Musical Phrases Research Articles

Musical Role Asymmetries in Piano Duet Performance Influence Alpha-Band Neural Oscillation and Behavioral Synchronization.

Recent work in interpersonal coordination has revealed that neural oscillations, occurring spontaneously in the human brain, are modulated during the sensory, motor, and cognitive processes involved in interpersonal interactions. In particular, alpha-band (8–12 Hz) activity, linked to attention in general, is related to coordination dynamics and empathy traits. Researchers have also identified an association between each individual’s attentiveness to their co-actor and the relative similarity in the co-actors’ roles, influencing their behavioral synchronization patterns. We employed music ensemble performance to evaluate patterns of behavioral and neural activity when roles between co-performers are systematically varied with complete counterbalancing. Specifically, we designed a piano duet task, with three types of co-actor dissimilarity, or asymmetry: (1) musical role (starting vs. joining), (2) musical task similarity (similar vs. dissimilar melodic parts), and (3) performer animacy (human-to-human vs. human-to-non-adaptive computer). We examined how the experience of these asymmetries in four initial musical phrases, alternatingly played by the co-performers, influenced the pianists’ performance of a subsequent unison phrase. Electroencephalography was recorded simultaneously from both performers while playing keyboards. We evaluated note-onset timing and alpha modulation around the unison phrase. We also investigated whether each individual’s self-reported empathy was related to behavioral and neural activity. Our findings revealed closer behavioral synchronization when pianists played with a human vs. computer partner, likely because the computer was non-adaptive. When performers played with a human partner, or a joining performer played with a computer partner, having a similar vs. dissimilar musical part did not have a significant effect on their alpha modulation immediately prior to unison. However, when starting performers played with a computer partner with a dissimilar vs. similar part there was significantly greater alpha synchronization. In other words, starting players attended less to the computer partner playing a similar accompaniment, operating in a solo-like mode. Moreover, this alpha difference based on melodic similarity was related to a difference in note-onset adaptivity, which was in turn correlated with performer trait empathy. Collectively our results extend previous findings by showing that musical ensemble performance gives rise to a socialized context whose lasting effects encompass attentiveness, perceptual-motor coordination, and empathy.

Artistic and aesthetic ideas in “Plays” for two pianos by P. Dambis

Artistic and aesthetic ideas in “Plays” for two pianos by P. Dambis

Analysis of duet vocalizations in Myiothlypis leucoblephara (Aves, Parulidae)

Bird vocalizations might be used for specific recognition, territorial defense, and reproduction. Bioacoustic studies aim to understand the production, propagation and reception of acoustic signals, and they are an important component of research on animal behavior and evolution. In this study we analyzed the sound structure of duet vocalizations in pairs of Myiothlypis leucoblephara and evaluated whether the vocal variables differ among pairs and if there are differences in temporal characteristics and frequency of duets between pairs in forest edges vs. forest interior. Vocalizations were recorded from 17 bird pairs in three remnants of Atlantic Forest in southern Brazil. Six of the bird pairs were situated at the edge of the forest remnant, and 11 were in the interior of the remnant. The duets of different pairs between forest areas showed descriptive differences in the frequency, number of notes per call, and time between issuance of calls, with the main distinguishing feature being a change in frequency of a few notes in the second part of the musical phrase. The minimum frequency of vocalization was reduced at the private area than in the other two remnants (p <0.05). The duets of birds in the forest edge and forest interior did not significantly differ in minimum or maximum frequency of phrases (p> 0.05), phrase duration (p> 0.05) or number of notes per phrase (p> 0.05). Myiothlypis leucoblephara did not show a specific pattern with respect to issue of phrases in duets, but instead showed five different patterns, which were variable among pairs. There was a sharp decline or alternation in frequency between notes in the second part of the musical phrase for recognition among pairs. Variation in vocalization among M. leucoblephara duets may play a role in pair recognition.

