Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 83 p.; also includes graphics. Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: Caroline Palmer, Dept. of Psychology. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-83).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Northwestern University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MMus.) - University of Glasgow, 2008. / MMus. thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts, Department of Music, Univeristy of Glasgow 2008. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed May 28, 2009). Advisor: Donald Hodges; submitted to the School of Music. Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-162).

The research aims to propose a narrative of the experience of listening and to provide some first examples of its possible application. This is done in three parts. Part One, “Words”, aims to methodologically frame the narrative by discussing the limits and requirements of a theory of listening. After discussing the difficulties of building an objective characterization of the listening experience, the research proposes that any theorization on listening can only express a point of view that is implied by descriptions of listening both in linguistic terms and in the data they involve. The analysis of theories about listening is therefore conducted through a grammatical path that unfolds by following the syntactic roles of the words involved in theoretical claims about listening. Starting from the problem of synonymy, the analysis moves around the subject, the object, adjectives and adverbs to finally discuss the status of the references of the discourses on listening. The Part One ends by claiming the need to reintroduce the subject in theories about listening and proposes to attribute the epistemological status of the narrative to any discourse about the listening experience. This implies that any proposed narrative must substitute its truth-value with the instrumental value that is expressed by the idea of “viability”. The Part Two, “Patterns”, is devoted to introducing a narrative of listening. This is first informally introduced in terms of the experience of a distinction within the sonic flow. After an intermission dedicated to connecting the idea of distinction to Gaston Bachelard’s metaphysics of time, the narrative is finally presented as a dialectics among three ways of organizing perceptive distinctions. Three perceptive modes of distinctions are presented as a basic mechanism that is responsible for articulating the sonic continuum in a complex structure of expectations and reactions, in terms of patterns, that is constantly renewed under the direction of statistical learning. The final chapter of the Part Two aims to briefly apply the narrative of pattern structures to dealing with the experience of noise. Part Three aims to show the “viability” of the proposed narrative of listening. First, a method for analysing music by listening is discussed. Then, a second chapter puts the idea of pattern structures in contact with music composition, as a framework that can be applied to data sonification, installations, music production and to the didactics of composition. Finally, the last chapter is devoted to the discussion of the idea of “soundscape” and “identity formation”, in order to show the potential of applying the proposed narrative to the context of cultural and social studies.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2008. / A thesis submitted to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Psychology, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references.

Researchers have investigated harnessing computers as a tool to aid in the composition of music for over 70 years. In major part, such research has focused on creating algorithms to work with pitches and rhythm, which has resulted in a selection of sophisticated systems. Although the musical possibilities of these systems are vast, they are not directly considering another important characteristic of sound. Timbre can be defined as all the sound attributes, except pitch, loudness and duration, which allow us to distinguish and recognize that two sounds are dissimilar. This feature plays an essential role in combining instruments as it involves mixing instrumental properties to create unique textures conveying specific sonic qualities. Within this thesis, we explore harnessing techniques for the analysis and control of instrumental timbre and timbral combinations. This thesis begins with investigating the link between musical timbre, auditory perception and psychoacoustics for sounds emerging from instrument mixtures. It resulted in choosing to use verbal descriptors of timbral qualities to represent auditory perception of instrument combination sounds. Therefore, this thesis reports on the developments of methods and tools designed to automatically retrieve and identify perceptual qualities of timbre within audio files, using specific musical acoustic features and artificial intelligence algorithms. Different perceptual experiments have been conducted to evaluate the correlation between selected acoustics cues and humans' perception. Results of these evaluations confirmed the potential and suitability of the presented approaches. Finally, these developments have helped to design a perceptually-orientated generative system harnessing aspects of artificial intelligence to combine sampled instrument notes. The findings of this exploration demonstrate that an artificial intelligence approach can help to harness the perceptual aspect of instrumental timbre and timbral combinations. This investigation suggests that established methods of measuring timbral qualities, based on a diverse selection of sounds, also work for sounds created by combining instrument notes. The development of tools designed to automatically retrieve and identify perceptual qualities of timbre also helped in designing a comparative scale that goes towards standardising metrics for comparing timbral attributes. Finally, this research demonstrates that perceptual characteristics of timbral qualities, using verbal descriptors as a representation, can be implemented in an intelligent computing system designed to combine sampled instrument notes conveying specific perceptual qualities.

