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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Theory of music & musicology > General
Why don't Guitar Hero players just pick up real guitars? What happens when millions of people play the role of a young black gang member in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? How are YouTube-based music lessons changing the nature of amateur musicianship? This book is about play, performance, and participatory culture in the digital age. Miller shows how video games and social media are bridging virtual and visceral experience, creating dispersed communities who forge meaningful connections by "playing along" with popular culture. Playing Along reveals how digital media are brought to bear in the transmission of embodied knowledge: how a Grand Theft Auto player uses a virtual radio to hear with her avatar's ears; how a Guitar Hero player channels the experience of a live rock performer; and how a beginning guitar student translates a two-dimensional, pre-recorded online music lesson into three-dimensional physical practice and an intimate relationship with a distant teacher. Through a series of engaging ethnographic case studies, Miller demonstrates that our everyday experiences with interactive digital media are gradually transforming our understanding of musicality, creativity, play, and participation.
The MENC Handbook of Research on Music Learning, Volume 1:
Strategies brings together the best and most current research on
methods for music learning, focusing squarely on the profession's
empirical and conceptual knowledge of how students gain competence
in music at various ages and in different contexts. The collection
of chapters, written by the foremost figures active in the field,
takes a broad theoretical perspective on current, critical areas of
research, including music development, music listening and reading,
motivation and self-regulated learning in music, music perception,
and movement. The book's companion volume, Applications, builds an
extensive and solid position of practice upon the frameworks and
research presented here.
From the Romantic era onwards, music has been seen as the most quintessentially temporal art, possessing a unique capacity to invoke the human experience of time. Through its play of themes and recurrence of events, music has the ability to stylise in multiple ways our temporal relation to the world, with far-reaching implications for modern conceptions of memory, subjectivity, personal and collective identity, and history. Time, as philosophers, scientists and writers have found throughout history, is notoriously hard to define. Yet music, seemingly bound up so intimately with the nature of time, might well be understood as disclosing aspects of human temporality unavailable to other modes of inquiry, and accordingly was frequently granted a privileged position in nineteenth-century thought. The Melody of Time examines the multiple ways in which music relates to, and may provide insight into, the problematics of human time. Each chapter explores a specific theme in the philosophy of time as expressed through music: the purported timelessness of Beethoven's late works or the nostalgic impulses of Schubert's music; the use of music by philosophers as a means to explicate the aporias of temporal existence or as a medium suggestive of the varying possible structures of time; and, a reflection of a particular culture's sense of historical progress or the expression of the intangible spirit behind the course of human history itself. Moving fluidly between cultural context and historical reception, competing philosophical theories of time and close reading of the repertoire, Benedict Taylor argues for the continued importance of engaging with music's temporality in understanding the significance of music within society and human experience. At once historical, analytical, critical, and ultimately hermeneutic, The Melody of Time provides both fresh insight into many familiar nineteenth-century pieces and a rich theoretical basis for future research.
Contributions by Herman Dijo, J. Ketwaru, Guilly Koster, Arthur Lamur, Lou Lichtveld, Pondo O'Bryan, and Marcel Weltak When Marcel Weltak's Surinamese Music in the Netherlands and Suriname was published in Dutch in 1990, it was the first book to provide an overview of the music styles originating from the land that had recently gained its independence from the Netherlands. Up until the 1990s, little had been published that observed the music of the country. Weltak's book was the first to examine both the instruments and the way in which they are played as well as the melodic and rhythmic components of music produced by the country's ethnically diverse populations, including people of Amerindian, African, Indian, Indonesian/Javanese, and Chinese descent. Since the book's first appearance, a new generation of musicians of Surinamese descent has carried on making music, and some of their elders referred to in the original edition have passed away. The catalog of recordings that have become available has also expanded, particularly in the areas of hip-hop, rap, jazz, R&B, and new fusions such as kaskawi. This edition, in English for the first time, includes a new opening chapter by Marcel Weltak giving a historical sketch of Suriname's relationship to the Netherlands. It includes updates on the popular music of second- and third-generation musicians of Surinamese descent in the Netherlands, and Weltak's own subsequent and vital research into the Amerindian and maroon music of the interior. The new introduction is followed by the integral text of the original edition. New appendices have been added to this edition that include a bibliography and updated discography; a listing of films, videos, and DVDs on or about Surinamese music or musicians; and concise, alphabetically arranged notes on musical instruments and styles as well as brief biographies of those authors who contributed texts.
