Rozprawy doktorskie na temat „Music and language”

Automatic music transcription (AMT) is commonly defined as the process of converting an acoustic musical signal into some form of musical notation, and can be split into two separate phases: (1) multi-pitch detection, the conversion of an audio signal into a time-frequency representation similar to a MIDI file; and (2) converting from this time-frequency representation into a musical score. A substantial amount of AMT research in recent years has concentrated on multi-pitch detection, and yet, in the case of the transcription of polyphonic music, there has been little progress. There are many potential reasons for this slow progress, but this thesis concentrates on the (lack of) use of music language models during the transcription process. In particular, a music language model would impart to a transcription system the background knowledge of music theory upon which a human transcriber relies. In the related field of automatic speech recognition, it has been shown that the use of a language model drawn from the field of natural language processing (NLP) is an essential component of a system for transcribing spoken word into text, and there is no reason to believe that music should be any different. This thesis will show that a music language model inspired by NLP techniques can be used successfully for transcription. In fact, this thesis will create the blueprint for such a music language model. We begin with a brief overview of existing multi-pitch detection systems, in particular noting four key properties which any music language model should have to be useful for integration into a joint system for AMT: it should (1) be probabilistic, (2) not use any data a priori, (3) be able to run on live performance data, and (4) be incremental. We then investigate voice separation, creating a model which achieves state-of-the-art performance on the task, and show that, used as a simple music language model, it improves multi-pitch detection performance significantly. This is followed by an investigation of metrical detection and alignment, where we introduce a grammar crafted for the task which, combined with a beat-tracking model, achieves state-of-the-art results on metrical alignment. This system's success adds more evidence to the long-existing hypothesis that music and language consist of extremely similar structures. We end by investigating the joint analysis of music, in particular showing that a combination of our two models running jointly outperforms each running independently. We also introduce a new joint, automatic, quantitative metric for the complete transcription of an audio recording into an annotated musical score, something which the field currently lacks.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how metadata from Spotify could be used to identify the language of songs in a dataset containing nine languages. Features based on song name, album name, genre, regional popularity and vectors describing songs, playlists and users were analysed individually and in combination with each other in different classifiers. In addition to this, this report explored how different levels of prediction confidence affects performance and how it compared to a classifier based on audio input. A random forest classifier proved to have the best performance with an accuracy of 95.4% for the whole data set. Performance was also investigated when the confidence of the model was taken into account, and when only keeping more confident predictions from the model, accuracy was higher. When keeping the 70% most confident predictions an accuracy of 99.4% was achieved. The model also proved to be robust to input of other languages than it was trained on, and managed to filter out unwanted records not matching the languages of the model. A comparison was made to a classifier based on audio input, where the model using metadata performed better on the training and test set used. Finally, a number of possible improvements and future work were suggested.

This thesis is centred on a number of contemporary vocal performances and projects I encountered, and often single-handedly organised, during years of study and exploration. An introduction provides insights as to how I came to connect my original performance research goals with additional subject matters in an effort to provide a more complete illustration of the broad span of the music at hand. The bulk of this submission lies within the recordings of performances, which are supported by three exploratory chapters that discuss the relationships of the works to one another. The first chapter examines Finnish contemporary vocal music from a performer's point of view. Following this are two chapters that look at selected vocal works of two of the most internationally famous composers today, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kaija Saariaho, in juxtaposition with an array of non-Finnish composition that share common themes. These chapters are accompanied by five audio CDs and one DVD, an extensive listing of recording tracks and performances, programmes and notes from all relevant concerts, press releases and reviews where applicable. An afterword sums up conclusions I arrived at regarding the role ofthe contemporary vocal artist and our responsibilities to the future of musical art.

The purpose of this study was to present a content analysis of seven music therapy journals in the English language in order to provide an objective documentation of the longitudinal growth of the field. The current study examined seven English language music therapy journals including the Journal of Music Therapy, Music Therapy: Journal of the American Association for Music Therapy, Music Therapy Perspectives, The Australian Journal of Music Therapy, The Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, The British Journal of Music Therapy, and The New Zealand Society for Music Therapy Journal. A total of 1,922 articles were coded according to author information (name, credentials, institution, geographic location), mode of inquiry, population studied, and subsequent article citation. Results indicated a broad range of research topics with a rapid rise in music and medicine research beginning in the 1980s. Research authors in music therapy comprise a diverse group of authors both from the United States and abroad. This study highlighted transitions in institutional productivity moving from clinical settings to academic settings. Over the course of 50 years, there have been continuous changes in various aspects of the music therapy literature that document the continuing growth of the profession.

For decades, many brass teachers have relied heavily upon speech as a means of conveying pedagogical concepts. Additionally, a significant number of teachers in the brass community continue to use speech sounds to teach specific kinesthetic responses (i.e. using specific vowels for tone production, particular consonants for articulation, and variations of vowels for different pitch registers). These teaching concepts have been perpetuated over time, though many intricate aspects of human anatomy were yet to be understood at the inception of these methods, including the physiological processes used during speech. As technology has evolved, researchers in the field of linguistics have made significant discoveries regarding the production and perception of speech. As a result of these innovations, researchers now understand more about individual languages than ever before. This document aims to critique popular beliefs regarding speech directives often utilized in trumpet pedagogy, such as guiding a student by saying “tah,” “too,” “tee,” etc. to produce a desired sound concept. A significant portion of this document also outlines an ultrasound experiment conducted by the author in the Phonetics Laboratory at the University of Kentucky, in which exercises were designed to determine if speech vowels are in fact used during trumpet playing. During this study, subjects wore a lightweight headset with an ultrasound probe placed under the chin. The ultrasound probe allowed the researcher a midsaggital (side) view of the subject’s oral cavity, displaying vowel placements and articulatory phenomena. While using the ultrasound imaging technology, subjects played a short selection of musical exercises on B-flat trumpet and then read aloud a pre-selected list of English words, designed to display multiple combinations of vowel and consonant pairings. Both the trumpet exercises and reading of the word list were audio recorded and simultaneously paired with the corresponding ultrasound video data. After playing the selected exercises, subjects completed a brief written questionnaire of personal language history to ascertain possible influences upon dialect. The ultrasound videos were then analyzed with the audio recordings to map each individual’s tongue placements during speech as compared to the placements utilized during trumpet playing. The author concluded that a majority of participants did not use the specific placements of speech vowels while playing the trumpet, although some participant data displayed a slightly stronger correlation than others. While many conclusions could be drawn from this research study, the corresponding data is intended for a purely observational understanding of the influence of linguistics upon trumpet performance and pedagogy. This document is presented in two parts: Part I contains introductory research material, as well as the process, analysis, and conclusions from the experiment outlined above. Part II contains recital programs and corresponding program notes in fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Trumpet Performance, as well as a personal vita.