РОЛЬ ЕМОЦІЙНИХ ЗАСОБІВ У ВИКОНАННІ ВОКАЛЬНО-КАМЕРНОГО ТВОРУ

The present paper examines the different ways used in professional training of the future vocalist. Vocal repertoire of the students’ training plays a great role in their aesthetic as well as artistic development. It is stressed that vocal repertoire has to be very varied: the diversity of musical works improves musical hearing and taste, develops singing and artistic performance. Thus, an experienced teacher has to pay considerable attention to the selection of appropriate vocal repertoire. By using a varied, well-selected repertoire students familiarize themselves with different singing techniques, music styles and works. Moreover, they learn how to sing with correct articulation, discover the peculiarities of poems transformed into songs, sense all shades of musical intonation and, consequently, recreate them in their own singing performance. Therefore, a varied, appropriately chosen vocal repertoire has inexhaustible opportunities in teaching a highly-professional vocalist.It has been emphasised on multiple occasions that vocal performance of musical works with varying degrees of emotional charge. Such an approach to voice coaching consists in the idea that as the educator is striving to enhance the quality of his student’s voice, he must not deprive the student of a chance to generate sound on his own terms, with a naturally emerging emotional colouring whereby the educator is to assist the student in terms of how to bring out fine shades in the timbre of the vocalist as per specific artistic and emotional assignment pertaining therewith. The article also stresses the fact that chamber vocal performances substantially contributes to the singer’s professional development, expands his outlook, enriches him intrinsically, enables him to master new vocal patterns as judging by the singer’s manner of performance, his eloquence and the degree of sophistication in musical phrases, the depth of image perception, one may immediately form an opinion on how familiar the singer is with musical literature. It has also been stated that vocal control is typically assumed in the course of working on the artistic image, as the artist is selecting the most suitable means of expression. Thus, from the very first years of vocal training, it is necessary to disclose – to the singer’s attention – the concealed properties of tempos, metric lines, musical forms and the architecture of rhythm wherein the dynamics of processes incarnated in music is revealed. It is further highlighted that the emotional stage in the ongoing performance of each vocal work that is being studied in the classroom contributes to the emotional colouration of the sound corresponding with the properties of the work in question. It is particularly important to ensure that the singer obtains and maintains his vibe (emotional disposition) throughout the process – not only during the performance of a musical work within an academic concert but also in the course of primary processing of the said work – i.e., from the very beginning.It should be emphasized that a teacher has to show students how correctly to choose emotional components, which will result in the professional performance of their vocal repertoire.

SCAPING THE BAJAU THROUGH RITUALS AND CELEBRATIONS IN MARITIME OF MALAYSIA AND THE PHILIPPINES

Lexically, the word scape is referred to a specific analogical view of something visible to people on the ground. In cultural studies, the scape is interpreted beyond a physical and visible context. It is a blend of both tangible and intangible cultural dimensions such as music/soundscape and dancescape. Bajau-Sama communities on the East Coast of Sabah and Bajau Laut in the Philippines live harmoniously in an environment where the living of the spiritual world is significant and vital. Balancing the people in the physical and spiritual world through rituals as efficacies are to be performed according to the bonding through inheritance of heirloom for many generations. All scheduled ritual performances not only are fulfilling the agreement between the physical and the spiritual world, but it also produces sounds and movements which add to the scapes of these communities’ world. Music and dance performances in these rituals are identic to the soundscape and dancescape with many types of specific ritual music and dances, i.e., igal soundscape and igal dancescape. The male and female music sounds, dance movements, and phrases in different kind of rituals are not only fulfilling the “manifest functions” but also signify the “latent functions”. Based on the observations of a few rituals among these communities in Semporna, Sabah and Sitangkai Island, Philippines; this paper analyses the scapes of Bajau as both tangible and intangible. This paper will also discuss the significance of these scapes in sustaining Bajau-Sama identity of these areas particularly to Malaysia and the Philippines. Keywords: Bajau-Sama, ritual, celebrations, igal music and dance, identity, Malaysia, the Philippines

