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Research indicates that the ways individuals engage with music listening in daily life has emotional consequences, and that these consequences, and their relationship to well-being, are influenced by a complex interaction among situational variables and personal dispositions. One such disposition is rumination, a response style characterized by repeated dwelling on negative thoughts and feelings. The tendency to ruminate is strongly related to issues such as depression and anxiety in the non-music domain, and music research indicates this trait may moderate relationships between a listener’s mood, the emotional content of their music choices, and the outcomes of listening. The primary aim of the present study was to assess this potential moderation using Experience-Sampling Methodology. Secondary aims included collection of descriptive data regarding typical listening scenarios as well as exploratory assessment of relationships between musical background/experience, motivations for listening, and outcomes. Participants (N=157) downloaded the MuPsych smartphone app and completed regular reports about their listening experiences over a two-week period. Information collected included mood measures taken at the onset of listening and again after a five-minute period, as well as information about current context and musical selections. Participants also completed measures of trait rumination and musical background. Results obtained via multilevel structural equation modeling indicate that although associations between initial mood, music valence, and affective outcomes were significant and in the expected direction, trait rumination generally did not significantly moderate these relationships. Nor was musical background or experience related to any motivation for listening or listening outcomes. Descriptive data, however, tended to support prior research regarding listening frequencies, common listening contexts, and the prevalence of affective change associated with listening. The present study has implications for music therapy and education, perhaps especially for awareness-building programs designed to help individuals acquire adaptive affect regulation skills and habits. Results here also lend support to the idea that the emotional outcomes of music listening are more strongly influenced by minute-to-minute situational variables than by dispositional or between-subjects variables.

Sport and dance psychology researchers have shown, time and again, how imagery improves performance in their respective fields. In singing, imagery has a long history in the bel canto (beautiful singing) tradition but it is more linked to using metaphor and simile as teaching aids rather than a mental practice technique to improve performance. Because of this, imagery in singing is even broader than imagery in athletics or dance. Moreover, imagery in singing psychology has not been as thoroughly examined in an empirical setting, especially not from a sport and dance psychology perspective. This monograph aims to outline the term “imagery” in its many forms and applications to sport, singing, and other fields to better understand the term across disciplines. For the purposes of this monograph, the author is operating under the definition of imagery from a sport and dance psychology perspective, whereby imagery is an experience that mimics a real experience. It occurs in the mind’s eye. It is multi-sensory, meaning that it is not limited to visualization, but encompasses all five senses as well as the kinesthetic sense. The guiding questions of this study were concerned with the individual singer’s use of imagery and how this differs between professional singers and student singers. This study was based on the author’s previous work where singers used imagery for vocal technique, performance anxiety and goals, and characterization, i.e., portrayal of characters, in their own personal singing. This research used a study-specific survey to explore the nature and function of singers’ imagery use with respect to vocal technique, performance anxiety and goals, and characterization. 130 singers were surveyed to determine the nature and function of their imagery use. Findings of the study revealed that no group differences exist between professional and student singers’ imagery use. There was a significant difference between males and females on the characterization subscale, suggesting that female singers may use imagery for characterization more so than males.

This thesis examines Spotify, the world’s most popular music streaming service, and its usage of music as a data extraction tool. I position Spotify as a surveillance capitalist firm that puts music at the centre of an enclosed environment designed to condition users’ affective responses and behaviors and reorient production of music. I analyze three features of the platform: a campaign in which Spotify invites users and producers to share the data it collects about them, the arrangement of the platform’s architecture into mood-based playlists, and its penchant for music that is “Chill.” I show how each serves the surveillance machine’s goals of collecting and contextualizing data from music and music consumption that it claims can quantify, predict, and condition behaviour. Using a framework of social and economic theory alongside data and musical analysis, I position Spotify and its exploitation of music within broader implications of life under surveillance capitalism.

The release of Bob Dylan’s 30th studio album in 1997, Time Out of Mind, marked an unlikely and triumphant return to critical acclaim following years of personal and creative decline. From this point onward, Dylan would maintain a quality of output comparable to his 1960s catalogue and unprecedented among artists in the twilight of their career. The proceeding albums, from “Love and Theft” (2001) to Triplicate (2017) would present Dylan as a living archive of traditional American genres – an intersection through which rock and roll, blues, bluegrass, and vocal jazz would pass. The notion of Dylan as a living archive is made possible firstly by a noticeable change in his late period songwriting, as his lifting of lyrics and literary passages becomes more brazen and problematic. An alternative reading offered here posits Dylan working in the vein of modernist cultural curation, a freedom granted to him by his advanced age and authority. Dylan’s late period output is also marked by a change in the singing voice and the emergence of two modes, the ‘croak’ and ‘croon,’ which are posited as intentional artistic decisions in service of the living archive project. A secondary function of this ‘new’ old voice is a performance of age intended to establish and solidify Dylan’s role as elder statesman and living archive, summoning the artists and genres he seeks to emulate. This suggestion is explored by way of analyses of each album from Time Out of Mind to Dylan’s standards albums of 2015-2017, followed by a discussion of the role of persona and the relationship between Dylan’s late period singing and songwriting.