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Bachelors
Arts and Sciences
Psychology

There is evidence that the strategies used by fluent readers of written language and by fluent "sight-readers" of musical notation are much the same. Both require a background in the modality represented by the written symbols. Both require context for construction of meaning through sampling and prediction. In this study, a method of elementary music-reading instruction was developed in which musical notation is introduced in the context of musical patterns familiar to the students through earlier musical experiences. The focus is on melodic contour and rhythmic units, initially with no emphasis on exact pitch. An experimental study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of this method with a more traditional one in which the elements of notation are first introduced in isolation. Subjects for the study were two beginning string classes (fourth- through sixth-grade students) in geographically contiguous schools in a large school district in a southwestern city. There were two 30-minute classes per week. During the first two months, both groups were given identical pre-reading experiences, including rote playing, by the regular music teachers. Instruction in music reading, begun in the third month, consisted of eleven lessons administered to each group by the investigator. The testing instrument, designed by the investigator and used as pretest and posttest, consisted of initial measures of five children's songs, four of which were familiar to the children through rote experiences. While all of the subjects received zero on the pretest, posttest scores for both groups indicated growth in music reading. A t-test on the data permitted rejection of the null hypothesis and acceptance of the alternate hypothesis that the investigator-designed method was more effective than the traditional one in both the music-reading task and the sight-reading task.

