Academic literature on the topic 'Music Theory, Key of Affection'

Artikkeli käsittelee yhteisön affektiivista kuvaa nordic noir -televisiosarjan Kaikki synnit (ohj. Mika Ronkainen) musiikissa. Nordic noirin lajityyppiin kuuluu keskeisenä affektina epäilys. Artikkelissa tarkastellaan sarjan keskeistä teemaa, anteeksiantoa, epäilyksien affektiivisena vastinparina.Sarjan tarinamaailma sijoittuu fiktiiviseen pohjoispohjanmaalaiseen Varjakan kuntaan, jonka valtaväestö on vanhoillislestadiolaista. Nordic noirille lajityypilliseen tapaan sarjan tarina nousee ajankohtaisesta yhteiskunnallisesta kysymyksestä, joka Kaikki synnit -televisiosarjassa on sukupuolittunut väkivalta ja seksuaalinen häirintä. Sarjan analyysin teoreettisena viitekehyksenä on 2000-luvun affektiteoria, jossa affektiivisuus ymmärretään kulttuurissa ja yhteiskunnassa syntyneenä.Kaikki synnit -televisiosarjan musiikki hyödyntää affektiivisuutta keskeisenä katsomiskokemusta ja tarinaa jäsentävänä tekijänä. Sarjan tarinamaailmassa yhteisön affektiivisuus näyttäytyy sidoksina ja katkoksina, jota musiikki ilmentää. Sarjaa tarkastellaan artikkelissa feministisen estetiikan valossa: yksiselitteisen väkivallan toistamisen sijaan sarja pyrkii kohti kerrontaa, jossa tarinan päätepisteenä ei ole kosto vaan sovinto menneisyyden kanssa.Avainsanat: Kaikki synnit, nordic noir, televisiosarjan musiikki, affekti, seksuaalinen häirintä, feministinen estetiikkaThe Music of suspicion and the montage of forgiveness: music as an affective image of the community in the television series Kaikki synnitThis article discusses the affective representation of the community in the music of the Nordic noir TV series Kaikki synnit (dir. Mika Ronkainen). The genre of Nordic Noir includes suspicion as a key affect. The article looks at the central theme of Kaikki synnit, forgiveness, as an affective counterpart of suspicion.The story world of the series is set in the fictional North Ostrobothnian town of Varjakka, where the majority of the population are conservative Laestadians. For Nordic noir, in a genre-specific way, the story of the series arises from a topical sociopolitical issue, which in the TV series Kaikki synnit is gendered violence and sexual harassment. The theoretical background of the analysis of the series is formed by recent affect theory, where affect is understood as a social and cultural phenomenon.The music in Kaikki synnit TV series draws on affect as a key factor in the viewing experience. In the story world of the series, the affectiveness of the community is represented as bonds and breaks, which is echoed in the music of the series. The series is viewed in light of feminist aesthetics: instead of repeating unambiguous violence, the series tends toward narration where the end point of the story is not revenge but reconciliation with the past.Keywords: Kaikki synnit, Nordic Noir, music in television series, affect, sexual harassment, feminist aesthetics

Abstract Human beings move coherently as individual selves, body and mind adapted to perform complex activities with imagination, knowledge, and skill; perceiving the environment by engaging it with discrimination and care. Human beings live intersubjectively in communitiesl each with the rituals, beliefs, and language of a culture, along with a history of affective relationships and agreed habits for acting in cooperation. These attachments and cultural habits depend upon an ability to sense the intentions, interests, and feelings of other human selves through sympathetic response to motives and emotions as displayed in the shapes and rhythms of body movement: an ability that infants possess from birth. No brain theory explains this ‘felt immediacy’ of others’ life experience, which philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment accepted as proof that human beings are ‘innately sympathetic’. An innate time sense, capacity to ‘attune’ to the dynamics of body movement, and ability to recognise serial ordering in ‘stories’ all appear essential. A theory of ‘communicative musicality’ employs key parameters of pulse, quality of movement, and narrative, applying them to poetry, music, dance, the prosody and rhetoric of language, and the regulation of skillful practices of all kinds. These elements - present in foetal movements and engaged in through joyful intersubjective ‘story-telling’ from birth - give direct information on how the human brain orchestrates reflex functions to move the body with sensations of grace and efficiency. Their age-related development leads to mastery of language and cultural rituals. They conduct all cognitive functions and all meaning making.