The loudness model used in ISO532-3: Development, evaluation and prospects

ISO 532-2 is based on the loudness model for stationary sounds described by Moore and Glasberg [JASA (2007)]. This model is similar to that in ANSI S3.4-2007, except that the model in ISO 532-2 incorporates binaural inhibition: a strong input to one ear in a given frequency region reduces the effective level of a weaker input to the other ear in nearby frequency regions. ISO 532-3 has been proposed as an extension to ISO 532-2 to deal with time-varying sounds. It generates predictions of short-term loudness, the loudness of a short-segment of sound such as a word in a sentence or a single note in a piece of music, and of long-term loudness, the loudness of a longer segment of sound, lasting 1–5 s, such as a whole sentence or a musical phrase. The model gives reasonably accurate predictions of the overall loudness of technical sounds (e.g., factory noises), of speech whose dynamic range has been compressed or expanded, and of sounds whose time pattern and spectra differ at the two ears. However, the model needs to be extended to generate predictions of the overall loudness impression of a sound environment over a period of several minutes to an hour.

Towards perfect unity: himnography and some musical reinterpretations within Serbian chanting practice

This paper explains the musical treatment of the hymnographic genres within the Serbian chanting practice. As it is known, the original Byzantine poetic structure written in verse — which was in perfect unity with the Byzantine chant concerning the rhythm and meter — was lost in Church-Slavonic translations. The Slavonic hymnography in prose inevitably caused modification of the music language, i.e. establishing of the new bond between the word and a tone. Accordingly, a creative practise of “tailoring” the church melodies to the structure and semantics of the particular hymnographic genre occurred within Serbian chanting practise. Eventually, many songs from the Octoechos, General Chanting, as well as certain songs of the Festal Chanting, gained the status of the “fixed” chants, the proof of which are the first Serbian chanting collections from the 19th century written in staff notation. In these chants semantics and music are set in a specific manner and they represent a model by which the chanters govern themselves while singing other church hymns. Ideal unity of hymnography and music in the fixed chants is reflected in coinciding of textual and music phrases. Such an ideal balance contributes to the clear transmission of the hymnographic content to the faithful. However, sticheras, irmoses, troparions and kontakions which lack the ideal balance, may cause the hymnographic narration and, at some places, even the theological points to be incomprehensible and imprecise. To creative chanters it is an opportunity to “tailor”, i.e. to reinterpret the chants in order to compensate for these imperfections. Such a creative interpretation is possible only by skilled chanters who, above all, thoroughly understand the meaning and structure of a particular hymnographic work. Amongst such chanters were some of the bishops and patriarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Certain chants related to this problem are examined in this paper.

