<p>Composing music is something a lot of people have wished they could be able to do. Unfortunately, to be able to compose music, people often need several years of training and study to acquire the necessary knowledge: first to learn how to use the traditional musical representation and then to learn the rules for composing different kinds of music. </p><p>This thesis describes research to develop and evaluate a representation and system for musical composition. The system provides users with a simple and specific language to create and interact with the artificial world; and by creating animals and giving them behaviors, users are composing music. The user study conducted at the end of this project showed that this program ("CompositionALife") could make it easier for people without previous knowledge in music and/or composition to compose interesting music.</p>

Thesis (D.M.A.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xiv, 107 p.; also includes graphics, music. Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-107). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

The musical notation of the northern Italian Benedictine abbey of St Sylvester in Nonantola has hitherto been neglected by most scholarship on early music scripts, mainly because of the paucity of surviving music manuscripts and their limited geographical diffusion. A new study was needed in order to develop a full understanding of the abbey’s role and importance in the first phases of development of the writing of music in the early Middle Ages. A Lombard foundation, Nonantola acquired much of its prestige from the links with the Carolingian court as early as the late eighth century. From the first decades after its foundation, the Po Valley abbey also benefited from an active scriptorium; this shaped a local type of text script that endured until after the fall of the Carolingian empire, when the abbey, including most of its library, was destroyed by the Hungarian invasion in 899 (§1). The study of the earliest surviving notated liturgical manuscripts revealed that, by the late ninth century, Nonantola already developed an institutional type of musical notation, making it the earliest known music script ever to be written in the Italic peninsula and, thus, among the earliest in Carolingian Europe (§§2–3). The unique design and use of musical signs showed that this northern Italic notation developed, for the most part, independently from a basic repertory of graphs derived from grammatical accents (§4). Finally, observations of the influences of the central Italic nota romana, which this study only began to explore, opened up the possibility that Nonantolan notation may preserve the oldest traces of graphic conventions for the representation of sound that can be associated with the city of Rome (§5). Placed between the northern and southern fringes of the Carolingian empire, the Benedictine abbey of Nonantola played an important role in the early history of music writing, and this study contributes to the breaking of new ground for further explorations.

Composing music is something a lot of people have wished they could be able to do. Unfortunately, to be able to compose music, people often need several years of training and study to acquire the necessary knowledge: first to learn how to use the traditional musical representation and then to learn the rules for composing different kinds of music. This thesis describes research to develop and evaluate a representation and system for musical composition. The system provides users with a simple and specific language to create and interact with the artificial world; and by creating animals and giving them behaviors, users are composing music. The user study conducted at the end of this project showed that this program ("CompositionALife") could make it easier for people without previous knowledge in music and/or composition to compose interesting music.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation s purpose is to characterize the musical notation as a representational system in which a certain kind of symbolic thought works. In this sense, the operations that are made in this notation are understood as signs handling without considering the meaning. Though this characterization confronts the question for the possibility of the symbolic thought, which question may be asked like this: how is it possible to warranty the results correction obtained by the sign s handling without taking care of the meanings? Aiming to offer a solid answer to this question, it was used a Leibniz s notion of blind or symbolic thought or knowledge, and certain associated functions. Based in an exam of three functions that are played by signs, as well as an analysis of traditional musical notation s basic elements this work tried to characterize the musical thought as a kind of formal operation. This can be seen in the western basic musical structure, in which scale and rhythm are comprehended as formal organization s ways in that are present a certain kind of calculus. So the signs in musical notation simply do not play the role of substitute the phonic component, but they make visible some structural aspects of these images. This exhibition is attributed in different senses to others representational systems, as diagrams, some artificial languages and even some alternative musical symbolism, some, called graphism , proposed by some 20th century composers. In this perspective the method used was the comparison among the different representation forms in order to identify the musical notation as an ecthetic representation. Concluding, the musical notation is characterized as a constitutive element of the music itself, and it is not a mere secondary code. / Esta dissertação visa caracterizar a notação musical enquanto sistema representacional em que opera um tipo de pensamento simbólico. Nesse sentido, as operações realizadas nessa notação são entendidas como pura manipulação de signos, sem a necessária consideração do designado. Entretanto, essa caracterização se defronta com a pergunta pela possibilidade do pensamento simbólico. Tal questão pode ser formulada à seguinte maneira: como é possível garantir a correção dos resultados obtidos pela manipulação simbólica, enquanto pura manipulação de signos sem atenção aos significados? Com vistas a oferecer uma resposta consistente a essa pergunta, recorre-se à noção leibniziana de pensamento (ou conhecimento) cego ou simbólico, e a certas funções a ela associadas. A partir de um exame de três funções exercidas pelos signos a saber, função de sub-rogação, função de cálculo e função ectética bem como de uma análise dos elementos básicos da notação musical tradicional, busca-se caracterizar o pensamento musical como um tipo de operação puramente formal. Isso pode ser observado pela atenção ao caráter estrutural da própria música ocidental, em que noções como a de Escala e a de ritmo são entendidas como modos de organização formal nas quais opera um certo tipo de cálculo. Assim, os signos da notação musical não executam simplesmente a função de substituir imagens acústicas, mas exibem ou tornam visíveis certos aspectos estruturais dessas imagens. Ora, essa exibição é atribuída também, em diferentes sentidos, a outros sistemas representacionais, como os diagramas, algumas linguagens artificiais e até mesmo algumas formas alternativas de simbolismo musical, como os chamados grafismos, propostos por compositores do século XX. Nessa perspectiva, a estratégia aqui empregada passa pela comparação entre a notação musical tradicional e diferentes formas de representação, buscando identificar essa notação como um tipo de representação ectética. Como conclusão, caracteriza-se a notação musical como elemento constitutivo da própria música, e não simplesmente como um código secundário.