AbstractUsing Norwegian hip hop as an example, this article argues that public sphere theory offers a fruitful theoretical framework in which to understand the political significance of music. Based on a musical and lyrical analysis of Lars Vaular's ‘Kem Skjøt Siv Jensen’ (Who Shot Siv Jensen) – a song that recently became the subject of extensive public political discourse in Norway – this article first highlights how the aesthetic language specific to hip hop music constitutes a form of political discourse that may be particularly effective in addressing and engaging publics. Further, the analysis brings attention to how hip hop music is characterised by phatic, rhetoric, affective and dramatic modes of communication that may be of value to democratic public discourse. Lastly, this article examines the expressive output of ‘Kem Skjøt Siv Jensen’ in light of Habermas' concept of communicative rationality. In conclusion, the article contends that the dichotomy between (‘rational’) verbal argument and (‘irrational’) musical expressivity constructed within public sphere theory is contrived and, moreover, that hip hop expressivity under certain conditions does conform to the standards of communicative rationality.

AbstractThis article is an attempt to understand music theory from the perspective of written and sounding media. It examines three radically different music-theoretical practices, which operate with different forms of written notation and different musical instruments, and have surprisingly different purposes in mind: the monochord-based theory of Franchinus Gaffurius (1518), the siren-based theory of Wilhelm Opelt (1834) and the piano-and-score-based theory commonly practised in our age. The instruments used in these three music theories hold the key to a fuller understanding: they can be understood as ‘epistemic things’ – that is, in producing sounds, these objects simultaneously produce knowledge about music. From a media-archaeological perspective, I suggest, these three music-theoretical practices stand emblematically for Pythagorean, digital and textual approaches to music.

We academics who write about music, something often eminently enjoyable, are privileged people. It doesn't mean that we sit around spending an inordinate amount of time grooving to various recordings, although this kind of activity is not unknown to exist. Many historians fall in love with their subject matter to some extent, while keeping a sense of impartiality in their work, but perhaps with music this affection is easier to cultivate compared to other subjects. During my two decades in academia, I have noticed that some seem to want to justify their working in such a field by infusing their writing with impenetrable jargon and theory known only to a few hundred fellow travellers, making the research they publish largely indecipherable to the general reading public. It's as if they're intimating that there must be an existential price to pay for daring to write about a subject that some (incorrectly) see as only pleasurable, that obfuscation needs to be applied to make work about music seem sufficiently serious for academics to justify doing it.

In the sonata practice of the mid-eighteenth century, composers frequently asserted the minor dominant prior to the major dominant in the second part of the exposition. Beethoven dramatized this technique in two senses: first, he used it after it had largely fallen out of fashion, thus affording it considerable dramatic impact (e.g., Piano Sonatas Ops. 2, no. 2, and no. 3); second, he graduated from using the “wrong” mode to the more radical technique of using the “wrong” key. For instance, for the secondary key of the Piano Sonatas Ops. 31, no. 1, and 53 (“Waldstein”), he substitutes the major mediant for the dominant. These and similar cases result in the deferred arrival of the tonic in the secondary theme of the recapitulation. Consequently, when the tonic belatedly arrives, the listener is more cognizant of it. In this way Beethoven brings the resolution of large-scale tonal dissonance to the fore. I suggest that such a tactic is metamusical—that Beethoven was in a sense writing music about music, about the relationship between a particular piece and the tonal and formal conventions it relies on and also problematizes. After presenting a number of such metamusical instances, this article traces the stages by which Beethoven “progressed” from the mid-eighteenth-century approach to sonata expositions to his more radical one; it then offers a typology of key-problematizing techniques. It concludes by briefly considering the extent to which these procedures can be squared with Schenkerian theory and its ideal of structural hearing.

