A Graphic User Interface is developed to determine the existence of a particular sequence of piano notes within a monophonic sound waveform. Such waveforms are recorded within the Graphic User Interface and then passed to the monophonic analysis engine. The first phase of analysis segments the PCM sound data to localize the potential note locations. The second phase of analysis takes the segmented note locations, moves them to the frequency-domain, and utilizes a probabilistic identification process to determine the identity of each note. Two sound files can be processed together to decide if any notes are common between them. A frequency-based comparison model allows flexibility in finding overlap between the files. Theoretical concepts are visualized using the Graphic User Interface making it a tool for developing additional insight into the analysis of music. / Graduation date: 1997

This thesis is based on the research conducted by the author for the series, Richard Niles' History of Pop Arranging, seven thirty-minute documentary programmes for BBC Radio 2, researched, written and presented by the author and broadcast in 2003. It also draws on interviews conducted by the author (and other research) between 2002 and 2007 both for the radio series and for this thesis and on the author's experience as a professional arranger in popular music working with many of the genre's significant recording artists including Paul McCartney, Ray Charles, Cher, Tina Turner, Westlife, Tears For Fears, Dusty Springfield, James Brown, Pet Shop Boys, Kylie Minogue and producers including Trevor Hom, Steve Lipson, Steve Mac and Steve Anderson. It will be argued that the role of the arranger in popular music has often been undervalued and that during a critical period of popular music history (1950-2000) arrangers played a significant part in the evolution of musical content. This thesis is, to the best of the author's knowledge, the first time (apart from the above mentioned documentary) the subject has ever been examined. The arranger is "invisible" because musical arrangers are often un-credited on record liner notes or in books or articles concerning popular music. A considerable amount of research has been necessary to determine who wrote many of the arrangements considered herein. Motown's Berry Gordy purposely kept the names of musicians and arrangers off the records because he feared others might 'poach' the trademark 'Motown Sound'. Other record labels considered the job of the arranger to be reminiscent of an earlier era, diluting the Rock 'n' Roll image of emotion and spontanaeity they wished to promote. Some producers and recording artists disliked sharing credit for their work. Motown arranger David Van dePitte told the author that arranging was "thankless and anonymous - a very service-oriented profession where others often take credit for what you've done." Arranging has therefore remained an intrinsically unseen art created by 'invisible' artists. By analyzing many recordings, revealing the techniques and concepts they have used in their work to create popular records, arrangers and their art will be made more 'visible'.

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The Bund deutscher Madel (BdM), a Nazi youth organization for girls, was sponsored, organized, and promoted by Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party. The BdM instilled values and beliefs of National Socialism in German girls, and encouraged attitudes and behavior in them that harmonized with Party views on womanhood. Political indoctrination for girls often came through music---especially song. Musical repertoire of the BdM strongly interconnects with the organization's development, internal structure and political philosophies. / My thesis analyses the relations between music, the BdM, National Socialism, and gender. Historical perspectives are documented to clarify the function and intention of the BdM, including its politics and philosophy, its activities designed to foster 'natural' gender roles, and its emerging supremacy over other right-wing youth movements in Nazi Germany. My thesis then examines conceptions of 'natural' gender roles for girls and women in Nazi society and how these role expectations are covertly and overtly embedded in the official music book of the BdM, entitled Wir Madel singen! To illustrate this relationship between music, politics, and gender expectations, ten songs from Wir Madel singen! are analyzed in detail.

No description available.

This research constitutes a detailed study of 5 - 6 voice-leading technique that is often found in music - theoretical literature and in the tonal repertoire. The study aims to prove that this technique is an essential theoretical and analytical concept for understanding the evolution of tonal music. / The first part of this study examines concepts and descriptions of 5 - 6 technique as they appear in the theoretical literature of the eigthteenth and nineteenth centuries and in the writings of Heinrich Schenker and the modern Schenkerian school. The descriptions of 5 - 6 technique in earlier conterpoint, figured-bass and harmony treatises led Schenker and his disciples to place the technique in a much broader context, though even they do not always grasp the full implications of their procedures. / In the light of William Caplin's recent theory of formal functions, (Caplin 1985; 1998), the second part of the thesis in a substantial selection of musical excerpts from the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries, demonstrates that 5 - 6 technique as a contrapuntal analatycal concept, provides an effective model for understanding the development of chromaticism and the extension of the tonal language at multiple structural levels.

