Song Characteristics Research Articles

Different frequency control mechanisms and the exploitation of frequency space in passerines.

Birdsong is used in reproductive context and, consequently, has been shaped by strong natural and sexual selection. The acoustic performance includes a multitude of acoustic and temporal characteristics that are thought to honestly reveal the quality of the singing individual.One major song feature is frequency and its modulation. Sound frequency can be actively controlled, but the control mechanisms differ between different groups. Two described mechanisms are pressure‐driven frequency changes in suboscines and control by syringeal muscles in oscines.To test to what degree these different control mechanisms enhance or limit the exploitation of frequency space by individual species and families, we compared the use of frequency space by tyrannid suboscines and emberizid/passerellid oscines.We find that despite the different control mechanisms, the songs of species in both groups can contain broad frequency ranges and rapid and sustained frequency modulation (FM). The maximal values for these parameters are slightly higher in oscines.Furthermore, the mean frequency range of song syllables is substantially larger in oscines than suboscines. Species within each family group collectively exploit equally broadly the available frequency space.The narrower individual frequency ranges of suboscines likely indicate morphological specialization for particular frequencies, whereas muscular control of frequency facilitated broader exploitation of frequency space by individual oscine species.

밀양 향토민요의 분포양상과 음악적 특징

본 논문은 밀양시에 전승되는 여러 민속 문화 중에서 민요를 대상으로 분포양상을 알아보고, 이들의 음계나 박자구조 등을 통하여 밀양지역 향토민요가 지니고 있는 특징을 살펴본 글이다. 밀양시 민요 특히 향토민요의 분포양상은 20세기 접어들면서 민요 기록의 일환으로 다양한 방법에 의해 조사한 결과물을 바탕으로 하였다. 왜냐하면 도시의 현대화와 산업화로 인하여 대부분의 소리들이 사라졌으며, 민요를 기억하는 사람들이 이미 돌아가셨거나 연령대가 높아 현지조사가 어렵기 때문이다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 『한국구비문학대계』와 『한국민요대전』을 주 자료로 하였으며, 이에 더하여『한국의민속음악-경상남도편』도 함께 활용하여 밀양시의 향토민요의 분포양상과 이들의 음악적 특징을 살펴보았다.<BR> 밀양 향토민요에서 나타나는 음계는 경상도지역 민요를 대표하는 메나리토리의 음계를 활용하고 있으나 기존 메나리토리와 달리 음계의 중간에서 곡을 마치지 않고 대부분 음계의 최저음을 활용하여 끝을 맺고 있다. 신세타령류의 민요인 어사용을 제외한 모든 민요는 규칙적인 박자를 지니고 있으며, 3소박4박의 박자구조 활용의 비중이 가장 높은 점으로 보아 밀양의 향토민요는 우리나라 민요의 보편성을 지니고 있음을 알 수 있다.<BR> 특히 메나리토리에서 음계의 최저음이 반음 높아진 형태의 특징을 지닌 어사용토리는 밀양을 비롯하여 창녕이나 양산 등지에서 나타나고 있었는데, 이들 지역은 낙동강을 주변 지역들로서, 낙동강을 중심으로 한 지역에서는 어사용토리 활용 비율이 높음을 확인할 수 있었다.

Song and dance genre specifics in works for button accordion by the composers of the Department of Folk Instruments of Ukraine of Kharkiv I. P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Art

