Musical dynamics- loudness and changes in loudness - forms one of the key aspects of expressive music performance. Surprisingly this rather important research area has received little attention. A reason is the fact that while the concept of dynamics is related to signal amplitude, which is a low-level feature, the process of deriving perceived loudness from the signal is far from straightforward. This thesis advances the state of the art in the analysis of perceived loudness by modelling dynamic variations in expressive music performance and by studying the relation between dynamics in piano recordings and markings in the score. In particular, we show that dynamic changes: a) depend on the evolution of the performance and the local context of the piece; b) correspond to important score markings and music structures; and, c) can reflect wide divergences in performers' expressive strategies within and across pieces. In a preparatory stage, dynamic changes are obtained by linking existing music audio and score databases. All studies in this thesis are based on loudness levels extracted from 2000 recordings of 44 Mazurkas by Frederic Chopin. We propose a new method for efficiently aligning and annotating the data in score beat time representation, based on dynamic time warping applied to chroma features. Using the score-aligned recordings, we examine the relationship between loudness values and dynamic level categories. The research can be broadly categorised into two parts. The first investigates how dynamic markings map to performed loudness levels. Empirical results show that different dynamic markings do not correspond to fixed loudness thresholds. Rather, the important factors are the relative loudness of neighbouring markings, the inter-relations of nearby markings and other score information, the structural location of the markings, and the creative license exercised by the performer in inserting further interpretive dynamic shaping. The second part seeks to determine how changes in loudness levels map to score features using statistical change-point techniques. The results show that significant dynamic score markings do indeed correspond to change points. Furthermore, evidence suggests that change points in score positions without dynamic markings highlight structurally salient events or events based on temporal changes. In a separate bidirectional study, we investigate the relationship between dynamic mark- ings in the score and performed loudness using machine learning techniques. The techniques are applied to the prediction of loudness levels corresponding to dynamic markings, and to the classification of dynamic markings given loudness values. The results show that loudness values and markings can be predicted relatively well when trained across recordings of the same piece, but fail dismally when trained across a pianist's recordings of other pieces. The findings demonstrate that score features may trump individual style when modelling loudness choices. The analysis of the results reveal that form|such as the return of the theme - and structure - such as repetitions -influence predictability of loudness and markings. This research is a first step towards automatic audio-to-score transcription of dynamic markings. This insight will serve as a tool for expression synthesis and musicological studies.

O presente trabalho investiga a relação entre a prática consciente e sua influência na prevenção do desencadeamento e no enfrentamento do processo de prejuízo da performance musical em condições de pressão (choking). Participaram do estudo três estudantes do Curso Superior de Instrumento da Escola de Música e Belas Artes do Paraná – Campus I – UNESPAR, Curitiba, PR. Foram utilizados os Guias de Execução (performance cues) propostos por Chaffin e colaboradores (2002, 2006, 2008) como suporte para o desenvolvimento de habilidades cognitivas. Os procedimentos metodológicos utilizados para coleta de dados consistiram de questionários, relatos verbais obtidos de entrevistas semiestruturadas, relatos de estudo, registro em áudio e vídeo da obra escolhida e relatos de guias de execução assinalados nas partituras como registro de decisões interpretativas deliberadas. O suporte cognitivo fornecido pelo trabalho com os Guias de Execução proporcionou segurança emocional suficiente para o enfrentamento das situações de estresse de exposição e principalmente de avaliação e autoavaliação. A partir da compreensão dos elementos teóricos encontrados na literatura e dos resultados deste trabalho com a abordagem metodológica de Chaffin, proponho um modelo conceitual de performance musical afetada pela ansiedade e centrado nos processos de controle e gerenciamento da informação durante a performance musical. Relacionado à hipótese levantada nos estágios iniciais de elaboração da pesquisa, esse modelo permite explorar a presença e manutenção de afetos e pensamentos negativos durante a prática instrumental individual e sua relação com a ocorrência de eventos de choking, e a suposição de que o desenvolvimento de habilidades cognitivas, relacionadas ao planejamento, monitoração e avaliação da prática instrumental, possa reforçar os processos de controle e gerenciamento do estado ansioso, ao permitir um suporte cognitivo que minimize o sentimento de vulnerabilidade, incontrolabilidade e imprevisibilidade inerentes ao estado ansioso, contribuindo, assim, para a melhoria e prevenção de eventos de déficits cognitivo-motores em performance sob pressão. / This study investigates the relationship between conscious practice, and its influence in prevention and coping with the decrement process in musical performance under pressure (choking under pressure). The study included three students of the bachelor degree of instrument in Escola de Música e Belas Artes do Paraná – Campus I – UNESPAR, Curitiba, PR. Performance Cues proposed by Chaffin and colleagues (2002, 2006, 2008) were used as support for the development of cognitive skills. Methodological procedures used for data collection consisted of questionnaires, verbal reports obtained from semi-structured interviews, practice reports, audio and video records of the chosen work and analysis of performance cues assigned in the scores as records of deliberate interpretative decisions. Cognitive support provided by working with Performance Cues provide enough emotional security for dealing with stress exposure situations and especially with evaluation and self-evaluation. Based on the understanding of theoretical elements found in the literature and the results of this study with the Chaffin methodological approach, I propose a conceptual model of musical performance affected by anxiety focused on process control and information management during the musical performance. Related to the hypothesis in the early stages of the research, this model explores the presence and maintenance of negative feelings and thoughts during the individual instrumental practice and its relation to the occurrence of choking event. The model also explores the assumption that the development of metacognitive skills, related to planning, monitoring and evaluation of instrumental practice can improve the control and management process of the anxious state. This control can be achieved by allowing a cognitive support that minimizes the feeling of vulnerability, uncontrollability and unpredictability, thus contributing to the improvement and prevention of cognitive-motor deficits events in performance under pressure.

