God never died as scholars of secularization theory from the 1960s and 1970s proposed that he eventually would, but He rather reappeared within the context of Pop music. This work analyzes the lives and music of Yusuf Islam a.k.a. Cat Stevens, Kanye West, Bob Dylan, and George Harrison in order to see how their inner quest for peace brought upon by religious conversion affected their supreme message. Once the artists realized the phenomenal peace found in experiencing personal relationships with the Divine, their music changed so as to inspire others to seek the same greater freedoms from which they benefited upon turning within. These four elite members of secular society did not privatize their faiths, and by sharing their new found beliefs with the world, they turned the minds of millions Godwards.

Sonic Activation is a multimedia performance-installation featuring sound sculptures, video projections, and performance with live electronics for solo and mixed ensembles. The work aims to unpack the nature in which we hear and interact with sound, space, and gesture. It is a project that recontextualizes the typical practice of performance and installation modes of music and art. The event uses 12 loudspeakers spaced around a gallery to create a densely layered sonic atmosphere that gently fluctuates and slowly evolves. Throughout the event, the audience is encouraged to freely navigate the gallery and experience the subtle changes in sound as they manifest in the space.

The scholars who have taken up the task of writing about Bob Kaufman have most often done so in response to a perceived demand: the lack of Kaufman scholarship, readership, anthology, publicity, canonization. The basis of this need is clear: Kaufman is almost never included as even a third-string Beat, a fringe Surrealist, or an underappreciated Jazz performer. To the committed readers of Kaufman – and almost all of his readers seem to be committed ones – it’s unforgivable. These various canons, major (mid-century American poets, Beat poets) and minor (Jazz poets, American Surrealists), are clearly missing one of their most important members. The task is to reintegrate Kaufman into the company it seems he has been omitted from, the company he deserves. The problem is that once the critic has overcome all the resistance – the capitalist publishing industry, the prison system, the white-dominated west coast poetry setting, the public demands of aesthetic production – she is resisted by the poetry itself, and by Kaufman the poet. Along the lines of Claude Pelieu’s back jacket blurb of Golden Sardine – “in spite of his continuing exclusion from American anthologies, both Hip & Academic” – Kaufman has excluded the anthology, the academy. I will read death through various critical lenses – some with nearly universal critical currency among readers of Kaufman, some with little – as Kaufman’s “FOUNT OF THE CREATIVE ACT.” But this thematic circumscription is also a reading of endurance, even of life. Kaufman writes: “[THE POET’S] DEATH IS A SAVING GRACE.” This becomes the vital relation at the center of my project: how does Kaufman, like Lorca, survive in his poem? How does Kaufman’s political poetry relate with poetic death and redemption? How does jazz involve these things? Does death exist? I want to know . . .

Procedural content generation for video games (PCGG) has seen a steep increase in the past decade, aiming to foster emergent gameplay as well as to address the challenge of producing large amounts of engaging content quickly. Most work in PCGG has been focused on generating art and assets such as levels, textures, and models, or on narrative design to generate storylines and progression paths. Given the difficulty of generating harmonically pleasing and interesting music, procedural music generation for games (PMGG) has not seen as much attention during this time. Music in video games is essential for establishing developers' intended mood and environment. Given the deficit of PMGG content, this paper aims to address the demand for high-quality PMGG. This paper describes the system developed to solve this problem, which generates thematic music for non-player characters (NPCs) based on developer-defined attributes in real time and responds to the dynamic relationship between the player and target NPC. The system was evaluated by means of user study: participants confront four NPC bosses each with their own uniquely generated dynamic track based on their varying attributes in relation to the player's. The survey gathered information on the perceived quality, dynamism, and helpfulness to gameplay of the generated music. Results showed that the generated music was generally pleasing and harmonious, and that while players could not detect the details of how, they were able to detect a general relationship between themselves and the NPCs as reflected by the music.

