Musical Dimensions Research Articles

The CRAFT Program: Mindfulness and Yoga for Enhancing the Well-Being and Academic Experience of Higher Education Student Musicians

The Consciousness, Relaxation, Attention, Fulfillment, and Transcendence (CRAFT) program, based on yoga, mindfulness, positive psychology, and emotional intelligence, was conceived as a neuroeducational method for self-actualization, happiness, and well-being. Previous quantitative research suggests the CRAFT program is a feasible intervention to improve student musicians’ health and well-being. The current study was devised to capture a wider understanding of student musicians’ experiences and perceived benefits from following the CRAFT program and how this exposure may affect their well-being and academic life. Participants were higher education student musicians ( n = 37) who had received CRAFT instruction at a conservatory of music as part of their curriculum, once a week for 1 hr, during the academic years 2017 to 2019. They completed an evaluation survey, comprising 36 5-point Likert-type items and one open-ended question. Descriptive statistics from participants’ Likert-type item evaluations supported the potential of the program to bestow numerous hypothesized benefits related to its five elements and viability. A content analysis conducted on participants’ responses to the open-ended question confirmed, clarified, and expanded these findings revealing additional benefits and insights across humanistic, educational, well-being, and music dimensions. This study rendered further supporting evidence for the CRAFT program as a viable intervention for promoting student musicians’ well-being and academic careers with relevant implications to other educational contexts, settings, and populations. Large mixed-methods investigations are needed to comprehensively understand and ascertain the efficacy and effectiveness of the CRAFT program to enhance the well-being and academic experience of student musicians.

Exploring Variational Auto-encoder Architectures, Configurations, and Datasets for Generative Music Explainable AI

Generative AI models for music and the arts in general are increasingly complex and hard to understand. The field of explainable AI (XAI) seeks to make complex and opaque AI models such as neural networks more understandable to people. One approach to making generative AI models more understandable is to impose a small number of semantically meaningful attributes on generative AI models. This paper contributes a systematic examination of the impact that different combinations of variational auto-encoder models (measureVAE and adversarialVAE), configurations of latent space in the AI model (from 4 to 256 latent dimensions), and training datasets (Irish folk, Turkish folk, classical, and pop) have on music generation performance when 2 or 4 meaningful musical attributes are imposed on the generative model. To date, there have been no systematic comparisons of such models at this level of combinatorial detail. Our findings show that measureVAE has better reconstruction performance than adversarialVAE which has better musical attribute independence. Results demonstrate that measureVAE was able to generate music across music genres with interpretable musical dimensions of control, and performs best with low complexity music such as pop and rock. We recommend that a 32 or 64 latent dimensional space is optimal for 4 regularised dimensions when using measureVAE to generate music across genres. Our results are the first detailed comparisons of configurations of state-of-the-art generative AI models for music and can be used to help select and configure AI models, musical features, and datasets for more understandable generation of music.

Effect of music education based on Edwin E. Gordon’s Theory on children’s developmental music aptitude and social emotional learning skills

This study aims to determine the effect of music education based on Music Learning Theory (MLT) on children’s developmental music aptitude (DMA) and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills. For this purpose, an experimental procedure planned as 16 lessons was applied to primary school first-grade students ( n = 92) aged between 6 and 7. The experimental group received music education based on MLT, and the control group received music education following the current curriculum in Turkey. Also, SEL objectives were integrated into MLT lessons. DMA was measured with the Primary Measures of Music Audiation test, and SEL skills were measured with Social Emotional Assets and Resilience Scale-Teacher Form-Turkish. In the musical dimension of the study, although the difference was not statistically significant, it can be said that the increase in the tonal, rhythmic, and composite scores of the experimental group are higher than the control groups’ scores and noteworthy for a short-term experiment. As for the SEL dimension of the study, the total SEL skills of the experimental group showed statistically significant improvement. These results suggest that music education in this direction can create opportunities and an effective learning environment for acquiring SEL skills; however further research is needed, particularly over a longer instructional period.