Recent years have provoked an increasing interest in button accordion arts of Ukraine therefore a great demand for button accordion performance based on song and dance genre features is to be of great importance. Our research work deals with the embodiment of the song and dance genres features in academic button accordion art. The above-mentioned phenomenon has led to the appropriate systematization of their transformations in the musicological viewpoint therefore is stated to be very novel. This systematization is revealed from stylization to various arrangements, further transcriptions, fantasies, paraphrases, works on the theme of other artists that is to create the genre-style transformation. The aim of the research is to determine the genre-style methods of composers’ work for button accordion on the basis of song and dance genre. Present scientific research scope led to the solution of the following tasks: the disclosure of methods of author’s song and dance originals processing, identifying the specifics of drama and means of musical expression, justifying the popularity of works in the domestic musical performance. The following methods are used: analytical, comparative-historical and structural-functional. Summing up the results, it can be concluded that stylizations of dance and song genre are stated to be a great component of button accordion art. The use of European modeling samples (gavotte, mazurka and musette) contributed to the button accordion performance leading to sound production sophistication, high refinement of the sound palette and dynamic nuance, which enriched the artistic means of expressiveness, contributed to the evolution of interpretive experience. In the arrangements and transcriptions (by other authors) of Latin American dance genres there was an enrichment of rhythmic intonation structures and timbre palette of the instrument that lead to great popularity among performers and listeners by the interaction of academic art and genres belonging to the ‘third layer’. Among the opuses created in the genre-style transformation of songs and dances, the re-intonation of the original musical compositions received high artistic results. The use of modern means of button accordion expression, construction of new musical forms, application of elements of musical polystylistics, modification of genres are aimed at multifaceted reproduction of the figurative content of the original source, giving it a new artistic value and concert life. In the musical works of button accordion composers, the direction of song and dance genres features continuously enriches the quantitative and qualitative musical literature, so the prospects for further scientific research are relevant and promising.

Species limits, patterns of secondary contact and a new species in theTrogon rufuscomplex (Aves: Trogonidae)

AbstractThe black-throated trogon, Trogon rufus, is a widespread, polytypic species-complex with a convoluted taxonomic history. Here, we integrated morphological, vocal and genetic datasets, including spectral data and digital quantification of barred plumage, to assess and redefine its species limits according to the foremost species concepts. We suggest the recognition of four named and one new species. Trogon tenellus and T. cupreicauda are divergent across Central and South America without geographic overlap or intermediates. Trogon chrysochloros in the Atlantic Forests of Brazil is phenotypically, genetically and ecologically distinct. In Amazonia, Trogon rufus consists of three phenotypically distinct subspecies intergrading with each other in a ring-like formation around central Amazonian rivers. Trogon rufus rufus in the Guiana Shield, Trogon rufus amazonicus in south-eastern Amazonia and Trogon rufus sulphureus in western Amazonia, with contact across the Lower Amazon and Madeira rivers, likely due to secondary contact between incompletely diverged lineages. The unique combination of song, morphology and mtDNA features of an unnamed, isolated population in the Atlantic Forest of north-eastern Brazil resulted in its description as a new species, known only from the type locality and considered here as Critically Endangered, requiring urgent conservation actions.

Song variation between sexes and among subspecies of New Zealand Fantail (Rhipidura fuliginosa)

ABSTRACT Variation in bird song occurs at many levels, including between sexes and among geographic regions. Variation can be due to differences in function, habitat, selection or drift. Quantifying when and where such differences occur provides insight into which of these drivers is most likely. Here we examine song variation, (a) between sexes and (b) among the three geographically isolated subspecies, of the New Zealand Fantail (Rhipidura fuliginosa), a monomorphic passerine native to New Zealand. We measured twelve temporal and frequency parameters from recorded songs based on buzz notes. Only maximum frequency in one of the three phrases showed a significant sex difference, although there were suggestions of other sex differences in some element-level parameters. Song characteristics differed notably among subspecies; North Island Fantails typically produced shorter songs, comprised shorter elements at higher frequencies and faster element rates, while the most isolated birds (Chatham Island population), sang longer, slower songs. South Island birds were intermediate and more variable. The similarity of male and female songs suggests song is used by both sexes for similar purposes, while selection pressures associated with different habitats or cultural drift may be responsible for the song differences observed among sub-species. Further research analysing vocalisations of both sexes across a broader geographical range is required to further our understanding of female song function and patterns of geographic variation.

Music intelligence: Granular data and prediction of top ten hit songs

In the music market, superstars significantly dominate the market share, while predicting the top hit songs is notoriously difficult. The music intelligence technology, retrieving and utilizing granular acoustic features of songs, provides opportunities to improve the prediction of top hit songs. Using data on 6209 unique songs that appeared in the weekly Billboard Hot 100 charts from 1998 to 2016, especially acoustic features provided by Spotify, we investigate empirically how the top-10-hit-songs likelihood prediction is improved by acoustic features. We find that some acoustic features (e.g., danceability, happiness, and some metrics of timbre and pitch) significantly improve the model's ability to predict the top-10-hit-songs probability. These results suggest that the granular data, provided by the music intelligence technology, carries a substantial predictive value in the era of online music streaming.

