Musical Style Research Articles

Arabic Music Genre Identification

Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is one data science application crucial for different tasks such as recommendation systems, genre identification, fingerprinting, and novelty assessment. Different Machine Learning techniques are utilised to analyse digital music records, such as clustering, classification, similarity scoring, and identifying various properties for the different tasks. Music is represented digitally using diverse transformations and is clustered and classified successfully for Western Music. However, Eastern Music poses a challenge, and some techniques have achieved success in clustering and classifying Turkish and Persian Music. This research presents an evaluation of machine learning algorithms' performance on pre-labelled Arabic Music with their Arabic genre (Maqam). The study introduced new data representations of the Arabic music dataset and identified the most suitable machine-learning methods and future enhancements.

Performance Analysis of Deep Learning and Machine Learning Methods for Music Genre Classification System

Classification plays a crucial role in numerous applications within the music industry, spanning from content management to personalized playlists and music recommendation systems. While previous research has explored various machine learning frameworks for this purpose, such as support vector machines (SVM), a comprehensive comparison analysis of convolutional neural networks (CNN) and k-nearest neighbor (KNN) remains unknown. This study aims to address this gap by analyzing and contrasting the performance of SVM, KNN, and CNN in music genre classification. Each algorithm was carefully trained using different music genres from a protected dataset, employing feature extraction methods to capture the appropriate qualities of audio signals. The models underwent extensive training with a limited number of samples, and their performance was evaluated using industry standards such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 scores. Experimental results included SVM, KNN, and CNN for music genre designation. This study contributes significantly to existing literature by providing a comparative analysis of these algorithms. The findings highlight the strengths and limitations of each approach, offering guidance for researchers and practitioners in choosing the most suitable approach for their specific needs. The insights gained from this research have the potential to enhance music genre classification systems, ultimately improving the user experience across various music-related contexts.

CCM in the choral classroom: Pedagogical practices of two high school music educators

This study aims to enrich the discourse on integrating contemporary commercial music (CCM) genres into vocal music education. Despite existing methodologies by vocal pedagogues, there is a pressing need for a formalized CCM pedagogy. Developing such a pedagogy requires understanding and possibly drawing inspiration from the pedagogical practices and philosophical beliefs of current vocal music educators teaching these styles. To delve deeper, the author conducted a qualitative case study with two suburban high school music educators proficient in CCM vocal techniques. Each participant underwent a 30- to 40-minute semi-structured interview and an observed rehearsal, and provided course materials. Analysis revealed key themes: Caroline’s motivation, teaching techniques and community response; and Matt’s musical background, motivation, beliefs, teaching practices and community response. Despite contextual differences, both shared musical backgrounds and positive community feedback. These findings offer insights for vocal music educators and teacher education programmes.

Bangla song genre recognition using artificial neural network

<p>Music has a control over human moods and it can make someone calm or excited. It allows us to feel all emotions we experience. Nowadays, people are often attached with their phones and computers listening to music on Spotify, Soundcloud or any other internet platform. Music Information retrieval plays an important role for music recommendation according to lyrics, pitch, pattern of choices, and genre. In this study, we have tried to recognize the music genre for a better music recommendation system. We have collected an amount of 1820 Bangla songs from six different genres including Adhunik, Rock, Hip hop, Nazrul, Rabindra and Folk music. We have started with some traditional machine learning algorithms having K-Nearest Neighbor, Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine and Decision Tree but ended up with a deep learning algorithm named Artificial Neural Network with an accuracy of 78% for recognizing music genres from six different genres. All mentioned algorithms are experimented with transformed mel-spectrograms and Mean Chroma Frequency Values of that raw amplitude data. But we found that music Tempo having Beats per Minute value with two previous features present better accuracy.</p>

Stylistic and structural peculiarities of the sonata ”Ludus Fistula” for flute and piano by Pavel Rusu

Pavel Rusu’s creation encompasses a wide range of musical genres, ranging from symphonic and choral to chamber music – both instrumental and vocal. Stylistically, P. Rusu was attracted by the diversity of 20th-century composition on the one hand, and on the other, he was particularly interested in folklore, allowing this field to shape his individual compositional style, while his opuses were dominated by the intonation and colors of folk music. The Sonata for Flute and Piano Ludus Fistula (1984) is a concert piece that perfectly exemplifies these observations. Having never been researched or published, the Sonata will be the object of study of the present article, in which the first attempts are made to fill this gap in the historiography of national music..

