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Nowadays, modern technologies provide a variety of opportunities in many fields, including education. In this context, it is crucial to comprehend the possibility of developing new ways of teaching electroacoustic music using such technology tools. For this purpose, the researchers of the present study elaborated and implemented a study program that presupposes involving students in the learning process using interactive digital tools. This approach promotes the development of practical musical skills among students. The present study aims to investigate the impact of an OSC-based interactive learning system on the rhythmic abilities of university students enrolled in electroacoustic music education. This research builds on an empirical approach through a quasi-experiment. It involved 160 students in Huaqiao University, China. The experimental work showed better results in the experimental group in both perception (t = 6.931, df = 133, p = 0.000) and performance of musical rhythm (t = 8.387, df = 133, p = 0.000). Consequently, it confirms the positive potential of the digital teaching environment. The present research has scientific and practical value since the results obtained may contribute to developing new music education in other educational institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply the minimum description length (MDL) methodology from information theory in order to select mathematical models for musical rhythm. We consider six models proposed by David Temperley and mathematically formalize them, which allows for an MDL analysis. As a consequence, we find that two of the models are not suitable to apply this methodology, as their codification strategy does not represent all possible rhythm sequences. A slight modification of Temperley's hierarchical model provides an improvement in codification performance, robust across all the four corpora considered in the experiments: three classical corpora commonly used in music studies and one of tango songs recently released. Our study confirms the usefulness of the MDL approach to solve the classical trade-off between model complexity and its ability to fit the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how Chilean teachers approach fundamental aspects of rhythm, verifying their consistency with cognitive processing theory and findings. 203 music teachers completed a validated questionnaire with closed and open items regarding how they approach pulse, tempo, meter and rhythmic patterns during rhythm production and perception activities. The results show that, in general, teaching practices are congruent with the scientific evidence related to the processing of these musical aspects. Finally, the use of elements that facilitate synchronization or constant pulse is suggested: optimal tempi ranges for adults, use of binary meters, and the use of rhythmic patterns that prioritise the double-half relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music therapy, like red-pink (soothing) music, is an important treatment for neurological disorders associated with learning and memory. Magnetic fields have been proved to have a similar regulating effect. However, the effect of magnetic fields with musical rhythm generated by the combination of the two has not been confirmed. This study aimed to investigate the regulation of magnetic stimulation with music rhythm on LTP (long-term potentiation) of Schaffer-CA1. This article selected three sorts of music tracks in different frequencies (music track (1) Turkish March, music track (2) Moonlight Sonata, music track (3) Funeral March) and four sorts of pure sinusoidal tracks of four different harmonic frequency (music track (4) the frequency is 3500 Hz; music track (5) the frequency is 2500 Hz; music track (6) the frequency is 1500 Hz; music track (7) the frequency is 500 Hz). These music tracks are converted into analog signals by the external sound card and power amplifier and fed into a homemade coil that meets the demand for this frequency bandwidth. The coil can generate seven sorts of time-varying magnetic fields with musical rhythm with a mean intensity of about 2 mT. We used multi-electrode array (MEA) to record the LTP signals of Schaffer-CA1 synaptic induced by seven sorts of musical rhythmic magnetic fields and analyze the regulation of them. The musical rhythmic magnetic fields generated by track 1 and track 2 have a remarkable enhancing effect on the amplitude of fEPSPs (field excitatory postsynaptic potentials) (p <.05), and these effects intensify with the increase of frequency. Nevertheless, there is no significant enhancing effect on LTP of the rhythmic magnetic field generated by track 3 (p >.05). The sinusoidal magnetic fields generated by track 4 and track 5 have an enhancing effect on the amplitude of fEPSPs (p <.05), and the enhancement is better than track 1 and track 2. The sinusoidal magnetic fields generated by track 6 and track 7 have an inhibiting effect (p <.05). We found that the enhancing effect of musical rhythmic magnetic fields generated by track 1 was the most significant. The frequency of 1500 Hz could be a turning-point frequency in the regulation of magnetic field on LTP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These detractors, and the author of this new book, remark that the late-Roman I Passio i of Cecilia's life simply does not refer to the saint's musical practices or abilities. The author proposes that it may even have been accompanied by the performance of a twelve-voice Mass for Saint Cecilia by Rome's most eminent composer, Palestrina, and his colleagues. The author refers to visual imagery from the medieval and early modern periods, from a historiated initial C depicting Cecilia's wedding feast in the Beaupré Antiphonary (13th century, Walters Art Museum) to Raphael's famous I Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia i altarpiece, and beyond. [Extracted from the article]

