Trance and house music are sub-genres within the genre of electronic dance music. The form of breakdown, buildup and anthem is the main driving force behind trance and house music. This thesis analyzes transcriptions from 22 trance and house songs in order to establish and define new terminology for formal devices used within the breakdown, buildup and anthem sections of the music.

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The purpose of this study was to discover whether or not the accompaniment of a lyric sheet while listening to rock music would aid a student's correct identification of the message conveyed by that song. Participants included one 7th and one 8th grade class of "gifted" students (N = 62). Other elements examined involved students' judgment of the messages as negative or positive, as well as the tonality of each song as pleasant or unpleasant and how these judgments related to correct or incorrect identification of the messages. Results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference regarding correct or incorrect identification of the message depending on whether or not students did or did not have a lyric sheet to read while listening to the U2 song, while there was a statistically significant difference concerning the Black Sabbath song. Additional results of this study are discussed, and implications for future research are suggested.

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Previous studies of musical creativity lacked strong foundations in music theory and music analysis. The goal of the current project was to merge the study of music perception and cognition with the study of expertise-based musical creativity. Three hypotheses about the nature of creativity were tested. According to the productive-thinking hypothesis, creativity represents a complete break from past knowledge. According to the reproductive-thinking hypothesis, creators develop a core collection of kernel ideas early in their careers and continually recombine those ideas in novel ways. According to what can be called the field hypothesis, creativity involves more than just the individual creator; creativity represents an interaction between the individual creator, the domain in which the creator works, and the field, or collection of institutions that evaluate creative products. In order to evaluate each hypothesis, the musical components of a sample of songs by two eminent 20th century American songwriters, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, were analyzed. Five separate analyses were constructed to examine changes in the psychologically salient musical components of Berlin's and Porter's songs over time. In addition, comparisons between hit songs and non-hit songs were also drawn to investigate whether the composers learned from their cumulative songwriting experiences. Several developmental trends were found in the careers of both composers; however, there were few differences between hit songs and non-hit songs on all measures. The careers of both composers contain evidence of productive and reproductive creativity. Implications of the results and suggestions for future research are discussed. / Psychology