La reprise dans le champ musical. À propos de la dimension créatrice de la compulsion de répétition

ObjectivesThe Freudian notion of repetition compulsion is marked, in its inaugural conception, by a negative connotation, that of a return of the same, which does not fully reflect the multiple facets of this register. Raising repetition to the rank of one of the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, Lacan uses Kierkegaard's text entitled “Repetition” to point out the renewal of fecundity that the tendency towards repetition can induce. This article demonstrates how the creative dimension of repetition finds a particularly vivid illustration in the field of music, a domain that makes regular and varied use of the term “repetition.” MethodThis article takes up themes deployed in a series of conferences during the academic year 2021/2022 at the École Pratique des Hautes Études en Psychopathologie, associating musicians – Vincent Ségal – psychoanalysts – Marc Morali, Corinne Tyszler, Olivier Douville – and music lovers, Mario Choueiry, and leaving a large place to musical listening. This study, beyond a reading of the repetition as an expression of the death drive, studies the way in which we can hear and put to work this Freudian notion through its manifestation in the musical register. In this paper, we explore the question of repetition in the sphere of popular music but also in jazz and classical music in order to apprehend its articulation with the very movement of creation. ResultsIn so-called popular music, and mainly in rock music, the covering a song consists in proposing a version, more or less faithful or distant, of an original piece – and not in imitating it. Listening to this cover causes a particular satisfaction in the listener who can identify it. Usually considered as a tribute to the pioneers or the mark of a debt towards elders, the cover version is however above all an attempt, impregnated with hostility, to erase the origin. This is how covers come to not only supplant the original pieces but also to repress them, to make them totally forgotten. Jazz is also attached to covering standards, not only as a necessary learning exercise, but as a way for artists impose their own style and thus gain recognition. The cover of a standard can be the occasion to make audible a blind spot in the original work, or to bring to the surface a trait of identity unknown to itself. Within the context of classical music, the progression of a work is also regularly done through the repetition of a theme that renews itself through slight displacements. Finally, contemporary repetitive music pushes, perhaps to its height, the creativity inherent to the effects of repetition. DiscussionPleasure, repression, origin, hostility, imitation, and identification: these terms that are related to repetition are closely linked to psychoanalysis, which only has at its disposal the concept of “repetition.” It is, however, typical to hear oneself on the divan taking up the story of a dream or that of a memory; one can even “repeat” by continuing one's analysis after a break or termination. This opens up the opportunity to question the creative function of repetition within analytic practice. ConclusionIntroducing the musical dimension of repetition into the analytic treatment leads us to question the specific talent it implies in the practitioner. Repetition only becomes creative through a shift in interpretation that can be found in the poetry of language, where the practitioner is enriched by approaching musical interpretation.

Deep learning’s shallow gains: a comparative evaluation of algorithms for automatic music generation

Deep learning methods are recognised as state-of-the-art for many applications of machine learning. Recently, deep learning methods have emerged as a solution to the task of automatic music generation (AMG) using symbolic tokens in a target style, but their superiority over non-deep learning methods has not been demonstrated. Here, we conduct a listening study to comparatively evaluate several music generation systems along six musical dimensions: stylistic success, aesthetic pleasure, repetition or self-reference, melody, harmony, and rhythm. A range of models, both deep learning algorithms and other methods, are used to generate 30-s excerpts in the style of Classical string quartets and classical piano improvisations. Fifty participants with relatively high musical knowledge rate unlabelled samples of computer-generated and human-composed excerpts for the six musical dimensions. We use non-parametric Bayesian hypothesis testing to interpret the results, allowing the possibility of finding meaningful non-differences between systems’ performance. We find that the strongest deep learning method, a reimplemented version of Music Transformer, has equivalent performance to a non-deep learning method, MAIA Markov, demonstrating that to date, deep learning does not outperform other methods for AMG. We also find there still remains a significant gap between any algorithmic method and human-composed excerpts.

