Musical Collaboration Research Articles

Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Music Education: A Critical Synthesis of Challenges and Opportunities

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a hot topic that presents new challenges and opportunities for the improvement of educational processes. The disruptive and transformative force of this new technological development implies the adaptation of educational ecosystems for its use and integration as a didactic and pedagogical resource. From this perspective, a systematic literature review has been conducted to analyze the didactic potential of generative AI tools in the field of promoting artistic creativity in music education. The research results confirm that the incorporation of AI in music education is paving the way for a more personalized, interactive and efficient learning experience. In addition, the analysis suggests nine fundamental fields of IA implementation in music education: virtual and augmented reality (VR; VA); learning personalization, intelligent tutoring systems; composition assistants; improved historical and contextual learning; assessment systems; interactive ear training and music theory systems; tools for music collaboration and performance; and assistive technologies. Furthermore, the challenges presented by the intersection of AI and digital didactics in the field of music education are discussed.

Technology and Interspecies Musical Practice

This case study on the work of interspecies musician David Rothenberg explores how engaging with the songs and rhythms of other species continues to challenge his musical practice and aesthetic. Technology, science and art come together in an artistic and research practice, which is grounded in the belief that technologies can bring us closer to nature. The article outlines how Umwelt theory, enactive music cognition, biosemiotics and the phenomenology of human-technology relations are engaged in the perception and creation of musical experiences. It also looks at how interdisciplinary research practices that traverse zoomusicology, the visual and performing arts, and data visualisation contribute to interspecies music theory and practice. The article concludes by presenting four interspecies auditory dispositives as a guide to how knowledge, tools and practice are entangled in concrete examples from Rothenberg’s musical collaborations with nightingales, humpback whales, periodical cicadas and pond life.

Caring for our planet: a world apart or same difference? A global music collaboration

PurposeThe impact and collective threat of climate change is of key concern to all. Music and arts education can play a role by responding to the ongoing climate crisis through the creation of artworks as activism. This paper discusses a collaborative online international music project and its potential contribution to sustainable development education.Design/methodology/approach 10,427 miles and 11 hours apart, music education students undertook the project, working in groups with a mix of students from Aberdeen, Scotland and Melbourne, Australia in each group. Each student collected video footage that captured their experience of climate concerns related to their environment. Students combined and edited the footage then collaboratively composed music to accompany the footage. This research was conceived as a collaborative self-study project undertaken by the authors as music teacher educators.FindingsThe results show a range of musical and extra musical outcomes and challenges. Evidence suggests that a collaborative online international music learning experience may contribute to sustainable development education and regenerative practice more broadly. Students began to develop their practice as educators for school and community contexts embedding learning for sustainability and climate consciousness, thus enabling them to develop as active global citizens.Originality/valueThis paper argues for greater attention to the affordances of digital collaborative music technology tools to facilitate creative projects as well as the need to reimagine musical experience, drawing together strands of music, sustainability education, technology and global citizenship. This paper also argues for the importance of embedding the UN Sustainable Development Goals in teaching and learning in Higher Education.

Affective Authenticity

This article develops the concept of “affective authenticity” to explore the experiences and reception of US-based African migrant musicians in the 1960s and 1970s. Based on interviews, archival sources and musical analysis, we trace the migration stories of South African singer Letta Mbulu and the ways in which she negotiated conflicting demands for “authenticity” in her musical performances on the American stage. Affective authenticity represents a heterogenous, explorative sound, reflecting pan-African politics and aesthetics that created the very conditions for African and African American musical collaborations. This aesthetic was countered with expectations for “scientific authenticity:” an ethno-linguistically circumscribed performance that catered to colonial ears and conceptualized African musics as insular, ancient and unchanging – an aesthetic held and policed primarily by (white) music critics. Through analysis of the Yoruba hymn Ise Oluwa (1927) and its “translations” in Mbulu’s performance on the soundtrack for the television show Roots (1977), we show the careful balance of voices, texts, instruments, and rhythms African migrant musicians perform in order to adhere to conflicting demands for authenticity, and the rebuke they experience when they transgress them. We also place conceptualizations of affective and scientific authenticity applied to popular music in broader discourses occurring during the height of the civil rights movement in the United States, the decolonization of Africa, and the entrenchment of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Mapping Early Modern Parisian Sound Worlds