Through a glass darkly: How Goth reflected and reimagined the Sixties

When Goth emerged as a post-punk music genre and subcultural style in the late 1970s and early 1980s, its references to the past included nineteenth-century Gothic literature and classic Hollywood ‘monster movies’ such as 1931’s Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. Less discussed, however, is Goth’s inclusion of 1960s culture into its repertoire. While the 1960s are often synonymous with the Mod joys of ‘Swinging London’ and the cheerful flower power of San Francisco, it was also a period marked by the popular Hammer Horror films and the real-life terrors of the Moors and Manson Murders. As children of the 1960s, Goth’s originators could not help but reference the sights and sounds that shaped their childhoods. In this light, the music produced by bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy conjure a darker side of that decade. This article assesses how the original wave of Goth musicians drew upon the 1960s to invent a dark psychedelia for a new generation of youth.

Black Epistemologies and Music: A Dialogue with Emicida's Sobre crianças, quadris, pesadelos e lições de casa

Abstract: The arts have consistently been interlocutors for Black scholarship in the humanities. Poetry, literature, and music are sources of knowledge for theorizing social realities. This relates to two elements: (a) an epistemology that values the production and spread of oral, subjective, and aesthetic forms of knowledge; (b) the systematic exclusion of Black people from academic spaces, especially in Latin American contexts, which encourages alternative practices of reflection and registry. Many artists actively consider what is produced in the cultural margins to be a strong locus of political and intellectual creativity. In Brazil, the rapper Emicida has been trying to make his artistic projects catalysts for philosophical reflection. His album Sobre crianças, quadris, pesadelos e lições de casa resonates with Asian, African, Black Atlantic, and Latin American sources of knowledge including religious practices, pop culture, and philosophy. It discusses themes such as love, race, racism, history, family, environmental crisis, and work relations through the combination of musical styles from Brazil, specifically, and the Black Atlantic, more generally. This article establishes a dialogue with the theories and debates suggested by this album, thus situating its contribution to Black scholarship and epistemology.

Application of Deep Learning Model for Music Genre Classification

A musical genre is a term used to classify specific musical styles in accordance with a sense of their significance or a set of guidelines. There are many techniques to classify music into different genres, but attempts to automate this process using machine learning have received much less attention from the media. Blues, Classical, Country, Disco, Hiphop, Jazz, Metal, Pop, Reggae and Rock are the most common musical genres. Objective: This study develops and creates a model that can classify music into their respective genre. The dataset, which contains 1000 songs divided into 10 sections with 100 songs each, was obtained from the open-source service "Kaggle" and utilized for the classification. To train and test the model, the dataset was then converted into a JSON format, the new dataset was then splitted into 30% for testing the model and 70% for the training of the model. This model was created using the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) machine learning technique. The result shows that the model was able to correctly classify 7 audios out of 10 audios and correctly classify them into their original genre. The classifier achieved an accuracy score of about 73%. In conclusion, the study provided a model that will aid in the classification of various types of music into their appropriate genres. This will be highly useful for record companies and other music retailers to group songs for search and retrieval.

Analysis of Building the Music Feature Extraction Systems: A Review

Music genre classification is a basic method for sound processing in the field of music retrieval. The application of machine learning has become increasingly popular in automatically classifying music genres. Therefore, in recent years, many methods have been studied and developed to solve this problem. In this article, an overview on the process and some music feature extraction methods is presented. Here, the feature extraction method using Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) is discussed in detail. Some typical results in using Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients for improving accuracy in the classification process are introduced and discussed. Therefore, the feature extraction method using MFCC has shown its suitability due to high accuracy and has much potential for further research and development.