The Creative Electronic Music Producer examines the creative processes of electronic music production, from idea discovery and perception to the power of improvising, editing, effects processing, and sound design. Featuring case studies from across the globe on musical systems and workflows used in the production process, this book highlights how to pursue creative breakthroughs through exploration, trial and error tinkering, recombination, and transformation. The Creative Electronic Music Producer maps production's enchanting pathways in a way that will fascinate and inspire students of electronic music production, professionals already working in the industry, and hobbyists.
Breaking the global record for streams in a single day, nearly 10 million people around the world tuned in to hear Kendrick Lamar's sophomore album in the hours after its release. To Pimp a Butterfly was widely hailed as an instant classic, garnering laudatory album reviews, many awards, and even a canonized place in Harvard's W. E. B. Du Bois archive. Why did this strangely compelling record stimulate the emotions and imaginations of listeners? This book takes a deep dive into the sounds, images, and lyrics of To Pimp a Butterfly to suggest that Kendrick appeals to the psyche of a nation in crisis and embraces the development of a radical political conscience. Kendrick breathes fresh life into the Black musical protest tradition and cultivates a platform for loving resistance. Combining funk, jazz, and spoken word, To Pimp a Butterfly's expansive sonic and lyrical geography brings a high level of innovation to rap music. More importantly, Kendrick's introspective and philosophical songs compel us to believe in a future where, perhaps, we gon' be alright.
Dancefilm: Choreography and the Moving Image examines the
choreographic in cinema - the way choreographic elements inform
cinematic operations in dancefilm. It traces the history of the
form from some of its earliest manifestations in the silent film
era, through the historic avant-garde, musicals and music videos to
contemporary experimental short dancefilms. In so doing it also
examines some of the most significant collaborations between
dancers, choreographers, and filmmakers.
As the sound-producing mechanism for the bassoon, the reed is a vital component in the sound of the entire instrument. While pre-manufactured reeds are widely available for purchase at music stores, this one-size-fits-all option hardly does justice to the unique needs of the musician and the piece. Many bassoonists, including seasoned professional bassoonist Eric Arbiter, instead choose to craft their own reeds. A nuanced and difficult craft to master, reed-making involves specialized machinery and necessitates special attention to the thickness, and even topography, of the reed itself. When done correctly, however, this process results in a reed that not only produces a more beautiful sound, but also holds up to even the most demanding musical performances. In The Way of Cane, Arbiter demystifies this process for bassoonists of all levels of experience. Drawing from his decades-long experience as both musician and reed-maker, Arbiter provides a comprehensive yet accessible overview of the craft, from the differing sound qualities produced by changing the dimensions of the reed's blades to the changes in the reed's behaviors as it passes through cycles of wetting and drying during production. Small changes in each of these variables, Arbiter explains, contribute to the ultimate goal of producing a bassoonist's ideal sound. With step-by-step instructions, detailed photos that further illuminate the reed-making process, and a companion website featuring the author's own recordings. The Way of Cane emphasizes the importance of the reed to the bassoon's sound, as well as the harmony between reed and musician.