The digital project which forms the focus of this article is the website www.parisiansoundscapes.org. Both the theory and practice of attempting to recreate the sound worlds and particularly the song culture of early modern Paris are discussed in this article, starting with the research-based background to the project, with the publication of two monographs, and moving to the musical collaboration with the period instrument group Badinage. The importance of the Pont Neuf both as an auditory space and as the location where street songs were most often performed is analysed, followed by consideration of the various challenges that we have encountered in attempting to recreate the sound worlds of the 1600s and 1700s. The three major features of the website - transcription of handwritten manuscripts, song recordings, and song tunes - are highlighted, as are the future plans for the development of the project.

Yuval Sharon’s Twilight: Gods (2020-21)

Yuval Sharon’s Twilight: Gods is a drive-through opera that presents a contemporary vernacular reimagination of Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Motivated by pandemic-related concerns, it was staged in the Detroit Opera House Parking Center in October 2020 and subsequently in Chicago’s Millennium Lakeside Parking Garage in April 2021. Rejecting immersion, my article puts forth re-enchantment as a phenomenological model, which captures the sense of play underlying site-specific opera. I build on Carolyn Abbate’s notion of “ludic distance” in positing that re-enchantment is derived not despite, but because of our hyperawareness of the creative tensions present in the hybrid media and technologies fleshed out before us. Moving on then to more specifically ideological—and ethical—considerations, I interrogate the racialized scripting underpinning the opera’s display culture. Employing Matthew Morrison’s Blacksound, I examine Scene 4 (“Siegfried’s Funeral March”) in demonstrating how it reveals an attempt to muster Detroit/Blacksound in the commodified packaging of Black signifiers for the edification of an elite, mostly white audience. A musical collaboration premised on “fitting” Black music into the dominant Western paradigm perpetuates musical essentialism. Similarly problematic questions ensue from examining the ethics and politics of collaboration with the two Black poets who contribute to the productions in uneven ways. It is an open question whether, in the end, the creative team has succeeded in fulfilling the redemptive terms it has set for itself. I conclude by stimulating further questions and reflections on how a socially progressive and anti-Racist opera would look and sound like in 21st-century America.

Music, literature, and community: Reflections on a framework for learning through and from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music

Inspired by a desire to explore ways in which non-Indigenous Australians can meaningfully connect with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, this article reflects on my doctoral studies and the role educators can have in holding space for First Nations peoples to directly contribute toward the creation of mutually rewarding teaching and learning experiences. It specifically evaluates the processes involved in establishing and implementing a project centered on my senior secondary music class as the students engaged in the collaborative reworking of two songs shared by Ngiyampaa composer and dancer, Peter Williams. The article is intentionally reflexive as it interrogates the journey and motivations behind conducting the study. As a non-Indigenous teacher-researcher, I table three foundational pillars behind my personal growth in understanding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures: the music, the academic literature, and most importantly, the local community. The article then discusses the challenges and factors that lead to the success of the musical interactions in the doctoral study—a process understood as co-composition—and critically, the transformative learning experiences gained as reciprocal relationships were forged during various stages of the project. Rather than promoting co-composition as a pedagogical strategy, this article encourages a heuristic approach to increased and effective inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music in secondary music classes. By setting out in autoethnographic form the experience of implementing a considered, decolonial, and ethical approach to learning from and through Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music, I hope to encourage educators to imagine themselves in a narrative of their own, one that includes their students and members of the local First Nations community, leading to rich and rewarding musical collaborations and ongoing fruitful relationships.