Genre and species characteristics of musical and performing interpretation

The relevance of the publication lies in the importance and necessity of determining the influence of genre and species characteristics on musical and performance interpretation. So, the main purposes of this article are to identify the main factors that influence the development of interpreting skills, analyse how students of higher music institutions have evaluated their own musical interpretation skills, provide an assessment analysis of how independent music experts have evaluated students' musical interpretation skills, provide a comparative analysis of these assessments, provide rationale for the importance of musical and performing interpretation skills regardless of the music genre, and provide recommendations for the development of musical performance interpretation skills for teachers of higher music institutions. While considering the issue of genre and species characteristics of musical and performing interpretation, the methods of this scientific work were applied: the deductive method, method of argumentation, method of matching, methods of combination and differentiation, method of categorisation, method of questionnaire survey, and systematic analysis, which provided an opportunity to link all the research results together. The study suggests the outcome of the research conducted, discovers the key peculiarities of the art process that influence the development of interpretation skills, analyses the results of self-assessment by students of higher music institutions, provides a comparative analysis with the assessments of independent experts, substantiates the need for closer attention to the development of musical and performing interpretation skills for musicians of all genres, both instrumentalists and vocalists, and provides recommendations for developing the musical and performing interpretation skills of future musicians. The practical value of the study lies in the fact that its results can be used both in the concert activity of musicians and in the process of mastering the performing disciplines by students of colleges and higher educational institutions related to the art of music.

Exploring The Connection of Passion and Motivation in Higher Education Singing and Choral Training in Music Performance Education

This qualitative study explores the intricate dynamics between students' passion for music and their motivation in higher education music performance classes. Guided by Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), the research involves in-depth interviews with fifteen undergraduate music performance majors. The study identifies five pivotal themes shaping students' motivation. The theme of personal music connections emphasises the profound impact of individualised relationships with music, highlighting the significance of nurturing personal and emotional dimensions within musical connections. Exposure to diverse musical styles emerges as a transformative factor, broadening students' musical horizons and significantly influencing their motivation. Involvement in extracurricular music activities is identified as a powerful motivator, providing real-world experiences that enhance students' passion for music performance. The theme of supportive interactions highlights the critical role played by educators, peers, and the overall learning environment in shaping students' motivation. Cultivating a strong personal bond with music accentuates the profound impact of an individualised and emotionally resonant connection with music on students' motivation within the educational context. These findings underscore the vital role of cultivating enthusiasm, providing diverse musical experiences, and fostering supportive environments to enhance motivation in higher education music performance classes. The implications extend to educators, enabling them to design more engaging and effective music programs, enriching the overall educational experience for students.

생성형 인공지능(Generative AI)을 활용한 대중음악 창작교육 방안 연구 - ChatGPT 활용방안을 중심으로

The education curriculum for music composition utilizing generative AI, particularly ChatGPT, aligns with the new direction for improving creative and integrative abilities. This program is based on the enhanced capabilities in the musical realm brought by the upgrade to GPT 4.0, thereby allowing for personalized music creation support across various music genres and styles. The introduction phase focuses on learning to use AI and acquiring basic knowledge of popular music. The development phase involves undertaking creative tasks such as lyric, chord, and melody generation. In the conclusion phase, participants reflect on the process and share what they have learned. This study is significant as it serves as a model that provides concrete examples of music creation activities.

Journalists’ authority and its bounded trade; Twitter, journalists, and boundary work in contemporary France’s music scene

Journalists, it is widely admitted, are engaged in new forms of boundary work on social media platforms, seeking to uphold their influence over news dissemination. This study focuses on music festivals as a case study to examine journalists' endeavors in maintaining their authority on social media. We analyze Twitter coverage of music festivals in France during the summer of 2018, systematically collecting data from 16 festivals of varying sizes and musical genres. Through this analysis, we investigate journalists' engagement and evaluate the trading of authority with other stakeholders through mentioning practices. Our findings challenge the prevailing notion of journalists as primary arbiters of authority on social media platforms. Despite their conspicuous presence during music festivals on Twitter, journalists emerge as relatively passive participants compared to other stakeholders in the music scene. Moreover, their ability to assert or receive authority from the broader public sphere is limited. This study sheds light on the bounded nature of journalists' boundary work on social media platforms, emphasizing the evolving dynamics of authority within digital information ecosystems.

가스펠 음악이 엘비스 프레슬리(Elvis Presley)의 음악에 끼친 영향과 의미

Elvis Presley’s Grammy Awards, all three of which were won in the Gospel category, highlight a lesser-known facet of his musical legacy. His unwavering commitment to gospel music led to his posthumous induction into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. This study explores the impact of gospel music on Presley’s musical career and the significance it held for him. Presley grew up in the Southern United States, where gospel music culture was not significantly differentiated from secular music, allowing for a seamless integration of various gospel music styles. Even after achieving rock and roll stardom, he continued releasing gospel records and incorporated gospel songs in movies and various other shows. He used gospel music as a key element in shaping his musical style, structuring his backup vocals around gospel quartets throughout his career. By infusing traditional gospel music with contemporary sounds, he crafted his own musical identity, presenting it with unwavering confidence to the general public and the music industry. Gospel music was indeed an integral part of his artistic persona. He introduced gospel music to the world of rock and roll, reserving a prominent place for it on his stage. This approach underscored the significance of gospel music in the broader music scene. Elvis Presley’s gospel music can be re-evaluated as having emerged as a pioneering force during the formative phase of contemporary Christian music.