Does the flamenco tourist exist? Motivation and segmentation

Flamenco is a popular art, symbol of the culture of southern Spain, has a growing number of fans both from this country and from the rest of the world. This paper tried to find out if flamenco can be a determinant motivational element when choosing a destination and if there is a specific flamenco tourist who tries to travel to symbolic flamenco places. The results show evidence of the existence of three motivational dimensions directly related to flamenco: flamenco experience, flamenco brand, flamenco pretext. Also, a so-called ‘musical dimension’ was observed, where the motivation to participate in musical experiences in general prevailed. Based on these motivational dimensions, three types of flamenco tourists were identified: flamenco lovers, friends of flamenco, and musical attraction. It was found that the group formed by ‘flamenco lovers’ has a very high sensitivity to all musical variables related to flamenco, being this one, the most numerous group.

Kinetic Cross-Modal Correspondences and Felt (e)Motion in a Novel Set of Musical Stimuli

Embodied music cognition predicts that our understanding of human-made sounds relates to our experience of making the same or similar movements and sounds, which involves imitation of the source of visual and auditory information. This embodiment of sound may lead to numerous kinetic cross-modal correspondences (CMCs). This article investigates music experience in participants with a non-professionally trained music background across three musical dimensions: Contour (Ascending, Descending, Flat), Vertical Density (Low, Medium, High), and Note Pattern (Binary, Ternary, Quaternary). In order that stimuli should reflect contemporary musical usage yet be subject to a high degree of experimental control, 27 ten-second digital piano tracks were created in collaboration with a film composer. In Study 1, participants were asked to rate the stimuli for perceived Direction, Rotation, Movement, and Emotional and Physical Involvement. We test the effects of these factors in terms of the following theories: general and vocal embodied responses to music, the Ecological Theory of Rotating Sounds, and the Shared Affective Motion Experience model of emotion induction. Results for Study 1 were consistent with theories of general and vocal embodied responses to music, as well as with theories of embodied emotional contagion in music. Study 1 also revealed potential confounds in the stimuli, which were further investigated in Study 2 with a new set of participants rating the stimuli for perceived Pitch, Loudness, and Speed. Results for Study 2 served to dissociate intrinsic features of the stimuli from CMCs. Taken together, the two studies reveal a range of embodied CMCs. Although there are limitations to a perceptual study such as this, these stimuli stand to benefit future research in further investigating the embodiment of musical motion.

Fascinacija muzičkim prostor-vremenom - klavirska dela Branke Popović (Solitude - Self reflections, Within a dense molecular cloud i Od Rejlija do Mija)

The piano works by Branka Popović (1977) appear as a unique and independent group in her oeuvre, as well as in the context of Serbian music of the current century. The question of the relation between the composer and musical space-time, which can be experienced directly, during the act of listening and indirectly, during the analysis of the piece of music, emerges as an essential point for understanding and interpreting Branka Popović's piano works. Under the assumption that this relationship is in the realm of unconsciousness and intuition, my goal in this article is to discover the hidden places that show how the musical space-time manifests, in this case, in the piano writing of Branka Popović. To achieve that, I will use an interpretative musical analysis, in which I will point out the specific compositional technique that Branka Popović employs and by which she 'regulates' different musical dimensions and, more precisely, musical components and their elements (specifically rhythm, timbre or tone color, harmony, motivic/thematic structuring, and dynamics) in the act of shaping the musical space-time.

