Understanding Of Music Research Articles

Computational analysis of Maqam music: from audio transcription to structural and stylistic analyses, everything is tightly intertwined

Automated transcription of audio recordings into musical scores is a very challenging problem. Robust technological solutions are so far limited to simple cases and specific conditions, such as the focus on specific tractable musical instruments. The traditional conception of transcription as the inference of a single layer of notes ignores one core characterization of music as a multi-layer encapsulation of events of various scales (notes, gestures, motifs, phrases, etc.), where higher-level structures contextually guide the progressive discovery of lower-level elements. Modeling the emergence of these multiple structural layers, although complicating the problem, is in our view the only way to obtain a robust automation of music transcription, which is modeled here in the form of a multi-layer and recursive auditory scene analysis. Additionally, culture, as the experience of previous similar types of music, plays another essential role in guiding the more ambiguous aspects of music understanding. A previously proposed modeling of the impact of culture in structural understanding, applied in particular to Arabic Maqam music, is generalized here to the study of the influence of such cultural knowledge on music analysis, and in particular on the lowest layers of note transcription.

The Metaphysics of Notation (review)

Mark Applebaum. The Metaphysics of Notation. DVD. Directed by Robert Arnold. St. Paul, MN: Innova, 2010. 787. $20.00. This single DVD contains is a brief documentary that chronicles the inspiration, creation, and rendering of Mark Apple - baum's graphic score, The Metaphysics of Notation (2008). Additionally, the disc contains performance excerpts, two scrolling versions of the score and a set of stills excerpted from the notation. The first item, Robert Arnold's brief documentary film (lasting less than twenty minutes) is provocatively titled There's No Sound in My Head, and begins with the composer stating, I'm really tired of sound. With this declaration, Applebaum calls into question immediately the nature of art, of music, and of realizing notation. Applebaum's work, a series of 12 panels and two hanging mobiles, revisits the challenge musicians have always faced when rendering pictographs, whether they be in traditional notation or in other formats. Remarkably, given the beautiful design of the graphic work and the aesthetic results, Applebaum has no formal training as an artist. This does not mean he does not have experience in communicating a musical idea, as manuscript preparation is a part of the composer's training. However, in The Metaphysics of Notation, the medium is innovative, and in it, Applebaum has created a new musical code. While on display at the Cantor Arts Center Museum at Stanford University, the work received weekly musical interpretations over the yearlong exhibit. Apple - baum's work demonstrates his understanding that visual arts and music are one and the same. Of course, even in this, there are more questions than answers including the idea of authorship, since in rendering this work, the performers are actually creating (composing?) the piece. In the film, a variety of scholars, performers, administrators, and Applebaum himself weigh in on this complex issue. Ultimately the composer offers no answers, but gracefully allows the performers, audience, and himself to examine the question in the moment. Applebaum's previous compositions provide examples of traditional, nontraditional, and hybrid notation (combining determinate and indeterminate indications). His Metaphysics of Notation is a departure from determinate notation, however it does have certain characteristics that speak to musical understanding. The panels contain some organic or culturally understood shapes (hearts, dots, shamrocks, stars); some items look like visual representations of a theme being broken down into component motives, which are then reassembled into something that looks completely different. The performance excerpts reflect a common cultural understanding. For example, the musicians who rendered the score read from left to right, the more detailed sections in the panels encouraged the performers to play more notes with smaller note values, and the denser designs were interpreted at a louder dynamic. Shapes that were higher on the panel were interpreted at a higher pitch and shapes that were lower were played at a lower pitch. The lack of detailed instructions allowed the performers to follow the lines emotionally, and encouraged all involved to ask a variety of questions, while at the same time offering no answers. …

Reading Billboard 1979–89: Exploring Rap Music's Emergence through the Music Industry's Most Influential Trade Publication

This article presents the qualitative content of Billboard magazine as an important resource for expanding popular music scholars' understandings of the activities, motives, and structures that shape commercial music. We argue that through careful consideration of columns appearing in Billboard researchers can resurrect, re-imagine, and update forgotten and overlooked aspects of music industry history. A thick reading of the trade journal between 1979 and 1989 reveals how rap's emergence into the field of popular music commerce was marked by struggles over its definition, placement, and meaning. In our particular reading of Billboard we emphasize its value in uncovering new perspectives on the context of innovation within popular music and enhancing existing production of culture analyses.