It has been shown that music and language training can elicit plastic changes on brain structure and function bringing along behavioural benefits. For instance, musicians have been reported to have better auditory discrimination including pitch and speech-in-noise perception, motor-synchronization, verbal memory and general IQ than individuals without formal musical background. Also, bilinguals have shown higher executive function and attention-related abilities than monolinguals. Furthermore, altered functional and structural connectivity can be tracked to brain areas related to the activities most frequently performed by both musicians (instrumentalists and singers) and linguistic experts (such as bilinguals or professional phoneticians). While research in the last decade has devoted important effort to the study of brain plasticity, only a few investigations have addressed the connection between the initial functional or structural properties of brain networks related to auditory-motor function and subsequent language or musical training. Indeed, brain structural markers such as grey matter volume/density or white-matter diffusivity measurements from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data, as well as functional measurements from task- related activity or resting-state data from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or electroenceplhalography (EEG) have been demonstrated to correlate with consecutive performance and learning in the auditory-motor domain. The main goal of the present dissertation was twofold: we aimed to further the existing knowledge regarding brain plasticity elicited during putative sensitive periods and after long-term music practice, and to explore the white-matter pathways that predict linguistic or musical skills at baseline . Our secondary goals were to confirm previous findings regarding the brain structures involved in music and language processing, as well as to provide evidence of the benefits of usingstructural measurements and correlational analyses between imaging and behavioural data to study inter-individual differences. Study I focused on the comparison between professional pianists and non- musicians observing a complex pattern of increases and decreases in grey matter volume. In comparison to non-musician individuals, pianists showed greater grey matter volume in areas related to motor skill and the automatization of learned movements, as well as reinforcement learning and emotional processing. On the other hand, regions associated to sensorimotor control, score reading and auditory and musical perception presented a reduction in grey matter volume. Study II explored the relationship between white-matter structural properties of the arcuate fasciculus (AF) and the performance of native German speakers in a foreign- language (Hindi) sentence and word imitation task. We found that a greater left lateralization of the AF volume predicted performance on the imitation task. This result was confirmed by using not only a manual deterministic approach but also an automatic atlas-based fibre-reconstruction method, which in addition pointed out to a specific region in the anterior half of the left AF as the most related to imitation ability. Study III aimed to investigate whether the white-matter structural connectivity of the pathways previously described as targets for plasticity mechanisms in professional musicians predicted musical abilities in non-musicians. We observed that the white- matter microstructural organization of the right hemisphere pathways involved in motor-control (corticospinal tract) and auditory-motor transformations (AF) correlated with the performance of non-musician individuals during the initial stages of rhythmic and melodic learning. The present work confirmed the involvement of several brain structures previously described to display plastic effects associated to music and language training in the first stages of audio-motor learning. Furthermore, they challenge previous views regarding music-induced plasticity by showing that expertise is not always or uniquely correlated with increases in brain tissue. This raises the question of the role of efficiency mechanisms derived from professional-like practice. Most importantly, the results from these three studies converge in showing that a prediction-feedback-feedforward loop for auditory-motor processing may be crucially involved in both musical and language learning and skills. We thus suggest that brain auditory-motor systems previously described as participating in native language processing (cortical areas of the dorsal route for language processing and the AF that connects them) may also be recruited during exposure to new linguistic or musical material, being refined after sustained music practice.
Estudios previos muestran que la formación musical y lingüística provoca cambios plásticos en las estructuras y funciones cerebrales, acompañándose también de beneficios conductuales. Por ejemplo, se ha descrito que los músicos poseen mejores habilidades de discriminación auditiva (incluyendo la percepción tonal y la discriminación del habla en un ambiente ruidoso), una mayor capacidad de sincronización motora, así como mejor memoria verbal y coeficiente intelectual general en comparación con personas sin formación musical. Paralelamente, los bilingües muestran mejores funciones ejecutivas y habilidades relacionadas con la atención en comparación con individuos monolingües. Además, las alteraciones en la conectividad cerebral funcional y estructural pueden ser rastreadas estudiando las áreas cerebrales relacionadas con las actividades más utilizadas por músicos (instrumentistas y cantantes) y expertos lingüísticos (como bilingües o fonetistas profesionales). Pese a que en la última década se han dedicado esfuerzos importantes en el campo de la investigación sobre la plasticidad cerebral, sólo unos pocos estudios han tratado de investigar la conexión entre las propiedades iniciales del cerebro, en cuanto a las funciones y estructuras que se relacionan con las funciones auditivo-motoras, y el posterior aprendizaje musical o del lenguaje. Sin embargo, los marcadores estructurales cerebrales, tales como volumen/densidad de materia gris o medidas de difusividad en la sustancia blanca a partir de datos de imagen del tensor de difusión, así como medidas funcionales de la actividad relacionada con una tarea o datos de resting-state (estado de reposo) obtenidos por resonancia magnética o electroencefalografía, han demostrado que pueden correlacionar con el rendimiento y el aprendizaje en el dominio auditivo- motor. En la presente tesis pretendíamos ampliar nuestro conocimiento en cuanto a la plasticidad cerebral obtenida durante los supuestos “períodos sensibles” y después de la práctica musical mantenida en el tiempo, por un lado, y explorar las vías de sustancia blanca que pueden predecir habilidades lingüísticas o musicales al inicio del aprendizaje, por otro lado. Como objetivos secundarios, queríamos confirmar resultados previos con respecto a las estructuras cerebrales involucradas en el procesamiento de la música y el lenguaje, así como apoyar el uso de mediciones estructurales y enfoques correlacionales (entre datos de neuroimagen y conductuales) para estudiar las diferencias inter- individuales. El Estudio I se centró en la comparación entre pianistas profesionales y no músicos, observando un complejo patrón de aumentos y disminuciones en el volumen de materia gris. En comparación con los individuos no músicos, los pianistas mostraron mayor volumen de sustancia gris en áreas relacionadas con la habilidad motora y la automatización de movimientos aprendidos, así como el aprendizaje a través del refuerzo y el procesamiento emocional, mientras que las regiones asociadas al control sensoriomotor, lectura de partituras y percepción auditiva y musical presentaron una reducción del volumen de materia gris. El Estudio II exploró la relación entre las propiedades estructurales de la materia blanca del fascículo arqueado (AF por sus siglas en inglés) y el rendimiento de hablantes nativos de alemán en una tarea de imitación de frases y palabras en una lengua extranjera (hindi). Encontramos que una mayor lateralización del volumen de AF hacia la izquierda predecía el desempeño en la tarea de imitación. Este resultado se confirmó utilizando no sólo un enfoque determinístico-manual sino también una reconstrucción automática (basada en atlas anatómicos) de las fibras de sustancia blanca que, además, señalaba una región específica en la mitad anterior del AF izquierdo como la más relacionada con las capacidades de imitación. El Estudio III tenía como objetivo investigar si la conectividad estructural de vías de sustancia blanca anteriormente descritas como dianas para los mecanismos de plasticidad en músicos profesionales, podría predecir las habilidades musicales en los no músicos. Se observó que la organización micro-estructural de la materia blanca en el hemisferio derecho en vías involucradas en el control motor (tracto corticoespinal) y en transformaciones auditivo-motoras (AF) correlacionaba con el desempeño de individuos no músicos en las etapas iniciales del aprendizaje rítmico y melódico. El presente trabajo ha confirmado la implicación en las primeras etapas del aprendizaje audio-motor de varias estructuras cerebrales que previamente habían mostrado efectos plásticos asociados al aprendizaje musical y del lenguaje. Además, estos resultados desafían las opiniones anteriores sobre la plasticidad inducida por la experiencia musical al demostrar que la experiencia no se correlaciona siempre ni únicamente con un aumento del tejido cerebral, y planteando así preguntas sobre los mecanismos de eficiencia derivados de la práctica musical a nivel profesional. Más importante aún es que los resultados de estos tres estudios convergen mostrando que un bucle de predicción–retroalimentación (feedback)–alimentación directa (feedforward) para el procesamiento auditivo-motor puede estar implicado de manera crucial tanto en el aprendizaje musical como en el aprendizaje de idiomas. Por tanto, sugerimos que los sistemas auditivo-motrices del cerebro, que previamente se habían descrito como participantes en el procesamiento del lenguaje nativo (áreas corticales involucradas en la vía dorsal para el procesamiento del lenguaje, y el AF, que las conecta) también pueden ser reclutados durante la exposición a material lingüístico o musical nuevo, siendo refinado tras años de práctica musical activa.

A thesis in electroacoustic composition presented as a set of five electroacoustic works: Monches en bois ... manches de joie, Repeal, Suite from 'List of Contents, Corporation and Conquate de Z 'espoce recorded on digital audio tape and accompanied by scores and a text. The whole forms the sharing of a personal strategy for electroacoustic composition. The text is in two parts. The first, through five chapters, expounds the author's approach to composition and shows how it is based on filmic models for the treatment of sound and aural image. Chapter One explains the author's concept of 'aural cinema' and defines briefly some analytical terms of reference needed for subsequent chapters. Chapter Two describes a general-purpose model for the language of film sound as developed by Claudia Gorbman, so that it can later be compared to aural cinema. Chapter Three describes the author's perception of how his music is heard by his audience and, in applying Gorbman's filmic model to the seemingly incompatible world of aural cinema, develops a term of reference for approaching electroacoustic music using aural images in composition -the phonoscope. In Chapter 4, the relationship between these two models: diegetics and phonoscopy is examined as it relates to the author's technique of composition. Finally, Chapter Five lays down some preoccupations of the author: transformation, experiential rhythm and sane ground-rules for a 'phonoscopic' approach to composition. Part Two of the text (chapters Six to Ten) shows how the author's approach to composition works in practice, by describing the making of the five pieces which form the main part of the thesis, and the composer's intended communication with the audience.