The Role of Pitch Weight in the Formation of Melody Style Characteristics of Folk Songs Simulated by Computer

Now entertainment culture development very rapidly in our country, different songs more and more, in the folk songs, there are many unique tones, is very special, the traditional Chinese folk songs have their own unique charm, for the research of traditional Chinese music, as well as the development of national music has very important significance, after years of development, Chinese folk songs, already has a great progress and development, also more and more receives the recognized by people, hunan region in our country, has a special kind of xiang yu, it is a kind of special culture music melody, a few words of local characteristics. This tone reflects the local culture to some extent and is a symbol of a culture. The sense of pitch is very important to music, so is the sense of pitch.

Application of the Singing Techniques in Oroqen Folk Songs Teaching with the Help of Multimedia Technology

This paper briefly analyzes the history, formation and characteristics of Oroqen folk songs. Through the description of singing skills and explore its application in national vocal music teaching with the help of multimedia technology. It can not only improve students’ singing skills and enrich their own teaching, but more importantly, promote national culture through the platform of national vocal music teaching.

MYKOLO BIRŽIŠKOS (1882–1962) ETNOMUZIKOLOGINĖ TERMINIJA

The article presents and analyses the ethnomusicological terminology used by Professor Mykolas Biržiška (1882–1962), an outstanding scholar, publicist, and researcher of traditional Lithuanian songs. The scientific activity of M. Biržiška was very extensive. He researched old Lithuanian literature, wrote textbooks, and published many articles. They include ‘The Life and Writings of Donelaitis’, ‘Textbook of Lithuanian Song Literature’, ‘The History of Our Literature’, ‘Our Ancient Writings’, ‘Old Vilnius University’, ‘Lithuanian Geography’, and others. He was particularly interested in the history of traditional Lithuanian culture, and tried to systematise Lithuanian literature, provide a general overview of it, and systematise all collected Lithuanian folk songs. He drew attention to various important features of Lithuanian folk songs in his writings. An important part of this research was devoted to the analysis of the composition of Lithuanian folk songs and the development of a system for their classification. In Biržiška’s times the dictionary of Lithuanian ethnomusicological terminology had not yet been formed, so he had to create new terms and propose new concepts for these terms. His works on the creation of ethnomusicological terminology are also of interest to contemporary scholars: ethnomusicologists, folklorists, and researchers of traditional Lithuanian singing and instrumental folklore.

Introductory gestures before songbird vocal displays are shaped by learning and biological predispositions.

Numerous animal displays begin with introductory gestures. For example, lizards start their head-bobbing displays with introductory push-ups, and many songbirds begin their vocal displays by repeating introductory notes (INs) before producing their learned song. Among songbirds, the acoustic structure and the number of INs produced before song vary considerably between individuals in a species. While similar variation in songs between individuals is a result of learning, whether variations in INs are also due to learning remains poorly understood. Here, using natural and experimental tutoring with male zebra finches, we show that mean IN number and IN acoustic structure are learned from a tutor. Interestingly, IN properties and how well INs were learned, were not correlated with the accuracy of song imitation and only weakly correlated with some features of songs that followed. Finally, birds artificially tutored with songs lacking INs still repeated vocalizations that resembled INs, before their songs, suggesting biological predispositions in IN production. These results demonstrate that INs, just like song elements, are shaped both by learning and biological predispositions. More generally, our results suggest mechanisms for generating variation in introductory gestures between individuals while still maintaining the species-specific structure of complex displays like birdsong.

Song Morphing by Humpback Whales: Cultural or Epiphenomenal?

Singing humpback whales (Megaptera noavaengliae) collectively and progressively change the sounds and patterns they produce within their songs throughout their lives. The dynamic modifications that humpback whales make to their songs are often cited as an impressive example of cultural transmission through vocal learning in a non-human. Some elements of song change challenge this interpretation, however, including: (1) singers often incrementally and progressively morph phrases within and across songs as time passes, with trajectories of change being comparable across multiple time scales; (2) acoustically isolated subpopulations singing similar songs morph the acoustic properties of songs in similar ways; and (3) complex sound patterns, including phrases, themes, and whole songs, recur across years and populations. These properties of song dynamics suggest that singing humpback whales may be modulating song features in response to local conditions and genetic predispositions rather than socially learning novel sound patterns by copying other singers. Experimental and observational tests of key predictions of these alternative hypotheses are critical to identifying how and why singing humpback whales constantly change their songs.

