treatise on China of the time: China illustrata (1667), by the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. To date, sinologists have generally dismissed Kircher’s musical Chinese as unintelligible. Musicologists, meanwhile, having long poured over Kircher’s Musurgia universalis (1650), have yet to offer a detailed critique of China illustrata. In reapproaching this singular source in Sino-Western history, this article argues that the Jesuits’ musical representation of the Chinese language should not be rejected a priori. Kircher’s cryptic description of Chinese can, in fact, be clarified by a letter from Beijing in which a Jesuit spelled out the Chinese tones in musical staff notation. A musical analysis of the lead illustration in China illustrata—the Nestorian Stele of Xi’an—indicates that the Jesuits’ solmizations were closer approximations of Chinese than one might assume. Off-tone though it might at first appear, China illustrata is a valuable record of how the Jesuits Romanized Chinese.

The Synchrony Era

The Synchrony Era

A media ecological approach to the history of music notation: The neume, staff and mensural rhythm

This article examines the transition from the oral mode of memorized song to the visualization of written musical notation. Modern music notation, unlike writing, emerged as a product of the medieval era. Musical forms burst information capacity boundaries sometime around fifteen centuries ago when unison cantillated plain-chant (one cantor) evolved into diversified organum (harmonious voices) in sacred ceremonies. New modalities of visually codifying song were required to keep pace with the growing possibilities of rhythm and harmony. Musical notation took recognizable shape roughly four hundred years prior to the printing press and some twelve hundred years after the onset of the phonetic alphabet. Moreover, musical notation, the ability to recreate from visual symbols polyphonic pitch and rhythmic complexity, was firmly in place centuries before the onset of the Renaissance. Although song and the spoken word coevolved naturally over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, the split from orality to literacy eventually required a visual technology to ‘hold’ song in stasis similar to the alphabet’s capturing of speech. This article focuses attention on the history of the neume, the musical staff and the mensural rhythm system as fundamental building blocks in the architecture of modern musical notation. This suggests that modes of visual specialist separation and tendencies towards individualist learning in the form of musical practice were embodied prior to and synergistically inspired the social transformations shaped by literacy.

EEG processing in emotion recognition: inspired from a musical staff

EEG processing in emotion recognition: inspired from a musical staff

Incidental learning in music reading: The music contingency learning task.

The present report investigated whether nonmusicians can incidentally learn musical skills needed for sight-reading. On each trial, participants identified a note name written inside of a note on the musical staff. In Experiment 1, each note was presented frequently with the congruent note name (e.g., "do" with the note for "do") and rarely with the incongruent names (e.g., "do" with the note for "fa"). With or without deliberate learning instructions, a robust contingency learning effect was observed: faster responses for congruent trials compared with incongruent trials. Participants also explicitly identified the meaning of the note positions more accurately than chance. Experiment 2 ruled out the potential influence of preexisting knowledge on the contingency learning effect by presenting notes most often with an incongruent note name. Robust learning was again observed, suggesting that participants acquired sufficient knowledge of musical notation to produce automatic influences on behaviour (e.g., akin to the interference effect previously found in skilled musicians). A congruency effect was additionally observed in Experiment 2, however. Experiment 3 further explored to what extent this congruency effect might be due to prior music knowledge and/or spatial stimulus-response compatibility between note and response locations (analogous to the SMARC effect). Overall, our results open up new avenues for investigating the incidental learning of complex material, musical or otherwise, and for reinforcing learning even further.

Mindful music – A pilot study of the effects of mindfulness-based music on staff members of the University of Limerick