The goal of this dissertation is to find out whether or not blues music is an event. I explore what constitutes a musical or artistic event in modern times and to see how this has changed in relation to earlier periods. I also identify its essential formal elements. I divide blues music into two categories, namely, its technical playing qualities (the micro) and its historical changes (the macro). This division frames the entire project and illustrates that in order to discuss an artistic event, we must account for both its technical and historical aspects. I examine several theories of the event including those of Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Martin Heidegger. While Deleuzian events are common and happen at the most elemental stages in life, Badiou’s notion of the event focuses on rare historical occurrences. Heidegger, by contrast, offers an ontological look at the happening of artistic works. He claims that great works of art are happenings that tell the viewer something about the culture from which they originated. However, Heidegger’s theory falls short because of his exclusive consideration of static forms of art as well as his distrust of technology. In response to Heidegger, I turn to the works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. Benjamin provides a theory about the importance of mechanical reproduction and its effects on the work of art. While Adorno’s theory proposes that modern forms of music are essentially non-events. Adorno’s critique of jazz (and popular music in general, including the blues) comes from a misunderstanding of the importance of the medium on the general population. I conclude that blues music is an event and that it cannot be considered outside of its history as a musical form of reproduction. Ultimately, I will illustrate that the event of blues music changes the way we consider artistic events as a whole.

In this dissertation, I demonstrate that audio mastering is a musical competency by elucidating the most significant, and clearly audible, facets of this competence. In fact, the mastering process impacts traditionally valued musical aspects of records, such as timbre and dynamics. By applying the emerging creative scholarship method used within the field of music production studies, this dissertation will aid scholars seeking to hear and understand audio mastering by elucidating its core practices as musical endeavours. And, in so doing, I hope to enable increased clarity and accuracy in future scholarly discussions on the topic of audio mastering, as well as the end product of the mastering process: records. Audio mastering produces a so-called master of a record, that is, a finished version of a record optimized for duplication and distribution via available formats (i.e, vinyl LP, audio cassette, compact disc, mp3, wav, and so on). This musical process plays a crucial role in determining how records finally sound, and it is not, as is so often inferred in research, the sole concern of a few technicians working in isolated rooms at a record label's corporate headquarters. In fact, as Mark Cousins and Russ Hepworth-Sawyer (2013: 2) explain, nowadays “all musicians and engineers, to a lesser or greater extent, have to actively engage in the mastering process.” Thus, this dissertation clarifies the creative nature of audio mastering through an investigation of how mastering engineers hear records, and how they use technology to achieve the sonic goals they conceptualize.

Female musicians who perform in tribute acts to male rock artists are an increasingly popular form of live musical entertainment, from Lez Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin) to Hervana (Nirvana). The purpose of this thesis is to explore the motivations for or rewards derived through tributing for women. Original interviews with artists and participant observation at performances are used for analysis alongside published interviews, videos, and website information. Discussions reveal how female tribute acts subvert the patriarchal dominance of rock music’s history by re-imagining canonical figures as women, as well as how archetypal signifiers of masculinity can be separated from male bodies and performed effectively via a feminized embodiment. Additionally, tribute performance spaces serve as communal fandom gatherings where texts can be reinterpreted and transformed through collective participation by musicians and audiences alike. In sum, female tribute acts allow new creative possibilities for women’s further involvement in rock and popular music-making.

There is a dark mythology surrounding the post-punk band Joy Division that tends to foreground the personal history of lead singer Ian Curtis. However, when evaluating the construction of Joy Division’s public image, the contributions of several other important figures must be addressed. This thesis shifts focus onto the peripheral figures who played key roles in the construction and perpetuation of Joy Division’s image. The roles of graphic designer Peter Saville, of television presenter and Factory Records founder Tony Wilson, and of photographers Kevin Cummins and Anton Corbijn will stand as examples in this discussion of cultural intermediaries and collaborators in popular music. These individuals helped to shape the image of Joy Division as a serious, melancholic and “authentic” rock band. Examining their unique contributions will illustrate the complex notion of authorship in popular music and the role cultural intermediaries play in the construction of musical meaning and value.