Composition has been conceptualized as a method for communicating a way of thinking (i.e., cognition) from composers to performers and audience members. Music notation, or how music is represented in a visual format, becomes the vehicle through which such cognition is communicated. In the past, research on notation has been approached either categorically or as a taxonomy, where it is placed into separate categories based primarily on visual elements, including its symbols, conventions, and practices. The modern application of notation in Western classical music repertoire, however, has shown that the boundaries between these systems are not always clear and sometimes blend together. Viewing music notation from a spectrum-based approach instead provides a better understanding of notation through its cognitive effects. These spectra can then be viewed through multiple dimensions, all addressing different aspects. The first dimension consists of the historical systems of notation, ranging from standard music notation (SMN) to music graphics. Additional kinds of notation, such as proportional, pictorial, and aleatoric, work as the mediary levels between these two. The second dimension focuses on whether notation is processed intuitively, based on either cultural priming or general cognitive principles, or through conscious interpretation. The last dimension views notation as either a visual representation of the sound (descriptive) or a representation of the process performed to create the sound (prescriptive). This thesis conceptualizes a theory for understanding music notation though these multiple dimensions by synthesizing psychological studies about music, music notation research, and pre-existing musical scores.

This dissertation aims to explore the functions and meanings of four frequently used dynamic accent markings (fp, rf, sf and sfp) in Beethoven’s early chamber music with the fortepiano, with the consideration of acoustic qualities and playing capabilities of instruments intended for the studied works. The sources of reference here include the three Op.1 piano trios, two Op.5 cello sonatas, and three Op.12 violin sonatas, using a modern critical edition in conjunction with the first editions published during Beethoven's lifetime. The study consists of two parts. The first part surveys historical aspects including: 1) the development of relevant instruments, namely the bow and the fortepiano, and 2) existing accentuation conventions, especially those found in selected works of Haydn and Mozart, and appropriate treatises from Beethoven's time. The second part of the study entails the examination of consistency and frequency of dynamic accent markings in general, and that of individual accent markings using specific musical examples. The process of this investigation shows that these signs have distinct meanings, and consequently, require different treatments for their respective executions in performance. It also implies that the acoustic qualities of the ensembles with instruments from Beethoven's time are the most important factor contributing to variations found in his use of the accent markings among the different genres. Such acoustic qualities include the quieter volume and faster decay of the fortepiano, as well as the larger sonority from the cello especially in the lower register, when compared with instruments made for today's concert halls. These insights not only illuminate the possible ways to realize each marking, but also clarify accent markings which could seem inconsistent to modern performers, in terms of acoustic balance, especially in combinations that include the cello.