Temporal Success Analyses in Music Collaboration Networks: Brazilian and Global Scenarios

Collaboration is a part of the music industry and has increased over recent decades; but little do we know about its effects on success and evolution. Our goal is to analyze how success has evolved over collaboration networks and compare its global scenario to a local, thriving one: the Brazilian music industry. Specifically, we build collaboration networks from data collected from Spotify's Global and Brazilian daily charts, analyze them and identify collaboration profiles in such networks. Analyses over their topological characteristics reveal collaboration patterns mapped into four different profiles: Standard, Niche, Ephemeral and Absent, where the two first have a higher level of success. Furthermore, we do deeper by evaluating the temporal evolution of such profiles through case studies: pop and k-pop globally, and pop and forró in Brazil. Overall, our findings emphasize the importance of collaboration profiles in assessing success, and show differences between the global and Brazilian scenarios.

앨범커버와 음악의 융합

We can have a “musical” experience through an “album cover” that does not contain any musical symbols, does not make any sounds, and is just a photograph, a work of art. Album covers are a new musical realm created by the musical collaboration of artists and musicians. You experience music through the album cover that you encounter first, and the music experienced through sight is now interpreted through sound. The importance of the album cover cannot be overlooked as it acts as a visual hook for the music. This study examines the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from two perspectives: the album cover and the music, and discusses how the music is reflected in the album cover. Through the close connection between the music and the album cover, this paper focuses on the importance of the album cover as a work of art and its role in establishing its own domain separate from other arts.

Enculturated Pedagogy: A Dialectic Approach to Music Teaching and Learning

Abstract Culture permeates every aspect of music learning and teaching. The complex interactions between teachers, students, and the pedagogies associated with music being taught offer an expansive setting for musical interactions as well as practical considerations for teachers planning culturally responsive lessons. The theory of enculturated pedagogy calls attention to and defines these interactions by accounting for the triangular relationships among the cultures of teachers, students, and the music being learned. Through a dialectic examination of the complementary epistemologies of cognitive neuroscience and sociology, this article develops three theoretical tenets for music teachers to apply to their own practice. The first tenet encourages the preservation of Indigenous pedagogies and considers how the pedagogical experiences of teachers and students inform instructional planning. The second supposes that teachers and students have culturally based, preferred ways of teaching and learning and, similar to multilingualism, are capable of learning multiple ways to teach and learn. The final tenet considers cultural differences between teachers, students, and the music itself as pedagogical assets, creating fertile ground for the creation of new musical collaborations and genre fusions.

AESCHYLUS’, EURIPIDES’, CACOYANNIS'S—AND SHORTER-SPALDING'S IPHIGENIAS

Like Euripides’ play, Iphigenia at Aulis, the Shorter-spalding opera is open-ended and unresolved—partly because, again like the Euripidean version, it is multi-authored and somewhat incomplete. Euripides’ play, in the form(s) in which we possess it, presents at least three different endings, none of which is likely to come from Euripides’ own pen; other authors certainly contributed to various sections of the final scene. Euripides himself also had a musical collaborator, Cephisophon, who presumably continued to work on finishing and rehearsing the play after Euripides himself died, up to its first production. The Shorter-spalding opera, …(Iphigenia), likewise is the result of collaboration—often at a distance, and over several years—between musicians, writers, and designers (as Morales describes in her Introduction to this issue). At least six different authors altogether are identified in the program notes as contributing to the libretto, including the three poets whose lyrics were sung in Act II: Ganavya Doraiswamy, Joy Harjo, and Safiya Sinclair, respectively South Asian, Native American, and Jamaican. As for the opera's ending—the most notoriously uncertain aspect of this myth ever since archaic Greek times—esperanza spalding states in her notes on the opera that the process of creating an ending has been one of constant adjustment, wholesale rewriting, and improvisation, and that even through the rehearsals the singers themselves onstage, as well as the instrumental jazz trio, were still trying out new things, right up to and including perhaps the performance that we saw. (I attended the Berkeley performance on February 12, 2022.) The opera is, we may say, unfinished.

A polylogue of musical collaboration (as exemplified by Ch.-V. Alkan’s second set оf transcriptions <i>Souvenirs de concerts du conservatoire</i>)

Creative individuality of the French virtuoso pianist Charles Valentin Alkan (18131888) was formed as a result of the extreme degree of introversion. Based on the example of the composers transcript art an attempt is made to present musical collaboration as a phenomenal stream of infinite revival of ideas, which involved musicians, writers, performers of different epochs and styles.