On the Swerve and the Flow in Thomas Adès's Polaris, op. 29

ON THE SWERVE AND THE FLOW IN THOMAS ADÈS’S POLARIS, OP. 29 ORIT HILEWICZ NE OF MY FAVORITE MOMENTS in John Rahn’s writings is the surreal yet vivid scene he presents in “The Swerve and the Flow,” after Lucretius, of “the universe as a frame of atoms of Being falling (naturally, according to their weight) forever in parallel lines, with this important tweak: occasionally, for no reason, an atom will swerve in its fall. . . . The frame of structure (or divine) order and the Swerve of free and artistic will.”1 Reading these words, I could not resist visualizing a scene of heavy, steady rain falling in a vacuum, comprising drops of varying sizes, each falling at a different pace but always directly downwards in multitudes of vertical columns. However, every now and then a drop deviates from its course of its own volition, unexpectedly, as if blown by a sudden wind.2 With this representation of the universe Rahn starts his discussion of musical Being and Becoming, and how music-theoretical accounts can reflect not only fixed and measurable aspects of music as an experience, but also its fluctuating, changing quality. Too often, Rahn contends, analytical methods take as their object a sort of frozen version of the piece, as if it has been transferred from time to space, where it is available all at once to be examined. Indeed, music’s in-the-moment O 224 Perspectives of New Music aspect, which Rahn describes as artistic or human will, is frequently represented in analysis only through the traces it leaves behind, after the change has already taken place. Being is inseparable from Becoming—a chaotic system does not Become, because free will and intention cannot be detected in complete chaos. Musical works establish their state of Being both contextually (within a work) and intertextually, through relationships created with other works. If each musical work is its own universe of falling atoms, then groups of works (e.g. tonal music, or Beethoven’s late string quartets, or serial film music) can share constellations—theorists have been dedicating their life’s work to draw these constellations and explore them. Rahn, however, is posing a problem. While the tools of our discipline (and Rahn is referring specifically to mathematical tools used by theorists) already accommodate accurate descriptions of Being, can mathematical tools be applied also to describe the artistic will that is the impetus of change? Thinking of this predicament when I first read Rahn’s essay, I set aside the fact that he was calling on us to reconsider the potential of mathematical theories for describing the fluctuating aspects of musical experience. Instead, I was interested in the more general problem of isolating that “free and artistic will,” in music-theoretical understanding, from its material consequences in a musical work. Becoming, or the Swerve, is a highly slippery concept to grasp, yet I was impressed by the force of Rahn’s descriptive language, which came close to conveying Becoming. It felt as if the language reveals a trace of the concept in lieu of an explanation. Rahn’s writing in this essay seems to me a powerful tool to express the experience of the Swerve. For example, Rahn never clearly states what a Swerve means for musicians. Neither does he expand on what in music (or in a particular musical work) can be considered Becoming or Being beyond characterizing Being as lack of change (“flash-frozen slices of the universe . . which lie quiet so that their structure may be perceived and described”3) and Becoming as change itself (“change, flux, fire, plasma, flow”4). Still, reading descriptions such as “music flows, and swirls madly,” and considering Rahn’s references not only to Hegel and Nietzsche but also to Langer, Bergson, and Deleuze and Guattari,5 it seemed clear that Becoming for Rahn encompasses something much broader than, say, Schmalfeldt’s deployment of the Hegelian dialectic in the analysis of certain aspects of nineteenth-century musical form, which defines musical Becoming as “the special case whereby the formal function initially suggested by a musical idea, phrase, or section invites retrospective reinterpretation within the larger formal context.”6 But restricting...

Natural Science Value of Linguistics in Historical Research

Martin Heidegger divided the researchers engaged in questions of history into two categories - historians and historiographers. Historiographers are immersed in the study of language texts and other artifacts left over from the past. Historians go further. They seek to immerse themselves in the flow of historical time and, in addition to the study of linguistic written texts, to present the sounding speech of the past human generations. To present speech is to have some experience in this regard. This experience is taken, according to Heidegger, from poetic and musical creativity. From this it is concluded that the historical events or even entire epochs are resonated, just as the harmonic consonance between the musical phrases of a symphony or sonata performed in time is realized. These phenomena are discussed in this article. To this it must be added that the results obtained in the article are not the fruits of musical-poetic intuition alone. They undergo rigorous testing in accordance with Heidegger's developed dialectic technique, based on the logical operation restored by him in philosophy and called privation.

Williams Syndrome and Music: A Systematic Integrative Review.

Background: Researchers and clinicians have often cited a strong relationship between individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) and music. This review systematically identified, analyzed, and synthesized research findings related to WS and music.Methods: Thirty-one articles were identified that examined this relationship and were divided into seven areas. This process covered a diverse array of methodologies, with aims to: (1) report current findings; (2) assess methodological quality; and (3) discuss the potential implications and considerations for the clinical use of music with this population.Results: Results indicate that individuals with WS demonstrate a high degree of variability in skill and engagement in music, presenting with musical skills that are more in line with their cognitive abilities than chronological age (CA). Musical strengths for this population appear to be based more in musicality and expressivity than formal musical skills, which are expressed through a heightened interest in music, a greater propensity toward musical activities, and a heightened emotional responsiveness to music. Individuals with WS seem to conserve the overall structure of musical phrases better than they can discriminate or reproduce them exactly. The affinity for music often found in this population may be rooted in atypical auditory processing, autonomic irregularities, and differential neurobiology.Conclusions: More studies are needed to explore how this affinity for music can be harnessed in clinical and educational interventions.