앰비언트 음악(Ambient Music) 형식 분석 - 에이펙스 트윈(Aphex Twind)의 ‘루바브(Rhubarb)’를 중심으로

Ambient music does not have a traditional music forms but emphasizes a sense of space through continuous repetition of pad and drone sounds. This study sought to reveal the characteristics of ambient music format. By analyzing Aphex Twin’s song “Rhubarb,” this study investigated the dynamic changes in ambient music that occur through repetition and transformation. The analysis confirmed that the dynamic change achieved through the overlapping of textures on repeated musical phrases forms the form of the song, thereby expanding and contracting the sense of space. The characteristics of the ambient music format were summarized as repetitive forms, dynamic changes through texture overlap, and creation of a sense of space through dynamic changes. This analysis of formal characteristics can be applied not only to the early ambient music created by Brian Eno, but also to the electronic music genre that later combined ambient music and ambient sound through combination with other genres. Analysis of ambient music as a branch of electronic music as well as research on ambient sound will provide a new direction to the possibilities of such music.

1960년대 한-일 대중음악에 나타나는 비틀즈의 영향을 통한, 대중음악의 수용의미 분석 - 1960년대 양국 밴드 음악의 비교를 중심으로

Since the Beatles’ arrival in New York on February 7 th , 1964 was broadcast, they have shaken up not only the United States but also the world’s popular music market. Korea and Japan, which were strongly influenced by American pop culture at the time, were also influenced by British-style band music including the Beatles. Based on this cultural phenomenon that Korea and Japan experienced simultaneously in the 1960s, this study examined the patterns of cultural spread in the Anglo-American region between the two nations via a comparison of the music of the two countries at the time. This study compared Korean and Japanese 60s popular music in terms of melodies and harmonies that were influenced by British-style band music represented by the Beatles. As a result, the band music of both countries exhibited similarities and differences in musical aspects. A common factor is that the band music of both countries follows the Beatles’ band formation and arrangement method; however, differences were also observed. In the case of Korean bands, excluding their adapted songs, the musical influence of the Beatles is not easy to find. Korean band Add4’s songs were made using pentatonic scales, which give the feeling of Korean folk music. The band Keyboys wrote songs in the trot genre. In the case of Japan, other examples can be found. The band The Spiders and The Dynamites used music as similar to the Beatles as possible, thereby reflecting the Beatles’ melodic and harmonic characteristics as much as possible. Jackey Yoshikawa and the Blue Comets showed enka tendencies. Based on our results, Korea’s 1960s band music localized new English-American music and accepted it in a compromise manner. Japanese band music also attempted to localize, but attempted to copy the trend of English-American music represented by the Beatles. It was confirmed that attempts had also been made. Based on these differences in cultural acceptance between the two countries, the patterns of cultural transmission at the time in the Anglo-American world can be summarized as follows. 1. The public’s level of exposure to Anglo-American culture was different in the two countries. 2. The music production companies of the two countries had different approaches to the newly forming English-American music. Thereafter, Korean and Japanese popular music in the 70s and 80s took different paths. This difference can be viewed as the result of the two countries’ different acceptance of Anglo-American music from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which are considered a time of differentiation in Anglo-American popular music genres such as rock, rock‘n’roll, and R&B. The occurrence of the phenomenon of cultural acceptance influencing later generations of music is believed to be repeating with the birth of K-pop. Accordingly, the formation of modern K-pop and its differences from J-pop can be considered as future research tasks.

Bentuk Interaksi Parasosial pada Penggemar K-Pop Melalui Media Sosial X

The Korean wave has become very popular, especially in the field of music often referred to as “Korean pop” or “K-pop”, which is a fusion of various popular music genres from South Korea. With the internet and social media being easily accessible, K-pop in Indonesia is growing very fast. This research looks at the phenomenon of fan behavior towards their idols on social media, which leads to parasocial interactions because the ease of social media makes fans feel close to their idols. In parasocial interaction, a person acts towards media figures as if they are where they are. Parasocial interaction has forms including task attraction, identification attraction, and romantic attraction. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find out how the form of parasocial interactions carried out by K-pop fans on X social media. This research uses a descriptive methodology that uses interviews and observations to collect data. The results showed that all informants actively engage in parasocial interactions with their idol, NCT, through social media X. This shows that the type of parasocial interaction that K-pop fans do on social media X. This shows that the types of parasocial interactions that occur in NCT fans through social media X are task attraction, identification attraction, and romantic attraction.