A presente pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar as estratégias de enfrentamento da ansiedade na performance musical utilizadas por mestrandos do curso de Pós-Graduação em Práticas Interpretativas da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) na preparação e realização de recital avaliativo de Mestrado. A metodologia adotada foi o estudo multicasos, com abordagem fenomenológica, qualitativa e descritiva, abarcando três estudantes de instrumentos distintos – flauta transversal, piano e violão. Os procedimentos de coleta de dados se deram através de entrevista semiestruturada e observação dos momentos de preparação do repertório e realização do recital, registrado em áudio e vídeo. Os dados analisados foram abordados individualmente e também transversalizados, mostrando semelhanças e diferenças entre os casos. Os resultados apontam para ampla variedade de estratégias utilizadas pelos mestrandos, bem como a existência de inter-relações entre elas. Ocorreram momentos marcantes e distintos de ansiedade na performance musical durante a preparação e realização do recital, associados a diferentes causas e geradores de variados tipos de sintomas. / This research aims to investigate strategies for coping with music performance anxiety used by graduate students of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in a judged recital. The methodology used was the multi-cases study, with phenomenological, qualitative and descriptive approaches, including three students of different instruments - flute, piano and guitar. The data, collected through semi-structured interviews, observation and recordings during the study sessions and performances, were individually investigated and compared, showing similarities and differences in the strategies used by the students. The results pointed to a wide variety of interrelated strategies used by the students, as well as different anxiety situations associated to different causes and symptoms.

Through the example of students at Fisk University, a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee, this dissertation ethnographically examines how vocality is racialized as "black" in the United States. For students at Fisk, voice serves as a mechanism of speaking and singing, and mediates ideological, discursive, embodied and affective constructions of blackness. Fisk built its legacy by cultivating and promoting a specific kind of New World blackness through vocal expression, and the indispensability of Fisk's historical legacy shapes how the university continues to promote the self-worth of its students as well as a remembrance of and recommitment to the social justice and citizenship journey of black people through the 21st century. The relationships between expressive culture, the politics of racial inequality, and higher education experiences overdetermine Fisk students' vocality in relation to blackness, in addition to students' agentive choices to express and (re)form black racial identity. This dissertation traces the differences between curricular and non-curricular vocality to foreground the ways that students resist 21st century forms of racial violence and create paths towards the world they desire. The project opens with an analysis of the role of diction in the performance practice of the Fisk Jubilee Singers®. The following chapter compares the repertoire and rehearsal style of the two primary choral ensembles at Fisk. The dissertation then explores how the neo soul genre figures in the Fisk Idol vocal competition. The concluding chapter describes students' different renditions of singing the university's alma mater, "The Gold and the Blue." These analyses of students' embodied, ritualized vocality show how Fisk students' voices performatively (re)construct blackness, gender, class, genre and institutionality.