Industrial Techno and SID Sound Design in the Commodore 64 GameSlipstream

Slipstream is a rail shooter developed by the group Bauknecht. The soundtrack, composed by Ronny Engmann, accentuates the game’s futuristic space setting and emphasis on speed by invoking the electronic dance music style of industrial techno, which combines the taut grooves of minimal techno with the abrasive sonics of early industrial music to make for an intensification of the sound that made the club scenes of Detroit and Berlin famous. Despite the Commodore 64 being a supposedly obsolete 8-bit platform that had its manufacture stopped decades ago, contemporary composers like Engmann are compelled to use the machine for its SID (Sound Interface Device) chip, which stands apart from the sound chips of other 8-bit home computers and consoles due to its variety of waveform types, filtering capabilities, ring modulation, and oscillator sync effects. The skills that Engmann developed while exploring the affordances of this versatile chip enabled him to compose a video game soundtrack that is informed by his engagement with the Berlin techno scene from the early 1990s onward. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with Engmann and Slipstream’s programmer Stefan Mader, this article demonstrates how techno’s pivotal theme of synergistic existence of humanity with technology resonates with an ecstatic feeling of forward propulsion that characterizes Slipstream. Focusing on the musical dimension of timbre and addressing the practical issues of modern cross-platform development through an analysis of Engmann’s project files for the Commodore 64 music tool GoatTracker, this article shows that Slipstream’s soundtrack is exemplary in effectively harnessing electronic dance music as video game music.

Fusion and Application of Chinese Ethnic Elements in Electroacoustic Music in Mist on a Hill

The development of computers and technology has made electroacoustic music an important part of modern music. In an effort to broaden the musical dimension and to offer more possibilities for timbral combinations, composers have used various techniques to combine electroacoustic music with acoustic instruments, giving traditional instrumental music a richer timbre, a wider range of pitches and greater sonic expressiveness. The pipa, a typical representative of Chinese music culture, has a long history and its unique timbre is widely loved by electroacoustic music composers. This article uses Marc Battier’s mixed music Mist on a Hill (for pipa and electroacoustic sounds) as an example to explore the integration and practical use of Chinese folk elements in electroacoustic music.

Co-producing knowledge and Morocco's musical heritage: a relational paradigm for colonial scholarship

ABSTRACTThe musical dimensions of the Moroccan Protectorate invite us to rethink certain tenets of colonial history, especially lingering nineteenth-century attitudes about ‘indigenous’ populations as ‘savage’. By the mid-twentieth century, efforts to comprehend Moroccan music were far less motivated by domination and submission than other agendas, beginning with ‘cultural protection’ to justify French presence, the Protectorate's priority since arrival. Publications and promotion of Moroccan music reflected French desire for long-term impact on the region. This enterprise depended on Moroccan as well as European support, addressing local needs and creating alliances with both urban and rural elites with their own political agendas. Offering archival evidence of the French Protectorate's institutional involvement in renovating Andalusian music – never before examined, yet so important in post-colonial Moroccan identity – and, despite colonial occupation, Moroccan musicians’ agency, this article focuses on the interactions between French administrator Prosper Ricard, Algerian-born musician/ethnographer Alexis Chottin, and Moroccan musicians equally concerned about their music's future. Many are here given voice for the first time. Drawing on these stakeholders’ expertise and experiences, they co-created new musical knowledge despite power asymmetries, sustained the musical practices of urban and rural populations, and encouraged traditional, hybrid and modern identities. In their newly-created Conservatory of Moroccan Music, music festivals, and Radio-Maroc, relationships shaped through shared responsibility for outcomes emerge as significantly more complex than between ‘superiors and subalterns’, reaching parity at the Fez festival (1939). Their multifaceted work continues to influence knowledge and praxis today. To understand this requires a new paradigm for colonial scholarship.

The Research of Computer Simulation of Textual Dimension in the Context of the Musical Discourse

The relevance of the study is determined by the need to rethink musical art as a value orientation in the period of postmodernity. The purpose of the study is to determine the features of the textual dimension of musical discourse as a feature of the postmodern value perception of musical art in combination with the information and computerization of society. The purpose of the article is to show the basic context of the textual dimension of musical discourse. This research shows a holistic analysis of musical art in the context of discourse analysis and innovative modeling, which in the future is a prospect for creating new ideas for the interpretation of musical works. The study highlights the main components of textual analysis of a musical work, as well as the perception of musical discourse as a manifestation of today’s information of social development. For a comprehensive analysis of musical art it is necessary to understand the basic theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of this concept. Therefore, the principal theoretical approaches of scientists concerning musical discourse in the context of the textual dimension were studied, and theoretical problems in musical discourse analysis were developed. Beneficial to study the complex modeling of the textual dimension of musical art, the methods of analysis and synthesis, research method and discourse analysis method were used. This study provided a basis for determining the effectiveness of computer simulation technology in the context of the musical dimension.