La copie de l’hymne à Asclépios d’Apollonia d’Illyrie (SEG 65 397)

Abstract A lead tablet from Apollonia in Illyria exhibits the last strophe of a paean to Asclepios, that is transmitted in its entirety on inscriptions from four other cities. This article presents some alternative readings of the new fragmentary version and analyses its variants through the prism of the interaction between the local dialect of the Corinthian colony and the literary Doric of traditional choral lyric. Moreover, some linguistic discrepancies between the different versions of the hymn may have been conditioned by specific local characteristics of religious songs.

Research on the influence of Music revealed by big data based on the Analysis of Network Theory

Music is the result of human's conscious cultural creation. The creation of some artists has been deeply influenced and inspired by other artists and works of art, thus showing similarities in certain features of songs. There are also revolutionary changes in music, such as the creation of brand-new musical styles, the emergence of new genres, re-creation of genres and so on. Through supervised learning, the paper directly use genre as the label of classification. However, due to the failure of the test, the paper reclassified the artist and music attributes in the only way based on the data. In the process of classification, firstly, the data are normalized, then the principal component analysis ((PCA)) is used to reduce the dimension of the attributes, and then the K-means clustering algorithm is used to cluster the samples to get new classification results. The paper creates the concept of degree coefficient to determine whether the new category reflects the original genre. The paper also introduces the concept of information entropy, which is based on artist data and music data to quantify the similarity between and within genres. As a result, the purpose of developing the measure of music similarity is achieved. The paper uses the degree coefficient to eliminate the general level of music attributes in the environment of influencers and followers and highlight the differences between them and the general population. Therefore, it can truly reflect whether the influencer has influence on his followers, as well as the size of the influence.

The Translation and Interpretation of Tujia Love Songs “Six Sips of Tea” and “Tangerine Tree”

Tujia love songs is one of the important types of Tujia folk songs. The paper analyzes the typical features of folk songs, regards song translation as a constrained translation and mainly introduced Peter Low’s Pentathlon Principle in the west and Jun QIN’s five rules on Chinese song translation. The principle and rules have been considered and applied in the paper, which then focuses on case analysis of two Tujia love songs “Six Sips of Tea” and “Tangerine Tree”. For the first song “Six Sips of Tea”, the authors translate and interpret it by involving tea culture and view of marriage. They also make a comparative study between their translated version and singable version online rendered by Jun QIN. For the second song “Tangerine Tree”, after translating it, the authors interpret it from different aspects. In the process of translating and interpreting two songs, unique Tujia culture and dialect have been displayed. The paper concludes that whether folk songs are to be translated for singing or for comprehension, the constraints such as rhymes or melodies shall be taken into consideration. Generally speaking, translating Tujia folk songs is of complexity and the interpretation of these songs need comprehensive knowledge of Tujia Culure.

Artistic and compositional features of harvest songs

In the Uzbek folklore, harvest songs are distinguished by their unique artistic and poetic composition. They have acquired a certain artistic composition as a product of poetic thinking. Harvest songs are mainly composed of independent verses, logically combined on the same theme, and performed in conjunction with each other, either individually or in groups, depending on the strength of the harvesters.

On the mythological songs of the “Elder Edda” as a system

This article is a systemic linguistic and stylistic analysis of the corpus of mythological songs of the “Elder Edda” in a wide cultural and historical context: folklore, ritual, literary. This approach made it possible to propose an interpretation of the mythological songs of the “Elder Edda” as a system and take a fresh look at their semantics, composition, structure, style and lexical organization. The most relevant results of the study of the linguistic and stylistic features of the Eddic songs of the mythological cycle can be considered the definition of linguo-stylistic features of various genre structures in their composition, the explanation of their coexistence, the identification of their source and the building of a hierarchy of mythological songs of the “Elder Edda” depending on the degree of representation in them of various genres. For the first time, the study of the mechanism of cultural dynamics makes it possible to use genres, plot, structure, images, motives of the Eddic text in the reconstruction of the mythopoetic model of the world. The author singles out the most representative genres (tula, cosmological and epistemological song, vision, memory, conspiracy, competition in wisdom, travel, afterlife poetry) and markers (the time of creation, the substance that served as material for the creation of the universe, subjects and objects of creation), allowing to evaluate their productivity and give a comparative description. On the basis of a detailed linguostylistic analysis of the mythological cycle of the “Elder Edda”, a different degree of closeness between mythological songs is established and their plot-genre classification is proposed. The author’s scientific hypothesis consists in the assumption of the deduction of linguostylistic methods of the Eddic cycle from the mythological situation of primordial creation, the dominance of the sacred sphere, which determines the strategy of the characters’ behavior and the results of their activities, anthropocentric orientation, which is expressed in the description of cosmogenesis in genealogical terms.

