The missing fundamentals of harmonic theory: Chord roots and their ambiguity in arrangements of jazz standards

Since Lippius and Rameau, chords have roots that are often voiced in the bass, doubled, and used as labels. Psychological experiments and analyses of databases of Western classical music have not produced clear evidence for the psychological reality of chord roots. We analyzed a symbolic database of 100 arrangements of jazz standards (musical instrument digital interface [MIDI] files from midkar.com and thejazzpage.de ). Selection criteria were representativeness and quality.The original songs had been composed in the 1930s and 1950s, and each file had a beat track. Files were converted to chord progressions by identifying tone onsets near beat locations (±10% of beat duration). Chords were classified as triads (major, minor, diminished, suspended) or seventh chords (major–minor, minor, major, half-diminished, diminished, and suspended) plus extra tones. Roots that were theoretically less ambiguous were more often in the bass or (to a lesser extent) doubled. The root of the minor triad was ambiguous, as predicted (conventional root or third). Of the sevenths, the major–minor had the clearest root. The diminished triad was often part of a major–minor seventh chord; the half-diminished seventh, of a dominant ninth. Added notes (“tensions”) tended to minimize dissonance (roughness or inharmonicity). In arrangements of songs from the 1950s, diminished triads and sevenths were less common, and suspended triads more common, relative to the 1930s. Results confirm the psychological reality of chord roots and their specific ambiguities. Results are consistent with Terhardt’s virtual pitch theory and the idea that musical chords emerge gradually from cultural and historic processes. The approach can enrich music theory (including pitch-class set analysis) and jazz pedagogy.

“Seeing off a Recruit”: The Ritual and Its Songs in the Udmurt Traditional Culture

The rite of Seeing Off a Recruit is one of the most relevant Udmurt family rite traditions that is still performed. Conscription is of particular importance in the life of the Udmurt family and recruit. This article aims to study the songs performed in the rite, and more precisely, their functions of performance at different stages such as the symbolic patterns and items that build a connection between the rite songs and the rite itself. The ethnographic data collected is based on the tradition of the village of Chutozhmon, Malaya Purga District in the Udmurt Republic of the Russian Federation. Through analysis of the data, I construct a detailed description and scenario for the rite of Seeing Off a Recruit. The model for the rite is similar in all Udmurt traditions, although the song component is rather different depending on the village. The original songs and tunes used in the village of Chutozhmon are well preserved and create a complete picture of the rite, thus it has been possible to thoroughly research it.

An Art Class for Music

This chapter describes in detail a constructivist philosophy for music curricula. Alternatives to traditional performance ensembles, including songwriting, sound design, remixing, sampling, and other computer-based music creation techniques, are discussed. The constructivist approach adopts learning strategies used by popular musicians, including aural learning by listening to and copying recordings, and personal learning with minimal adult guidance and intervention. Furthermore, project prompts are designed to guide students from tightly scaffolded and formulaic production exercises to more open-ended creative projects. The affordances of digital audio workstations support trial-and-error experimentation by linking visualization to immediate auditory feedback for each action. The chapter also covers the role of sound design in popular music production, the remix as a scaffold for creating original songs, and the intellectual property considerations inherent in sampling. The goal is for students to have created a portfolio of music that expresses their tastes and identities, and that they are proud of.

Batyar Songs in Viktor Morozov’s Creativity

Relevance of the study. The batyar subculture has already become the subject of many scientific works of Polish and Ukrainian researchers as a social phenomenon with its own jargon and cultural traditions. In particular, this issue has become central in the works of U. Jakubowska, A. Kozytsky, O. Kharchyshyn, Y. Vynnychuk, N. Kosmolinska, W. Szolginia and others. Batyar songs as a layer of Lviv city music got a new life thanks to the creativity of V. Morozov, realized in the publication of three albums with neobatyar songs. This group of songs and its genre and intonation parameters have not yet been at the center of musicological research and open up new perspectives for learning of genetic links between urban music and popular contemporary music in Ukraine.The purpose of the study is to analyze the genre and intonation features of Viktor Morozov’s albums, the principles of their cyclization, to explore the genetic links between batyar and neobatyar songs.Results and conclusions. Each of the three albums “Only in Lviv” (“Tilku vi Lvovi”), “Heart of the batyar” (“Serdtse batiara”) and “Batyarsky blues” (“Batiarskyi bliuz”) reveals itself as a large genre, which structure builds an expanded musical dramaturgy. In many aspects, it is connected with principles of the cyclization of academic genres, in particular, the vocal cycle and the program suite. The basis of the dramaturgy development of the albums was the method of contrast at the level of thematic, genre, tempo-metric organization. In addition, all three albums actually formed the one line of transformation of batiar songs from the authentic sound of songs from the period of the 20–30s of the twentieth century, and to new author’s — neobatyar songs, there were created on the basis of modern genres.New plots and themes of the verbal text of neobatyar songs also directly appeal to the original period of the first Lviv batyars at the beginning of the 20th century. The love adventures of the batyars, the struggle for authority and respect among the representatives of the subculture, the love for the native city, the glorification of fearlessness, life with not burdened by laws and fear became the main topics in neobatyar songs too. A characteristic local dialect is preserved, including a combination of vocabulary of various language systems; the use of lexical distortions, obscene vocabulary takes on a new embodiment through modern neologisms, borrowings. Songs are still performed exclusively by men, and the main genre outline is dance, including polkas, waltzes, tango, staer and others. The phenomenon of the double nature of batiar songs is organically embodied, where folklore and author’s songs are expressed through a combination of anonymous and original songs of the prewar period and neobatyar songs created by the authors of the albums. The nebatyars headed by V. Morozov in the albums “Only in Lviv”, “Heart of the batyar” and “Batyar blues” deliberately appeal to the layer of batyar songs, aiming to give new life to the old batyar song genre in the context of modern musical trends, to save the unique phenomenon from oblivion, rethink them in the context of the realities of our time. Thanks to the conceptual approach to the creation of the aforementioned albums, the authors managed not only to organically continue the musical traditions of batyar songs, but also to give them new life at a fresh, even brighter artistic level.

