scholarly journals Ubiquitous Motor Cognition in Musical Experience: Open Peer Review of Jacques Launay’s “Musical Sounds, Motor Resonance, and Detectable Agency”

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Rolf Inge Godoy
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Mental Images ◽  
Motor Resonance ◽  
Motor Cognition ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Evolution Of Music ◽  
Musical Sounds

Motor cognition, defined as the capacity to conceive, plan, control, perceive, and imagine body motion, is here seen as an ubiquitous element in music: music is produced by body motion, people often move in various ways when listening to music, and images of body motion seem to be integral to mental images of musical sound. Given this ubiquity of motor cognition in musical experience, it could be argued that motor cognition is a fundamental element in music, and thus could be hypothesized to also have been an essential element in the evolution of music, regardless of whether music is seen as primarily a social or as a more solitary phenomenon. It could furthermore be argued that music in all cases has intersubjective significance because of shared motor cognition among people, and also that this motor cognition may be applied to most perceptually salient features of music.

Sound-Motion Bonding in Body and Mind

2018 ◽  
pp. 144-160
Author(s):  
Rolf Inge Godøy
Keyword(s):  
Mental Simulation ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Visual Features ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Motor Theory ◽  
Sound Motion

This chapter focuses on the links between sound and body motion in music. It can readily be observed that musical sound is produced by body motion and also triggers body motion in many contexts, meaning scholars have an inexhaustible supply of sound-motion bonding available for research. The main challenges here are to get an overview of the different kinds of sound-motion bonding at work in music, and to go deeper into the subjective experiences of sound-motion bonding. To this end, the chapter presents sound-motion bonding in a so-called motor theory perspective on perception, suggesting that whatever humans perceive of sound, motion, and/or visual features is spontaneously re-enacted in our minds, meaning active mental simulation of whatever it is that we are perceiving. This leads to the idea of sound-motion objects, entities that fuse sensations of sound and motion into salient and holistically perceived units in musical experience.

scholarly journals Motor Constraints Shaping Musical Experience

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolfe Inge Godøy
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Music ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Music Cognition ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Perceptual Features ◽  
Motor Constraints

In recent decades, we have seen a surge in published work on embodied music cognition, and it is now broadly accepted that musical experience is intimately linked with experiences of body motion. It is also clear that music performance is not something abstract and without restrictions, but something traditionally (i.e., before the advent of electronic music) constrained by our possibilities for body motion. The focus of this paper is on these various constraints of sound-producing body motion that shape the emergent perceptual features of musical sound, as well as on how these constraints may enhance our understanding of agency in music perception.

scholarly journals Musical Sounds, Motor Resonance, and Detectable Agency

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques Launay
Keyword(s):  
Direct Relationship ◽  
Social Experience ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Motor Resonance ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Human Agent ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Musical Engagement ◽  
Musical Sounds

This paper discusses the paradox that while human music making evolved and spread in an environment where it could only occur in groups, it is now often apparently an enjoyable asocial phenomenon. Here I argue that music is, by definition, sound that we believe has been in some way organized by a human agent, meaning that listening to any musical sounds can be a social experience. There are a number of distinct mechanisms by which we might associate musical sound with agency. While some of these mechanisms involve learning motor associations with that sound, it is also possible to have a more direct relationship from musical sound to agency, and the relative importance of these potentially independent mechanisms should be further explored. Overall, I conclude that the apparent paradox of solipsistic musical engagement is in fact unproblematic, because the way that we perceive and experience musical sounds is inherently social.

Value of Information through Standardization of Peer Reviews by Qualitative Analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Kumar ◽  
D. Spencer ◽  
J. Brown ◽  
T. Esmaiel
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assurance ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Value Of Information ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Standard Procedure ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Peer Reviews ◽  
Technical Work

