Wrapped Into Sound: Development of the Immersive Audio Quality Inventory (IAQI)

Although virtual reality, video entertainment, and computer games are dependent on the three-dimensional reproduction of sound (including front, rear, and height channels), it remains unclear whether 3D-audio formats actually intensify the emotional listening experience. There is currently no valid inventory for the objective measurement of immersive listening experiences resulting from audio playback formats with decreasing degrees of immersion (from mono to stereo, 5.1, and 3D). The development of the Immersive Audio Quality Inventory (IAQI) could close this gap. An initial item list (N = 25) was derived from studies in virtual reality and spatial audio, supplemented by researcher-developed items and items extracted from historical descriptions. Psychometric evaluation was conducted by an online study (N = 222 valid cases). Based on controlled headphone playback, participants listened to four songs/pieces, each in the three formats of mono, stereo, and binaural 3D audio. The latent construct “immersive listening experience” was determined by probabilistic test theory (item response theory, IRT) and by means of the many-facet Rasch measurement (MFRM). As a result, the specified MFRM model showed good model fit (62.69% of explained variance). The final one-dimensional inventory consists of 10 items and will be made available in English and German.

The Development of Rhythmic Categories as Revealed Through an Iterative Production Task

Both humans and some non-human animals (e.g., birds and primates) demonstrate bias toward simple integer ratios in auditory rhythms. In humans, biases are found for small integer-ratio rhythms in general. In addition, there are biases for the specific small integer-ratio rhythms common to one’s cultural listening experience. To better understand the developmental trajectory of these biases, we estimated children’s rhythm priors across the entire human rhythm production space of simple rhythms. North American children aged 6-11 years completed an iterative rhythm production task, in which they tapped in synchrony with repeating three-interval rhythms. For each rhythm, the child’s produced rhythm was presented back to them as the stimulus, and over the course of 5 iterations we used their final reproductions to estimate their rhythmic biases or priors. Results suggest that children’s rhythmic priors are (nearly) integer ratios, and the relative weights of the categories observed in children are highly correlated with those of adults. However, we also observed age-related changes especially for the ratio types that vary most across cultures. In an additional rhythm perception task, children were better at detecting rhythmic disruptions to a culturally familiar rhythm (in 4/4 meter with 2:1:1 ratio pattern) than to a culturally unfamiliar rhythm (7/8 meter with 3:2:2 ratios), and performance in this task was correlated with tapping variability in the iterative task. Taken together, our findings provide evidence that children as young as 6 years old exhibit categorical rhythm priors in their rhythm production that closely resemble those of adults in the same culture.

Listening to/with Mar Paradoxo: a collective practice for sharing listenings

This paper presents an experimental methodology developed by the collective Laura: Place for Research on Aurality for approaching listening as a shared experience. As a motif for the application of this methodology, we take the work Mar Paradoxo (Raquel Stolf, 2016) as a proposition for experiencing multiple modes of listening. To contextualize our understanding of Stolf’s work, we refer to the concept of otography as a way of approaching the listening experience as something that makes and is made out of traces. By means of the production, sharing, and analysis of listening reports, we outline different modes through which our listening navigates. These modes help us understand listening as an experience that is multi-mediated and relational, singular and situated. In the end, we emphasize the presence of the other in the listening subject, resonating the thesis that the listening activity is driven by a desire of making one’s listening listened.

A Brazilian Perspective on Audiobooks

This paper presents a Brazilian perspective on audiobooks. It contextualizes the past and current realities of the format in the country, on the basis of surveys coordinated by national associations connected to the book market and of archival research we have undertaken, and shows some examples of recorded literary works and recent initiatives in audiobook production. The ‘acoustic-editorial project’ idea is proposed as a way to highlight and deepen the materiality and production process of audiobooks, and to understand the editorial elements through which the listening experience is created. Authors from book history, bibliography, communication theory, and audiobook studies influenced this investigation and strengthened our construction of audiobooks as a research object.

What Dreams May Come - Ambient Suite for Jazz Orchestra

<p>What Dreams May Come is a five-movement suite for jazz orchestra, intended to create a calm and relaxing listening experience. The project is inspired by the mystery of dreaming, and it attempts to communicate musical ideas which reflect the relaxed state one is in when sleeping. The aims of What Dreams May Come are to highlight the timbral combinations available in a jazz orchestra and to draw on characteristics of ambient music to give the listener a relaxing atmosphere. This exegesis explores timbre both in music that served as inspiration for this composition and in the composition itself, and it describes how emphasising timbre in my compositional process affected other musical elements of the piece. Chapter 1 explores Brian Eno’s ambient album Ambient 1: Music for Airports, specifically looking at the role of timbre and texture in the album, and at the overall structuring techniques used by Eno on the album to create coherency. Chapter 2 analyses two compositions for jazz orchestra by Maria Schneider, “Nocturne” and “Sea of Tranquility”, examining the role of timbre in the compositions, as well as the ways Schneider uses soft dynamics and harmonic techniques to structure the pieces. These two chapters look into how Eno and Schneider, in different ways, both highlight timbre in their compositional approaches and processes. Each chapter dives deep into timbral and textural analysis, with additional analysis of form and harmony. Chapter 3 reflects on the ways these two composers informed What Dreams May Come, focussing on how I used techniques from Eno and Schneider to challenge myself in composing for jazz orchestra. In the course of the project, I strove to tap into music’s therapeutic qualities, putting this idea at the forefront of my intentions as a composer. Using dreaming as aesthetic and conceptual influence, Brian Eno’s ambient music as inspiration, and Maria Schneider’s compositions as a musical guide, I have been able to produce a work which not only challenges traditional jazz orchestra techniques but also relaxes listeners by complementing their environments.</p>