Do they know they're composing': Music making and understanding among newly arrived immigrant and refugee children

This article discusses issues of creative music making and understanding as they arose in the context of a music programme for newly arrived refugee and immigrant children. How do young people make sense of a music environment when they do not understand the language of the facilitator or other participants Visual information and imitation offer reliable entry points into participation, but are not always sufficient for more complex creative processes such as group composition and invention. The author draws upon her experiences working in an English Language School for recent immigrants and refugees, and explores some key points of cross-cultural adaptation as they intersect with musical understanding and engagement in a composition process.

Educational Possibilities of the Project Colour Visualization of Music

Educational Possibilities of the Project Colour Visualization of Music We propose a system of colour visualization of music based on a system of colour signs, which are connected to musical tones. Tones, which are in harmonic relationships, are represented by related colours. First, we outline the foundations on which the system of colour signs is based - the mathematical model of harmony. We discuss several possibilities of visual representation of expressive elements of music - melody, composition, rhythm and harmony. These relationships enabled us to develop a computer program that employs these elements for visualization. The program mimics human perception in which the parts are determined by the perception of the whole. Furthermore, the program enables the development of tools that can enhance music understanding during listening or performing. Music performance can acquire a new quality with the use of interactive coloured musical instruments, which by using colours show the performer different possibilities for forming musical harmonies and thereby change the composing of music into a game and attractive colour-aural journey. Here we stumble upon a challenge for educational science and methodology: how to use such upcoming multimedia tools. These tools would bring the processes of learning and playing a game closer together since playing games is a child's most natural form of functioning. Furthermore, in the area of artistic creation we can once again establish a balance between our logical and intuitive nature.

An exploration of musical communication through expressive use of timbre: The performer’s perspective

This study explores the sound world of the performer, building on increasing evidence that timbre is the most salient variable performance parameter and can also be the primary source of inspiration and structure in composition. Psychological, psychoacoustic, musicological and aesthetic literature is reviewed, to establish the connection between existing (listener focused) research and potential performer motivation and affect. An interview study with one elite performer/composer (classical guitar) was undertaken to investigate timbre in live performance, specifically as part of the communication process. Results show that timbre salience varies according to style: in Baroque music it mainly enhances other performance parameters and in ‘contemporary’ music it is integral to composition and interpretation. Emotional affect in the performer appears to be related to inner drive towards optimal representation of musical understanding, which then generates the evolution of extended instrumental techniques, allowing ever more imaginative use of timbre. Parallels with aesthetic and philosophical theory are offered as explanation for some of the more intangible elements of performance, particularly in relation to the main priorities and motivations of the performer. Further research might synthesize psychological and philosophical reasoning in this respect and establish whether these findings are common to other instruments, performers and cultures.

On Music, Wine and the Criteria of Understanding

According to an influential account of music, the listener's recognition of music's emotive character is a central criterion of her musical understanding. As the structural similarities between music and human emotive behavior do not unambiguously determine music's emotive character, the only available method of determining this character is to simply perceive it in the music. Appropriately backgrounded listeners should thus be not just well-versed in the specifically musical features of our musical system but also psychologically disposed to respond to music in an emotive way. In this paper, I argue that this view of musical understanding fails to account for the normative aspect of our notion of understanding. Given that there are no publicly shareable reasons to which one could appeal in order to justify or reject a given emotive attribution, we should read such attributions as nothing more than more or less illuminating comparisons between music and something else. Most importantly, emotive attributions should not be treated as criteria of musical understanding.

The National Standards for Music Education

The opportunity for individualized instruction in the college studio allows the studio teacher to be a strong influence on the development of music students. The private studio can be an arena for standards implementation, bringing all aspects of a comprehensive music education to fruition. The college studio teacher is often the only teacher who has individual, one-on-one experience with students throughout their undergraduate careers, and the convictions and teaching style of this studio professor could influence a novice music educator. College music studios, therefore, offer a look at the extent to which and how students are given opportunities to make these connections and to develop thinking about the importance of a comprehensive approach to their own musical development. If the goal of studio teaching is to develop musicianship and to foster lifelong pursuit of musical knowledge and understanding, then instructors might benefit from a standards-based teaching philosophy. Such a philosophy has the potential to revolutionize how future students view a complete music education. In this article, the author examines options for integrating each of the National Standards for Music Education into the private lesson studio.

Corporalidade musical na música popular: uma visão da performance violonística de Baden Powell e Egberto Gismonti

Recorte da tese de doutorado (SCHROEDER, 2006) em que proponho o conceito de corporalidade musical para poder explicar as performances de cinco músicos populares. Através da investigação das relações que dois deles (Baden Powell e Egberto Gismonti) constroem com seus instrumentos (violão popular) e linguagens (música popular instrumental), pretende-se enfatizar a performance como um jogo de tensões entre as possibilidades particulares dos músicos (tanto de realização quanto de entendimento musical) e as linguagens, gêneros e instrumentos musicais escolhidos por eles para expressão. Estes instrumentos são marcados por regras oriundas de um processo histórico e coletivo que não se realiza num só indivíduo, e os músicos, marcados por possibilidades e dificuldades que não permitem a realização plena de uma exigência coletiva. Deste jogo complexo nasce a música.