Aim: This action research project investigates the perceived benefits of Mindful Music staff wellbeing programme on university staff members.
 Method: Mindful Music is an original programme of mindfulness-based music therapy (MBMT), designed by author 5, including guided live and recorded music listening combined with simple mindfulness practices (awareness of the breath /body scan/guided visualization). Staff were invited to participate in 30 - 45-minute Mindful Music sessions at lunchtime during working hours. Six in-person sessions were held at the university between March and December 2020 with 54 employees engaging in the programme. Qualitative feedback was analyzed using thematic analysis. A programme of four pre-recorded online sessions was conducted between September 2020 and January 2021 with 9 participants. A previously tested online anonymous survey relating to the perceived benefits of Mindful Music on workplace well-being and stress management was circulated following these sessions. Participants were asked to answer four quantitative questions with one qualitative question to enable participants to share comments on how they believe the sessions could be improved and to elaborate on perceived benefits.
 Results: Statistical analysis revealed a positive response to the sessions. 63 staff participated in the programme. The three most common feeling states chosen by participants prior to the session were tired (12.50%), busy (9.87%) and hopeful (8.88%). The three most common feeling states recorded after the intervention were relaxed (24.03%), hopeful (11.69%) and positive (11.69%). Participant feedback was generally positive, with many requesting more sessions, while few noted minor technical issues with sound quality and a desire for shorter interventions. Live music and live facilitated sessions (online or in person) were preferred to recorded sessions to be listened to at one’s own convenience. Limitations included lack of demographic data to enable further analysis based on staff grade and role, educational status, and other variables. The relatively small sample size also limits usefulness of findings as well as lack of comparison of music-based initiatives with other staff workplace well-being activities and in other work contexts.
 Discussion: Research on music-based workplace wellbeing initiatives is scarce. This study indicates that mindfulness-based music activities may support staff in improving workplace wellbeing and gives some evidence to support Mindful Music as a means of improving wellbeing and stress management for university staff. Future research should include larger sample sizes and a variety of workplace settings and compare music-based activity with other workplace wellbeing initiatives as well as further exploration of the impact of online vs in person well-being sessions for staff.

Cross-modal masked priming of the tritone paradox.

The tritone paradox is a musical illusion consisting of pairs of octave-ambiguous tones that could be heard as ascending or descending in pitch. This study investigated whether perception of the tritone paradox can be unconsciously influenced by a masked visual prime - specifically, a musical notation. In Experiment 1, participants were first given a "neutral" masked prime (an image of an empty music staff) to assess baseline perception. Then, they were presented with a "meaningful" masked prime consisting of two music notes arranged in either an ascending or a descending configuration, depending on their baseline perception. The results showed that the meaningful prime shifted participants' perception of the tritone paradox in the direction indicated by the musical notation. This effect was stronger for musicians than non-musicians. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 and further ascertained that this effect occurred unconsciously and was not due to regression to the mean. Together, the results of this study demonstrate that relevant visual images can unconsciously influence auditory perception under conditions of ambiguity.

Computerized Music-Reading Intervention Improves Resistance to Unisensory Distraction Within a Multisensory Task, in Young and Older Adults.

Incoming information from multiple sensory channels compete for attention. Processing the relevant ones and ignoring distractors, while at the same time monitoring the environment for potential threats, is crucial for survival, throughout the lifespan. However, sensory and cognitive mechanisms often decline in aging populations, making them more susceptible to distraction. Previous interventions in older adults have successfully improved resistance to distraction, but the inclusion of multisensory integration, with its unique properties in attentional capture, in the training protocol is underexplored. Here, we studied whether, and how, a 4-week intervention, which targets audiovisual integration, affects the ability to deal with task-irrelevant unisensory deviants within a multisensory task. Musically naïve participants engaged in a computerized music reading game and were asked to detect audiovisual incongruences between the pitch of a song’s melody and the position of a disk on the screen, similar to a simplistic music staff. The effects of the intervention were evaluated via behavioral and EEG measurements in young and older adults. Behavioral findings include the absence of age-related differences in distraction and the indirect improvement of performance due to the intervention, seen as an amelioration of response bias. An asymmetry between the effects of auditory and visual deviants was identified and attributed to modality dominance. The electroencephalographic results showed that both groups shared an increase in activation strength after training, when processing auditory deviants, located in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. A functional connectivity analysis revealed that only young adults improved flow of information, in a network comprised of a fronto-parietal subnetwork and a multisensory temporal area. Overall, both behavioral measures and neurophysiological findings suggest that the intervention was indirectly successful, driving a shift in response strategy in the cognitive domain and higher-level or multisensory brain areas, and leaving lower level unisensory processing unaffected.

Understanding the Wellbeing Effects of a Community Music Program for People With Disabilities: A Mixed Methods, Person-Centered Study.