This thesis returns love to the purview of Marxism and punk, which had attempted to ban the interpersonal in respective critiques of abstractions. Love-as-sense—as it is figured by Marx— will be distinguished from the love-of-love-songs, and from commodity fetishism and alienation, which relate to this recuperated love qua perception or experience. As its musical output exhibited residue of free love’s failure, and cited sixties pop which characterized love as mutual ownership, American and British punk from 1976-80 will be analyzed for its interrogation of commodified love. An introductory chapter will define love as an aesthetic activity and organize theoretical and musical sources according to the prominence of the body. The second chapter considers fetishisms and the coerced body-as-commodity. The third chapter emphasizes gender, bodily inscribed alienation, and disruptions of punk’s material-immaterial cohesion. A concluding chapter employs Marxist theories of rhythms to posit atypical punk music as a spatiotemporal habitat conducive to love-as-sense.

What is the internet? It began as a military research experiment, but the internet has since become a sweeping cultural phenomenon. One of the most prevalent areas of the internet’s cultural dominance is in popular music, and this thesis addresses how the internet is being understood and discussed by popular music artists. I study the works of Grimes and Childish Gambino, two popular music artists who grew up alongside the internet’s rise to cultural dominance and explicitly address this experience as an integral component of their lives and works. I look specifically at discourse surrounding Grimes’ “post-internet” music and Childish Gambino’s expansive conceptual work Because the Internet (2013). This research concludes by addressing how popular music artists like Grimes and Childish Gambino are helping produce the ways in which we understand and discuss the cultural phenomenon of the internet, and how they provide a foundation for future artists and research to build upon.

The experimental hip-hop group Death Grips, formed in 2010, quickly rose to prominence and signed with the major label Epic Records in 2012. Their first Epic album, The Money Store, (2012) did well and the band appeared to be settling in to a profitable and productive relationship with the company. Yet in 2013 Death Grips released their second album, No Love Deep Web, online, for free, and without authorization from the label. Despite this breach of contract, Epic Records did not do the expected and seek to enforce their contract or sue for damages. Instead, Death Grips were released from their contract and allowed ownership of their recordings. By offering an account of these events, and analyzing the response to them in trade journals, blogs, and interviews with the band, this thesis examines the actions of the band and the company in the context of the ongoing digitalization-driven restructuring of the music industries. My findings show that by analyzing the actions of Death Grips through frame works drawn from media studies, popular music studies, art history, and political theory, the group can be seen as taking advantage of a contemporary process of media democratization (brought on in part by new media technologies) as a means of rebelling against their employer. This disobedience affects the group's relationships to their intellectual property rights and their rights to control their own labour. I argue that Death Grips' actions suggest that new possibilities of artists' control over their work within the existing record industry and that it may be possible for other artists to take similar action, ultimately pushing toward a shifting balance of power in the record industry.

The wholesale adoption of copyright collective management as public policy tool has had an extraordinary impact on the information landscape. The unfettered expansion of collective rights organizations throughout the 20th century has resulted in increased social costs and a burgeoning bureaucracy surrounding the collective use of rights. This thesis considers the role of copyright tribunals within that process, and more importantly within a critical historical frame. While some work has been done with respect to copyright tribunals and their role in the policy process, none of it has considered the tribunals within a critical frame. This thesis considers those agencies, and the Copyright Board of Canada in particular, within the context of their initial creation as oversight on copyright collectives, their subsequent regulatory practice and their current role within the larger policy frame. Utilizing Antonio Gramsci’s conception of hegemony, the thesis views the current capture of those agencies as a further indication of the growing hegemony surrounding copyright in general and collective management regimes in particular.

An original composition in five movements for string quartet, percussion and electric guitar. Majority of the electric guitar parts are marked “quasi-improvisation”, with the intent of allowing the player freedom to explore their own creativity and expand upon the notated guitar parts as desired. The percussion parts, also marked “quasi-improvisation”, allow the player to expand upon the notated rhythms and choose their own combination of muted wood blocks as desired. The name of this piece and its individual movements pay homage to the author Steven King and his series of books known as the The Dark Tower. Much of the music contained in this piece was written “under the influence” of The Dark Tower. Stand and be true.