Improving melody recognition in cochlear implant recipients through individualized frequency map fitting

Recent research has shown that music perception remains very difficult for most cochlear implant (CI) users, who generally report being unsatisfied with the quality of music listening through the CI. In particular, the appreciation of the spectral features of music, which include pitch, melody and timbre, is widely known to be poorer than its rhythmic patterns. One of the possible causes for this may be the misalignment between the conventional frequency band allocation to the electrodes of the array (frequency-place function) and the distribution of pitch percepts generated by electrode stimulation along the array (electrode-pitch function). In this paper the authors investigate whether mismatch correction through individualized fitting of the processor's frequency maps can improve music understanding in ten Nucleus™ cochlear implant users, by comparing scores obtained with experimental and old map; both maps were tested before, immediately after and 1month after the fitting through a music test battery designed for the purpose of the study.

A Multimodal Way of Experiencing and Exploring Music

Significant digitization efforts have resulted in large multimodal music collections, which comprise music-related documents of various types and formats including text, symbolic data, audio, image, and video. The challenge is to organize, understand, and search musical content in a robust, efficient, and intelligent manner. Key issues concern the development of methods for analysing, correlating, and annotating the available multimodal material, thus identifying and establishing semantic relationships across various music representations and formats. Here, one important task is referred to as music synchronization, which aims at identifying and linking semantically corresponding events present in different versions of the same underlying musical work. In this paper, we give an introduction to music synchronization and show how synchronization techniques can be integrated into novel user interfaces that allow music lovers and researchers to access and explore music in all its different facets thus enhancing human involvement with music and deepening music understanding.

Some Remarks on “Hearing-as” and its Role in the Aesthetics of Music

Starting from the context in which Wittgenstein thinks of the concepts of “seeing-as” and “hearing-as”, the basic relation is clarified between the question of representation, musical understanding, and the theory of musical expressiveness. The points of views of Wollheim, Scruton, Levinson, and Ridley are discussed, in a re-consideration of the notions of hearing and understanding within Wittgenstein’s “last philosophy”.

How Do You Hear That? Autism, Blindness, and Teaching Music Theory

On Hearing[1] In the documentary film Touch The Sound, which examines Evelyn Glennie's life as a deaf percussionist, Glennie remarks,If someone asks me: 'Oh well, how do you hear that?' - then I simply say: 'I really don't know, but I just basically hear that through my body, through opening myself up. do you hear that?' ... So, when you try to bounce the question back to a so-called person, then they simply do not know how to answer these questions. So therefore, why should I be put in that position?[2] Hearing is very much a subjective experience, difficult to put into words. As hearing people, we find it very difficult to understand Glennie's experience with music. The question How do you hear that? is really a substitute for the more dubious question How can you hear that? Reinterpreting the question using the former, more inclusive meaning, Glennie still casts doubts on its intentions. Her experience with music is different, but no less valid than that of a hearing person's.[3] Music theory is often taught to reflect normative hearing. Alternate hearings are discouraged, or are at least marginalized in the classroom. Where does this leave people like Glennie whose aural understanding of music falls so far out of the norm?[4] Autism and blindness both carry with them particular experiential differences that extend to multiple perceptual realms. Normative is profoundly redefined for people with these disabilities. In this paper, I would like to make some observations about experiences I have had with two people named Noah and Laura. Diagnosed with autism at age 19 months in 2005, my son Noah developed a deep sensory connection to music and sound early in life. One year after Noah's diagnosis, Laura, a blind student with special musical talent, enrolled in my first year music theory course at Swarthmore College. I don't wish to suggest the approaches that Noah and Laura take to understanding music are generalizable to all members of their respective demographics; it is enough to understand how their modes of are deeply affected by their disabilities, which can give us some insight into the wider spectrum of musical understanding.[5] In searching for ways to connect with my son, whose verbal and social communication skills are limited, I have found music to be an invaluable resource. I would like to address my experience as a father trying to make sense of his son's world, viewing it through the prism of his understanding of and experience with music. My experiences with Noah have had a strong effect on my approach to teaching Laura, and I would also like to compare her modes of and experiencing music to his.Theories of Autism[6] In current psychological literature, there are three prevailing theories of autism designed to subsume the condition's many symptoms and diagnostic criteria. The first identifies a lack of theory of mind in individuals with autism, the inability to ascribe mental states to others. Impairment of executive function highlights the difficulty with hierarchizing thoughts and actions, producing obstacles towards initiating or inhibiting immediate actions. Finally, weak central coherence (WCC), which I will concentrate on here, posits an inability to see things holistically, finding a focus on details to the exclusion of the big picture. A classic example of WCC in autism is found in Daniel Tammet's book Born on a Blue Day (2006), in the diagram reproduced in Figure 1. When asked to identify the letters they see, autistic individuals are more likely to see an A on the left and an H on the right than their typically developing peers, who will see the opposite.Figure 1Figure 2. Which line is longer?[7] Note that all three of these theories are deficit models of autism, emphasizing inability over difference. Indeed, in the research literature, there is a tendency to position even seeming strengths resulting from cognitive difference as weaknesses. …