This is both a personal and academic review of Godfried Toussaint's The Geometry of Musical Rhythm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines gqom's position as a post-kwaito phenomenon as it occupies both a landscape significantly shaped by kwaito and distinguishes itself from it. Kwaito represents a major milestone in the development of South African electronic dance music and has significantly shaped personal expression amongst black youth. The development of kwaito and its broader relationship with South African history are discussed here. A subsequent section deals with the history of gqom and addresses its name, emergence, dissemination, production, gender discourse, relationship with party spaces, and the way that these elements continue and challenge the legacy of kwaito. This is followed by an analysis of the musical characteristics of gqom, many of which are distinguishable from the sound of kwaito. These include a 'raw' dark sound, the subordination of harmony and melody to emphasise a distinguishable rhythmic beat, an unmistakable 'slow-burn' structure, and the further transformation of these characteristics in more recent releases. While gqom certainly resembles kwaito and owes a great deal to its history, it stands out in the South African musical landscape as a wholly new form of music with a new mode of self-definition and approach to music-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the contributions of Markman's text (this issue) focusing on similarities and differences in how he and this author use rhythm as a musical metaphor for the interactional processes constituting a psychoanalytic encounter. This review emphasizes 1) Markman's unique sense of reverie, 2) his thinking about rhythm in terms of embodied registrations, and, 3) the difference between Markman's unit of analysis and that frequently used by this discussant for describing embodied registrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Nigerian pop musicians draw from and build upon a treasure trove of indigenous musical idioms and performance practices, including call-and-response techniques, extemporisation, and specific melodic, rhythmic and harmonic vocabularies. It is necessary to understand how, for example, an Igbo hip hop musician like Chibuzor Nelson Azubuike (popularly known as Phyno) is influenced by aspects of traditional Igbo musical and language practices. This article explores how rhythm is both appropriated and expropriated in Igbo hip hop music. Employing an analytical and interpretative approach, it examines Phyno's rhythmic permutations and investigates how he weaves indigenous Igbo rhythmic techniques into contemporary hip hop music. The concept of a pervasive presence of the density referent is examined, and it is argued that this rhythmic idiom is not only derived from Igbo speech rhythms, but also and even more so accountable for the polymetric and polyrhythmic patterns that characterise Phyno's music. The article offers unique insights into the sonic qualities and characteristics of contemporary Igbo hip hop music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The infant observation presented in this paper was conducted weekly for two years. Through an extensive use of clinical vignettes and personal and theoretical considerations, this article aims to highlight that both harmonies and pauses, as well as interruptions and dissonances, can be present in early interactive exchanges, forming the fabric of a relational piece of music that is not always as harmonious as might be desirable. The role of the father in moderating problematic interactions between the mother and her child is also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the phenomenon known as the "Ruta del Bakalao", a hugely popular dance scene that first emerged in nightclubs in Valencia in the 1980s and spread across the whole of Spain in the early 1990s. In particular, the article provides an archaeology of the subculture and its music by considering the distinctive ways in which it appropriated time and space. It focusses on the significance of the accelerated rhythms of the music and the irregular opening hours of nightclubs, as well as the acoustic environments that were created through listening to the music in cars and car parks. In doing so, this article aims to consider the ways in which the phenomenon was in turn shaped by a political economy that was increasingly defined by speed and economic unevenness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its humble beginnings as a ritual instrument, the bodhrán or Irish frame drum has developed into a globally recognised percussion instrument that is found in diverse contexts. This research is about the sophisticated, technical development of this instrument by the drum maker Seamus O'Kane during the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles. The brilliant organological experiments and innovations of O'Kane, altered the bodhrán's design contributing to a rapid expansion of new performance practices and increased interest in the drum. One of O'Kane's signature innovations was the use of skins from the unionist lambeg drum. O'Kane had to precariously negotiate paramilitary politics and drum making in Northern Ireland in order to produce a superior instrument. This paper explores the complex, intertwined nature of Irish political dissidence in County Derry during the Troubles in relation to far-reaching developments in bodhrán drum making. O'Kane's bodhráns, which he continues to make in his County Derry-based workshop, draw from both Irish republican and unionist drum making traditions. This blending of traditions has enabled him to produce an innovative, tunable drum representative of the shared musical cultures of Northern Ireland within a violent, politically divided milieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I discuss the use of rehearsal drills among the tambores