This book shows how information theory, probability, statistics, mathematics and personal computers can be applied to the exploration of numbers and proportions in music. It brings the methods of scientific and quantitative thinking to questions like: What are the ways of encoding a message in music and how can we be sure of the correct decoding? How do claims of names hidden in the notes of a score stand up to scientific analysis? How many ways are there of obtaining proportions and are they due to chance? After thoroughly exploring the ways of encoding information in music, the ambiguities of numerical alphabets and the words to be found "hidden" in a score, the book presents a novel way of exploring the proportions in a composition with a purpose-built computer program and gives example results from the application of the techniques. These include information theory, combinatorics, probability, hypothesis testing, Monte Carlo simulation and Bayesian networks, presented in an easily understandable form including their development from ancient history through the life and times of J. S. Bach, making connections between science, philosophy, art, architecture, particle physics, calculating machines and artificial intelligence. For the practitioner the book points out the pitfalls of various psychological fallacies and biases and includes succinct points of guidance for anyone involved in this type of research. This book will be useful to anyone who intends to use a scientific approach to the humanities, particularly music, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the intersection between the arts and science.With a foreword by Ruth Tatlow (Uppsala University), award winning author of Bach's Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance and Bach and the Riddle of the Number Alphabet."With this study Alan Shepherd opens a much-needed examination of the wide range of mathematical claims that have been made about J. S. Bach's music, offering both tools and methodological cautions with the potential to help clarify old problems." Daniel R. Melamed, Professor of Music in Musicology, Indiana University
This first book-length study of D. H. Lawrence's lifelong engagement with music surveys his extensive musical interests and how these permeate his writing, while also situating Lawrence within a growing body of work on music and modernism. A twin focus considers the music that shaped Lawrence's novels and poetry, as well as contemporary developments in music that parallel his quest for new forms of expression. Comparisons are made with the music of Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Wagner, and British composers, including Bax, Holst and Vaughan Williams, and with the musical writings of Forster, Hardy, Hueffer (Ford), Nietzsche and Pound. Above all, by exploring Lawrence and music in historical context, this study aims to open up new areas for study and a place for Lawrence within the field of music and modernism.
What does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense pursues this question through the many territories affected by the Crimean War, including Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Dagestan, Chechnya, and Crimea. Examining the experience of listeners and the politics of archiving sound, it reveals the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the media through which wartime sounds became audible-or failed to do so. The volume explores the dynamics of sound both in violent encounters on the battlefield and in the experience of listeners far-removed from theaters of war, each essay interrogating the Crimean War's sonic archive in order to address a broad set of issues in musicology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, the history of the senses and sound studies.
Sulke Vriende Is Skaars bevat die geannoteerde briefkorrespondensie tussen twee seminale figure in die Suid-Afrikaanse Westerse kunsmusiek. Dit is die eerste keer dat briefwisseling binne die Suid-Afrikaanse musiekgeskiedenisskrywing gepubliseer word en is ’n publikasie wat ’n noemenswaardige bydra tot die dissipline van Suid-Afrikaanse musiekhistoriografie, asook tot Afrikaner- en apartheidshistoriografie, sal maak. Dit toon die belangrikheid aan van verdere navorsing oor die geïnstitusionaliseerde posisie van wit kunsmusiek in Suid-Afrika. Benewens die briewe, word belangrike foto’s, afskrifte van faksimilees, telegramme en ander vorme van korrespondensie geplaas en groot klem geplaas op die visuele voorkoms van die boek.
This collection of original essays is in tribute to the work of Derek Scott on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. As one of the leading lights in Critical Musicology, Scott has helped shape the epistemological direction for music research since the late 1980s. There is no doubt that the path taken by the critical musicologist has been a tricky one, leading to new conceptions, interactions, and heated debates during the past two decades. Changes in musicology during the closing decades of the twentieth century prompted the establishment of new sets of theoretical methods that probed at the social and cultural relevance of music, as much as its self-referentiality. All the scholars contributing to this book have played a role in the general paradigmatic shift that ensued in the wake of Kerman's call for change in the 1980s. Setting out to address a range of approaches to theorizing music and promulgating modes of analysis across a wide range of repertories, the essays in this collection can be read as a coming of age of critical musicology through its active dialogue with other disciplines such as sociology, feminism, ethnomusicology, history, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, aesthetics, media studies, film music studies, and gender studies. The volume provides music researchers and graduate students with an up-to-date authoritative reference to all matters dealing with the state of critical musicology today.