Singing Wives and Oligarch Patrons

Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork on Swedo-Russian musical collaborations, this article explores the link between popular music and the conspicuous consumption of Russia’s wealthy elite. Presenting two specific cases, one following a Russian millionaire’s wife’s efforts to become a pop star and the other exploring a wealthy Russian’s pursuit of patronage for emerging pop artists, the article describes how popular music became a means for Russia’s rich elite not only to show off their wealth and luxurious lifestyles but also to exchange monetary means for other forms of (cultural) capital, such as fame, coolness, and associations with a Western lifestyle. Furthermore, the article situates this elite dynamic in relation to specific Russian historical trajectories, and the ways in which the influence of the economic elite within the Russian music industry creates an unlevelled playing field for professionals trying to make a living from making popular music.

‘Stockhausenesque’: South African Musical Vanguardism during the ‘Durban Moment’

AbstractThis article weaves a story around the scant evidence that survives of the first university-based electroacoustic studio in Africa and the musical experimentalism that developed alongside it at the fledgling music department of what was then the University of Natal. The time is the early 1970s, the setting the eastern seaboard city of Durban, the local political context the ‘Durban moment’ of growing political unrest infused by Steve Biko's Black Consciousness movement and the radical politics of Richard (Rick) Turner, the red herring an ARP-2500 modular synthesizer, and the key figures the German-born experimental composer Ulrich Süsse and South Africa's foremost musicologist at the time Christopher Ballantine. By tracing the genealogy of Ballantine's ideas in post-1968 British counterculture and in musical collaborations with the physics department at the University of Natal – and by juxtaposing and contrasting the Durban New Music Group's activities with Turner's contemporaneous and often seething critique of white liberalism – the article offers perspectives on the globalization of the avant-garde, the expression of musical vanguardism in the problematic and contradictory spaces of twentieth-century white liberal South Africa, and the dialectics between the ‘experimental’ and the ‘avant-garde’ that informed alternative institution-building at what was to become the first department in South Africa to include African music, jazz, and popular music in their curricula in the early 1980s.

지역 오케스트라의 음악활동으로 본 예술적 시민성

Objectives The purpose of this study is to discuss the direction of music education by examining how artistic citizenship, a component of global citizenship, which is the focus of world education, is practiced in the region.
 Methods As a qualitative research method, an amateur orchestra performing music activities in the region was observed and in-depth interviews were conducted for 10 months.
 Results Artistic citizenship begins with the expression and development of sound, not language, when an individual learns a musical instrument. In order for everyone to make music, in the process of musical cooperation, communication by controlling the volume and tempo takes place. Musical collaboration induces empathy internally and at the same time gives empathy that understands and respects the emotions and feelings of others on stage, changing from self-centered to pro-social.
 Conclusions The musical activity of the local orchestra creates artistic citizenship in the form of altruistically changing lives and creating a healthy society that empathizes with and expands the same feelings through cooperation among local citizens.

“If We Don’t Have a Good Relationship, We Won’t Deliver Anything Good”: Emotion Regulation in Small Music Ensembles, Insights from Higher Music Education

Situated within the context of higher music education, the empirical orientation of this study is on the reflective accounts of young musicians participating in collaborative ensemble work in an educational institution in Norway. Drawing on theories of regulated learning from educational psychology, this study explores the affective and relational aspects of music students’ experiences of small ensembles. Specifically, it examines students’ perceptions of an ideal ensemble environment, socio-emotional challenges encountered during rehearsals, and the emotion-regulation strategies employed within these contexts. Eleven participants, 4 women and 7 men, with a median age of 22, were interviewed. The data were analyzed using a combination of inductive and deductive approaches to thematic analysis. The findings reveal that music students highly value collaborative ensembles as a gateway to acquiring new knowledge and performance skills, which are predominantly gained through peer interaction and active participation in the learning processes. Respect and receptivity emerged as critical qualities for fruitful musical collaborations. Notably, participants prioritized the well-being of the socio-emotional climate over musical competency, underscoring the formative role of emotions in these social learning environments. Furthermore, the study explored the self-reported emotion-regulation strategies employed by student musicians to maintain and/or re-establish a positive socio-emotional group climate. These regulation strategies involved both self- and other- directed processes.