musicians of Villa El Salvador (VES), an underprivileged yet emerging district of Lima, Peru that was built and populated by Andean and mestizo settlers starting in the 1970s. Tambores is a drum genre derived from Afro-Brazilian batucada music that incorporates community-oriented values inherited from the seminal ideological principles established by the first wave of rural settlers. Starting in the early 2000s, grassroots organisations led by VES adolescents began developing and disseminating local pedagogies to promote tambores music as a conduit for galvanising communal engagement and solidarity. The article shows how VES musicians deploy rehearsal routines to fortify their grassroots initiatives, seeking to enfranchise other adolescents by incorporating bodily techniques for self-empowerment and dynamic socialisation. Through this pedagogical programme, tambores musicians employ the rehearsal as a space where the district's youth may fine-tune and 'transform' their bodies and social attitudes in order to become engaged and positively motivated members of the VES community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The score of Luciano Berio's Sequenza VII for solo oboe exhibits a strict and definite temporal space, yet most performers do not manage to perform the work within the prescribed time. The score is presented as a matrix with thirteen lines and columns and each line undergoes a temporal compression. The impetus of this practitioner-based study was driven by a need to find a method of performing the unusual time increments and to be as close as possible to the composer's intent regarding the temporal grid. The aim of this study was to investigate and demonstrate a method of calculating and performing the intended duration of Sequenza VII so that the performance realises the absolute duration intended by Berio. Two methods were used to calculate the total duration of the composition. The result of the precise calculation of the predetermined total duration of Sequenza VII is six minutes and thirty seconds, and therefore refines the results of previous explorations of this subject by other scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his three-decade long search for ways to restructure rhythm, Elliott Carter developed an identifiably unique and intricate rhythmic language, as manifested in his Fourth String Quartet. While much of the Carter scholarship on his works of the 1980s has focused on the rhythmic design (long-range polyrhythms), sketches show that Carter expanded his rhythmic expression without simplifying other musical elements, such as harmony, which carries equal importance as rhythm in the design of the piece. The harmonic structure is based on assigning unique intervallic restraints to each instrument that typically yield all-interval twelve-tone chords with a characteristic parallel-inversional invariance. This article illustrates Carter's logical hierarchy in his compositional process and the meticulous detail in planning the rhythmic and harmonic framework in his least-understood string quartet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For any musical rhythm given by a sequence of duration values as rational numbers, traditional common western notation (CWN) provides infinite possibilities for its notation, using the standard devices: note symbols, prolongation dots, ties, and proportional brackets. But given additionally a musical meter, which in CWN is some hierarchical organization of time points, repeated with every measure, this number is significantly reduced to those aligned with both meter and rhythm. For an automatically generated rhythm, for instance by algorithmic composition or analysis, such a notation should be found automatically, too. This is achieved by the algorithm metricSplit, presented in this paper. The necessary analysis and modelling shall also serve as a contribution to theoretical discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time is troubled for my patient Maya and for me with her. This article describes the nature of the temporal disturbance, as well as the process by which I have come to understand it. Two metaphors help me to define the temporal problems for Maya and for us: music and future vision. Musical dissonance—failures in harmonic expectations, in rhythm and timing, and in responsiveness and temporal direction—provide an analogy for problems between Maya and me. And the collapse of future vision—the projection of a person into an imagined future—is an idea that captures important difficulties in our analytic work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We survey several occurrences of combinatorics of words and morphisms in the pieces of Tom Johnson, showing in particular that some of the sequences of notes that he used intuitively can be interpreted or constructed through combinatorial objects such as morphisms. Furthermore some of these sequences have an independent interest in number theory and theoretical computer science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship identifies various technical, expressive, sociocultural and communicative functions of bodily gestures within music performance contexts. The relationships and interactivity of these functions serve the integration of biomechanical activity and the communication of artistic intent underlying music performance. This integration is considered a result of mindful, bodily engagement with a musical instrument in the music-making process. The performer’s embodied activity thus translates a particular composition into a musical experience. This article examines and identifies the interactive and interrelated gestural functions of four expert pianists performing Claude Debussy’s Feux d’Artifice using Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies (LBMS). The LBMS concepts of Body, Effort, Space and Shape are utilized not only to identify functional and expressive purposes of gestures during