Bulgarian popular music, the meanings it articulates, and the infrastructures of its creation, operates within a web of inter-dependencies with changing social and political contexts. Positioned on the edge of Europe, between the cultural constructs of the 'East' and 'West', Bulgarian popular music negotiates the complexities of perceived 'global' values and specificities of the 'local'. This book takes an ethnographic approach to qualitative methodologies to create a mosaic of perspectives through the participation of music artists, critics, business figures, copyright specialists, and young audiences. It employs the metaphor of the 'crossroads' to describe the realities of the contemporary Bulgarian popular music field, developed amidst the prolonged transitions that followed the communist era. In the context of struggles for social change, popular music has participated in the creation of rituals and symbols of protest and resistance. At the same time, the new market environment created opportunities for popular music to formulate a business approach to producing standardised content. The Balkans, are a melting pot of music traditions, but are also framed as pathologically different from the rest of Europe. This book suggests that an internalised negative stereotype adds tacit complexities to Bulgarian popular music, while at the same time, expressive markers of identity, such as folklore and language, are celebrated.
In this book Steven Vande Moortele offers a comprehensive account of operatic and concert overtures in continental Europe between 1815 and 1850. Discussing a broad range of works by German, French, and Italian composers, it is at once an investigation of the Romantic overture within the context of mid-nineteenth century musical culture and an analytical study that focuses on aspects of large-scale formal organization in the overture genre. While the book draws extensively upon the recent achievements of the 'new Formenlehre', it does not use the overture merely as a vehicle for a theory of romantic form, but rather takes an analytical approach that engages with individual works in their generic context.
Becoming Audible explores the phenomenon of human and animal acoustic entanglements in art and performance practices. Focusing on the work of artists who get into the spaces between species, Austin McQuinn discovers that sounding animality secures a vital connection to the creatural. To frame his analysis, McQuinn employs Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's concept of becoming-animal, Donna Haraway's definitions of multispecies becoming-with, and Mladen Dolar's ideas of voice-as-object. McQuinn considers birdsong in the work of Beatrice Harrison, Olivier Messiaen, Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, Daniela Cattivelli, and Marcus Coates; the voice of the canine as a sacrificial lab animal in the operatic work of Alexander Raskatov; hierarchies of vocalization in human-simian cultural coevolution in theatrical adaptations of Franz Kafka and Eugene O'Neill; and the acoustic exchanges among hybrid human-animal creations in Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Minotaur. Inspired by the operatic voice and drawing from work in art and performance studies, animal studies, zooarchaeology, social and cultural anthropology, and philosophy, McQuinn demonstrates that sounding animality in performance resonates "through the labyrinths of the cultural and the creatural," not only across species but also beyond the limits of the human. Timely and provocative, this volume outlines new methods of unsettling human exceptionalism during a period of urgent reevaluation of interspecies relations. Students and scholars of human-animal studies, performance studies, and art historians working at the nexus of human and animal will find McQuinn's book enlightening and edifying.
Outside and Inside: Representations of Race and Identity in White Jazz Autobiography is the first full-length study of key autobiographies of white jazz musicians. White musicians from a wide range of musical, social, and economic backgrounds looked to black music and culture as the model on which to form their personal identities and their identities as professional musicians. Their accounts illustrate the triumphs and failures of jazz interracialism. As they describe their relationships with black musicians who are their teachers and peers, white jazz autobiographers display the contradictory attitudes of reverence and entitlement, and deference and insensitivity that remain part of the white response to black culture to the present day. Outside and Inside features insights into the development of jazz styles and culture in the urban meccas of twentieth-century jazz in New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Reva Marin considers the autobiographies of sixteen white male jazz instrumentalists, including renowned swing-era bandleaders Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Charlie Barnet; reed instrumentalists Mezz Mezzrow, Bob Wilber, and Bud Freeman; trumpeters Max Kaminsky and Wingy Manone; guitarist Steve Jordan; pianists Art Hodes and Don Asher; saxophonist Art Pepper; guitarist and bandleader Eddie Condon; and New Orleans-style clarinetist Tom Sancton. While critical race theory informs this work, Marin argues that viewing these texts simply through the lens of white privilege does not do justice to the kind of sustained relationships with black music and culture described in the accounts of white jazz autobiographers. She both insists upon the value of insider perspectives and holds the texts to rigorous scrutiny, while embracing an expansive interpretation of white involvement in black culture. Marin opens new paths for study of race relations and racial, ethnic, and gender identity formation in jazz studies.