People with disabilities face inequalities in mental wellbeing, for which social exclusion is a contributing factor. Musical activities offer a promising but complex intervention, making impacts on a population with highly varied characteristics and needs challenging to capture. This paper reports on a mixed methods, person-centered study investigating a community music intervention for such a population. Three groups of adult service users with varied disabilities (either physical, learning, or both), took part in weekly music workshops in different locations. Music staff, housing and resource center staff, as well as participants and members of their families, took part in semi-structured interviews. A quantitative measure administered by service staff was used to rate service users’ social development. Two lay researchers, both individuals with a disability contributed to all aspects of the study. Interviews were analyzed through thematic analysis. Improvements in individuals’ self-expression, confidence, mood, and social skills were consistent with previous findings. Differences in effect between centers included: Group 1, some of whom had previous experience of workshops, showed an improvement in musical skills; Group 2 showed a mixed response, some participated with enthusiasm but others chose art activities over music workshops; Group 3 had lasting positive impact, this group had very limited opportunities for music due to their rural location. Quantitative analysis showed significant increase over all groups in communication, interaction with others, and joint attention. The intervention was beneficial for participants in separate locations in similar ways, but also highlighted that context and prior experience mediated effects in distinct ways. The lay researchers enhanced the qualitative analysis by emphasizing (1) the importance of recognizing participants’ self-expression in non-verbal modes of communication and (2) the importance of having music staff with a disability to provide a positive role model. This paper proposes that mixed methods person-centered research is the most suitable approach to capture and understand the multiple and varied effects of this complex intervention for a diverse group of participants.

An evaluation of matrix training to teach college students piano notes and rhythms.

Twelve college students learned to tact the names of notes and rhythms and play them when presented with compound stimuli (visuals of notes and rhythms on a musical staff). In Experiment 1, we assessed generalization by presenting novel notes, rhythms, and compound stimuli not previously paired together. In the second experiment, we added a metronome that played at 60 beats per minute in all conditions for 3 out of 6 participants to ensure consistent tempo. Across both experiments, participants passed almost all posttests with the exception of tacting and playing in the presence of sound clips. Our data suggest that matrix training is an effective procedure to teach music skills to college students.

Didactic images in a thirteenth-century French music theory treatise: theScientia artis musiceof Hélie Salomon

AbstractTheScientia artis musice, a music theory treatise completed in the year 1274 by Hélie Salomon, a cleric from the village of St-Astier (Périgord/Dordogne), covers all the usual topics treated in such sources: letter names, hexachord syllables, the claves (letter + syllable(s)), the musical hand, mutation, staff notation, clef placement and chant genres. It includes an incomplete tonary with representative chant genres together with a commentary on the seculorum (differentiae) appropriate to various chant incipits. A lengthy instruction on the performance of parallel four-voice organum is also included. TheScientiais the only medieval theory treatise whose eight illustrations (called ‘figurae’) include human figures. These images relate directly to matters covered in the treatise and serve to make its main points more easily committed to memory. Of especial interest is the image of an enthroned bishop that serves as the focal point for a novel exposition of the tonal system of chant as (1) a set of logical relations modelled after the Tree of Porphyry and (2) a variant of the tree of consanguinity. Since the sole surviving copy of the treatise is the original, all these details must reflect the author's intention.

От нотных строк к истории радио: личная (владельческая) коллекция нотных изданий Т.Д. Радиной как основание для изучения развития радиовещания в Читинской области в первой половине XX в.

От нотных строк к истории радио: личная (владельческая) коллекция нотных изданий Т.Д. Радиной как основание для изучения развития радиовещания в Читинской области в первой половине XX в.

Effects of Visual Predictive Information and Sequential Context on Neural Processing of Musical Syntax.