performance, but also the relationships between them and how they serve the unique artistic interpretations of the musical score. This article offers LBMS as an inclusive analytical approach, in combination with an aural analysis of the performance acknowledging score indications, as observational analysis of piano performances informing both embodied knowledges and performance-related practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musician's body movements are considered to be a source of communication and to contribute to the perceived musical impression of a performance. The aim of this study was to analyse ancillary body movements of clarinettists in order to identify characteristic motion types used in performance and to investigate their influence on the perception of the musical performance. The body movements of 22 clarinettists were recorded using 3D motion capture. A cluster analysis was performed on the variances of the angles in the shoulders, arms, knees, the back and the instrument hold, in order to examine commonalities in movement patterns. Four different motion types were classified: predominant knee motion (PkneeM), predominant arm motion (ParmM), no specific prominent motion pattern (NoSMP) and overall low motion performance (LowMP). In a perceptual experiment, in which all audio-visual recordings of performances were presented with the same audio track, 154 participants were asked to rate 8 performances (2 in each motion type) on 5 evaluation scales. The results showed that different motion types had a significant effect on perceptual ratings, with the highest affective ratings given to those who performed with predominant motion patterns in either the arms (ParmM) or in the knees (PkneeM) and the lowest ratings were given for performances with overall low motion (LowMP). In summary, the categorization of four motion types supports a systematic analysis of commonalities in motions made during clarinet performances across players. In addition, these different motion types have been shown to effectively influence perception of musical performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a novel model for the characterization of musical rhythms that is based on the pervasive rhythmic phenomenon of syncopation. Syncopation is felt when the sensation of the regular beat or pulse in the music is momentarily disrupted; the feeling arises from breaking more expected patterns such as pickups (anacrusis) and faster events that introduce and bridge the notes articulated on the beats. Our model begins with a simple pattern that articulates a beat consistent with the metrical expectations of a listener. Any rhythm is then generated from a unique combination of transformations applied on that simple pattern. Each transformation introduces notes in off-beat positions as one of three basic characteristic elements: (1) syncopations, (2) pickup rhythmic figures and (3) faster notes that articulate a subdivision of the beat. The characterization of a pattern is based on an algorithm that discovers and reverses the transformations in a stepwise manner. We formalize the above transformations and present the characterization algorithm and then demonstrate and discuss the model through the analysis of the main rhythmic pattern of the song 'Don't stop 'till you get enough' by Michael Jackson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some esoteric doctrines, time is not linear but cyclical, or even experienced as non-existent. This leads to a conception of music as spatial, rather than temporal, and resulting from the interplay of the universal principles of expansion and contraction. Platonic cosmology, based on the principles of the Same and the Different, also manifests in music on various quasi-fractal levels. The postwar avant-garde, especially, fostered the idea of music as a means for transcending time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African Rhythmsapproaches composition from an intercultural perspective in that it amalgamates musical elements and processes from African and Western art music cultures. Minimalism co-exists with Western compositional devices with an added aspect of intercultural activity by using orchestral instruments in African percussive ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defines a collection of rhythmic building blocks produced by generative operations that fuse metrical anticipation and parallelism. It connects aspects of musical expectation with Arthur Komar's constraints on the generation of rhythmic derivations. A correspondence between those constraints and the divisibility of binomial coefficients is used to map derived rhythmic elaborations and syncopations separately onto Pascal's triangle and jointly onto the Sierpinski gasket. This mapping provides concise means to directly enumerate and compare rhythmic configurations. An Online Supplement provides musical examples and discusses potential applications. It can be accessed athttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17459737.2015.1136001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We posit that progress in Optical Music Recognition (OMR) has been held up for years by the absence of anything resembling the standard testbeds in use in other fields that face difficult evaluation problems. One example of such a field is text information retrieval (IR), where the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) has annually-renewed IR tasks with accompanying data sets. In music informatics, the Music Information Retrieval Exchange (MIREX), with its annual tests and meetings held during the ISMIR conference, is a close analog to TREC; but MIREX has never had an OMR track or a collection of music such a track could employ. We describe why the absence of an OMR testbed is a problem and how this problem may be mitigated. To aid in the establishment of a standard testbed, we provide (1) a set of definitions for the complexity of music notation; (2) a set of performance metrics for OMR tools that gauge score complexity and graphical quality; and (3) a small corpus of music for use as a baseline for a proper OMR testbed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, the development and validation of computational measures of rhythmic similarity in music relies on proxy classification tasks, often equating rhythm similarity to genre. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary exploration of the classification performance of a state-of-the-art system for rhythm similarity. By synthesizing the methods of quantitative analysis with a musicological perspective, detailed insight is gained into the various facets that affect system behaviour, consisting of three main areas: rhythmic sensitivities of a given feature representation, idiosyncrasies of the data used for evaluation, and the tenuous relationship between rhythmic similarity and genre. Through this study, we provide perspective on gauging the abilities of a computational system beyond classification accuracy, as well as a deeper understanding of system design and evaluation methodology as a musically meaningful exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of its minimalist construction, Steve Reich’sClapping Musicprovides an ideal crucible for an examination of the role of expressive timing and expressive timbre in musical performance. Seven recordings ofClapping Musicare studied. The analysis begins by dissecting the seven performances into hundreds of segments that contain either single handclaps or double handclaps. These are then studied in many ways: the consistency with which performers are able to maintain the timbre of their claps, the height percept of a handclap and its meaning for such a percussive sound, the accuracy in time with which performers can maintain a steady pulse. When clapping together, the timbre of the clap pair is dependent not only on the individual timbres but also on the timing of the claps. It is possible to measure the accuracy in time with which performers synchronize the double claps. The section-by-section timing deviations correlate significantly with a simple measure of complexity: the more complex the pattern, the greater the timing deviations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sounds in a piece of music form rhythmic patterns on the surface of a music signal, and in a metered piece these patterns stand in some relation to the underlying rhythmic mode or meter. In this paper, we investigate how the surface rhythm is related to theusul, which are the rhythmic modes in compositions of Turkish makam music. On a large corpus of notations of vocal pieces in short usul we observe the ways notes are distributed in relation to the usul. We observe differences in these distributions between Turkish makam and Eurogenetic music, which imply a less accentuated stratification of meter in Turkish makam music. We observe changes in rhythmic style between two composers who represent two different historical periods in Turkish makam music, a result that adds to previous observations on changes in style of Turkish makam music throughout the centuries. We demonstrate that rhythmic aspects in Turkish makam music can be considered as the outcome of a generative model, and conduct style comparisons in a Bayesian statistical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study introduces a rhythm memory task and compares performance of musicians and non-musicians. The rhythm span task with increasing and decreasing sequence length according to the participants’ performance, measures the individual memory capacity for musical rhythms. Results show that musicians perform significantly better on the rhythm span task indicating that memory capacity for rhythms is superior after many years of formal musical training. Additionally performance correlates positively with an established pitch span task (Williamson & Stewart, 2010) as well as the five dimensions of the Gold-MSI self-report questionnaire (Müllensiefen et al., 2014) evaluating musical sophistication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a new model for pitch-and-rhythm interrelationships and demonstrates the importance of these interrelationships as features for music analysis and classification. We show that the model is capable of identifying certain musical patterns and categorising pieces created by Mozart's dice game by identifying their quality. We discuss the cognitive foundation of this model and present future directions and applications. We employ the subdivision-based music analysis methods introduced earlier by the present authors to model certain pitch-and-rhythm interdependencies and symmetry patterns in selected pieces, shedding more light on the analogy proposed between subdivision schemes and musical structures. Our approach to pitch-and-rhythm interactions points out an interesting phenomenon, according to which the relations between neighbour pitches may be related to their timing through a relatively simple model. We propose hierarchical reductions and indicate that their levels are interrelated through simple subdivision schemes using new criteria, yielding features for classification. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Automatic melodic segmentation is a topic studied extensively, aiming at developing systems that perform grouping of musical events. Here, we consider the problem of automatic segmentation via supervised learning from a dataset containing segmentation labels of an expert. We present a statistical classification-based segmentation system developed specifically for Turkish makam music. The proposed system uses two novel features, a makam-based and an usul-based feature, together with features commonly used in literature. The makam-based feature is defined as the probability of a note to appear at the phrase boundary, computed from the distributions of boundaries with respect to the piece’s makam pitches. Likewise, the usul-based feature is computed from the distributions of boundaries with respect to beats in the rhythmic cycle, usul of the piece. Several experimental setups using different feature groups are designed to test the contribution of the proposed features on three datasets. The results show that the new features carry complementary information to existing features in the literature within the Turkish makam music segmentation context and that the inclusion of new features resulted in statistically significant performance improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In viewing the contemporary musical landscape in South Africa 20 years after the fall of apartheid, this article seeks to understand how the discourse of musicology might expand in an interdisciplinary manner to allow for the analysis of current compositions. In doing so, the article traces interdisciplinary tendencies in recent musicological scholarship to locate such an expansion in the study of heterogeneous compositions. These compositions attempt to critically engage with their environment and as such the article seeks an analytical approach that might unlock this critical potential. One such composition is Mocke Jansen van Veuren'sJozi Rhythmanaloguesand thus it becomes a case study in the article. The work uses Lefebvre's notion of rhythmanalysis as a premise and is situated strongly in contemporary Johannesburg, South Africa. Through understanding this premise and attempting to unlock how it, through the unfolding of the composition, might engage with its environment, it becomes clear that interdisciplinary expansion of a fundamental grammar of musicology is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rhythm is an important element in music. In indigenous African music, it does not occur in a linear (Western) sense but in a cyclical (African) sense. Cycles are a key rhythmic element in indigenous African music and operate according to well-established principles. Two variations of the cyclical pattern commonly known as the “standard” pattern will be explored for their educational potential at tertiary level. As part of this paper, rhythmic principles (the most important of which are pulse, beat, cycle and polyrhythm) will be discussed with a particular focus on how they can be used to sharpen the rhythmic acuity of tertiary level learners. All of these are explained at first, then presented as parts of South African dance-song genres at the end of the paper. Two dance-song examples of the three-against-two polyrhythm are also provided. I suggest recorded examples in the “Sound of Africa” series, available from the International Library of African Music. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We investigate the relationship between analytical information extracted from the score of Chopin's Prélude Op. 28 No. 4 and tempo curves obtained from 30 recordings by well-known pianists. The score-related information consists of metric, melodic, and harmonic weight functions. A hierarchic regression approach is used. The statistical analysis yields strong evidence for the approximate validity of an operator defined in terms of hierarchically decomposed weight functions, as originally introduced by G. Mazzola and J. Beran in 1997 (“Rational Composition of Performance.” In:Regulation of Creative Processes in Music, edited by W. Auhagen and R. Kopiez, Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung, Berlin, pp. 37–67) in the context of Schumann'sTräumerei. Further analysis based on these findings reveals some typical features of the performances. Supplemental online material for this article can be accessed athttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17459737.2014.930192. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two studies examined adult cochlear implant (CI) users' ability to match auditory rhythms occurring in music to visual rhythms occurring in dance (Cha Cha, Slow Swing, Tango and Jive). In Experiment 1, adults CI users (n = 10) and hearing controls matched a music excerpt to choreographed dance sequences presented as silent videos. In Experiment 2, participants matched a silent video of a dance sequence to music excerpts. CI users were successful in detecting timing congruencies across music and dance at well above-chance levels suggesting that they were able to process distinctive auditory and visual rhythm patterns that characterized each style. However, they were better able to detect cross-modal timing congruencies when the reference was an auditory rhythm than when the reference was a visual rhythm. Learning strategies that encourage cross-modal learning of musical rhythms may have applications in developing novel rehabilitative strategies to enhance music perception and appreciation outcomes of child implant users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most relevant representations of music are notations and audio recordings, each of which emphasizes a particular perspective and promotes different approximations in the analysis and understanding of music. Linking these two representations and analysing them jointly should help to better study many musical facets by being able to combine complementary analysis methodologies. In order to develop accurate linking methods, we have to take into account the specificities of a given type of music. In this paper, we present a method for linking musically relevant sections in a score of a piece frommakammusic of Turkey (MMT) to the corresponding time intervals of an audio recording of the same piece. The method starts by extracting relevant features from the score and from the audio recording. The features of a given score section are compared with the features of the audio recording to find the candidate links in the audio for that score section. Next, using the sequential section information stored in the score, it selects the most likely links. The method is tested