The attribution of influence in music – usually, the influence of one composer on another – is a notoriously slippery business, one whose results are apt to seem arbitrary and impressionistic. Recently musicologists, inspired by the example of Harold Bloom in literature (The Anxiety of Influence, 1973, and several subsequent works) have tried to make the study of influence more rigorous. This has sometimes meant the setting up of a formidable theoretical apparatus, the complexity of which can make one lose sight of the simplicity of the musical relationships involved. The pursuit of theory easily becomes an end in itself: as one commentator has observed, references to Bloom, in such discussions, have now become more or less de rigueur, with authors rushing to demonstrate their familiarity with misprision, revisionary ratios and other Bloomian categories. As will be apparent, I am not primarily interested in influence as a matter of anxiety: influence when it shows itself is usually obvious enough (by which I mean obvious to the ear), and the obviousness of the connexion tends to make it uninteresting and further discussion redundant.

In this dissertation, I propose a model for comparing the degree to which diatonic major and minor keys are related to one another. I consider specific tonal and interval relationship factors (e.g., circle-of-fifths distance, tonic-to-tonic interval class) and their influence on the perception of how two keys are related. For all forty-eight possible relationships of two diatonic keys, I assign numerical values for each factor. These values are based on theoretical concepts where appropriate (e.g., the number of steps between the keys on the circle of fifths) and on an intuitive assessment in cases where there is no accepted numerical designation (e.g., the direction along the circle of fifths one travels from the first key to the second). I weight the values according to the relative significance of each factor and sum the weighted values to obtain a single numerical measure that describes the "distance" from the first key to the second. This abstract idea of distance represents the degree of relatedness between two keys. Larger distance values denote a lesser degree of relatedness. The model incorporates the idea of keydistance asymmetry - that the perceived distance between two keys depends on the order in which they occur.I devote one chapter to a general discussion of key relationships and another to the application of the model as a tool for analyzing the harmonic structure of tonal compositions from the standard literature. Using the key-distance model I develop in Chapter 2, I also provide a harmonic analysis of a composition for symphonic band which I have written to complement the theoretical portion of this dissertation. The score of this piece is included as an appendix.
School of Music