Thesis (MSc (Mathematical Sciences))-- University of Stellenbosch, 2010.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: We investigate the suitability of applying some of the probabilistic and automata theoretic ideas, that have been extremely successful in the areas of speech and natural language processing, to the area of musical style imitation. By using music written in a certain style as training data, parameters are calculated for (visible and hidden) Markov models (of mixed, higher or first order), in order to capture the musical style of the training data in terms of mathematical models. These models are then used to imitate two instrument music in the trained style.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek die toepasbaarheid van probabilitiese en outomaatteoretiese konsepte, wat uiters suksesvol toegepas word in die gebied van spraak en natuurlike taal-verwerking, op die gebied van musiekstyl nabootsing. Deur gebruik te maak van musiek wat geskryf is in ’n gegewe styl as aanleer data, word parameters vir (sigbare en onsigbare) Markov modelle (van gemengde, hoër- of eerste- orde) bereken, ten einde die musiekstyl van die data waarvan geleer is, in terme van wiskundige modelle te beskryf. Hierdie modelle word gebruik om musiek vir twee instrumente te genereer, wat die musiek waaruit geleer is, naboots.

Bibliography: 190-197.
This dissertation investigates the general use of language on instrumental music. Three types of linguistic usage are identified: the metamusical, the systemic, and the metasystemic. In the first section, various forms of the metamusical - description, attempts at "recreation" and formal analyses of music - are considered, and are all shown to fail in different ways. The limitations of existing systems for negotiation between language and music are also brought to the fore. Failure is redefined, and shown to be intrinsically related to the tradition of musical ineffability, which finds its most extreme development in the notion of "absolute music". The second section attempts to provide a systemic discourse which takes the failure of language into account. Drawing on Lacan's imaginary/symbolic distinction and on Derrida's notion of the frame, it sets forth a construct called "the word of music", which is itself an impossible point of aspiration, but which manages to account for some of the dialectical complexities involved in systemic negotiation with a non-denotative form such as music. The third section entails metasystemic analysis proper; in other words, metamusical and systemic sources are analyzed and assessed. This part consists of a passage-by-passage translation of eight pages from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, in which the fictional character Wendell Kretschmar delivers a lecture on and performance of Beethoven's Opus 111. Various metamusical and systemic issues are discussed: it is shown that Mann draws on a large number of established musicoliterary traditions, with his sources ranging from early Beethoven biographies to the writings of Theodor Adorno. Particular attention is given to the Romantic "Beethoven myth" and to Adorno's analysis of the composer's late music. Mann's negotiation between two partly opposing trends in the presentation of Opus 111 as an "ultimate" or "absolute" composition - the one based in a Romantic discourse of musical transcendence and the other originating in Adorno's identification of a tendency towards alienation in Beethoven's late style - is extensively discussed.

The tasks : discriminating music, speech and other sounds and language identification have a broad range of applications in todays multilingual multimedia community. Both tasks gave a lot of possibilities regarding methods and development tools which also brings some risk. The Language Identification(LID) problem ended up with two different approaches. One approach was discarded due to poor results in the pre-study while the other approach had some promising potential but did not deliver as hoped in the first place. On the other hand, the music, speech discrimination was solved with great accuracy using 3 simple time domain features and Support Vector Machines(SVM). Adding 'other sounds' to this discrimination problem did complicate the problem but the final solution delivered great results using the enormous BBC Sound Effects library as examples of non speech and music. Both tasks were tried being solved using Gaussian Mixture Models(GMM) because of it's known great ability to model arbitrary feature space segmentations. The tools used were Matlab together with a number of different toolboxes explained further in the text.

As result of the Contrapunctus European project the design of the Braille Music Mark-up as an XML representation of a music scores in Braille has been carried out. We propose a design of a prototype system for translating these kinds of files into spoken music encoded in DAISYXML. In this way any blind musician may be able to memorize any Braille score using a DAISY reader. Therefore the dependency of reading BMML files in front of a computer would be eliminated. This is a first work on feasibility which will be improved and managed by a working group.

As result of the Contrapunctus European project the design of the Braille Music Mark-up as an XML representation of a music scores in Braille has been carried out. We propose a design of a prototype system for translating these kinds of files into spoken music encoded in DAISYXML. In this way any blind musician may be able to memorize any Braille score using a DAISY reader. Therefore the dependency of reading BMML files in front of a computer would be eliminated. This is a first work on feasibility which will be improved and managed by a working group.

This study examined the language of Hip-Hop songs and ideology of the artists as reflected through their songs. The study was based on the theory that Hip-Hop or rap songs are legitimate artforms because of their use of poetic elements such as figuration, figures of sound, symbolism, and ambiguity. The study recorded and interpreted the lyrics of a few current rap songs for the purpose of investigating their poetical and ideological elements. The researcher found signification battles by some rap artists as the best examples of songs which express the richness and complexity of Hip-Hop music. The researcher found that both Hip-Hop music lyrics and standard poetry have many similarities, but also have a few different features which enhance their uniqueness. The conclusions drawn from the findings suggest that the main reason many critics do not consider Hip-Hop or rap music an artform, is that they either compare the music to something extremely different, or they simply do not take the time to listen to its songs. Rap Music is an artform that expresses poetic elements and utilizes electronic devices, thus making it a Postmodernist popular artform. Through the research, the researcher showed that rap music lyrics also have intense meaning, just like poetry..

Reading and writing curricula in more than 50% of America's schools have not been successful in assisting students to meet mandated academic performances for a number of reasons, including lack of student motivation and self-esteem. Research studies indicated that music can influence student motivation and academic performance in subjects such as language arts and that a music-infused curriculum could generate the positive difference between academic failure and academic success. For this qualitative case study with a constructivist paradigm, the purpose was to observe, document, and analyze music-infused lessons used by 4 teachers from prekindergarten to 5th grade with the goal to enhance students' language arts skills. The study examined teachers' perspectives and the instructional tools they used to stimulate and motivate students to strive toward academic success. It included interviews, a focus group, and observations with the participants. Data were coded, transcribed, analyzed, and evaluated for the final documented results, which revealed the benefits teachers experienced and the positive changes they noticed in their students from using music infusion in language arts. Findings revealed that students were more motivated, exhibited better attitudes, and had sustained attention and better retention of lessons taught with a music-infused structure. A recommendation is that administrators allow teachers more opportunities and flexibility to collaborate and assist with developing music-infused lessons to align with their language arts curriculum. Overall, the implications for social change were significant for educators, administrators, and students by providing an alternative method to teaching language arts that can increase motivational levels and academic success of struggling students.