The purpose of this research was to test a strategy which uses music-related concepts to teach math. A quasi-experimental study of two high school remedial geometry sections was conducted during a review lesson of ratio, proportion, and cross multiplication. A pretest was given to both groups. Then, Group A received normal textbook instruction while Group B received the treatment, Get the Math in Music, which is an online activity involving proportional reasoning in a music-related context. Afterwards, a posttest was given to both groups. Pretest and posttest scores were used to compare gains in subject knowledge between the groups. Then a second evaluation of the treatment was conducted. Group A received the treatment and took a post-posttest. Score gains for Group A before and after receiving the treatment were compared. After these tests, all participants took a survey to determine if their appreciation of math grew as a result of the treatment. Finally, interviews were conducted to provide better understanding of the results. The research questions of this study were: to what extent does the integration of Get the Math in Music improve students' academic performance in a remedial geometry review of ratio, proportion, and cross multiplication, and to what extent does participation in the Get the Math activity improve students' attitudes towards math? My hypotheses were that students would perform significantly better on a subject knowledge test after receiving the treatment, and that all students would have a more positive attitude towards math after receiving the treatment. Quantitative results did not triangulate to support or refute these hypotheses. Greater improvement from pretest to posttest was statistically correlated with Group B, which was the group first receiving the treatment. But later, between posttest and post-posttest Group A did not show statistically significant greater gains after receiving the treatment. Surveys results showed that students did not necessarily like math any more after the treatment. Interviews revealed that several of these students were apathetic to geometry in particular, if not to math in general. The case of one student's improvement suggested that positive teacher-student relationships are more effective than any particular method to increase academic performance and student engagement. Survey results were consistent with earlier psychological studies claiming teenagers care about music. Additional studies in the future on the merits of using music to teach high school math would be useful. Claims that proportional reasoning is challenging were supported. It would be beneficial to evaluate the treatment in an Algebra or Pre-Algebra setting when students first study proportions.

The purpose of this treatise is not so much to discover heretofore unknown facts through original research; however, certain research is planned to assist in deleting the obvious handicaps one might encounter from using faulty instruments or mouthpieces, but rather to assemble under one cover practical data that may be of value in improving intonation in the band ensemble. Various definitions of terms will be established, purposes determined, opinion and methods of teachers evaluated, conclusions reached, and highlights of other persons’ experiments that may bear upon the subject will be presented.

No description available.

Information received during interviews with fifteen prominent choral directors, ministers and laymen of different communities end questionnaire responses from thirty of fifty churches of the San Joaquin Presbytery of tho Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., indicates almost unanimously that there is a growing need. and also a growing awakening among the youth of the church for participation in church musical activities. For many years churches, large and small, have been struggling with the difficult problems of providing satisfactory musical experiences for both the adults and the youth in the churches of various denominations. For the large churches, with large budgets at their command, the matter is simplified by the hiring of paid singers and competent directors at good salaries. In the case of the smaller churches, the duties of furnishing music for various services and special programs usually fall to a local music instructor, and interested layman, the wife of the minister, or perhaps the minister himself. In some cases there is a small monthly remuneration, but in many cases the work done is a matter of donated time and labor on the part of the director. Much has been discussed as to the reasons for the lack of interest shown by the young people of various denominations in the musical life of the churches, but little practical information can be found to remedy the situation. In a conference with Dr. Clair Morrow, moderators of the Synod of California and Minister of the First Church of Fresno, and Leonard Ballmer, Moderators of the San Joaquin Presbytery, it was felt that such a study should take place in order to evaluate and compare the Youth Music Program at the First Church in Fresno with the other churches in the Presbytery.

Numerous studies examine Irish traditional music influencing old-time music, but few examine the influence of old-time on contemporary Irish. As our societies become more global, folk music travels faster and becomes more open to influence. Thes influences can be heard in the music of “Alfi” and “Lankum,” two ensembles steeped in Irish traditional music. This study defines common musical elements of old-time and examines the use of those elements in two recordings: Alfi’s, “Jubilee” and Lankum’s, “The Old Man from Over the Sea.” Much of my data comes from interviews with Irish and American musicians and my own professional knowledge, gaining a deeper understanding of the musical decisions made by members of Alfi and Lankum. This study adds to the formal literature relating to old-time and Irish traditional music. More importantly, it helps fill a gap in the literature by adding to the discussion of the dissemination of traditional music.

<p>Music, like language, is a universal means of communication unique to humans, and the overlap of music and linguistic cognitive and neurological processes is well established. Performers and listeners alike are drawn to music as an avenue of emotional expression, as music is recognized for its rich emotional content. The study of affective priming indicates the communication of emotion-based concepts: stimuli that are related by affect give rise to response facilitation, an effect not observed to stimuli that are unrelated by affect. The measure of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) reveal, with exquisite temporal accuracy, that music clearly conveys emotion concepts in a manner commensurate to written language and prosody. To date, ERP studies of affective priming with music have involved written language and prosody, and have focused on the N400, an indication of semantic cognitive integration. The current study is the first to measure ERP responses in an affective priming paradigm of music and speech. In addition to the N400, the current study is the first of its kind to measure the N300, indicating cognitive categorization and the P300, reflecting recognition. Three sets of analyses – based on categorically correct responses, behaviourally correct responses and subjective responses – reveal N300 and N400 affective priming effects, corresponding to deliberate cognitive categorization and conceptual integration, respectively.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)