This paper studies the formal ambiguity that arises when a closing gesture occupies a beginning location in the instrumental works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Accordingly, I am interested in those formal areas within a piece that are concerned with the functions of either "beginning" or "ending." / I first present a systematic survey of the theoretical principles underlying the formal functions of beginning and ending in this style. I then show some specific examples of typical cadences and of initial units that imitate them. Next, I focus on the "main theme," observing how the function of "beginning" is performed by a "closing initial idea" and then, how the main theme's cadences express their proper function. Finally, I study what happens in other locations such as the return of the main theme, the cadence closing the form, and post-cadential material.

A software system that automatically classifies MIDI files into hierarchically organized taxonomies of musical genres is presented. This extensible software includes an easy to use and flexible GUI. An extensive library of high-level musical features is compiled, including many original features. A novel hybrid classification system is used that makes use of hierarchical, flat and round robin classification. Both k-nearest neighbour and neural network-based classifiers are used, and feature selection and weighting are performed using genetic algorithms. A thorough review of previous research in automatic genre classification is presented, along with an overview of automatic feature selection and classification techniques. Also included is a discussion of the theoretical issues relating to musical genre, including but not limited to what mechanisms humans use to classify music by genre and how realistic genre taxonomies can be constructed.

This thesis examines the relations among emotions and musical features and their changes with time, based on the assertion that there exist underlying, culturally specific, quantifiable rules which govern these relations. I designed, programmed and tested a computer controlled Two-Dimensional Emotion Space (2DES) which administered and controlled all aspects of the experimental work. The 2DES instrument consisted of two bipolar emotional response (ER) dimensions: valence (happiness-sadness) and arousal (activeness-sleepiness). The instrument had a test-retest reliability exceeding 0.83 (p &gt 0.01, N = 28) when words and pictures of facial expressions were used as the test stimuli. Construct validity was quantified (r &lt 0.84, p &gt 0.01). The 2DES was developed to collect continuous responses to recordings of four movements of music (N = 67) chosen to elicit responses in all quadrants of the 2DES: &quotMorning&quot from Peer Gynt, Adagio from Rodrigo???s Concierto de Aranjuez (Aranjuez), Dvorak???s Slavonic Dance Op 42, No. 1 and Pizzicato Polka by Strauss. Test-retest reliability was 0.74 (p &gt 0.001, N = 14). Five salient and objectively quantifiable features of the musical signal (MFs) were scaled and used for time series analysis of the stimuli: melodic pitch, tempo, loudness, frequency spectrum centroid (timbral sharpness) and texture (number of different instruments playing). A quantitative analysis consisted of: (1) first order differencing to remove trends, (2) determination of suitable, lagged MFs to keep as regressors via stepwise regression, and (3) regression of each ER onto selected MFs with first order autoregressive adjustment for serial correlation. Regression coefficients indicated that first order differenced (???) loudness and ???tempo had the largest correlations with ???arousal across all pieces, and ???melodic pitch correlated with ???valence for Aranjuez (p &gt 0.01 for all coefficients). The models were able to explain up to 73% of mean response variance. Additional variation was explained qualitatively as being due to interruptions, interactions and collinearity: The minor key and dissonances in a tonal context moved valence toward the negative direction; Short duration and perfect cadences moved valence in the positive direction. The 2DES measure and serial correlation adjusted regression models were, together, shown to be powerful tools for understanding relations among musical features and emotional response.

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Rochester, 1975. / Reproduced from typescript. Four works analyzed: Capriccio, by Henk Badings.- Gargoyles, by Otto Luening.- Music plus one, by Ilhan Mimaroglu.- Quadrants: event/complex number three, by Larry Austin. "Glossary of terms": leaves 90-94. "Works for solo violin and tape": leaves 95-96. Vita. Bibliography: leaves 97-101. Digitized version available online via the Sibley Music Library, Eastman School of Music http://hdl.handle.net/1802/6294