No description available.

Nesta tese de doutorado abordamos modelos cognitivos de percepção da métrica musical e entrainment a partir de questões musicológicas, como a ambiguidade métrica decorrente de exemplos da literatura. Partindo de uma verificação do estado da arte em pesquisas rítmicas que envolvem o estudo de anacruses, realizamos um percurso experimental que investiga a efetividade da chamada percepção da acentuação subjetiva revelada por Povel e Okkerman (1981), por acreditarmos que o fenômeno da acentuação subjetiva esteja envolvido na desambiguação da percepção de referenciais métricos dúbios. Para tanto, desenvolvemos uma metodologia de quantificação das similaridades entre os padrões de acentuação coletados em grupo universitário da cidade de São Paulo e os padrões de referência da literatura, sobretudo de Povel e Essens (1985). Estes experimentos revelaram que há uma tendência significativa à percepção da acentuação subjetiva predominantemente em grupo sem estudo formal de música. Por outro lado, os estudantes de música revelaram uma tendência de acentuação mais relacionada à pulsação musical. / In this doctoral thesis we address cognitive models of perception of musical meter and entrainment from musicological issues, such as the metric ambiguity arising from examples of literature. Based on a state-of-the-art check on rhythmic researches involving the study of anacruses, we conducted an experimental study that investigates the effectiveness of the so-called subjective accent revealed by Povel and Okkerman (1981), because we believe that the phenomenon of subjective accent is Involved in the disambiguation of dubious beat references perception. Therefore, we developed a methodology to quantify the similarities between the accentuation patterns collected in university group of São Paulo and the literature reference standards, especially Povel and Essens (1985). These experiments revealed that there is a significant tendency to subjective perception of accent predominantly in people without formal music study. On the other hand, the students of music revealed a tendency of accentuation more related to the musical beat.

Nesta tese de doutorado abordamos modelos cognitivos de percepção da métrica musical e entrainment a partir de questões musicológicas, como a ambiguidade métrica decorrente de exemplos da literatura. Partindo de uma verificação do estado da arte em pesquisas rítmicas que envolvem o estudo de anacruses, realizamos um percurso experimental que investiga a efetividade da chamada percepção da acentuação subjetiva revelada por Povel e Okkerman (1981), por acreditarmos que o fenômeno da acentuação subjetiva esteja envolvido na desambiguação da percepção de referenciais métricos dúbios. Para tanto, desenvolvemos uma metodologia de quantificação das similaridades entre os padrões de acentuação coletados em grupo universitário da cidade de São Paulo e os padrões de referência da literatura, sobretudo de Povel e Essens (1985). Estes experimentos revelaram que há uma tendência significativa à percepção da acentuação subjetiva predominantemente em grupo sem estudo formal de música. Por outro lado, os estudantes de música revelaram uma tendência de acentuação mais relacionada à pulsação musical. / In this doctoral thesis we address cognitive models of perception of musical meter and entrainment from musicological issues, such as the metric ambiguity arising from examples of literature. Based on a state-of-the-art check on rhythmic researches involving the study of anacruses, we conducted an experimental study that investigates the effectiveness of the so-called subjective accent revealed by Povel and Okkerman (1981), because we believe that the phenomenon of subjective accent is Involved in the disambiguation of dubious beat references perception. Therefore, we developed a methodology to quantify the similarities between the accentuation patterns collected in university group of São Paulo and the literature reference standards, especially Povel and Essens (1985). These experiments revealed that there is a significant tendency to subjective perception of accent predominantly in people without formal music study. On the other hand, the students of music revealed a tendency of accentuation more related to the musical beat.