Integrating Computational Thinking with a Music Education Context

Computational thinking is becoming common in K-12 curricula, and at the same time there is interest in how STEM subjects can be integrated with the Arts (referred to as STEAM). There are some obvious connections between music and computation, but the idea of engaging with genuine computational thinking while also having authentic music learning experiences for students provides new opportunities. In this paper we consider ways to explore computational thinking ideas such as decomposition, patterns, abstraction and algorithms in a meaningful way while also exploring key concepts that a music educator would expect to work with. We review some existing ideas for doing this, and also provide novel approaches that connect computational thinking and music. This is done through a series of vignettes that describe creative ways to connect the two subjects using approaches that have been used successfully with school students. The first approach is based on the use of comparisons in sorting, which can be used to have students physically compare musical elements such as note pitches. The second uses simple programming on physical devices to represent music notation. Further examples include exploring binary representations using sound, writing programs for musical scales, understanding musical phrases in the context of programming, and using programming for music composition. Integrating the opportunity to learn about computational thinking and music at the same time has the benefit that some efficiency can be gained in teaching, but more importantly, students are able to experience the relevance of these two subjects to each other, when they might otherwise pigeonhole them into separate areas of their lives.

Are Fast Complex Movements Unimaginable? Pupillometric Studies of Motor Imagery in Expert Piano Playing

Motor imagery (MI; mental simulation of actions) shares certain mental representations and processes with executed movement (ME). This neurocognitive overlap between MI and ME may explain why the systematic use of MI improves skilled performance in numerous domains. Unfortunately, the attentional mechanisms underlying MI remain unresolved. Therefore, the present studies investigated the role of attentional effort (as measured by pupil dilation) in MI. We evaluated the effects of movement complexity and speed on expert pianists' pupil dilation as they physically executed and used MI to perform easy/complex and slow/fast music phrases. Results revealed that easy movements required similar levels of attentional effort during MI and ME. However, during complex movements performed at a fast speed, the correspondence between execution and imagery of movement was disrupted.

A Music-Driven Dance System of Humanoid Robots

Robot dance is an important topic in robotics. Conventional robot dance systems mainly rely on beats or rhythms of music; however, these conventional systems suffer from limited dance styles and less action novelty. In this paper, we instead develop a humanoid robot dance system driven by musical structures and emotions. In the proposed system, a musical phrase and a dance phrase are considered as the basic structural units of music and dance, respectively. A musical phrasing algorithm based on music theories is created to divide a piece of music into a sequence of phrases. When the emotion of each phrase has been recognized, an emotion sequence can be established. Meanwhile, a hidden Markov model (HMM) matches a dance phrase sequence to the emotion sequence. In particular, several concepts of the “chance method” created by choreographer Merce Cunningham are adopted to guide our robot dance system; thus, a dance phrase is choreographed by randomly selecting and combining a number of actions from a predesigned action library. Based on the approach, one music can generate diverse robotic dance motions, showing the novelty and diversity of robot dance. The experiments on our humanoid robot “Alpha1 Pro” show that our robot can do a good job dancing to music according to musical structures and emotions and can be well accepted by various people.

Music and choreography interaction in the stage dances of musical theater productions of the 17th – the first half of the 18th century

Music and choreography interaction in the stage dances of musical theater productions of the 17th – the first half of the 18th century

Kharkiv regional school of chromatic button accordion playing: the history, the personalities and the priorities of performing

Kharkiv regional school of chromatic button accordion playing: the history, the personalities and the priorities of performing

Kharkiv regional school of chromatic button accordion playing: the history, the personalities and the priorities of performing

Kharkiv regional school of chromatic button accordion playing: the history, the personalities and the priorities of performing

Creating improvisations on chord progressions using suffix trees

Technology nowadays takes an increasing part of “creativity” in live music software such as the OMax-ImproteK-Djazz improvisation environment. Specifically, Djazz implements techniques for indexing and creating improvisations using a given chord progression. It relies on a database that we call a dictionary, storing musical sequences (audio or MIDI) associated with known chord changes. We define an improvisation on a given chord progression x as a sequence obtained by concatenating musical phrases identified with factors of x that can be found in the dictionary. Given a query sequence x and a dictionary D, we present an algorithm that finds an improvisation on x with respect to D. We use the suffix tree data structure to index D and then produce a graph formulation of the problem in order to find a suitable improvisation in linear time, with respect to the length of x.