Today, no matter where you are in the world, you can turn on a radio and hear the echoes and influences of Chicago house music. Do You Remember House? tells a comprehensive story of the emergence, and contemporary memorialization of house in Chicago, tracing the development of Chicago house music culture from its beginnings in the late '70s to the present. Based on expansive research in archives and his extensive conversations with the makers of house in Chicago's parks, clubs, museums, and dance studios, author Micah Salkind argues that the remediation and adaptation of house music by crossover communities in its first decade shaped the ways that Chicago producers, DJs, dancers, and promoters today re-remember and mobilize the genre as an archive of collectivity and congregation. The book's engagement with musical, kinesthetic, and visual aspects of house music culture builds from a tradition of queer of color critique. As such, Do You Remember House? considers house music's liberatory potential in terms of its genre-defiant repertoire in motion. Ultimately, the book argues that even as house music culture has been appropriated and exploited, the music's porosity and flexibility have allowed it to remain what pioneering Chicago DJ Craig Cannon calls a 'musical Stonewall' for queers and people of color in the Windy City and around the world.
A major new study piecing together the intriguing but fragmentary evidence surrounding the lives of minstrels to highlight how these seemingly peripheral figures were keenly involved with all aspects of late medieval communities. Minstrels were a common sight and sound in the late Middle Ages. Aristocrats, knights and ladies heard them on great occasions (such as Edward I's wedding feast for his daughter Elizabeth in 1296) and in quieter moments in their chambers; town-dwellers heard and saw them in civic processions (when their sound drew attention to the spectacle); and even in the countryside people heard them at weddings, church-ales and other parish celebrations. But who were the minstrels, and what did they do? How did they live, and how easily did they make a living? How did they perform, and in what conditions? The evidence is intriguing but fragmentary, including literary and iconographic sources and, most importantly, the financial records of royal and aristocratic households and of towns. These offer many insights, although they are often hard to fit into any coherent picture of the minstrels' lives and their place in society. It is easy to see the minstrels as peripheral figures, entertainers who had no central place in the medieval world. Yet they were full members of it, interacting with the ordinary people around them, as well as with the ruling classes: carrying letters and important verbal messages, some lending huge sums of money to the king (to finance Henry V's Agincourt campaign in 1415, for instance), some regular and necessary civic servants, some committing crimes or suffering the crimes of others. In this book Rastall and Taylor bring to bear the available evidence to enlarge and enrich our view of the minstrel in late medieval society.
Sonic Identity at the Margins convenes the interdisciplinary work of 17 academics, composers, and performers to examine sonic identity from the 19th century to the present. Recognizing the myriad aspects of identity formation, the authors in this volume adopt methodological approaches that range from personal accounts and embodied expression to archival research and hermeneutic interpretation. They examine real and imagined spaces—from video games and monument sites to films and depictions of outer space—by focusing on sonic creation, performance, and reception. Drawing broadly from artistic and performance disciplines, the authors reimagine the roles played by music and sound in constructing notions of identity in a broad array of musical experiences, from anti-slavery songsters to Indigenous tunes and soundscapes, noise and multimedia to popular music and symphonic works. Exploring relationships between sound and various markers of identity—including race, gender, ability, and nationality—the authors explore challenging, timely topics, including the legacies of slavery, indigeneity, immigration, and colonial expansion. In heeding recent calls to decolonize music studies and confront its hegemonic methods, the authors interrogate privileged perspectives embedded in creating, performing, and listening to sound, as well as the approaches used to analyze these experiences.