“With Concord of Sweet Sounds…”

Questions about music's evolution and functions have long excited interest among scholars. More recent theoretical accounts have stressed the importance of music's social origins and functions. Autism and Williams syndrome, neurodevelopmental disorders supposedly characterized by contrasting social and musical phenotypes, have been invoked as evidence for these. However, empirical data on social skills and deficits in autism and Williams syndrome do not support the notion of contrasting social phenotypes: research findings suggest that the social deficits characteristic of both disorders may increase rather than reduce the importance of music. Current data do not allow for a direct comparison of musical phenotypes in autism and Williams syndrome, although it is noted that deficits in music cognition have been observed in Williams syndrome, but not in autism. In considering broader questions about musical understanding in neurodevelopmental disorders, we conclude that intellectual impairment is likely to result in qualitative differences between handicapped and typical listeners, but this does not appear to limit the extent to which individuals can derive benefits from the experience of listening to music.

The Making of a Musical Canon in Chinese Central Asia: The Uyghur Twelve Muqam. Rachel Harris

The Making of a Musical Canon in Chinese Central Asia: The Uyghur Twelve Muqam, by Rachel Harris. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. xviii + 157 pp., + CD. £27.50 (hardcover). This book is essentially a musicological, historical and social analysis of the Twelve Muqam, the series of suites that many Uyghurs regard as the acme of their traditional cultural achievements. Its central research question is how and when these suites entered the national musical canon of the Uyghurs, a Turkic people most of whom live in Xinjiang in northwest China. Rachel Harris is developing a fine reputation for her work on the past and present music and culture of Xinjiang, and especially the Uyghurs. She has already published a book on the music and culture of the Xibes of northern Xinjiang, and several book chapters and scholarly articles on Uyghur music. This book will certainly add to her reputation. The coverage is thorough and scholarly. It gives great insight into the suites and to Uyghur music in general. As Harris rightly points out, there are many traditions of this music, situated in a variety of Xinjiang's localities. There are also muqam traditions in other parts of Central Asia, as far as Iran. However, along with scholars like Nathan Light and James Millward, Harris is clear about the lack of significant Chinese influence on this tradition. In its documentation, the book is excellent. It includes references to sources in Uyghur, English, Chinese and French. It is based on extensive and high-quality fieldwork, as well as a good deal of personal experience in the field of Uyghur music. For instance, the author not only knows numerous musicians well but also can play the dutar, the two-string long-necked lute, which is the most widespread of Uyghur musical instruments. Unfortunately, I have not had the pleasure of hearing her play, but I can say that her passion, deep musical understanding and close experience show through in her writing. The book also has quite a few pictures and musical texts. These add to its scholarly value, the pictures being well produced and showing themes and people that add to the interest of the text. One of the central issues of this topic is Uyghur cultural survival. Harris' descriptions of her own fieldwork and experiences suggest to me that, though local traditions are weakening, the twelve Uygur muqam are very much alive. The extensive Han immigration has not diluted this significantly, and a few of the most important contributors to understanding of the muqam are themselves Han. One often hears how the Chinese are destroying Uyghur culture, but there is no evidence for it in this book. There is a good deal of information and insight about the main performers of the muqam. One of them is Abdulla Majnun, on whom there is a whole chapter as well as numerous references in other chapters. He comes through not only as a brilliant musician but as an extremely colourful character, who has succeeded in annoying colleagues by his boorishness when drunk but is universally acknowledged for his brilliance as a performer and his work in maintaining and developing the tradition. …

Learner agency: To understand and to be understood

What began as an exploration of student learning while listening to music evolved into a study of learner agency in a music classroom. Whilst students used and developed strategies that enabled their own success while listening to, performing and creating music, it became evident that they were proactively seeking musical understanding and growth in their own musicianship. Their intense desire to share their musical ideas and to be valued for their role in the music learning community within the classroom illustrated the learners’ agency for affirmation and valuing of self and others. These qualities are closely connected to the zone ofproximal development(Vygotsky, 1978) andperezhivanie(Mahn & John-Steiner, 2000, 2002; Mahn, 2003). As educators may seek to enable students to grow in conceptual understanding (competence) and self-efficacy (confidence), a reflexive relationship occurs as students, too, seek to grow in musicianship (competence) and to be valued for who they are (confidence).