La Sinfonía de Babel [Babel’s Symphony

At its core, the practice of creating sound installations as sonic art involves presenting and manipulating audio in a gallery-like setting. In the case of "La Sinfonía de Babel" the usage of pre-existing musical and literary phrases, or "quoting," formulates the substantive basis for a non-interactive quadraphonic piece that challenges preconceptions of appropriation, citation, and plagiarism where it concerns composition. Inspired by the works “Sinfonia” by Italian composer Luiciano Berio, and “La Biblioteca de Babel” by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, "La Sinfonía de Babel" recontextualizes conventional ideas of musical narratives by combining and indeterminately presenting excerpts of six hundred and forty looped musical works from different time periods, thus generating a thick and immersive cluster of audio. Within this milieu, auditors are invited to sit and read Borges’ text whilst simulataneously identifying musical familiarities within the cluster, hence experiencing quoting on a multi-dimensional level. This paper offers a methodological and aesthetic overview of Berio and Borges' works, focusing specifically on how citation is approached from musical and literary perspectives. Furthermore, structural and technical methodologies are analyzed as a means of better understanding the overarching creative process.

Young children pause on phrase boundaries in self-paced music listening: The role of harmonic cues.

Proper segmentation of auditory streams is essential for understanding music. Many cues, including meter, melodic contour, and harmony, influence adults' perception of musical phrase boundaries. To date, no studies have examined young children's musical grouping in a production task. We used a musical self-pacing method to investigate (1) whether dwell times index young children's musical phrase grouping and, if so, (2) whether children dwell longer on phrase boundaries defined by harmonic cues specifically. In Experiment 1, we asked 3-year-old children to self-pace through chord progressions from Bach chorales (sequences in which metrical, harmonic, and melodic contour grouping cues aligned) by pressing a computer key to present each chord in the sequence. Participants dwelled longer on chords in the 8th position, which corresponded to phrase endings. In Experiment 2, we tested 3-, 4-, and 7-year-old children's sensitivity to harmonic cues to phrase grouping when metrical regularity cues and melodic contour cues were misaligned with the harmonic phrase boundaries. In this case, 7 and 4 year olds but not 3 year olds dwelled longer on harmonic phrase boundaries, suggesting that the influence of harmonic cues on phrase boundary perception develops substantially between 3 and 4 years of age in Western children. Overall, we show that the musical dwell time method is child-friendly and can be used to investigate various aspects of young children's musical understanding, including phrase grouping and harmonic knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record

Analysis of Tonguing and Blowing Actions During Clarinet Performance.

Articulation on the clarinet is achieved by a combination of precise actions taking place inside the player's mouth. With the aim to analyse the effects of tonguing and blowing actions during playing, several physical variables are measured and parameters related to articulation are studied. Mouth pressure, mouthpiece pressure and reed displacement are recorded in an experiment with clarinet players to evaluate the influence of the player's actions on the selected parameters and on the sound. The results show that different combinations of tongue and blowing actions are used during performance. Portato and legato playing show constant blowing throughout the musical phrase, which varies according to the dynamic level. In portato, short tongue-reed interaction is used homogeneously among players and playing conditions. In staccato playing, where the tongue-reed contact is longer, the mouth pressure is reduced significantly between notes. Such a mouth-pressure decrease might be used to stop the note in slow staccato playing. It is hereby shown that when the note is stopped by the action of the tongue both the attack and release transients are shorter compared to the case where the vibration of the reed is stopped by a decrease of mouth pressure.