Unquestionably the founding work of minimalism in musical
composition, Terry Riley's In C (1964) challenges the standards of
imagination, intellect, and musical ingenuity to which "classical"
music is held. Only one page of score in length, it contains
neither specified instrumentation nor parts. Its fifty-three
motives are compact, presented without any counterpoint or evident
form. The composer gave only spare instructions and no tempo. And
he assigned the work a title that's laconic in the extreme. At the
same moment of its composition, Elliott Carter was working on his
Concerto for Piano, a work Stravinsky was to hail as a masterpiece.
Having almost completed Laborinthus II, Luciano Berio would soon
start the Sinfonia. Karlheinz Stockhausen had just finished
Momente. In context of these other works, and of the myriad of
compositional styles and trends which preceded them, In C stands
the whole idea of musical "progress" on its head.
In recent decades, the relationship between music, emotions, health and well-being has become a hot topic. Scientific research and new neuro-imaging technologies have provided extraordinary new insights into how music affects our brains and bodies, and researchers in fields ranging from psychology and music therapy to history and sociology have turned their attention to the question of how music relates to mind, body, feelings and health, generating a wealth of insights as well as new challenges. Yet this work is often divided by discipline and methodology, resulting in parallel, yet separate discourses. In this context, The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind and Well-being seeks to foster truly interdisciplinary approaches to key questions about the nature of musical experience and to demonstrate the importance of the conceptual and ideological frameworks underlying research in this field. Incorporating perspectives from musicology, history, psychology, neuroscience, music education, philosophy, sociology, linguistics and music therapy, this volume opens the way for a generative dialogue across both scientific and humanistic scholarship. The Companion is divided into two sections. The chapters in the first, historical section consider the varied ways in which music, the emotions, well-being and their interactions have been understood in the past, from Antiquity to the twentieth century, shedding light on the intellectual origins of debates that continue today. The chapters in the second, contemporary section offer a variety of current scientific perspectives on these topics and engage wider philosophical problems. The Companion ends with chapters that explore the practical application of music in healthcare, education and welfare, drawing on work on music as a social and ecological phenomenon. Contextualising contemporary scientific research on music within the history of ideas, this volume provides a unique overview of what it means to study music in relation to the mind and well-being.
Performance Practice in the Music of Steve Reich provides a performer's perspective on Steve Reich's compositions from his iconic minimalist work, Drumming, to his masterpiece, Music for 18 Musicians. It addresses performance issues encountered by the musicians in Reich's original ensemble and the techniques they developed to bring his compositions to life. Drawing comparisons with West African drumming and other non-Western music, the book highlights ideas that are helpful in the understanding and performance of rhythm in all pulse-based music. Through conversations and interviews with the author, Reich discusses his percussion background and his thoughts about rhythm in relation to the music of Ghana, Bali, India, and jazz. He explains how he used rhythm in his early compositions, the time feel he wants in his music, the kind of performer who seems to be drawn to his music, and the way perceptual and metrical ambiguity create interest in repetitive music.
This textbook is a product of William Bennett's work in developing and teaching a course on the physics of music at Yale University to a diverse audience of musicians and science students in the same class. The book is a culmination of over a decade of teaching the course and weaves together historical descriptions of the physical phenomena with the author's clear interpretations of the most important aspects of the science of music and musical instruments. Many of the historical examples are not found in any other textbook available on the market. As the co-inventor of the Helium-Neon laser, Prof. Bennett's knowledge of physics was world-class. As a professor at one of the most prestigious liberal-arts universities in the world, his appreciation for culture and humanities shines through. The book covers the basics of oscillations, waves and the analysis techniques necessary for understanding how musical instruments work. All types of stringed instruments, pipe organs, and the human voice are covered in this volume. A second volume covers the remaining families of musical instruments as well as selected other topics. Readers without a background in acoustics will enjoy learning the physics of the Science of Musical Sound from a preeminent scientist of the 20th century. Those well versed in acoustics will discover wonderful illustrations and photographs depicting familiar concepts in new and enlightening ways. |
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