The Translation and Interpretation of Tujia Love Songs “Adieu: A Tujia Love Duet” and “Visiting Sweetheart Solo” in Enshi

Tujia Love songs, as a means of expressing love, are one of the important parts of the folk songs in Enshi, Hubei Province. The love songs are the exposure of Tujia’s history, life, beliefs and values, as well as the reflection of their specific needs, national psychology, national survival relationship and life concept. It reflects the national emotion and personality characteristics. The research on it is of great value for the development of national culture and intercultural communication. This article focuses on the translation and interpretation of two representative love songs, “Adieu: A Tujia Love Duet” and “Visiting Sweetheart Solo” to interpret the typical artistic characteristics and cultural images and promote communication and understanding across cultures. By using case-studying method, these two love songs are used as models to dig out the characteristics of Tujia love tradition and Tujia love songs in common. While in translating these songs, cultural images, metaphors, terms of addresses and lining words are the most important parts which need to be closely studied, lingered on and treated with. Thus the artistic conception, dialect characteristics and cultural context can be disclosed through the process of translation, with the goal of readability and reader acceptability being realized as well as the combination of information and cultural atmosphere being reconstructed. In a word, the unique language artistic characteristics by using lining words is the result of dialect characteristics; rich and diverse rhetorical devices are the common means to make folk songs more vivid, humorous and interesting; different performance methods are adopted to perform diverse and wonderful folk songs; while the culture images and the terms of address have made rich cultural connotation. The love songs are the window of displaying the beautiful soul of Tujia people and also the accumulation of Tujia history and culture. Their pursuit of free love “with songs as the match-maker” is in line with the contemporary concept of freedom in marriage and love.

A Model for Predicting Pop Music Popularity and Its Different Characteristics Based on Multiple Linear Regression

Pop songs are pretty diverse in the current digital music market. The article focuses on how different characteristics of a pop song can affect its popularity. In this paper, multiple linear regression is used to predict the model of pop song's popularity. Also, a Matlab code is made in order to achieve an ideal optimal popular pop song. The article can primarily answer the questions: What determines the popularity of a song? What kind of music do people like most currently? What characteristics shall composers focus on while making a new piece? This article may be helpful to those who make their own music and those who are engaged in the music market. Furthermore, This article also provides a computer model that can adjust parameters to obtain the optimal song type.

Investigation of Folk Music in Batang County

Batang county's folk music culture is colorful, showing the batang people's unique national character and aesthetic pursuit. This paper explores the artistic characteristics of Batang folk songs, folk songs and dances and Tibetan opera.

Learning Recommendation Algorithm Based on Improved BP Neural Network in Music Marketing Strategy.

The growth and popularity of streaming music have changed the way people consume music, and users can listen to online music anytime and anywhere. By integrating various recommendation algorithms/strategies (user profiling, collaborative filtering, content filtering, etc.), we capture users' interests and preferences and recommend the content of interest to them. To address the sparsity of behavioral data in digital music marketing, which leads to inadequate mining of user music preference features, a metric ranking learning recommendation algorithm with fused content representation is proposed. Relative partial order relations are constructed using observed and unobserved behavioral data to enable the model to be fully trained, while audio feature extraction submodels related to the recommendation task are constructed to further alleviate the data sparsity problem, and finally, the preference relationships between users and songs are mined through metric learning. Convolutional neural networks are used to extract the high-level semantic features of songs, and then the high-level semantic features of songs extracted from the previous layer are reformed into a session time sequence list according to the time sequence of user listening in order to build a bidirectional recurrent neural network model based on the attention mechanism so that it can reduce the influence of noisy data and learn the strong dependencies between songs.