Master of Music / Department of Music / Phillip D. Payne / The purpose of this study was to determine if music educators who have had experiences with informal music are more likely to employ informal learning within their classroom. Secondary research objectives included a comparison of survey results against specific demographics of the survey participants, an examination of the types of informal learning that the participants experienced and facilitated, and a look at the perceived barriers and benefits of informal music learning from the viewpoints of the participants. Participants (N=25) were practicing music educators pursuing graduate music studies. The participants were enrolled in a summer Master of Music program at a university in the Midwest. Data was collected by employing a pen and paper survey that provided a demographic description and informal music learning questionnaire. The participants were asked to indicate the frequency of participation in informal music activities prior to becoming a music educator. They further reported what informal music learning activities they facilitate within their school music curriculum. Finally, the participants responded to two short answer questions where they identified barriers and benefits they perceive with the implementation of informal music practices within their music programs. Results from a Pearson correlation showed a moderately strong relationship (p = 0.43) between participants who had informal music experiences (E) and who employed informal music learning within their music curriculum (C). There were no significant differences observed in the results between participants of different gender or school division. Of the short answer responses cataloged, participants cited a lack of experience with informal music and difficulty of connecting informal music learning to the formal music curriculum as the barriers to employing informal music learning in the classroom. The participants discussed the increase in student motivation, expanding musicality, and real-world relevance as the benefits of informal music learning. Knowledge gained from this study may be useful to individuals facilitating informal music learning within music education programs at the primary, secondary, or collegiate levels.

Master of Music / Music, Theatre, and Dance / Slawomir Dobrzanski / This Master’s report analyzes four piano compositions performed on April 9, 2015 at the author’s Master’s recital. The works under consideration are Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita in B flat major, BWV 825; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Sonata in D major, K.576; Fryderyk Chopin’s Four Mazurkas, Opus 17; and Aram Khachaturian’s Toccata. This analysis includes the discussion of the theoretical, stylistic, and historical background of each composition.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Kurt R. Gartner / This is a report intended for musicians planning to perform any number of, or scholars seeking to enrich understanding of, the following compositions: Concerto for Marimba and Wind Ensemble by David Gillingham, XL Plus One by Alvin Etler, March from Eight Pieces for Four Timpani by Elliott Carter, 42nd Street Rondo by Wayne Siegel, and Oceanus by Steve Houghton and Wendell Yuponce. Each work is analyzed in accordance with Jan Larue's method of style analysis. For some compositions, analysis of harmony has been omitted. For all compositions, the author has added a pedagogical realm of analysis, dedicated to notable performance considerations, interpretive possibilities, and technical considerations, to Larue's organizational scheme. Therefore, the approach taken in this document can be expressed as: Sound, Harmony, Melody, Rhythm, Growth, and Performance.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Jennifer R. Edwards / This report consists of extended program notes and translations for programmed songs and arias presented in recital by Elizabeth Ann Rodina on April 22, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. in All Faith's Chapel on the Kansas State University campus. Included on the recital were works by George Frideric Handel, Franz Schubert, Reynaldo Hahn, Jules Massenet, Clifford Shaw, and Giacomo Puccini. The program notes include biographical information about the composers and a textual and musical analysis of their works.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Patricia Thompson / This report contains biographical, historical, and analytical commentary on the following composers and their pieces for soprano voice: Henry Purcell and The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation; Franz Schubert and Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister, Op. 62, D. 877; Jacques Offenbach and Les oiseaux dans la charmille, from Les Contes d'Hoffmann; Libby Larsen and Try Me, Good King: Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII; Charles Gounod and Ah! Je veux vivre, from Roméo et Juliette. These selections, unified by the theme of tragedy in various forms of love, were presented in a graduate recital in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Music in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy degree.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Frank C. Tracz / This document was submitted to the Graduate School of Kansas State University as a partial requirement for the Master’s of Music Education degree. It contains information about music education philosophy, what defines quality literature, theoretical and historical analyses, and rehearsal plans for each of the three pieces that were performed on the Graduate Student Conducting Recital on Wednesday, March 11, 2009. Selections performed on the recital included in the document’s analysis portion include Four Scottish Dances by Malcolm Arnold, arranged by John Paynter, Mosaic, Op. 30 by Mario Gaetano, and Celebration Fanfare from “Stepping Stones” by Joan Tower, arranged by Jack Stamp. The analytical methods employed in this document and the rehearsal techniques listed are based on the Blocker/Miles unit studies and macro-micro-macro concepts from the Teaching Music Through Performance in Band book series.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / William H. Hsu / Pitch detection and instrument identification can be achieved with relatively high accuracy when considering monophonic signals in music; however, accurately classifying polyphonic signals in music remains an unsolved research problem. Pitch and instrument classification is a subset of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) and automatic music transcription, both having numerous research and real-world applications. Several areas of research are covered in this thesis, including the fast Fourier transform, onset detection, convolution, and filtering. Basic music theory and terms are also presented in order to explain the context and structure of data used. The focus of this thesis is on the representation of musical signals in the frequency domain. Polyphonic signals with many different voices and frequencies can be exceptionally complex. This thesis presents a new model for representing the spectral structure of polyphonic signals: Uniform MAx Gaussian Envelope (UMAGE). The new spectral envelope precisely approximates the distribution of frequency parts in the spectrum while still being resilient to oscillating rapidly (noise) and is able to generalize well without losing the representation of the original spectrum. When subjectively compared to other spectral envelope methods, such as the linear predictive coding envelope method and the cepstrum envelope method, UMAGE is able to model high order polyphonic signals without dropping partials (frequencies present in the signal). In other words, UMAGE is able to model a signal independent of the signal’s periodicity. The performance of UMAGE is evaluated both objectively and subjectively. It is shown that UMAGE is robust at modeling the distribution of frequencies in simple and complex polyphonic signals. Combined classification (combiners), a methodology for learning large concepts, is used to simplify the learning process and boost classification results. The output of each learner is then averaged to get the final result. UMAGE is less accurate when identifying pitches; however, it is able to achieve accuracy in identifying instrument groups on order-10 polyphonic signals (ten voices), which is competitive with the current state of the field.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Frank C. Tracz / This document is constructed on the comprehensive examination question based on the Graduate Conducting Recital of Gavin W. Smith. The theoretical and historical analysis includes Spring Wind – Weather Movement I and Storm Warning and Dance – Weather Movement II by Steve Riley, Prelude Op. 34, No. 14 by Dmitri Shostakovich, and Tempered Steel by Charles R. Young. Along with the analysis, this document contains the rehearsal plans and procedures for the preparation of the literature. The recital was performed by Kansas State University’s Symphony Band on March 13, 2007 in McCain Auditorium at 7:30pm.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Gary C. Mortenson / This Master's report contains the biographical, harmonic, and style analysis of the five compositions performed on the author's Master's recital that occurred on October 11th, 2007. The analyses included will provide foundational information for thorough study of Richard Peaslee's Nightsongs, Eric Ewazen's Sonata for Trumpet and Piano, Antonio Carlos Jobim's Desafinado, Horace Silver's Peace, and Bronislaw Kaper's Green Dolphin Street.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Slawomir P. Dobrzanski / The following report analyzes compositions performed at the author’s Master’s Piano Recital on March 15, 2012. The discussed pieces are Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata in G major, BWV 916; Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata in E flat major, op. 31, no. 3; Frederic Chopin’s Ballade in F minor, op. 52; Leoš Janáček’s In The Mists: I. Andante, III. Andantino; and Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata in A minor, op. 28. The author approaches the study from the historical, theoretical, stylistic and pedagogical perspectives.