Barbarians at the Gate

The Roanoke College Writing Initiative Grant (WIG) program provides a two-thousand-dollar stipend for non-English Department faculty to teach in the first-year writing program. Faculty is expected to teach three iterations of their proposed course and receive a year of training prior to entering the classroom. Hanstedt's introduction discusses the theoretical justifications for the program, as well as its historical roots and positive outcomes. The faculty development training of Roanoke's WIG program is described, as is how this member of the chemistry department put the lessons learned into action as he taught freshman writing for the first time. Rachelle Ankney taught an introductory writing course as a break from teaching many sections of introductory college math. She enjoyed learning a whole new approach to writing and had fun in the first-year writing course. But she was most surprised to find that teaching writing well makes teaching math better, too. She went from advocating “required writing across the curriculum” to being a firm supporter of “teaching writing across the curriculum.” This paper reflects on an experiment in using a writing course to teach critical thinking skills and vice versa, with special emphasis on helping students to get beyond their aversion to and distrust of argument. The course assigned short argument analyses, an exercise in literary interpretation, and a research paper in for students to gain more familiarity with argument and to appreciate its varied uses. One unforeseen result was the amount of time that had to be devoted to clarification of the terms of argument. Because clarification requires using inference, however, it is recommended that descriptive writing would be a helpful vehicle to start students addresstheir problems involving argument. This paper recounts a music professor's experience designing and teaching his first writing course, Music into Words. Research on the conceptualization of music argues that our ability to communicate musical understanding relies heavily on phenomenological and metaphorical description; the opportunity to teach writing about music to the general student offered the musician a laboratory for testing this hypothesis. However, the instructor discovered that, not surprisingly, narrative (story-telling) functioned as his students' primary mode of communicating meaning and significance in music. In the end, while reading and writing these stories, the students and the music professor learn important lessons about the role of music in human experience.

Learning about what constitutes effective training from a pilot programme to improve music education in primary schools

The new primary strategy in England has raised the profile of foundation subjects, including music, yet many primary school teachers lack skills and confidence in their ability to teach music. This research explores a year-long programme of training across 16 primary schools in England that sought to improve music education. The programme involved whole school in-service training, advisory teachers offering support within the classroom and further training for music co-ordinators. The implementation of the programme, the training received, lesson observations throughout the programme, difficulties arising and the longer term benefits were explored through questionnaires, interviews and school visits with participant teachers, and senior managers in the Local Authorities and schools. The findings indicated that the programme had been effective in improving teacher confidence, and musical understanding, and the quality of teaching. Factors contributing to the success of the programme and lessons for the development and implementation of future programmes were identified.

The effect of a music education program featuring the integration of movement, pictures, and language on young children's musical understanding and interest

The effect of a music education program featuring the integration of movement, pictures, and language on young children's musical understanding and interest

Changing conceptions of educational creativity: a study of student teachers’ experience of musical creativity

This study interrogates the views of students training to be music teachers in relation to creativity in the music curriculum. Developing approaches to musical creativity has always been problematic in the classroom setting. However, the increasing movement to promote creativity across the school curriculum – with its broader universalised conception of creativity – has further blurred the concept for music educators. The study was longitudinal and took place over the participants’ training year. An initial questionnaire at the beginning of the year, before they embarked upon teaching experience, was followed up by in-depth interviews at the end of the year, after they had taught in classrooms for 120 days. The responses were coded and analysed using qualitative analysis software. The findings are important because they suggest that a problematic dichotomy exists in relation to the purpose of musical creativity in the classroom. For example, some respondents saw it as promoting generic life skills while others saw it as a conduit to musical understanding. Other findings suggest that teachers and pupils, for a number of reasons, may feel ill equipped or vulnerable when it comes to teaching and learning in creative classroom contexts. The study concludes by proposing a fuller debate on the context and articulation of musical creativity in the curriculum and the implications this might have for future teacher training and the development of emerging pedagogies.