Abstract Oil & gas companies leverage value of information to deliver asset performance from their portfolio to achieve their strategic targets. This requires a transparent, consistent, and balanced reporting of any subsurface project's technical evaluation. To undertake such quality assurance and to build confidence in any evaluation, peer reviews are an essential element of the generally accepted industry standard procedure. Peers aim to review work to identify deficiencies due to inadequate technical investigation, recognize cost effective opportunities and advise for any additional technical work. Any international upstream oil & gas company will deal with various subsurface challenges, especially for a new field. A standardization of peer assists and peer reviews by qualitative analysis has been designed, starting with development projects. Checklists help quality assurance in a structured manner by organizing the facts into a framework, and they are intended to serve two main purposes: (1) Assist the systematic review of the subsurface work to request further technical assistance if necessary, and (2) Aid the review of various subsurface disciplines to ensure that the data supports the appropriate conclusions. It is important to streamline the technical assurance process within any organization. Ideally, informal peer assists concentrate on specific discipline interactions before a formalized technical peer review. A set of review checklists has been developed to aid Geophysicists, Geologists, Petrophysicists, and Reservoir Engineers in their review of subsurface projects. The checklist for a field development project consists of 213 subsurface standards in total: 60 Geophysical, 36 Geological, 62 Petrophysical and 55 Reservoir Engineering standards. Each discipline review is then followed by two key recommendations: (1) further work is required or not, and/or (2) a recommendation to proceed to the next phase is made or not. Because of the high level of detail for the analysis of each subsurface discipline, it is recommended that the checklists be used as part of an informal peer assist rather than a formal peer review. For each discipline, a summary of the outcome is agreed between the project member and the peer (typically a subject matter expert). The use of such qualitative analysis is a big step in the right direction to resolve issues of detailed technical assurance before the formal peer review. Such integration of the subsurface approach drives better business decisions. A case study is presented to show how this systematic approach was used and how the results are consistent, comparable, encompassing and objective. This paper outlines a clear and concise method that has been tried and tested and that allows for relevant technical work to be presented at the correct decision gates and thereby allow data evaluation to be done in a more ordered and efficient way, and this would be of interest to organizations that are required to undertake several review steps prior to project execution.

scholarly journals Sonifying the Shape of Human Body Motion using Motiongrams

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Refsum Jensenius ◽  
Rolf Inge Godøy
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Video Recording ◽  
Visual Display ◽  
Human Motion ◽  
Visual Similarity ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Auditory Displays ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Spatial Shape

<p class="author">The paper presents sonomotiongram, a technique for the creation of auditory displays of human body motion based on motiongrams. A motiongram is a visual display of motion, based on frame differencing and reduction of a regular video recording. The resultant motiongram shows the spatial shape of the motion as it unfolds in time, somewhat similar to the way in which spectrograms visualise the shape of (musical) sound. The visual similarity of motiongrams and spectrograms is the conceptual starting point for the sonomotiongram technique, which explores how motiongrams can be turned into sound using &ldquo;inverse FFT&rdquo;. The paper presents the idea of shape-sonification, gives an overview of the sonomotiongram technique, and discusses sonification examples of both simple and complex human motion.</p>

Cultural construction of illness, festival and music in Southeast Asia

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-415
Author(s):  
Muhamad Ali
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Mental Images ◽  
Rich Region ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Southeast Asians ◽  
Health Performance

Southeast Asia remains a rich region for students and scholars interested in understanding the place of culture within a variety of human activities. Three recent studies under review, Acts of integration, Bridges to the ancestors and Listening to an earlier Java, particularly demonstrate the ways in which culture plays a pertinent role in the health, performance and music of contemporary Southeast Asians. Although Acts of integration focuses on mental images, Bridges to the ancestors on a festival, and Listening to an earlier Java on musical sound, the studies shared the recognition of the interplay between two opposite yet interactive forces: sacred and secular; inner and outer; order and chaos; male and female. They argue that mental normality, aesthetics and music represent, shape and are shaped by culture characterised by such dichotomous categories. Amidst other studies which try to deconstruct culture as more fluid and hybrid, however, these works serve as a reminder of the place of culture as an underlying persistent force in shaping the views and lives of many Southeast Asian peoples.

scholarly journals Against Nature? or, Confessions of a Darwinian Modernist

2014 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 151-182
Author(s):  
Murray Smith
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Musical Sounds ◽  
Western Classical Music ◽  
The Way

