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This study presents a theory of melodic creation, transmission, memory, and recall within the Anglo- and Celtic-American culture of lower Appalachia, from the time of the earliest European settlers until the present. This theory and its attendant hypotheses draw upon earlier published ideas, current theories of memory and recall, and the results of applying a computer-supported analytical system developed by the author. Sources include previous studies of folksong melody, song collections, and earlier investigations of the psychology of memory. Also important are portions of an anonymous treatise on traditional Celtic musical scales and an authoritative, modern interpretation of this document. A final body of sources is a small group of sound-recordings.

The purpose of this study was to determine how pitch and rhythm aspects of melodic memory are affected by aural distractions when melodic stimuli are presented both visually and aurally, as compared to aurally only. The rationale for this research is centered on the need for improved melodic memory skills of students taking melodic dictation, and the possibility that temporary visual imagery storage of target melodies might enhance those skills. The participants in this study were undergraduate and graduate music majors (n=41) at a large northeastern university. All participants had successfully completed the first two semesters of college-level music theory, and none had perfect pitch. Participants progressed through two self-contained experimental tests at the computer. Identical target melodies were presented: 1) aurally only on one test; and 2) aurally, with visual presentation of the matching notation, on the other test. After the target melody, a distraction melody sounded, during which time participants were to maintain the original target melody in memory. Participants then chose which of two aural options matched the original target, with a third choice of "neither." The incorrect answer choice in each item contained either a pitch or rhythm discrepancy. The 2x2 factorial design of this experiment was based on independent variables of test presentation format and answer discrepancy type. The dependent variable was experimental test scores. Each participant took both parts of both tests, yielding 164 total observations. Additional data were collected for exploratory analysis: the order in which each participant took the tests, the major instrument of each participant, and the educational status of each participant (undergraduate or graduate). Results of a 2x2 ANOVA revealed no significant differences in test scores, based on either test format or answer discrepancy type, and no interaction between the factors. The exploratory analyses revealed no significant differences in test scores, based on test order, major instrument, or student status. Results suggest that visual reinforcement of melodies does not affect aural memory for those melodies, in terms of either pitch or rhythm. Suggestions for further research include an aural-visual melodic memory test paired with a learning modalities survey, a longitudinal study of visual imagery applied to aural skills study, and a detailed survey of strategies used by successful and unsuccessful dictation students. / Music Education / Accompanied by two .wmv files: 1) Audio-OnlyTest.wmv. 2) Audio-VisualTest.wmv.

The dissertation identifies three types of tonality: scalicfmodal, melodic, and harmonic. Scalic/modal tonality and melodic tonality are known to have been existent in Antiquity. Messiaen adheres to these ancient types of tonality and also harmonic tonality. Messiaen uses these types of tonality in his own combinations -- his concept of tonality is revealed to be highly complex. / Musicology / M.Mus. (Musicology)

Structure is one of the fundamentals of music, yet the complexity arising from the vast number of possible variations of musical elements such as rhythm, melody, harmony, key, texture and form, along with their combinations, makes music modelling a particularly challenging task for machine learning. The research presented in this thesis focuses on the problem of learning a generative model for melody directly from musical sequences belonging to the same genre. Our goal is to develop probabilistic models that can automatically capture the complex statistical dependencies evident in music without the need to incorporate significant domain-specifc knowledge. At all stages we avoid making assumptions explicit to music and consider models that can can be readily applied in different music genres and can easily be adapted for other sequential data domains. We develop the Dirichlet Variable-Length Markov Model (Dirichlet-VMM), a Bayesian formulation of the Variable-Length Markov Model (VMM), where smoothing is performed in a systematic probabilistic manner. The model is a general-purpose, dictionary-based predictor with a formal smoothing technique and is shown to perform significantly better than the standard VMM in melody modelling. Motivated by the ability of the Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) to extract high quality latent features in an unsupervised manner, we next develop the Time-Convolutional Restricted Boltzmann Machine (TC-RBM), a novel adaptation of the Convolutional RBM for modelling sequential data. We show that the TC-RBM learns descriptive musical features such as chords, octaves and typical melody movement patterns. To deal with the non-stationarity of music, we develop the Variable-gram Topic model, which employs the Dirichlet-VMM for the parametrisation of the topic distributions. The Dirichlet-VMM models the local temporal structure, while the latent topics represent di erent music regimes. The model does not make any assumptions explicit to music, but it is particularly suitable in this context, as it couples the latent topic formalism with an expressive model of contextual information.