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Tonality cognition incorporates a number of diverse and multidisciplinary aspects, including music cognition, acoustics, culture, computer-aided modelling, music theory and brain science. Current research shows growing emphasis on the use of computational models implemented on digital computers for music analysis, particularly with reference to the analysis of statistical properties, form and tonal properties. The applications of these analytical techniques are numerous, including the classification of genre and style, Music Information Retrieval (MIR), data mining and algorithmic composition. The research described in this document focuses on three aspects of tonality analysis, namely music cognition, computational modelling and music theory, particularly from the perspectives of statistical analysis and key-finding. Mathematical formulations are presented for a number of computational algorithms for analysing the statistical and tonal properties of music encoded in symbolic format. These include algorithms for determining the distributions of note durations, pitch intervals and pitch classes for statistical analysis and for template-based key-finding for tonal analysis. The implementation and validation of these computational algorithms on the Matlab software platform are subsequently discussed. The software application is used to determine whether a more optimal combination of pitch class weighing model and key profile template for the template-based key-finding algorithm can be derived, using the 24 preludes from Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier Book I, the Courante from Bach's Cello Suite in C major and the Gavotte from Bach's French Suite No. 5 in G major (BWV 816) as test material. Four pitch class weighing models, namely histogram weighing, flat weighing, linear durational weighing and durational accent weighing, are investigated. Two prominent key profile templates proposed in literature are considered, namely a key profile derived from tonality cognition experiments and a key profile based on classical music theory principles. The results show that the key-finding performances of all the combinations of the pitch class weighing models and existing key profile templates depend on the nature of the test material and that none of the combinations perform optimally for all test material. The software application is subsequently used to determine whether a more optimal key profile template can be derived using a pattern search parameter estimation algorithm. This investigation was conducted for diverse sets of search conditions, including unconstrained and constrained key profile coefficients, different pitch class weighing models, various key resolutions and different search algorithm parameters. Using the same sample material as for the key-finding evaluations, the investigation showed that a more optimal key profile, compared to existing profiles, can be derived. In comparing the average key-finding scores for all of the test material, the optimised profiles outperform the existing profiles substantially. The optimised key profiles introduce new pitch class hierarchies where the supertonic and the subdominant rate higher at the expense of the mediant in the major profile to improve the tracking of key modulations.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Kognitiewe tonaliteit behels 'n aantal uiteenlopende en multidissiplinêre aspekte, insluitende musiek, akoestiek, kultuur, rekenaargesteunde modelering, musiekteorie en breinwetenskap. Huidige navorsing toon toenemende klem op die gebruik van berekenende modelering wat op digitale rekenaars geimplimenteer is vir musiekanalise, veral met verwysing na die analise van statistiese eienskappe, vorm en tonale eienskappe. Die aanwending van hierdie analitiese tegnieke is veelvoudig, insluitende die klassifikasie van genre of styl, onttrekking van musiekinformasie, dataversameling en algoritmiese komposisie. Die navorsing wat in hierdie dokument beskryf word fokus op drie aspekte van tonaliteit analise, naamlik musiekkognisie, berekenende modelering en musiekteorie, veral vanuit die perspektiewe van statistiese analise and toonsoortsoek. Wiskundige formulerings word aangebied vir 'n aantal berekeningalgoritmes vir die analise van die statistiese en tonale eienskappe van musiek wat in simboliese formaat ge-enkodeer is. Hierdie sluit algoritmes in vir die bepaling van die verspreidings van nootlengtes, toonintervalle en toonklasse vir statistiese analise en vir templaatgebaseerde toonsoortsoek vir tonale analise. Die implementering en validering van hierdie berekeningalgoritmes op die Matlab programmatuur platvorm word vervolgens bespreek. Die programmatuur toepassing word vervolgens gebruik om te bepaal of 'n meer optimale kombinasie van toonklas weegmodel en toonsoortprofiel templaat vir die templaat-gebaseerde toonsoortsoek algoritme afgelei kan word, deur gebruik te maak van Bach se Well-tempered Clavier Book I, die Courante van Bach se Cello Suite in C major en die Gavotte van Bach se French Suite No. 5 in G major (BWV 816) as toetsmateriaal. Vier toonklas weegmodelle, naamlik histogram weging, plat weging, lineêre duurtyd weging en duurtyd aksent weging, word ondersoek. Twee prominente toonsoortprofiel template uit die literatuur word oorweeg, naamlik 'n toonsoortprofiel wat van tonaliteit kognisie eksperimente afgelei is en 'n toonsoortprofiel gebaseer op klassieke musiekteoretiese beginsels. Die resultate wys dat die toonsoortsoek prestasies van al die kombinasies van die toonklas weegmodelle en bestaande toonsoortprofiel template afhang van die aard van die toetsmateriaal en dat geen van die kombinasies optimaal presteer vir alle toetsmateriaal nie. Die programmatuur toepassing word vervolgens aangewend om vas te stel of 'n meer optimale toonsoortprofiel afgelei kan word deur gebruik te maak van 'n patroonsoek parameterestimasie algoritme. Hierdie ondersoek is uitgevoer vir uiteenlopende stelle soektoestande, insluitende onbeperkte en beperkte toonsoortprofiel koëffisiënte, verskillende toonklas weegmodelle, 'n verskeidenheid toonsoort resolusies en verskillende soekalgoritme parameters. Deur gebruik te maak van dieselfde toetsmateriaal as vir die toonsoortsoek evaluerings, toon die ondersoek dat 'n meer optimale toonsoortprofiel, in vergelyking met bestaande profiele, afgegelei kan word. In 'n vergelyking van die gemiddelde toonsoortsoek prestasie vir al die toetsmateriaal, presteer die geoptimeerde profiele aansienlik beter as die bestaande profiele. The ge-optimeerde toonsoortprofiele lei tot nuwe toonklas hiërargiee waar die supertonikum en die subdominant hoër rangposissies beklee ten koste van die mediant in die majeur profiel, ten einde die navolg van toonsoort modulasies te verbeter.

The following thesis outlines the goal and process of algorithmic musical key detection as well as the underlying music theory. This includes a discussion of signal-processing techniques intended to most accurately detect musical pitch, as well as a detailed description of the Krumhansl-Shmuckler (KS) key-finding algorithm. It also describes the Java based implementation and testing process of a musical key-finding program based on the KS algorithm. This thesis provides an analysis of the results and a comparison with the original algorithm, ending with a discussion of the recommended direction of further development.