on a dataset consisting of instrumental and vocal compositions of MMT, achieving 92.1% and 96.9%-scores on the instrumental and vocal pieces, respectively. Our results show the importance of culture-specific and knowledge-based approaches in music information processing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Pan-Pontian dance ‘Tik’ can be found in many variant forms depending on the geographical origins of the dance. The purpose of this study is to determine the differences and similarities between the different forms of the popular Pontiac dance ‘Tik’ and therefore limit the uncertainties and generalizations around its basic elements. The collection of the ethnographic data was based on the principles of historical ethnography, which combines fieldwork research on a community with historical data and written sources and interviews. Structured interviews were used for data collection. The criteria for sample selection were the age, the professional and social activity, and people such as musicians, teachers, and members of culture and social clubs were chosen. The rhythmical data collection was based on published music notations of specialized ethnomusicologists and researchers. Rhythmic transcripts and analysis of the authors of this study, based on the principles of ethnomusicology and ancient Greek musical rhythmic, were also used. The results of this study revealed 14 variant forms of ‘Tik,’ which differ in names, form of the hand grip, morphological elements, rhythm, and positioning in the dance circle. The musical meter of 2/4, which is the most rare, and the most common meters 5/8 and 7/16 were found during the analysis of the rhythmical data. It is the first research attempt to analyze and clarify the different forms of ‘Tik’ and the results of this study are the first analysis of the ethnographic and musical elements of these forms. These results help the recognition and understanding of the different forms of the dance and are valuable in the hands of dance teachers and researchers. Also, this study aspires to set a new approach at studying teaching traditional Greek folk dance and music in general. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a novel algorithm for the automatic classification of song excerpts according to their meter. The proposed algorithm performs two types of analyses: a local analysis of the acoustic properties (e.g. spectrum) in the vicinity of the beat and a larger time span analysis of the acoustic properties (e.g. pitch) measured during intervals between two successive beats. Compared to existing algorithms, it pays more attention to the temporal shape of events near the beat and it introduces a pitch analysis in the inter-beat intervals. Moreover, it extracts similarity features for expressing the differences between the acoustic properties at subsequent beats and during subsequent inter-beat intervals respectively. Finally, a dedicated feature selection approach is proposed to control the training of the stochastic models that perform the final classification. An experimental validation of the new algorithm is carried out on a standard meter classification dataset and on a new dataset that is much larger and more diverse. A comparison between the proposed algorithm and three state-of-the-art algorithms shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art systems for each tested configuration. Moreover, looking at the features that were selected for the classification models, it appears that periodicity evidences derived from some of the newly introduced features are more relevant than those derived from the traditional features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in the field of embodied music cognition has shown the importance of coupled processes of body activity (action) and multimodal representations of these actions (perception) in how music is processed. Technologies in the field of human–computer interaction (HCI) provide excellent means to intervene into, and extend, these coupled action-perception processes. In this article this model is applied to a concrete HCI application, called the “Conducting Master.” The application facilitates multiple users to interact in real time with the system in order to explore and learn how musical meter can be articulated into body movements (i.e., meter-mimicking gestures). Techniques are provided to model and automatically recognize these gestures in order to provide multimodal feedback streams back to the users. These techniques are based on template-based methods that allow approaching meter-mimicking gestures explicitly from a spatiotemporal account. To conclude, some concrete setups are presented in which the functionality of the Conducting Master was evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Neural resonance theory (E.W. Large & J.F. Kolen. 1994. Resonance and the perception of musical meter. Connection Science, 6, 177--208) suggests that the perception of rhythm arises as a result of auditory neural populations responding to the structure of the incoming auditory stimulus. Here, we examine the extent to which the responses of a computational model of neural resonance relate to the range of tapping behaviours associated with human polyrhythm perception. The principal findings of the tests suggest that: (a) the model is able to mirror all the different modes of human tapping behaviour, for reasonably justified settings and (b) the non-linear resonance feature of the model has clear advantages over linear oscillator models in addressing human tapping behaviours related to polyrhythm perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how scale vectors (which can represent either pitch or rhythmic patterns) can be written as a linear combination of columns of scale matrices, thus decomposing the scale into musically relevant intervals. When the scales or rhythms have different cardinalities, they can be compared using a canonical form closely related