In this study I combine music analysis with critical theory to investigate how different conceptions of feminine identity--intersecting with race and class--are materialized through recorded sound. I present interpretive analyses of four popular songs recorded and released between 1967 and 1974: "Baby, I Love You" by Aretha Franklin, "Fist City" by Loretta Lynn, "If I Were Your Woman" by Gladys Knight and the Pips, and "Jolene" by Dolly Parton. My analyses focus on vocal performance, and vocal quality (or timbre) in particular, as I investigate the means by which the sounds of these recordings participate in cultural discourse on gender, sexuality, race, and class. These songs narrate moments in sexual love relationships (the hope of new love or the threat of infidelity), while the performances of each vocalist, the studio musicians, and the work of engineers and producers combine to create representations of black and working-class femininity that express varying degrees of assertiveness and vulnerability in the face of unequal gender power relations. I compare and contextualize these sonic expressions of identity with the personas these vocalists presented in their professional and public lives, illustrating how these recordings participate in the construction of a multi-faceted and always-emergent history of American womanhood. In order to accurately describe the relationship between musical sound and intersectional gender identity, I develop a phenomenological analytic methodology sensitive to how embodied responses (the types of physical engagements invited by sound), associative (or connotative, semiotic) responses, and social and historical context of both the recording and listener all contribute to the process of interpretation. I take my own situated listening experience as the object of study, recognizing how my listening practices and reactions, and overlapping identities--as a white, upper-middle-class woman and music scholar--impact my interpretations of these songs. My focus on the physical engagement inherent in music listening underpins the approach to vocal quality analysis I present at the outset of my study, in which I link descriptive language about voice to the physical components of vocal sound production. In my analyses of lyrics, instrumental quality, dynamics, rhythm, form, pitch, and the sonic "space" afforded by each recording, I continue to attend to the types of embodied and associative responses afforded by each element, demonstrating how an engagement with these sounds informs conceptions of gender identity.

This study was an investigation of the effects of guided listening upon instrumental music performances of junior college students. The study also sought to discover possible significant relationships between perception and performance variables. It was concluded that the guided listening program was ineffective in improving music performances of junior college students. It was recommended that (a) this study be replicated utilizing string, voice, and piano students, (b) an experimental study be made to investigate the effects of music theory instruction upon music performance, (c) an experimental study be made to investigate the effects of music history instruction upon music performance, and (d) an investigation be made of the Abeles performance constructs interpretation, tone, rhythm-continuity, intonation, tempo, and articulation, in an effort to ascertain ways in which expression of these constructs may be improved.

MIRRORS is a cycle of songs composed for soprano voice and piano using five poems by Sylvia Plath. The work features the creation of a protagonist and tells a chronological story through the arrangement of the five poems colored and unified by the manipulation of a thematic twelve-tone row.

The songwriting process, inspiration to song, can take many forms. This project explores a highly structured approach, using themes derived from reported individual experience to direct the creation of musical ends addressing common experience.

Smithhaven--Still Making Excuses--If Seeing Is Believing--Myth--Your Last Ride--If I Had a Dollar--Tack and Jibe--Stewie Took My Nose--March Home to Me--I Recall--God's Work Is Never Done--Farther Down the Track. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1101/thumbnail.jpg

The Johnson City Sessions were held in Johnson City, Tennessee in October 1928 and October 1929. This work "...marks the first time these recordings have been assembled in any format. Collectively, these 100 songs and tunes are regarded by scholars and record collectors as a strong and distinctive cross-section of old-time Appalachian music just before the Great Depression. The four CDs gather every surviving recording from the sessions, while the accompanying 136-page LP-sized hardcover book contains newly researched essays on the background to the sessions and on the individual artists, with many rare and hitherto unpublished photographs, as well as complete song lyrics and a detailed discography." -- Back cover. Ted Olson (East Tennessee State University) and Tony Russell are the re-issue producers. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1112/thumbnail.jpg