This dissertation revolves around the task of computational key estimation in electronic dance music, upon which we perform three interrelated operations. First, we attempt to detect possible misconceptions within the task, which is typically accomplished with a tonal vocabulary overly centred in Western classical tonality, reduced to a binary major-minor model which might not accomodate popular music styles. Second, we present a study of tonal practises in electronic dance music, developed hand in hand with the curation of a corpus of over 2,000 audio excerpts, including multiple subgenres and degrees of complexity. Based on this corpus, we propose the creation of more open-ended key labels, accounting for other modal practises and ambivalent tonal configurations. Last, we describe our own key finding methods, adapting existing models to the musical idiosyncrasies and tonal distributions of electronic dance music, with new statistical key profiles derived from the newly created corpus.
Aquesta tesi doctoral versa sobre anàlisi computacional de tonalitat en música electrònica de ball. El nostre estudi es concentra en tres operacions fonamentals. Primer, intentem assenyalar possibles equívocs dins de la pròpia tasca, que normalment es desenvolupa sobre un vocabulari tonal extremadament centrat en el llenguatge de la música clàssica europea, reduït a un model binari major-menor que podria no acomodar fàcilment estils de música popular. Seguidament, presentem un estudi de pràctiques tonals en música electrònica de ball, efectuat en paral·lel a la recol·lecció i anàlisi d'un corpus de més de 2.000 fragments de música electrònica, incloent diversos subgèneres i graus de complexitat tonal. Basat en aquest corpus, suggerim la creació d'etiquetes tonals més obertes, que incloguin pràctiques modals així com configuracions tonals ambigües. Finalment, descrivim el nostre sistema d'extracció automàtica de tonalitat, adaptant models existents a les particularitats de la música electrònica de ball, amb la creació de distribucions tonals específiques a partir d'anàlisis estadístiques del recentment creat corpus.
Esta tesis doctoral versa sobre análisis computacional de tonalidad en música electrónica de baile. Nuestro estudio se concentra en tres operaciones fundamentales. Primero, intentamos señalar posibles equívocos dentro de la propia tarea, que normalmente se desarrolla sobre un vocabulario tonal extremadamente centrado en el lenguaje de la música clásica europea, reducido a un modelo binario mayor-menor que podría no acomodar fácilmente estilos de música popular. Seguidamente, presentamos un estudio de prácticas tonales en música electrónica de baile, efectuado en paralelo a la recolección y análisis de un corpus de más de 2.000 fragmentos de música electrónica, incluyendo varios subgéneros y grados de complejidad tonal. Basado en dicho corpus, sugerimos la creación de etiquetas tonales más abiertas, que incluyan prácticas modales así como configuraciones tonales ambiguas. Por último, describimos nuestro sistema de extracción automática de tonalidad, adaptando modelos existentes a las particularidades de la música electrónica de baile, con la creación de distribuciones tonales específicas a partir de análisis estadísticos del recién creado corpus.

The concept of key characteristics deals with the particular moods which different tonalities are believed to provide to music. Discussions regarding their existence and the validity of the phenomena have always been controversial because of a lack of fundamental reasons and explanations for them. Nevertheless, references to key characteristics have appeared in various fields of study and over many centuries: the Greek doctrine of ethos, writings of Guido d’Arezzo, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Traité de l’harmonie, scribbles in Beethoven’s sketches, and several passages in Hermann von Helmholtz’s On the Sensations of Tones. The attitudes and opinions towards key characteristics have varied in each period of its history. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, the characteristics of modes were discussed among philosophers, namely, Plato, Aristotle, Lucianus and Cassiodorus. They were believed to affect moral development but were also associated with mysticism. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, references to key characteristics can be found in the writings of numerous theorists, including Gioseffo Zarlino, Ramos de Pariea and Heinrich Glarean. The studies and discussions of key characteristics in those periods became so well explored as to result in the first appearance of a list of the characteristics of each mode. In Germany and France especially, the discussion of key characteristics reached its peak in the first half of the eighteenth century, when it was studied as a part of Rhetoric. Theorists and composers equally showed their interest in the elements each key could offer to music and how to use keys advantageously in order to enrich the musical experience of the listener. While key characteristics were studied commonly as a vital subject by composers in the eighteenth century and as a fundamental of musical education by many young musicians in the early nineteenth, this tradition had all but disappeared by the middle of the twentieth. The concept of key characteristics is no longer commonly taught in our musical institutions, and this desertion from such a traditionally significant discipline is ever puzzling and particularly interesting to me. In my thesis, I will focus on writings from the last half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth to determine the various paths taken in the study of key characteristics. I will investigate the writings and discussions of three scholarly groups—music theorists, composers and scientists—from late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and discuss how the survival of the study of key characteristics was influenced by aspects of the time: popular aspects and aims in the fields of music theory; cultural and social expectations in the validity of phenomena; pronouncements of composers (Arthur Bliss, Alexander Scriabin, Olivier Messiaen, Arnold Schoenberg and Vincent D’Indy) in their musical styles; the rise of a naturalistic view of physical reality as a field and changes it brought to music and societies. I will also include a comparative summary of the status of key characteristics in various periods.