Research supporting the viability of music to promote language and literacy development as well as the theory of multiple intelligences suggests that any sound educational program employ a multifaceted approach to teaching and learning. This project created a thematically based multiple intelligence curriculum for first grade English language learners that emphasized the use of song.

The purpose of this project is to explore the effectiveness of combining music and visual supports as a means of facilitating communication in exceptional preschoolers. The results indicate that music and visual supports have some merit for increasing verbal responses.

This project explores how longstanding conflicts in Taiwanese society have been reflected in the development of popular song in Taiwan in the period of martial law from the late 1940s to the late 1980s, and in the light of the periods of colonisation experienced by the country (i.e. Japanese colonial rule from 1895-1945, and the rule of the Chinese Nationalists from 1945-1987). The research methodology employed is sociological as well as historical and ethnomusicological in orientation. It is argued that popular song offers a significant focus for two main reasons: (i) it is a shared medium through which ordinary people interpret and make sense of their everyday life experiences; and (ii) it provides a rich resource in terms of the diversity of linguistic usage in the two main language groups in which popular song is produced in Taiwan – Mandarin Chinese and Minnan-Taiwanese, each of which has come to represent conflicting attitudes to social class and national identity. Genres of popular song like the ‘patriotic popular song’, the ‘campus song’, the love song, ‘dialogue’ songs, and songs of migration and separation are examined and interpreted in relation to the larger historical and political context of this period. The dissertation is organised into two parts. Part I (Chapters One to Three) focuses on how the Chinese Nationalist government propagated a particular version of Chinese cultural hegemony through cultural policies, control of the mass media and the education system, and support for the notion of ‘patriotic popular song’. Part II (Chapters Four and Five) explores the post-war period by examining Taiwanese-language popular song and its musical structures and lyric narratives, together with the starkly contrasting world-view that emerges from these songs. Through an examination of popular songs and their lyrics in the period of martial law it is shown how the split in Taiwanese society is represented in the songs of these years of change – the move from the countryside to the cities, the role of work, the differing social status of immigrant Chinese and indigenous Taiwanese, and the status of women. What emerges from this study is an awareness that the conflict is not only that between the immigrant Chinese and the indigenous Taiwanese communities, but also the conflict of identity within the Taiwanese Minnan-speaking community itself.

This thesis is intended to amplify, support and provide historical and aesthetic contexts for the concerns which I have explored and developed in my creative practice as a composer. It is accompanied by three audio CDs containing six compositions which map the development of my language of studio music, together with a further two CDs containing earlier compositions and a sixth CD containing a musical reference compilation which supports the text. The thesis is divided into the following six sections: Introduction "a brief account of my background as a composer including a summary of the composition portfolios of my previous degrees, going on to discuss my first composition for this project, The Book (1999), which is submitted not as a portfolio piece but for reference only (CD 4) "a description of the subsequent ten compositions, only one of which is submitted, Summer Nights Dream (2001), which again is intended for reference only (CD 5) " the listing of a number of influential collage pieces according to the categorisation superimposition or juxtaposition which prefaces the history of collage music outlined in the next chapter. I Collage Music: History, Context and Influence "a positioning of collage music in both historical and cultural contexts; examples are drawn from both popular and classical musics including examples of contemporary studio-based music, in effect proposing a genre-crossing history of collage music which is currently undocumented " an examination of the ways in which the structure, pace and content in my studio music have been informed by comedy. This chapter is intended to be read in conjunction with the musical reference CD (6). 2 Composition and Computers: The Landscape of Studio Music " an exploration the various ways in which music technology has been an influence on the development of my compositional language "a brief survey of the field of algorithmic composition and a description of a suite of computer programs I designed in order to generate musical material "a discussion of a system of calculating modes which I devised in conjunction with these programs " an account of 'large-scale phasing' including an examination of historical precedents in both the classical and popular music traditions for using this kind of generative system " an exploration of the notion of musical landscape as a means of pointing up a significant development in my approach to composition. 3 The Portfolio of Compositions: An Overview "a discussion of the development of my language of composition throughout the pieces in the portfolio "a grouping of my work into four approaches to form: generative landscape, episodic, rondo and fantasia " an examination of structure and gesture in my pieces. 4 Carnival of Light: An Account of my Compositional Process "a detailed account of the composition of one of the pieces in my portfolio in which I show how I have been inspired by texts, paintings, photographs and music in the creation of each section of my piece, hoping also to illuminate the thinking processes involved. Conclusion " an attempt to bring together the themes of each of the preceding sections, and to summarise the contribution I have made to the fields of studio composition and collage music " the introduction of the notion of altitude as a means of establishing a distinction between collage and non-collage music "a discussion of the issue of quotation in collage and a consideration of the relevance of collage music in contemporary culture.

This qualitative study investigated four monolingual, English-only speaking Caucasian elementary music teachers and their reflections regarding instruction of English language learners (ELL). The purpose of this multiple case study was to investigate the teaching practice and curricular decisions of elementary music teachers who instruct Hispanic ELL students. The investigation was conducted during a nine-week period, and data collection included classroom observations, phenomenological interviewing, and teacher audio journals. None of the teachers had prior education or pre-service preparation in teaching music to ELL students. The major theoretical base from which the study was developed was the reflective teaching theory of Donald Schön (1983). The main research question was: "What are the participating teachers' reflections about their curricular and pedagogical decisions when teaching ELL students?" Following a description of the elementary music teachers' reflections on practice with ELL students, the study revealed that the majority of elementary music teachers had a lack of preparation and ELL music curriculum, and negative perceptions of the placement program for ESL students. Despite these factors, the teachers made attempts to include ELL students in all music activities. This study showed that while one teacher accommodated specifically for the ELL students' learning, three out of four teachers did not. This study also suggests that music is a subject by which strong interactions between peers, opportunity for language expansion, and other factors occur which have positive correspondence to recommended ELL instructional strategies. A cross-case analysis revealed that the life history and experience of the elementary music teachers had an influence on the teachers' awareness of ELL students. The analysis suggests a relationship between teacher awareness and accommodation. The study also recognized the need for further inquiry regarding ELL students and issues related to their school placement. This study has implications for music education research including suggestions for music teacher preparation in working with ELL students, ELL music resources and curriculum, and pre-service and in-service ELL music preparation.