to Lyndon words. The eigenvalues of the scale matrix are equal to the Fourier coefficients, which leads to a number of relationships between the scale vectors and the decompositions. Overcomplete dictionaries of frame elements can be used for more convincing representations by finding sparse decompositions, a technique that can also be applied to tiling problems. Scale matrices are related to familiar theoretical properties such as the interval function, Z-relation or homometry, all of which can be efficiently studied within this framework. In many cases, the determinant of the scale matrix is key: singular scale matrices correspond to Lewin's special cases, regular matrices allow a simple method of recovering the argument of an interval function and elicit unique decompositions, large determinant values correspond to flat interval distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this study, we focus on the interaction between microtiming patterns and several musical properties: intensity, meter and spectral characteristics. The data-set of 106 musical audio excerpts is processed by means of an auditory model and then divided into several spectral regions and metric levels. The resulting segments are described in terms of their musical properties, over which patterns of peak positions and their intensities are sought. A clustering algorithm is used to systematize the process of pattern detection. The results confirm previously reported anticipations of the third and fourth semiquavers in a beat. We also argue that these patterns of microtiming deviations interact with different profiles of intensities that change according to the metrical structure and spectral characteristics. In particular, we suggest two new findings: (i) a small delay of microtiming positions at the lower end of the spectrum on the first semiquaver of each beat and (ii) systematic forms ofaccelerando and ritardando at a microtiming level covering two-beat and four-beat phrases. The results demonstrate the importance of multidimensional interactions with timing aspects of music. However, more research isneeded in order to find proper representations for rhythm and microtiming aspects in such contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The famous results of Carey and Clampitt [N. Carey and D. Clampitt, Aspects of well-formed scales, Music Theory Spectr. 11 (1989), pp. 187-206] focus on scales generated by one interval and explain why some of these scales are preferable to others. Those preferable are called well-formed (WF). Their explanation is based on a theorem showing equivalence between 'symmetry' and 'closure'. In this paper, we propose and prove a generalization of this theorem. Instead of scales with a single generator, tone systems generated by two intervals are considered. In addition, various examples are given to illustrate the developed theoretical framework. Among them, the ancient Indian 22-śruti system is interpreted as a WF two-dimensional tone system generated by the fifth and the śruti. Finally, we draft open problems pertaining to the presented theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We slightly modify Hellegouarch's axiomatic definition of a musical scale and give conditions for such scales to exist and to be uniquely defined. We also present an algorithm computing all elements of a scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tonal modulation is discussed in the context of graph theory with the aim of applying its fundamental ideas and theorems to solve or pose musically interesting problems. Mathematical ideas such as connectivity of graphs, group structure, graph colouring, metrics, Hamiltonian paths and Euler tours are used to prove the existence of special sequences of modulations and chord progressions, as well as to investigate the possibilities and limitations of tonal modulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the 2007 Helmholtz Workshop in Berlin, two seemingly disparate papers were presented. One of these, by Julyan Cartwright, Diego Gonzalez, and Oreste Piro, dealt with a nonlinear dynamical model for pitch perception based on frequency ratios and forced oscillators, while the other, by Jack Douthett and Richard Krantz, focused on musical scales, maximally even (ME) sets, and their relationship to the one-dimensional antiferromagnetic Ising model. Both these approaches lead to a fractal structure involving Farey series known as a devil's staircase. Why is this? What is the connection between them? The ME sets approach is related to the Ising model of statistical physics; on the other hand, the forced oscillator model relates to the circle map of dynamical systems. Thus we find ourselves facing a deeper question: what are the links between these two paradigms, the Ising model and the circle map, that are fundamental to statistical physics on the one hand and to dynamical systems on the other? Here we present the two halves of the work side by side, so that the construction of the two arguments that arrive at a devil's staircase in music can be seen together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the set of musical, social, and technical practices that later became essential for producing techno. In particular, the focus is on how musicians kept time, drawing from examples of James Brown and Kraftwerk. Only at the intersection of Brown's human-centered approach and Kraftwerk's machine-oriented method are the resulting musical practices of techno made understandable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a course on Music & Math, my Honors class studied Clapping Music by Steve Reich. This is a musical composition consisting of varying rhythm patterns. The composer's variation method uses permutations of a basic pattern. Our study led to the notions of groups and cyclic groups. This article also discusses assessment and one student's extension of this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]