I det här arbetet har jag undersökt hur fiollärare med förankring i folkmusiken undervisar samt vilka eventuella områden som de lägger vikt vid och varför. Jag valde att göra en kvalitativ intervju med fem informanter. Mitt mål var att välja fiollärare med utbildning från musikhögskola, men för övrigt med så varierande bakgrund som möjligt. Jag har ställt intervjusvaren mot några klassiska fiolmetoder. Jag har inte kommit fram till några nya perspektiv eller infallsvinklar i folkmusikundervisningen. Jag ser istället likheter mellan informanternas undervisning och de klassiska metoderna. Momentens syfte kan dock variera. I folkmusikundervisningen används gehörsundervisning i alla åldrar. Informanterna tycker det är viktigt att eleverna tycker det är kul att spela fiol och musicera och att man lättare når fram till musicerandet om man utgå från gehöret. / In this study, I will examine how violin teachers with roots in folk music teach, and if there are any areas which they prioritize and why. I chose to make a qualitative interview with five interviewees. My goal was to choose violin teachers who had studied at a colleges of music, but also with as varied a background as possible. I have set interview responses against some classical violin methods. I have not reached any new perspective or angles in folk music teaching. Instead, I see similarities between the interviewees’ teaching and the classical methods. The aim for the methods may vary. In folk music, ear training is used among all ages. The interviewees think it is important that students enjoy playing the violin and to make music. It is easier to understand and grasp the music if you begin with ear training.

Rhythm in early Western polyphonic music.

Charles Ives is commonly referred to as the "Father of American Music." The implication is one that Ives himself would agree with, that he wrote purely American ideas from his own environment without reference to other styles or methods, in particular the widespread European tradition. Some composers, like Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions, created an American sonority by incorporating the concepts of musical construction they studied at the Paris Conservatoire. Ives, conversely, received no instruction in Europe, but the techniques so prevalent in the music of the French art song are found in certain songs written by Ives. Though he claimed no European influence, however, he used the late nineteenth century French song style in some of his songs, and he also borrowed tunes from the French composers. This study identifies significant trademarks of eighteenth century French song and the stylistic traits associated with a variety of prominent composers of the time. Ives's childhood musical influences, his church position, and his studies at Yale University will establish a relationship between Ives and the French musical ideas. The primary source for his songs is his collection entitled 114 Songs. Ives gathered his songs and put them into one collection which included Four French Songs. Through the analysis of several songs, including the four French songs written by Ives and three comparisons of songs by Ives with songs by French composers, it becomes evident that Ives was influenced, to a certain extent, by French music and used many techniques of the style.

Content-based MIDI Music Retrieval and Computer-aided Composition Based on Musical Whistling Hung-Cche Shen* Chung-Nan Lee+ ABSTRACT In this dissertation, we have focused on the research of content-based MIDI music retrieval and computer-aided composition based on musical whistling. For MIDI music retrieval, a prototype system called ¡§Whistle-for-Music¡¨ is developed. This system enables users to retrieve MIDI format music by whistling a melodic fragment. It consists of three essential components which are query processing, MIDI preprocessing and an approximate search engine. For query processing, we have achieved a real-time and robust whistle-to-MIDI converter. For MIDI preprocessing, the extracted features from MIDI files contain individual, local and global melodic descriptions. In order to match a querying pattern with target, we extend an existing search engine into a fast approximate melodic matching engine. There is a systematic evaluation of ¡§Whistle-for-Music¡¨ system. The performed experiments include ¡§Query turnaround time¡¨, ¡§Unique prefix searching¡¨, ¡§Error density vs. match rank percent¡¨ and ¡§Statistics of global descriptions¡¨. The results show that careful measurement and objective comparisons can lead us to know the scaling trend about query and target. For computer-aided composition, a system called ¡§Whistle-to- Music¡¨ is presented. The ¡§Whistle-to-Music¡¨ system can ease the melody input and musical composition. Firstly, our ¡§Whistle-to-MIDI¡¨ transformation is to translate a whistled tune into a sequence of notes, which are defined by onset, duration, velocity and note pitch. This ¡§Whistle-to-MIDI¡¨ is a relative melody transcription since we apply ¡§pitch templates¡¨ and ¡§rhythm templates¡¨. Based on the given melodic motives, we propose the templates of melodic forms and harmonic tables for the tasks of motive development and automatic harmonization. We demonstrate that the proposed melodic forms templates can successfully produce various formal songs from one or few bass motives. The harmonic tables allow us to produce classic-style harmonization based on three theories. The process of ¡§Whistle-to-Music¡¨ system is described by giving examples of melody transcription, motive development and demonstrating the resulting music from automatic harmonization. In automatic harmonization, we demonstrate that the proposed harmonic tables can successfully produce a piece of well-formed harmonization from a variety of whistled tunes. * Author +Advisor

This study involves the research, analysis, and performance of existing arrangements of songs that have been played and recorded by jazz musicians, and are identifiable as pop songs of the last thirty years. This project will discuss the development of these songs as new repertoire in the jazz idiom. In particular it will examine transcriptions of arrangements by Herbie Hancock, Dianne Reeves, Brad Meldau, Charlie Hunter, Christian McBride, and Bob Belden. The analysis of these transcriptions will consider the techniques these musicians used in their arrangements including reharmonisation, melodic interpretation, rhythm, and restructuring of the form of the original song. Further, the techniques identified in the analyses will be applied in the creation of new arrangements of similar songs from that era for jazz ensemble of various sizes.