In dem von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft geförderten Projekt PROBADO (http://www.probado.de) werden von drei universitären Informatik-Instituten und zwei Bibliotheken innovative Verfahren für nicht-textuelle Dokumente entwickelt und prototypisch für die Bereiche 3D-Architekturmodelle und Musikdokumente in bibliothekarische Arbeitsabläufe integriert. Tonaufnahmen und Musikalien stehen dabei im Mittelpunkt des Teilprojekts Probado-Musik, das von der Bayerischen  Staatsbibliothek und dem Institut für Informatik III der Universität Bonn (Arbeitsgruppe Professor Clausen) betreut wird. Die drei wichtigsten Ziele dieses Teilprojektes sind die weitgehende Automatisierung der Erschließung und Indexierung von Musikdokumenten, die Anwendung neuartiger inhaltsbasierter Suchverfahren für Musik und der Aufbau nutzerfreundlicher Oberflächen zur komfortablen Suche und Bereitstellung von diesen Musikdokumenten. Hierfür wurde ein Musik-Repository aufgebaut, das Musikdokumente in verschiedenen Formaten enthält. Dazu gehören eingescannte Notendrucke im TIFF- und JPEG-Format, Audio-Dateien im WAV- und MP3-Format sowie symbolische Musikformate wie Music-XML und die Ausgabeformate von OMR-Programmen („Optical Music Recognition“). Das Musik-Repository enthält mittlerweile ca. 100.000 Seiten von eingescannten Notendrucken und Audio-Dateien von mehreren Hundert CDs. Die dazugehörigen Metadaten werden aus dem Katalog der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek und externen Datenquellen gewonnen und in einer FRBR-basierten Datenbank abgelegt. (Katrin Braun, Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum / Digitale Bibliothek, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek)

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1974. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 154-157).

A tablatura é um formato de notação musical alternativo para instrumentos de corda. Ela contém a posição exata (corda e casa) que necessita ser tocada para produzir um som desejado. A conversão da notação musical padrão (partitura) para uma tablatura de violão, também conhecida como transcrição, não é um processo simplificado. A razão é que cada nota da notação musical padrão pode ser tocada em diferentes posições no braço do violão. Desta forma este problema pode ser classificada como um problema de otimização combinatório. Neste trabalho, foi empregado um estudo comparativo de diferentes algoritmos: A*, algoritmos genéticos (AG), algoritmos genéticos com uso de subpopulações (AG-SP), otimização por colônia de formigas (ACO), e evolução diferencial (ED). Heurísticas baseadas nas buscas locais 2-opt e 3-opt para as abordagens AG, AG-SP e ED também foram inclusas. Os resultados experimentais com um conjunto de dados de 87 músicas monofônicas demonstraram que os algoritmos ACO, AG-SP 2-opt e AG 2-opt apresentaram os melhores resultados. Por fim, cada abordagem foi estatisticamente comparada utilizando o teste ANOVA em conjunto com o pós-teste de Tukey (Tukey post hoc), onde as análises demonstraram que há diferenças significativas entre os algoritmos avaliados. / A tablature is an alternative music notation format for string instruments. It contains the exact position (string and fret) witch needs to be played to produce the desired sound. The conversion of the musical staff notation (sheet music) to a guitar tablature, also known as transcription, is not a straightforward process. The reason is that each note on the music notation format can be played in different positions of the guitar fretboard. So this problem can be classified as a combinatorial optimization problem. In this work, we have employed a comparative study of different algorithms: A*, genetic algorithms (AG), genetic algorithms with use of subpopulations (AG-SP), ant colony optimization (ACO) and differential evolution (ED). I was also included heuristics based on local search 2-opt and 3-opt in the aproaches AG, AG-SP and ED. The experimental results with a dataset of 87 monophonic musics indicated that the approaches ACO, AG-SP 2-opt and AG 2-opt obtained the best results. Finally, each approach were statistically compared using the ANOVA with the Tukey post hoc, where the analysis indicated that there are significant differences between the evaluated algorithms.