Although the topoi and elements of what has been described as the “Venerable Style” (V.S.) are found in many places in Mozart’s solo keyboard sonatas, the obsessive juxtaposition of these elements against brilliant, concerted, Empfindsamer Stil, and Sturm und Drang topoi can be shown to define the first and third movements of his minor key piano sonatas K.310 and K.457. This thesis will investigate using the theoretical tools developed by a range of Topic Theory authors such as Ratner (1980,) Allanbrook (1983,) Hatten (2004,) and Monelle (2000, 2006,) a newly developed analytical concept known as topical expansion, and the structural framework provided by Hepokoski and Darcy (2006) to prove that the venerable topoi are not purely referential gestures, but are also vital parts of the structural content of each of the sonatas and their respective single movements. In line with Caplin (2005)’s warning that the venerable and learned styles are some of the only historically developed and generally accepted topoi with formal (structural) ramifications, this thesis will argue that K.310 and K.457’s surface content is built largely upon the application, troping, and expansion of V.S. topoi in the key formal regions given in Hepokoski and Darcy (2006). As a result of comparative analysis, a further topical level of unity and compositional organization will be shown to be present in the works justifying Kinderman (2006) and Irving (2010)’s conception of the works’ stylistic affect as avant-garde and romantic in execution. Additionally, analysis of the works’ strictly controlled topoi will show each work to be in opposition to Allanbrook’s conception of Mozart’s music as a “miniature theater of gestures,” suggesting that their austere affect is programmed at the topical level in addition to their tonal and formal content (Allanbrook 1992, 130).

AbstractConservatoires in the West are now made up of a significant body of international students who come to study the Western canon of classical music. With the canon arising in the same milieu as Enlightenment notions of shared humanity, historically, many have argued that this music has a wide, cross-cultural appeal. Though such tropes of classical music still exist, they also have the potential today to act as awkward anachronisms, markers of elitism, whiteness and cultural hegemony. This chapter starts from the perspective that the considerable economic contribution of international students to host institutions risks reproducing colonial relations if their pedagogical experiences are not thought through carefully. Looking to postcolonial theory to make sense of the dynamics at play, key concepts from Homi Bhabha are used as a lens to view the conservatoire. It is argued that international students are marginalized through stereotyping and positioned ‘in need’ of a Western education, even with attempts to bring their cultural experience of learning into account. I advocate that the conservatoire must move beyond its attempts to contain the effects of cultural diversity and instead harness the potential for self-renewal that comes from embracing cultural difference in a third space.

The classroom environment is more than just the way the desks are arranged and includes the conditions and circumstances that we bring, both as students and as educators. The effective classroom environment is a safe space that welcomes discussion, curiosity, dialogue, and discovery. The effective classroom is also not the setting for a power struggle between instructor and students as learning is shared in the positive classroom space. Several key elements help to create this safe environment, including respect and rapport, discussion and effective questioning, effective and meaningful collaboration, and appropriate technology. The effective classroom environment is established as soon as the first day of class, and how an instructor handles the first day is crucial for setting up a positive classroom experience.

The earliest levels of the undergraduate music theory core might be some of the more challenging courses to teach. Because students enter the undergraduate theory core with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge, instructors face the challenge of inspiring some students with new material while keeping the more experienced students involved. How can educators make this material both relevant and engaging for all students? Teaching the lower levels of written theory is more than just memorization of patterns and rules; it is an opportunity to engage students in creative music making from the very first day with an introduction that helps them understand why a certain element of music works. By participating in engaging and creative methods of learning scales, key signatures, intervals, triads, harmonic function, and voice leading, students are immersed in a music experience that is more than just printed notes on the page.