Similarity computation is a difficult issue in music information retrieval tasks, because it tries to emulate the special ability that humans show for pattern recognition in general, and particularly in the presence of noisy data. A number of works have addressed the problem of what is the best representation for symbolic music in this context. The tree representation, using rhythm for defining the tree structure and pitch information for leaf and node labelling has proven to be effective in melodic similarity computation. In this dissertation we try to built a system that allowed to classify and generate melodies using the information from the tree encoding, capturing the inherent dependencies which are inside this kind of structure, and improving the current methods in terms of accuracy and running time. In this way, we try to find more efficient methods that is key to use the tree structure in large datasets. First, we study the possibilities of the tree edit similarity to classify melodies using a new approach for estimate the weights of the edit operations. Once the possibilities of the cited approach are studied, an alternative approach is used. For that a grammatical inference approach is used to infer tree languages. The inference of these languages give us the possibility to use them to classify new trees (melodies).

This dissertation seeks to investigate an aspect of Hendrik Hofmeyr's engagement with music through his theories of harmonic analysis and his use of expanded tonality in his compositions. The purpose of the discipline of music analysis is investigated, and analysis is compared with its sister disciplines to consolidate its vital role in relation to musical study and practice at large. The debate started in the New Musicology in the 1980s is discussed with special reference to the objectives of analysis. The current state of theoretical and analytical study that has emerged since the 1990s is established as a background from which this study takes its cue. Hendrik Hofmeyr's harmonic analytical theories are positioned within the context of this present state of analytical development. Hofmeyr's theories and analytical methods deal with harmonically ambiguous music and expanded tonality. The methods are described in detail in this dissertation, drawing information from Hofmeyr's presentation of his methods of harmonic analysis at the Congress of the Musicological Society of Southern Africa in 2005. The focus then shifts to Hofmeyr's compositional interaction with harmony. Using the methods of Hofmeyr's analytical engagement with harmony, certain complex harmonies in Hofmeyr's Notturno are analysed. The purpose here is to gain a fuller Insight into Hofmeyr's direct compositional interaction with harmony. Hofmeyr's harmonic treatment within the realm of expanded tonality is used as evidence of an individual voice, as something that says,"This is the work of Hendrik Hofmeyr".

Marc Fagelson discusses how not just hearing loss, but tinnitus and hyperacusisand impairments to an individual’s ability to process music can adversely affect one’s quality of life, as well as their overall interactions from a societal and personal perspective. He explains the processes and anatomy underlying our music perception so that as clinicians we can be better advocates for our patients, thus enhancing their participation in music-related activities and preventing avoidance behaviours.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1986.
Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Harold F. Abeles. Dissertation Committee: Lenore Pogonowski. Bibliography: leaves 291-295.

This dissertation concerns the computational modelling of early life development of music perception and cognition. Experimental psychology and neuroscience show results that suggest that the development of musical representations in infancy, whether concerning pitch or rhythm features, depend on exposure both to music and language. Early musical and linguistic skills seem to be, therefore, tangled in ways we are yet to characterize. In parallel, computational modelling has produced powerful frameworks for the study of learning and development. The use of these models for studying the development of music information perception and cognition, connecting music and language still remains to be explored. This way, we propose to produce computational solutions suitable for studying factors that contribute to shape our cognitive structure, building our predispositions that allow us to enjoy and make sense of music. We will also adopt a comparative approach to the study of early development of musical predispositions that involves both music and language, searching for possible interactions and correlations. We first address pitch representation (absolute vs relative) and its relations with development. Simulations have allowed us to observe a parallel between learning and the type of pitch information being used, where the type of encoding influenced the ability of the model to perform a discrimination task correctly. Next, we have performed a prosodic characterization of infant-directed speech and singing by comparing rhythmic and melodic patterning in two Portuguese (European and Brazilian) variants. In the computational experiments, rhythm related descriptors exhibited a strong predictive ability for both speech and singing language variants' discrimination tasks, presenting different rhythmic patterning for each variant. This reveals that the prosody of the surrounding sonic environment of an infant is a source of rich information and rhythm as a key element for characterizing the prosody from language and songs from each culture. Finally, we built a computational model based on temporal information processing and representation for exploring how the temporal prosodic patterns of a specific culture influence the development of rhythmic representations and predispositions. The simulations show that exposure to the surrounding sound environment influences the development of temporal representations and that the structure of the exposure environment, specifically the lack of maternal songs, has an impact on how the model organizes its internal representations. We conclude that there is a reciprocal influence between music and language. The exposure to the structure of the sonic background influences the shaping of our cognitive structure, which supports our understanding of musical experience. Among the sonic background, language's structure has a predominant role in biasing the building of musical predispositions and representations.
Esta tesis aborda la modelización computacional de algunos fenómenos de la percepción y cognición de la música durante el período de desarrollo en la primera infancia. La Psicología experimental y la Neurociencia muestran resultados que sugieren que el desarrollo de las representaciones del ritmo o de la altura musicales durante la infancia son dependientes de la exposición tanto a la música como al lenguaje de las culturas en las que se nace y crece. La capacidad musical y lingüística, durante los primeros años de desarrollo, están inter-relacionadas de formas que aún no ha sido posible caracterizar. En paralelo, las herramientas computacionales proporcionan un marco teórico y empírico eficaz para el estudio del aprendizaje y el desarrollo. El uso de los modelos computacionales para estudiar el desarrollo de la percepción y la cognición de información musical, conectando la música y el lenguaje, todavía queda por explorar. Así, nos proponemos producir soluciones computacionales adecuadas para el estudio de los factores que contribuyen a dar forma a nuestra estructura cognitiva y a la construcción de las predisposiciones que nos permiten disfrutar y dar sentido a la música. También adoptamos una perspectiva comparativa para la investigación que, englobando la música y el lenguaje, busca sus posibles interacciones y correlaciones. Primeramente, hemos abordado la representación de la altura tonal (absoluta vs. relativa) y sus relaciones con el desarrollo. Las simulaciones computacionales han permitido observar que el tipo de codificación utilizada ha influido en la capacidad del modelo para efectuar correctamente una tarea de discriminación, lo cual sugiere una relación entre el aprendizaje y el tipo de información de altura que se utiliza. Seguidamente, se ha realizado una caracterización prosódica del habla y del canto dirigidos al bebé, mediante la comparación de patrones rítmicos y melódicos en dos variantes de Portugués (Europeo y Brasileño). En los experimentos computacionales, los descriptores relacionados con el ritmo han exhibido una fuerte capacidad predictiva para el habla y canto, en tareas de discriminación de variante de lenguaje, siendo observados diferentes patrones rítmicos para cada variante. Se revela que la prosodia del entorno sonoro de un bebé es una fuente rica de información y que el ritmo es un elemento fundamental para la caracterización de la prosodia del lenguaje y las canciones de una cultura. Por último, se construyó un modelo computacional basado en el procesamiento y representación de información temporal para explorar cómo los patrones prosódicos temporales del habla de una cultura específica influyen en el desarrollo de las representaciones y predisposiciones rítmicas. Las simulaciones muestran que la exposición al ambiente sonoro circundante influye en el desarrollo de las representaciones temporales y que la estructura del entorno a que se esta expuesto, específicamente, la falta de canciones maternales, tiene un impacto sobre la forma como el modelo organiza sus representaciones rítmicas internas. Se concluye que existe una influencia recíproca entre la música y el lenguaje. La exposición a la estructura del entorno sonoro influye en la formación de la estructura cognitiva, que sustenta la comprensión de la experiencia musical. De entre todos los “inputs” del entorno sonoro, la estructura del lenguaje tiene una influencia predominante en la construcción de predisposiciones y representaciones musicales.