What Dreams May Come - Ambient Suite for Jazz Orchestra

<p>What Dreams May Come is a five-movement suite for jazz orchestra, intended to create a calm and relaxing listening experience. The project is inspired by the mystery of dreaming, and it attempts to communicate musical ideas which reflect the relaxed state one is in when sleeping. The aims of What Dreams May Come are to highlight the timbral combinations available in a jazz orchestra and to draw on characteristics of ambient music to give the listener a relaxing atmosphere. This exegesis explores timbre both in music that served as inspiration for this composition and in the composition itself, and it describes how emphasising timbre in my compositional process affected other musical elements of the piece. Chapter 1 explores Brian Eno’s ambient album Ambient 1: Music for Airports, specifically looking at the role of timbre and texture in the album, and at the overall structuring techniques used by Eno on the album to create coherency. Chapter 2 analyses two compositions for jazz orchestra by Maria Schneider, “Nocturne” and “Sea of Tranquility”, examining the role of timbre in the compositions, as well as the ways Schneider uses soft dynamics and harmonic techniques to structure the pieces. These two chapters look into how Eno and Schneider, in different ways, both highlight timbre in their compositional approaches and processes. Each chapter dives deep into timbral and textural analysis, with additional analysis of form and harmony. Chapter 3 reflects on the ways these two composers informed What Dreams May Come, focussing on how I used techniques from Eno and Schneider to challenge myself in composing for jazz orchestra. In the course of the project, I strove to tap into music’s therapeutic qualities, putting this idea at the forefront of my intentions as a composer. Using dreaming as aesthetic and conceptual influence, Brian Eno’s ambient music as inspiration, and Maria Schneider’s compositions as a musical guide, I have been able to produce a work which not only challenges traditional jazz orchestra techniques but also relaxes listeners by complementing their environments.</p>

Can’t clap to a beat? How rhythmically challenged people experience and strategize keeping time to music

While the phenomenon of beat-deafness has been explored in clinical contexts, few studies have investigated how rhythmically challenged people experience the act of keeping time with music. Task-based semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants who self-identified as being unable to clap in time to a beat. Participants were asked to keep time with a gradated battery of musical stimuli using both claps and alternative gestures (e.g. head nodding, swaying) and to articulate their timekeeping experience and strategies. Analysis reveals three core themes: (a) an apparent disconnect between the act of identifying the beat and the physical act of clapping, (b) variation in strategies for keeping time depending on the type of musical example (i.e., whether the beat was explicitly played by a percussive instrument or not), and (c) variation in the ease of coordination and listening experience when a movement other than clapping was used to keep time. Despite being small in scale, this qualitative study sheds light on some of the underlying strategies and processes involved in beat abstraction and keeping time to music, informing options for the musical training of rhythmically challenged people.

The Symbolism of the Caravaca Cross in the Work “Crux Christi Salva Nos” by Szymon Godziemba-Trytek

Relevance of the study. The author’s commentary of Szymon Godziemba-Trytek concerns the role of sacred symbol in his work “Crux Christi Salva Nos” for mixed choir, soloists, horns, double basses and percussion (2017). This study for the first time acquaints the Ukrainian audience with the creativity of a modern Polish composer, who fruitfully works in the field of symphonic, chamber, and especially vocal and choral music. Main Objective of the article is to show the author’s way of interpreting sacred symbols in the composition and drama of his work; to reveal the role of a symbol as a tool for integrating a composition into an intercultural context that arises on the basis of musical and extra-musical listening experience. Methodology/How the study was done. The empirical and analytical methods used in the research reflect the two sides of the author’s activity — he is a composer and a scientist. From the Christian symbol of Caravaca Cross that inspired him — to the compositional idea and its implementation in sounds: these are the stages of the creative process described in the article. Results/Findings and Conclusions. The composition of the work «Crux Christi Salva Nos» was determined by two aspects of the European Christian symbol Caravaca Cross — its graphics and the history of its existence in culture. The external feature of the Caravaca Cross is the mnemonic signs applied to its surface, they fix the sequence of prayer lines. The sequence of the placement of these signs forms the architectonics of Godziemba-Trytek’s musical work. The symmetry in the arrangement of the signs corresponds to the symmetry of the music composition. In the history of the existence of Caravaca Cross in European culture, the composer is most attracted by the emergence of various religious cults associated with it. They origins often are in folklore. Reflections on the process of acceptance of theological ideas among the people led the composer to some decisions in the field of drama, performing resources, stylistics. Specially, composer use the text of the Polish traditional Lent Song as the epilogue of his work. This epilogue becomes the quiet climax of the composition. The choir’s location and the way haw it is used in the work are also symbolic: within each subsequent movement, the choir is situated closer to the listener. Stylistic means reflect the idea of giving the dogmas of faith a human dimension.

Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter?

The last decades have seen a proliferation of music and brain studies, with a major focus on plastic changes as the outcome of continuous and prolonged engagement with music. Thanks to the advent of neuroaesthetics, research on music cognition has broadened its scope by considering the multifarious phenomenon of listening in all its forms, including incidental listening up to the skillful attentive listening of experts, and all its possible effects. These latter range from objective and sensorial effects directly linked to the acoustic features of the music to the subjectively affective and even transformational effects for the listener. Of special importance is the finding that neural activity in the reward circuit of the brain is a key component of a conscious listening experience. We propose that the connection between music and the reward system makes music listening a gate towards not only hedonia but also eudaimonia, namely a life well lived, full of meaning that aims at realizing one’s own “daimon” or true nature. It is argued, further, that music listening, even when conceptualized in this aesthetic and eudaimonic framework, remains a learnable skill that changes the way brain structures respond to sounds and how they interact with each other.