Creating and Sustaining an All-Ages Jam Session in Salt Lake City: slcJAMS, Salt Lake City, United States

Creating and Sustaining an All-Ages Jam Session in Salt Lake City: slcJAMS, Salt Lake City, United States

Malian music ‘made in France’: postcolonial relationships through world music festivals and ‘transcultural creations’

ABSTRACT As a former French colony, Mali's musical landscape contributed in important ways to the formation of the world music scene in France, where many of its most famous musicians have recorded, performed, and sometimes settled, especially from the 1980s onwards. Drawing on this context, the essay offers an overview of the African world music scene in France through some of its main vectors of development, including labels, festivals, and cultural institutions. This is approached through the analysis of programmes from important French world music festivals showcasing Malian musicians, such as Africolor or Musiques Métisses, and by exploring examples of musical collaborations—referred to in France as ‘transcultural musical creations’—which were often implemented within cultural institutions and featured in festivals. Elaborating on how an elitist art culture was created, by stressing certain features of Malian music to the detriment of others, it is argued that these musical productions perform a play with otherness, which, in turn, has enabled western canons to take the guise of praising Malian music genres and instruments. Ultimately, these creative processes—and the discourses that foreground them—shed light on how France articulates and negotiates the postcolonial relationships it sustains with some of its former colonies.

AR Drum Circle: Real-Time Collaborative Drumming in AR

AR Drum Circle, is an augmented reality (AR) platform we developed to facilitate a collaborative remote drumming experience. We explore the effects of virtual avatars that are rendered in a player’s view to provide the joy and sensation of co-present music creation. AR Drum Circle uses a head mounted AR display, providing players with visual effects to assist drummers in coordinating musical ideas while simultaneously using a latency-optimized remote collaboration service (JackTrip). AR Drum Circle helps overcome barriers in music collaboration introduced when using remote collaboration tools on their own, which typically do not support real-time video, lack spatial information, and volume control between players, all of which are important for in-person drum circles and music collaboration. This paper presents the results of several investigations: (1) analysis of an in-depth, free-form response survey of drumming communication provided by a small group of expert drummers, (2) observations and analysis of 20 videos of live drum circles, (3) a case study using the AR Drum Circle application in pairs of remotely located participants, and (4) a collaborative drumming case study using a popular networked conferencing application (Zoom). Findings suggest that substantial communicative information including facial expressions, hand-tracking, and eye-contact is lost when using AR alone. Findings also indicate that the AR Drum Circle application can make players less self-conscious and more willing to participate while playing drums improvisationally with others.

Outsourcing the nation? Musical collaboration, nation building and neo-liberal logics in Coke Studio Pakistan

Coke Studio Pakistan is a decade-long music reality show featuring collaborations between pop, classical and local folk musicians. Sponsored by Coca-Cola and displaying a state-of-the-art production, it aims to bring local and old-school musicians and repertories to the Pakistani urban youth while disseminating a positive image of Pakistan. This occurs in the context of the efforts of Pakistani entrepreneurs and artists towards their insertion into the global market while overcoming the country’s negative international reputation due to religious violence. This article analyses Coke Studio Pakistan under the lens of neo-liberal nationalism, characterizing it as a nation-branding effort that uses music to make a representation of Pakistan that complies with Coca-Cola’s corporate goals and with the agendas of a sector of Pakistani artists. A quantitative and network analysis of the show reveals which artists, genres, regions and cultural groups the show privileges or overlooks. A qualitative study of the show’s communicational strategy and of the discourses of its creators and sponsors complements the quantitative analysis. This article explores the complexities of a nationalist model of multicultural citizenship promoted by the private sector, including issues of cultural representation, corporate agendas, class relationships, responsiveness to audiences’ demands and international politics.