This book examines the exercise of power in the Stalinist music world as well as the ways in which composers and ordinary people responded to it. It presents a comparative inquiry into the relationship between music and politics in the German Democratic Republic and Poland from the aftermath of World War II through Stalin’s death in 1953, concluding with the slow process of de-Stalinization in the mid- to late-1950s. The author explores how the Communist parties in both countries expressed their attitudes to music of all kinds, and how composers, performers, and audiences cooperated with, resisted, and negotiated these suggestions and demands. Based on a deep analysis of the archival and contemporary published sources on state, party, and professional organizations concerned with musical life, Tompkins argues that music, as a significant part of cultural production in these countries, played a key role in instituting and maintaining the regimes of East Central Europe. As part of the Stalinist project to create and control a new socialist identity at the personal as well as collective level, the ruling parties in East Germany and Poland sought to saturate public space through the production of music. Politically effective ideas and symbols were introduced that furthered their attempts to, in the parlance of the day, “engineer the human soul.” Music also helped the Communist parties establish legitimacy. Extensive state support for musical life encouraged musical elites and audiences to accept the dominant position and political missions of these regimes. Party leaders invested considerable resources in the attempt to create an authorized musical language that would secure and maintain hegemony over the cultural and wider social worlds. The responses of composers and audiences ran the gamut from enthusiasm to suspicion, but indifference was not an option., https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks/1029/thumbnail.jpg

This thesis examines audio mastering as musical communication. Tasks including loudness management, harmonic balance, denoising, phase alignment, monitoring, effects application, and administrative responsibilities are of central importance to mastering engineers. With the exception of administrative responsibilities, each of these tasks significantly shapes a record’s aesthetic character and physical makeup. These contributions – the final creative steps before an album’s release – demonstrate the mastering engineer’s role as a collaborative auteur in recorded musical communications.

1 Campus Chorus Unites and Inspires The University Chorus is one of UC Berkeley's hidden gems. It includes 70 singers – from novice to professional, undergrad to senior citizen – all eager to share their passion for making music. Journalism grad student (and Chorus alto) Sade McDougal chronicles the group and its members in a short video. http://music.berkeley.edu/performance/ensemble/chorus.php Sources -------------- Interviews: Anna Sadovnikova, UC Berkeley undergrad Kayla Sheehan, UC Berkeley undergrad Lily Jacobson, UC Berkeley undergrad Marika Kuzma, UC Berkeley professor, choral director Abstract 2 Here’s to Hoopdance Hula hooping is hip again. In this piece, newly voted "Best Hoopdancer of the East Bay" Nicole Wong helps us explore the craze. As with yoga, pilates, and other new-age workout trends, new fans praise the modern, homemade hoop as a means of exercise, meditation, and fun. People of all ages and backgrounds are now getting in touch with their inner child and giving it a whirl. Exercise fads come and go, but Bay Area hoopers hope this one is here to stay. http://www.hooping.org/2010/11/hooping-by-the-bay/ Source List: -------------- Interviews: Nicole Wong, instructor, Cherry Hoops Antonio Gomez, coordinator, Bay Area Hoopers Articles: Hamill, Sean. “Hooping Already Has Its Own Jane Fonda.” New York Times, March 9, 2010. Hix, Lisa. “Hula hoops make a comeback among adults.” San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 2008. Abstract 3 Saving Grace: Health and Healing for Gay Men in the Black Church African Americans make up only six percent of San Francisco’s population, but they are nine times more likely than whites to have AIDS. This video looks at the group most at risk for the disease, black gay men, and how the church community affects their HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Source List -------------- Articles: Eaton, Lisa, Seth Kalichman, and Chauncey Cherry. “Sexual Partner Selection and HIV Risk Reduction Among Black and White Men Who Have Sex With Men.” American Journal of Public Health 100.3 (2010): 503-509. 1 Sept. 2010. Web. “HIV among African Americans.” CDC.gov. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sept. 2010. Web. 25 Jan. 2011. Lubensky, Micah, et al. “Black Brothers Esteem’s Spiritual Health Initiative: Focusing on spiritual health to further HIV prevention and strengthen holistic health among African-American MSM (men who have sex with men).” AIDS 2008 - XVII International AIDS Conference. International AIDS Society. Mexico City: 3 Aug. 2008. Print. McFarland,Willi. “HIV prevalence and risk behavior among African American MSM: An epidemiological paradox?” University of California, San Francisco [Conference Presentation]. San Francisco. Raymond, Fisher H. “HIV Update.” San Francisco Department of Public Health [Conference Presentation]. San Francisco. 13 January 2011. Wilson, Patrick A., et al. “Race-Based Sexual Stereotyping and Sexual Partnering Among Men Who Use the Internet to Identify Other Men for Bareback Sex.” Journal of Sex Research 46 (2009): 1-15. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Interviews: Norman Tanner, Black Brothers Esteem outreach coordinator, San Francisco AIDS Foundation Micah Lubensky, community development manager, San Francisco AIDS Foundation Susan Kegeles, co-director, Center for AIDS Prevention Studies George Wilson, choir member, Glide Memorial United Methodist Church Cecil Williams, minister and founder, Glide Memorial United Methodist Church Janice Mirikitani, founding president, Glide Memorial United Methodist Church Paul Harkin, HIV services coordinator, Glide Memorial United Methodist Church Clinic