Learning and memorizing vocabularies of a new language is regarded as an important factor ingaining mastery over a new language while it is a tedious and challenging task. Learners feel reluctant to learn new words by heart and, in most cases, they fail to do so. The aim of this studyis to propose a pleasurable teaching methodology by using music as a variable to enhance and tofacilitate the learning process and to bring joy to the language learning environment.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of auditory-motor mapping training (AMMT) on the speech output of nonverbal elementary age students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Auditory-motor mapping training facilitates the development of association between sounds and articulatory actions using intonation and bimanual drumming activities. This intervention purportedly stimulates neural networks that may be dysfunctional in persons with ASD.

Seven nonverbal children with a primary diagnosis of ASD participated in twelve 20-minute weekly sessions consisting of engagement with 15 predetermined target words through imitation, singing, and motor activity (all components of AMMT). Assessments were made at baseline, mid-point, and post AMMT intervention sessions. These probes were used to determine the effects of AMMT on expressive language abilities of speech output. A null hypothesis was tested to determine the significance of the independent variables of singing, showing visual cues, and drumming on the speech output of nonverbal children with ASD, age five through eight years (p ≤ .05). Additionally, effects of AMMT on children's development of social communication skills also were examined at the end of each intervention session.

Results of the study revealed no significant effect of the AMMT intervention on the speech output of elementary age children with ASD from the best baseline to probe one and probe two (p = .424), therefore the null hypothesis that there was no significant effect of auditory-motor mapping training (AMMT) on speech output of nonverbal elementary children with ASD was retained. Additionally, a comparison of the growth of the independent ‘High Five’ gesture from session one to session twelve yielded no statistical significant results (p > .05). The McNemar chi-square was used to compare this secondary AMMT effect from sessions two to eleven, and revealed a positive growth trend that approached a significant outcome associated with the children's social communication responses ( p =.063).

Although significant changes in the nonverbal children's speech output were not substantiated in this study, there were areas of growth for all children in this study that were highlighted through qualitative analysis and descriptive narratives. Confounding variables that possibly affected children's speech output and social communication development were addressed. Additionally, recommendations were made for future research involving music as a vehicle for speech development for nonverbal elementary age children with ASD.

The persuasive power of music is often relegated to the dimension of pathos: that which moves us emotionally. Yet, the music commodity is now situated in and around the liminal spaces of digitality. To think about how music functions, how it argues across media, and how it moves us, we must examine its material and immaterial realities as they present themselves to us and as we so create them. This dissertation rethinks the relationship between rhetoric and music by examining the creation, performance, and distribution of music in its material and immaterial forms to demonstrate its persuasive power. While both Plato and Aristotle understood music as a means to move men toward virtue, Aristotle tells us in his Laws, through the Athenian Stranger, that the very best kinds of music can help guide us to truth. From this starting point, I assess the historical problem of understanding the rhetorical potential of music as merely that which directs or imitates the emotions: that which "Soothes the savage breast," as William Congreve writes. By furthering work by Vickers and Farnsworth, who suggest that the Baroque fascination with applying rhetorical figures to musical figures is an insufficient framework for assessing the rhetorical potential of music, I demonstrate the gravity of musical persuasion in its political weight, in its violence--the subjective violence of musical torture at Guantanamo and the objective, ideological violence of music--and in what Jacques Attali calls the prophetic nature of music. I argue that music has a significant function, and as a non-discursive form of argumentation, works on us beyond affect. Moreover, with the emergence of digital music distribution and domestic digital recording technologies, the digital music commodity in its material and immaterial forms allows for ruptures in the former methods of musical composition, production, and distribution and in the political potential of music which Jacques Attali describes as being able to foresee new political realities. I thus suggest a new theoretical framework for thinking about rhetoric and music by expanding on Lloyd Bitzer's rhetorical situation, by offering the idea of "openings" to the existing exigence, audience, and constraints. The prophetic and rhetorical power of music in the aleatoric moment can help provide openings from which new exigencies can be conceived. We must, therefore, reconsider the role of rhetorical-musical composition for the citizen, not merely as a tool for entertainment or emotional persuasion, but as an arena for engaging with the political.