A Study on the Singing Forms of Western Rock Music Integrating Classical Cultural Elements

Rock and roll is not only a form of music, but also a "attitude and philosophy of life". It is precisely because of this that rock and roll is different from general pop music, and there are various differences between Chinese and Western rock and roll. Rock music has many branches and complex forms. Its main styles include folk rock, art rock, psychedelic rock, Country rock, heavy metal, punk, etc. This article studies the singing forms of Western rock music that integrate classical cultural elements. People who listen to classical music "despise" the "vulgarity" of rock and roll, and people who play rock and roll "dislike" the "affectation" of classical music. These two music styles, which seem to never blend together, always maintain a proud attitude of respecting each other in their respective music culture circles. The extensive use of words with classical cultural elements and cultural imagery in rock music works can allow viewers to develop a sense of closeness and identification with the national essence reflected in the work from an aesthetic psychological perspective, and have a deeper understanding of the ideas expressed in the work.

A Concert-Based Study on Melodic Contour Identification among Varied Hearing Profiles-A Preliminary Report.

Background: This study investigated how different hearing profiles influenced melodic contour identification (MCI) in a real-world concert setting with a live band including drums, bass, and a lead instrument. We aimed to determine the impact of various auditory assistive technologies on music perception in an ecologically valid environment. Methods: The study involved 43 participants with varying hearing capabilities: normal hearing, bilateral hearing aids, bimodal hearing, single-sided cochlear implants, and bilateral cochlear implants. Participants were exposed to melodies played on a piano or accordion, with and without an electric bass as a masker, accompanied by a basic drum rhythm. Bayesian logistic mixed-effects models were utilized to analyze the data. Results: The introduction of an electric bass as a masker did not significantly affect MCI performance for any hearing group when melodies were played on the piano, contrary to its effect on accordion melodies and previous studies. Greater challenges were observed with accordion melodies, especially when accompanied by an electric bass. Conclusions: MCI performance among hearing aid users was comparable to other hearing-impaired profiles, challenging the hypothesis that they would outperform cochlear implant users. A cohort of short melodies inspired by Western music styles was developed for future contour identification tasks.

Nostalgia of Sound: The Social and Cultural Phenomenon of the “Soviet Wave” Music Community

Nostalgia for the late Soviet past takes various forms and is intertwined in complex ways with global trends to look to the past for inspiration in creating new examples of mass culture. New generations of those who were born and raised after the collapse of the Soviet system are being introduced to nostalgic reminiscences. The article analyzes the socio-cultural phenomenon of electronic music Soviet Wave, which combines the stylistics of the late Soviet popular culture and contemporary electronic music. This phenomenon can be understood as post-nostalgia for the late Soviet, since it involves members of the younger generation who know about the Soviet from the stories of their parents and the media. In addition, the “Soviet Wave” is also analyzed as part of the general trend of retromania described by S. Reynolds. Reynolds, where there is an endless reference to the musical styles of the past in the creation of new works. The main concept of the phenomenon of the Soviet Wave is the idea of “ersatz-nostalgia” by A. Appadurai, which suggests the contemporary experience of the past without a corresponding life experience and collective historical memory, but based on the popular patterns of mass culture, in the representations of which the past has already undergone profound transformation. Nostalgia for the late Soviet past takes various forms and is intertwined in complex ways with global trends to look to the past for inspiration in creating new examples of mass culture. The article presents a brief history of the formation and evolution of the musical culture of “Soviet Wave” in the Russian subcultural scene, shows the connection of the aesthetics of this trend with the nostalgic mood of the late Soviet period, reveals the elements of ersatz and techno nostalgia (T. Pinch, D. Reyneke), examines the relationship of this phenomenon with the broader trends in contemporary mass culture in the international context. “The Soviet Wave” is also considered as an element of cultural citizenship formation and transformational museumfication of the Soviet. The article is based on the results of the author’s empirical research, which included interviews with musicians working in the “Soviet Wave” genre.