‘Make Classical Music Great Again’: Contemporary Music, Masculinity, and Virality in Memetic Media in Online Spaces

While an image may be worth a thousand words, a meme can be worth much more. From politics to videos, games to social media, memes are an integral part of today’s online communication and content production in the paradigm of participation culture that is prevalent on the internet and in society. By looking at memes as a socially constructed and intertextual discourse which represents different voices, perspectives, and creative insights, these cultural units are also a reflection of how cybercommunities think about, circulate, and imbue content with meaning in their everyday lives. Among many varieties of meme categories, music plays an important role in the production and consolidation of this online dimension, especially on YouTube and other social media. From rock to classical music, most music genres are featured either in static or audiovisual memes, except for one (large) period of music that is commonly referred to as ‘modern’ music. Despite niche and specialised meme pages, groups and forums related to contemporary music, this broad category is quite overlooked by YouTube compilations, social media featuring classical music, and other online spaces, thus mixing and confusing repertoires and stereotypes. With recurrent tropes regarding gender, power, and aesthetics that can be found either in pages dedicated to western contemporary art music and on other generalised platforms labelling it as ‘ugly’, ‘male’ or ‘white’, this paper aims to examine how the musical dimension affects the production of music memes and related online content, thus analysing its role in popular culture today and how cybercommunities—with or without audiovisual literacy—relate to and spread this (musical) phenomenon.

MELUDIA – Online music training for cochlear implant users

Background Music enjoyment is of importance for many cochlear implant (CI) users, and the interest in music training is high. But many CI users report that it is a challenge to find suitable training resources and that they stall because they don’t know how to practice. Meludia is an online music training program that provides structured and guided music training for musically experienced and inexperienced children and adults. Objective The aim of the study was to evaluate the suitability of the Meludia music training software for CI recipients based on two research questions: (1) are the easiest exercises available easy enough for CI users, and (2) are there any gaps when progressing through levels and stars with increasing difficulty? Methods Thirty-eight adult MED-EL CI users completed fourteen exercises involving 5 different musical dimensions of the online music training program. Results Our results show that the easiest exercises available in Meludia are easy enough for CI users to be able to use this training resource independent of age, indication, duration of CI use or musical background. Conclusion With Meludia we assessed and found a suitable and comprehensive training tool that allows CI recipients to work on individual goals regardless of their present abilities.

The Effects of in Store Music on Shopping Behaviour in a Retail Setting

This article extends research linking shopping behaviour to music as an environmental stimulus. Spanning across five sports apparel stores shoppers shopping in a real retail experience reported their perception of time spent inside the store, their overall hearing/aural rating on a ten point bi polar scale and the actual time spent in the store was noted down. Also their level of music familiarity was asked on a 5 point bi polar scale and the tempo of music in each store was analyzed. Results show that music familiarity has a positive relationship with the perception of time. The subjects reported shopping longer when exposed to familiar music but actually the time spent shopping was longer, when exposed to unfamiliar music. This result can be attributed to the notion that time appears to be longer when one can remember more about it and which is what happens when people listen to familiar music. The overall perception of the aural/hearing sense of the consumers also showed a positive relationship with music familiarity. An extensive literature review reveals interesting findings in various types of retail settings, on various consumer behaviour variables, and effects of various music dimensions..