The early right anterior negativity (ERAN) in event-related potentials (ERPs) is typically elicited by syntactically unexpected events in Western tonal music. We examined how visual predictive information influences syntactic processing, how musical or non-musical cues have different effects, and how they interact with sequential effects between trials, which could modulate with the strength of the sense of established tonality. The EEG was recorded from musicians who listened to chord sequences paired with one of four types of visual stimuli; two provided predictive information about the syntactic validity of the last chord through either musical notation of the whole sequence, or the word “regular” or “irregular,” while the other two, empty musical staves or a blank screen, provided no information. Half of the sequences ended with the syntactically invalid Neapolitan sixth chord, while the other half ended with the Tonic chord. Clear ERAN was observed in frontocentral electrodes in all conditions. A principal component analysis (PCA) was performed on the grand average response in the audio-only condition, to separate spatio-temporal dynamics of different scalp areas as principal components (PCs) and use them to extract auditory-related neural activities in the other visual-cue conditions. The first principal component (PC1) showed a symmetrical frontocentral topography, while the second (PC2) showed a right-lateralized frontal concentration. A source analysis confirmed the relative contribution of temporal sources to the former and a right frontal source to the latter. Cue predictability affected only the ERAN projected onto PC1, especially when the previous trial ended with the Tonic chord. The ERAN in PC2 was reduced in the trials following Neapolitan endings in general. However, the extent of this reduction differed between cue-styles, whereby it was nearly absent when musical notation was used, regardless of whether the staves were filled with notes or empty. The results suggest that the right frontal areas carry out the primary role in musical syntactic analysis and integration of the ongoing context, which produce schematic expectations that, together with the veridical expectation incorporated by the temporal areas, inform musical syntactic processing in musicians.

Creating a Welcoming and Inclusive Environment for Transgender and Gender Fluid Music Library Users

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this article is to share suggestions on how music library staff can create a welcoming and inclusive environment for library users who are transgender or gender fluid. This user population often encounters barriers such as language usage, accommodations, name and pronoun usage, and identity disclosure when using libraries. The focus of this article is on the practical aspects of assisting transgender and gender fluid individuals in instructional settings, during reference transactions, at outreach events, or in mentoring students and student employees. Nine suggestions are given to help library staff build cultural competency and confidence in serving this user population. Although this article is centered on music libraries in academic institutions, many of the suggestions can be transferred to a public library setting.

Automatic pattern identification of rock moisture based on the Staff-RF model

Studies on the moisture and damage state of rocks generally focus on the qualitative description and mechanical information of rocks. This method is not applicable to the real-time safety monitoring of rock mass. In this study, a musical staff computing model is used to quantify the acoustic emission signals of rocks with different moisture patterns. Then, the random forest (RF) method is adopted to form the staff-RF model for the real-time pattern identification of rock moisture. The entire process requires only the computing information of the AE signal and does not require the mechanical conditions of rocks.

What is New, Here? Locating an Art Form Within the Western Australian New Music Archive

The Western Australian New Music Archive seeks to collect documentation of art music activity from Western Australia from 1970 to the present, with the collection materials being made accessible online via a public web portal. Seeking to archive, compile and curate a collection based solely around a particular musical community has required a number of questions to be posed around what actually constitutes new music practice, and specifically, what this practice looks (and sounds) like in the context of Western Australia as the home to the community being represented by this collection. These questions have been answered in part by analysing the collection items themselves, but also through identifying the primary roles of each of the project partners. Tura New Music and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation have contributed content to the collection and the web portal, respectively. Edith Cowan University has had a long tradition of composition and music technology students and staff who have contributed to this community, and leads the research. Finally, as collecting institutions the State Library of Western Australia and the National Library of Australia will retain and provide access to collection materials. Nonetheless, a sufficiently layered and complete analysis of what constitutes new music, and how Western Australian new music practice can be identified, are only possible through analysis of the collection items that is also informed by collection development and its relationship to discourses of art and academia.

Teachers’ and students’ music preferences for secondary school music lessons: reasons and implications

ABSTRACTThis paper is based on the data collected from a longitudinal study of seven maintained, secondary schools in England that have adopted Musical Futures as an approach to teaching music. The research had a particular focus on key stage 3 (11–14). For the purposes of this paper, data gained from 18 music staff and 325 student interview transcriptions were reviewed to answer research questions about the music preferences of teachers and students in the context of school music lessons. The data indicated that when teachers chose music they were particularly conscious of difficulty whereas student choices, when permitted, were based solely on liking. Teachers’ choices were often informed by inclusion and feasibility. The music students enjoyed depended on how it was incorporated into the lesson rather than purely on style. Some implications of how music is categorised and chosen are discussed.