A few years ago I gave a paper on the aesthetics of ‘noise,’ that is, on the ways in which non-musical sounds can be given aesthetic shape and structure, and thereby form the basis of significant aesthetic experience. Along the way I made reference to Arnold Schoenberg's musical theory, in particular his notion ofKlangfarbenmelodie, literally ‘sound colour melody,’ or musical form based on timbre or tonal colour rather than on melody, harmony or rhythm. Schoenberg articulated his ideas aboutKlangfarbenmelodiein the final section of hisHarmonielehre(1911). ‘Pitch is nothing else but tone colour measured in one direction,’ wrote Schoenberg. ‘Now, if it is possible to create patterns out of tone colours that are differentiated according to pitch, patterns we call ‘melodies’…then it must also be possible to make such progressions out of the tone colours of the other dimension, out of that which we simply call “tone colour.”’ In other words, traditional melodies work by abstracting and structuring the dominant pitch characterizing a musical sound, while ‘sound colour melodies’ work, Schoenberg argues, by structuring the combined set of pitches contained in a given musical sound (the overtones as well as the dominant pitch). Schoenberg is emphatic that, although a neglected and underdeveloped possibility within Western classical music, ‘sound colour melody’ is a perfectly legitimate and viable form of musical expression; indeed for Schoenberg it is a musical form with enormous potential.

Voiceness in Musical Instruments

2019 ◽  
pp. 236-268
Author(s):  
Cornelia Fales
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Musical Sounds ◽  
The Voice

This chapter presents the results of a pilot study of “voiceness” in instrumental musical sound across cultures. This study grew from the proposition that not only is the voice of primal importance in music, but “voiceness” in nonvocal musical sounds is a quality that seems to exert a particular fascination to music cultures around the world. The objective is to look at the use of voiceness in music across cultures in order to discover something about the constituents of voiceness. Since it is normally not the case that voice-like instruments, either alone or in combination, sound like voices per se, it must be the case that the quality they convey as voiceness consists of some distillation of acoustic features, presumably proper to “real” vocal sound. A primary question addressed in the chapter is whether the voiceness in music of specific cultures varies in a way consistent with that culture’s primary language, or whether there are features that convey voiceness across cultures independent of language. Unlike many other instruments, the voice is capable of immense timbral variation, and the magnitude of difference across individual voices can be as great as the difference between instrument classes. The author has taken the results of the study as a preliminary indication of an abstract auditory category of voiceness consisting of perceived commonalities across several levels of vocal variation. The chapter focuses on sounds from just three cultures that are particularly illuminating in regard to these issues.

scholarly journals Thinking Sound and Body-Motion Shapes in Music: Public Peer Review of “Gesture and the Sonic Event in Karnatak Music” by Lara Pearson

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Rolfe Inge Godøy
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Hand Motion ◽  
Sound Motion ◽  
Insight Into

<p>It seems that the majority of research on music-related body motion has so far been focused on Western music, so this paper by Lara Pearson on music-re&shy;lated body motion in Indian vocal music is a most welcome contribution to this field. But research on music-related body motion does present us with a number of chal&shy;lenges, ranging from issues of method to fundamental issues of perception and multi&shy;modal integration in music. In such research, thinking of perceptually salient fea&shy;tures in different modalities (sound, motion, touch, etc.) as shapes seems to go well with our cognitive apparatus, and also be quite practical in representing the fea&shy;tures in question. The research reported in this paper gives us an insight into how trac&shy;ing shapes by hand motion is an integral part of teaching Indian vocal music, and the approach of this paper also holds promise for fruitful future research.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

scholarly journals Ecological Constraints of Timescales, Production, and Perception in Temporal Experiences of Music

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 224
Author(s):  
Rolf Inge Godøy
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Ecological Constraints ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Musical Imagery ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Order ◽  
At Will

In trying to structure our discussions of temporal experience in music, it could be useful to have a look at some basic ecological constraints of timescales, produc&shy;tion, and perception of music. This may hopefully help us to distinguish between on the one hand readily perceived features of sound and music-related body motion, i.e. con&shy;crete sonic, kinematic, and proprioceptive features, and on the other hand, more generic, amodal, and abstract elements in musical discourse, manifest in various symbolic representa&shy;tions such as notation, numbers, and diagrams. Given easily accessible music tech&shy;nologies, it is actually possible to experiment with different editions of musical works, i.e. concatenate fragments in different order and then evaluate the emergent contex&shy;tual effects in listening experiments. Also, given the faculties of musical imagery (de&shy;fined as our ability to mentally re-experience musical sound and body motion in the ab&shy;sence of physically present sound and body motion), we can at will recombine chunks of music in our minds and mentally scan through large musical works. The contention here is that such recombination in actual re-editing of musical sound or in musical im&shy;agery, will still be related to the basic ecological constraints of the timescales, production and perception in music.

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