Musical Listening Qualia: A Multivariate Approach

ABSTRACT French and American participants listened to new music stimuli and evaluated the stimuli using either adjectives or quantitative musical dimensions. Results were analyzed using correspondence analysis (CA), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), multiple factor analysis (MFA), and partial least squares correlation (PLSC). French and American listeners differed when they described the musical stimuli using adjectives, but not when using the quantitative dimensions. The present work serves as a case study in research methodology that allows for a balance between relaxing experimental control and maintaining statistical rigor.

Song lines and soundtracks: Autoethnographic narratives across four generations

Music is personal. While self-reflection is common to performers, composers, teachers and researchers, there exists a musical dimension – the source of these experiences – wanting recognition. These experiences, I suggest, are the personal memories of one’s deep involvement with music. Reported here are rich narratives across four generations of women in my family. Each one demonstrates separate cultural identities and influences according to her musical heritage, religious traditions, upbringing and access to music at a given time, place and environment. Each one’s story reveals a profound sense of self-knowing, the ‘me-ness’ of lived experience through music. The autoethnographic data were inspired by close relationships with the women in my family and interest in the significance of music memories from childhood, youth and early adulthood. I propose that knowledge of our students’ musical memories provides a baseline for understanding their musical development and influences our curricular decisions.

The Soundscapes of Childhood in Coleridge’s Lyric Poetry

ABSTRACT This article explores portrayals of childhood in Coleridge’s poetry in the light of the poet’s own objections to Wordsworth’s description of a child as a philosopher in Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. Coleridge suggests that by forcing adult ideas of rationality upon the child, Wordsworth undermines the uniqueness of childhood as a separate form of consciousness with its own ways of thinking and communicating. I argue that Coleridge avoids this deficiency in his own poetry by using the musical dimension of the lyric to celebrate childhood in its own language. The pre-literate child’s off-page tears, gurgles, and whimpers can be heard in the adult speaker’s infant-directed speech. The speaker’s acoustic choices allow the reader to ‘read’ the moods of the child in the melodic part of the lyric (melos) and anticipate a time when the child will be able to join its opsis.

Smelling sensations: Olfactory crossmodal correspondences (JPI-first)

Olfaction is ingrained into the fabric of our daily lives and constitutes an integral part of our perceptual reality. Within this reality, there are crossmodal interactions and sensory expectations; understanding how olfaction interacts with other sensory modalities is crucial for augmenting interactive experiences with more advanced multisensorial capabilities. This knowledge will eventually lead to better designs, more engaging experiences, and enhancing the perceived quality of experience. Toward this end, the authors investigated a range of crossmodal correspondences between ten olfactory stimuli and different modalities (angularity of shapes, smoothness of texture, pleasantness, pitch, colors, musical genres, and emotional dimensions) using a sample of 68 observers. Consistent crossmodal correspondences were obtained in all cases, including our novel modality (the smoothness of texture). These associations are most likely mediated by both the knowledge of an odor’s identity and the underlying hedonic ratings: the knowledge of an odor’s identity plays a role when judging the emotional and musical dimensions but not for the angularity of shapes, smoothness of texture, perceived pleasantness, or pitch. Overall, hedonics was the most dominant mediator of crossmodal correspondences.

Socio-Cultural Dimensions of Dugu Music of the Waala People of the Upper West Region of Ghana

The article is a documentation of the authors’ research into the Duori dugu music of the Waala people in the Wa municipality of Upper West Region of Ghana. It underscored the socio-cultural dimensions of the dugu genre and also touched on the contexts of performance and the use of instruments. Grounded on the theory of cultural context, the authors addressed the interplay between musical performance and the rich culture that portrayed the musical identity of the Wa people and the Waala in general. Data was gathered through interviews and participant observation. It was found that apart from its contextual performance at the in-laws’ programmes, the dugu group also performs at Damba festival as well as other programmes that are connected to the members. The write-up concludes that dugu music gives the people of Wa a solid sense of cultural identity through instrumental organization and the contexts in which it is performed. Keywords: Socio-cultural, Dugu, cultural context, In-laws, Damba festival, Wa DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/12-2-03 Publication date: January 31 st 2022