I den här studien har jag undersökt hur förskollärare kan använda musik som ett pedagogiskt verktyg i barnens språkutveckling samt vilka likheter och samband som finns mellan språk och musik. Jag har undersökt fem förskollärares erfarenhet och tankar kring detta. I studien har jag intervjuat fem förskollärare som arbetar mycket med musik tillsammans med barn. Resultatet visar att musik och språk har mycket gemensamt, båda innehåller bland annat rytm, ton, klang dynamik och uttryck. Förskollärare använder musik, sång, rytm, rim och ramsor för att stimulera barnens språkutveckling. Det är svårt att avgöra vad som ligger bakom barns språkliga framsteg, men deltagarna i undersökningen ansåg musicerandet  vara en språkstimulerande faktor. Genom att arbeta med musik på att medvetet sätt i förskolan kan barnen utveckla deras språkliga medvetenhet.
In this study, I have investigated ways that preschool teachers can use music as a pedgogical tool in children's language development, as well as the similarities and connections which exist between language and music. I have investigated preschool teachers' experiences and thoughts on the subject. In the study, I have interviewed five preschool teachers who use a lot music in their work with children. The results show that music and language have much in common; both have, among other things, rhythm, tone, dynamics, and expression. Preschool teachers use music, song, rhythm and rhyme in order to stimulate children's language development. It is difficult to determine what lies behind children's progess with language skills, but participants in the study believed music to be a language-stimulating factor. By working with music in a conscious way in preschool, children can develop their linguistic awareness.

As evidence of intimate music-language relations grow, a certain connection between the use of tone language and the ability of absolute pitch has been found. Genesis of absolute pitch has long been a controversial topic among scientists. While interest of learning the tone language Chinese increases, it is, from a pedagogical perspective, relevant and engaging to specifically study this connection. The purpose of this essay is to study a small group of young beginners in Chinese at close quarters. By implementing a pitch-based hearing test, their pronunciation skills in Chinese were compared with sense of pitch shown in the test. The findings point to complex interactions between several factors, and show for instance a significant importance of musical training and learning motivation.
Samtidigt som vetenskapliga bevis för en intim relation mellan musik och språk växer, har ett visst samband mellan användning av tonspråk och absolut gehör också upptäckts. Uppkomsten av absolut gehör har länge varit ett kontroversiellt forskningsämne. När intresset att lära sig tonspråket kinesiska ökar globalt, är det ur ett pedagogiskt perspektiv motiverat att studera just detta samband. Syftet med föreliggande uppsats är att på nära håll studera en liten grupp elever i nybörjarkinesiska. Genom ett gehörstest, baserat på förmågan att uppfatta tonhöjder, har dessa testresultat jämförts med de tidigare observerade uttalsförmågor hos eleverna. Studien pekar på komplexa interaktioner mellan många faktorer, och visar till exempel musikträning och studiemotivation som avgörande faktorer.
提要：随着越来越多的研究证明音乐与语言之间的密切关系，也有证据显示声调语言的使用与绝对音高感之间有着一定的互动关系。绝对音高感的成因一直是一个科学上有争议的话题，如今，学习声调语言普通话的兴趣已是国际性，从教学的角度来看，这两者之间的互动关系是个值得研究的话题。 此研究对一小群中文初学者做了近距离的观察，并对她们进行了音高感的听力测试。通过比较测试数据和她们已表现的中文发音能力及敏感性，本文发现了多种因素之间的复杂关系，比如音乐培训以及学习积极性的关键性。

The purpose of this thesis is to present and analyze six original compositions and arrangements by Agustin A. Conti that demonstrate the influence of Argentinean music on Jazz composition. Conti’s compositions combine elements of the Chacarera, Candombe, Murga, Milonga, and Malambo styles, with the odd-meter ostinato and metric modulation used in modem Latin jazz. The thesis includes scores of the six works, as well as a CD of the thesis recital, performed by a jazz quartet consisting of tenor saxophone (or soprano), piano, electric bass and drum set.

This dissertation investigates the interrelationship of language and music in the complex cultural domain of Cape Verde and the Cape Verdean diaspora in West Africa, Europe, and North America. I illustrate how derogatory tropes of degeneracy, inferiority, and impurity applied to Creole languages and cultures (Creole exceptionalism) have prevented language parity between Portuguese, Cape Verde’s official colonial language, and Cape Verdean Creole (CVC), the vernacular of the country’s entire population. These tropes and their sociological implications are, ultimately, detrimental to efforts toward development in the country. I show that music, a safe and welcoming space for CVC, plays an integral role in preserving and promoting the language. The results of centuries-old exceptionalist beliefs include the historical association of women as closer to nature than to culture in the Cape Verdean context and the perception of CVC language and culture as similarly subaltern as compared to their European counterparts. While men have traditionally been the revered songwriters and cultural intellectuals in Cape Verde, on world music stages Cape Verdean women have had the lion’s share of success. I argue that this gender role reversal is largely due to the unique career of Cesária Évora. Drawing on discourse-centered analysis, I chart the elements of race, gender, and social class indexed by song texts into the sociopolitical world of which they are a part and analyze the fruitful interventions and subversions made by Cape Verdean women performers in discussions of womanhood, “Africanness,” and “Creoleness.” This study contributes to numerous ongoing scholarly debates in African diaspora studies and Creole studies, especially regarding the politics of representation, and offers one of the few existing comprehensive historical and ethnographic studies of language in music and of a Creole language specifically. Inherently political, the research for this dissertation has been accompanied by a decade-long project of social engagement advocating for the linguistic human rights of CVC speakers.
African and African American Studies