Artificial intelligence became Beethoven: how do listeners and music professionals perceive artificially composed music?

Purpose Artificial intelligence (AI) has reached creative industries such as music. Algorithms now produce high-quality artistic content (e.g. original songs), for hedo consumption and utilitarian business applications. While available literature to-date focuses mainly on technological development and applications, this paper aims to address the resulting research gap by investigating listeners’ perceptions towards music composed by AI. Design/methodology/approach First, an online survey was conducted with 446 respondents and compared perceptions of music professionals (n = 72) and non-professional listeners (n = 374). Following this, a 2 × 2 laboratory experiment was conducted, where 86 participants listened to songs composed by AI but were presented different narratives regarding the composition process (human versus AI). Findings Overall, results from the online survey indicated a rather negative perception, low purchase intention for AI music and a negative credibility perception of musicians using AI. Findings from the experiment indicated no significant differences between the groups, suggesting that the awareness of the use of automation did not influence the perception towards the music. Originality/value This paper contributes by highlighting the current perception of both listeners and music professionals towards the application of artificial creativity in music composition. Furthermore, it contributes to the existing literature on artificial creativity applied in music, by providing evidence of its impact on listeners’ perception. Results reveal the importance of further investigation on the topic.

Mathew and Me: A Musical Performance Autoethnography Exploring Same-Sex Attraction in Sport

Mathew and Me is a musical performance autoethnography that explores embodied experiences of same-sex attraction between men within heteronormative sport cultures. The performance comprises a layering of original songs, performance poetry, and personal narrative. Songwriting is used as a critical arts-based methodology to discover, interrogate, and communicate fragmentary, sensory, and embodied remembrances of lived experience. Alongside a textual representation of the performance, reflections are offered on the two methodological issues: first, the challenges of sharing music and songs within conventional academic publication and, second, the possibilities and nuances of songwriting as a methodology for critical qualitative inquiry.

AN ICY FORCE BOTH FOUL AND FAIR: THE THEME OF LOVE VERSUS FEAR IN THE DUTCH DUBBED VERSION OF DISNEY’S FROZEN

This study compares the songs from the original, English-language version of the 2013 Disney film Frozen to those of the Dutch dubbed version, investigating how the thematic representation of love and fear differ between these versions. To support this inherently qualitative analysis, this study employs the triangle of aspects, an analytical model that identifies certain aspects and variables central to animated musical film dubbing, allowing a quantification of differences between dubbed versions. It is found that the dubbed songs differ most strongly from the original songs in the verbal code, which covers issues such as semantic sense and register, and least in the musical code, which concerns matters of rhyme scheme, rhythm, and singability. The effects of the changes are a slight backgrounding of the theme of love versus fear: whereas the source version presents and explores a clear dichotomy between love and fear, the dubbed version concentrates more on love as the ultimate goal of life, eliminating much of the importance of fear. These results show that quantitative data can be useful in qualitative analyses, presenting an important step in the development of the field of animated musical film dubbing within translation studies.

Final Reflections

This last chapter of the book highlights two case studies of multivocality in the political climate following the 2016 presidential election, in the contexts of intersectional feminist activism and youth activism against gun violence. It first discusses Asian American singer-songwriter Connie Lim’s song “Quiet,” and her experience when it was adopted as an anthem of the Women’s March movement in 2017. Then, the chapter investigates the voices of young U.S. musicians in the response to a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It examines their experiences writing and performing original songs at school walkouts and protests, as well as their understandings of the singing voice as powerfully agentive.

Instrumental Sensibility of Vocal Detector Based on Spectral Features

Detecting voice in a mixture of sound sources remains a challenging task in MIR research. The musical content can be perceived in many different ways as instrumentation varies. We evaluate how instrumentation affects singing voice detection in pieces using a standard spectral feature (MFCC). We trained Random Forest models with song remixes for specific subsets of sound sources, and compare it to models trained with the original songs. We thus present a preliminary analysis of the classification accuracy results.