The first chapter opens with a famous excerpt from Sartre’s La Nausée where the musical ‘object’ is positioned as resolutely independent of the material props upon which the reproduction of its sounding depends (the gramophone/record), whilst also mapping specific identities (the Jew and the Negress) and their attendant sufferings onto nothing more than its sounding. Thus Sartre, via Roquentin, highlights the way music seems to be both material and immaterial, mediated and autonomous, real and ideal, and deeply and viscerally human but also beguilingly transcendental. It develops this issues that arise from this well-known passage to sketch out some of the key issues in any thinking about music, introducing crucial tropes and associations as well as drawing on the musicological literature that has sought to deconstruct in critical and political ways what it is we mean (or often do not mean) when we think or speak about ‘music.’ Key considerations include music’s essence, definition and location, as well as its emotional and psychological impact (its effect and affective capacity more broadly), its similarities and differences with language, and the roles of composers, performers, listeners and, of course, technology, alongside music’s relationship to identity, society, culture and politics.

In this chapter, we will design some tools to aid in the discussions of concepts related to music theory. In particular, we will discuss chord progressions, scale analysis, chord analysis, mode relationships, harmonic direction of chords, and harmonization. By the end of this chapter, you will have an arsenal of tools for explaining theoretical concepts of music. Sometimes, theoretical concepts in music can be difficult to grapple with, even for professional musicians. As we discuss some different ways to address these concepts through soft ware, try to think of demonstrating the theory concept as the goal, and the Max part of it as the means of reaching the goal. This will help you to program with the goal in mind and will help the way we reach that goal, through Max, to make more logical sense. Begin with the goal in mind! Let’s quickly build a patch that allows us to play back chords. As you’ll recall, we used a patch like this in the Chapter 7: Example 2 in the EAMIR SDK. Let’s open that patch. You may also build a chord patch from scratch if you prefer. 1. Click on Extras>EAMIR from the top menu to view the main menu of the EAMIR SDK 2. In the umenu labeled Examples, click the second item 2. EAMIR _Chord_Basics.maxpat 3. Click File>Save As and save the file as chord_progressions. maxpat Suppose you wanted to discuss the chord progressions used in your favorite popular music song. Let’s pretend that the chord progression is 1, 5, 6, 4 (I V vi IV) in the key of C Major (C, G, A minor, F). We can allow the user to play through each chord in the progression by entering these chords into a coll.

This chapter examines Sly Stone as an organic intellectual, that is, a poet-songwriter, imaginative thinker, and visionary artist whose band, Sly and the Family Stone, played a foundational role in creating funk music and the broader cultural aesthetic that exemplified funk. In this regard, the chapter demonstrates how Stone’s approach to music-making, which was largely determined by his extensive background in gospel, played a vital role in his construction of funk. Combining gospel, blues, jazz, and rock, the Family Stone created a new sound that not only fascinated listeners of rock and rhythm and blues but such acclaimed musicians as Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock as well. In addition, the chapter provides biographical information that contextualizes the artists’ development and illuminates the band’s aesthetic. Finally, the chapter provides key information on groundbreaking bass player Larry Graham and trumpeter Cynthia Robinson as well as detailed commentary on momentous recordings and live performances.

This chapter showcases Betty Davis’s transposition of women’s blues into rock-inflected version of funk. Bolden advances two key arguments. First, Davis reprised the sexual politics and rebellious spirit exemplified by singers Bessie Smith and Ida Cox, for instance, and reinterpreted those principles in modern America. Second, Davis’s eroticism and sui generis style of funk, which she expressed in her recordings and onstage, reflected a sexual politics that served as a counterpart to those of black feminists writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and many others who were publishing coextensively. But whereas black feminist writers often wrote about black women in previous generations, Davis not only addressed contradictions that black women encountered in contemporary street culture; she also represented such X-rated sexual desires as sadomasochism in her songwriting. In addition, the chapter provides biographical information that contextualizes Davis’s route to the music industry, and Bolden uses critical methods from scholarship on African American poetry to illuminate Davis’s vocal technique.