El presente proyecto de tesis tiene como objetivo desarrollar una aplicación que permita reconocer canciones, por medio del tarareo o canto de una persona. Por este motivo, se ha analizado el estado del arte para conocer cuáles son las mejores soluciones hasta el momento y considerarlos como guía para ofrecer una propuesta. En este proceso, se encontraron los conceptos necesarios para el entendimiento de la problemática y desarrollo de la posible solución. Las partes más importantes del aplicativo son la extracción de descriptores para el poblado de la base de datos y la comparación entre los descriptores y el tarareo para obtener las canciones más similares. / The purpose of this thesis is to develop an application that allows songs to be recognized from the humming or singing of a person. For this reason, the state of the art has been analyzed to know what the best solutions are so far and to consider them as a guide to offer a proposal. In this process, the necessary concepts were found for understanding the problem and developing the possible solution. The most important parts of the application are the extraction of descriptors for the construction of the database and the comparison between the descriptors and the humming to obtain the most similar songs. / Trabajo de investigación

Detta arbete syftar till att undersöka hur inre medvetenhet samt kunskap om melodin inverkar på min upplevelse och förmåga att lära mig, samt att uppfatta, stämmor utifrån inspelade förlagor. I studien plankar jag tre stycken stämmor från inspelningar med tre olika duokonstellationer från Dalarna, där jag för varje stämma som plankas har olika grader av inre medvetenhet samt kunskap om melodin. I bakgrunden tas begrepp som gehör och plankning upp och en redogörelse görs för vad jag menar med inre medve- tenhet och kunskap om melodin. Vidare förklaras stämspel inom svensk folkmusik och forskning om människans förmåga att uppfatta tonhöjder och harmonier i arrangemang tas upp. I resultatet framkommer att min uppfattning av de valda låtarna som helhet har förändrats efter att jag plankat stämmorna. I efterhand har jag mycket enklare för att uppfatta dem och kan välja att fokusera mitt lyssnande på olika aspekter av musiken i större grad än innan. Min förmåga att lära mig stämmorna påverkades av hur mycket jag kunde melodin till en början. / This study is aiming towards investigating how inner awareness and knowledge about the melody affects my ability and experience of perceiving and learning second voices from a source of recorded sound material. In the study I learn three second voices by ear from recordings of three different duo constellations from the county of Dalarna. For every second voice different levels of inner awareness and knowledge about the melody are applied. In the background the concept of learning by ear is explained and an illus- tration about inner awareness and knowledge about the melody is made. Furthermore, harmony lines in Swedish Folk Music is explained and research about human’s ability to perceive pitch and harmonies in arrangements is described. In the result it is shown that my perception of the pieces of music studied has changed after learning the second voic- es. Afterwards I find it easier to perceive the second voices in the arrangements and show a higher grade of ability to focus my awareness to different aspects of the music. My ability to learn the second voices was affected by my knowledge of the melody from start.

The Master's Thesis discusses the possibilities of automatic melody harmonization. System use dictionary method for harmonization, this was inspired with comprimation algorithm LZW. System's output file is in MusicXML format.

Der Beitrag würdigt die Improvisation als eine die interpretatorischen und analytischen Verfahren ergänzende Perspektive des Werk- und Stilverstehens. Um die Erschrockenheit zu überbrücken, welche gemeinhin entsteht, wenn dem am Literaturspiel geschulten Instrumentalisten der sichere Boden des Notentextes entzogen wird, wird eine methodisch durchformte Improvisationsanleitung gegeben, die es ermöglicht, den neu gewonnenen Freiraum durch Begrenzung zu bewältigen, bevor es zum Überschreiten des zunächst gesetzten Rahmens kommt. Das Konzept gilt der tonalen Improvisation und orientiert sich an kompositorischen Modellen der Nach-Beethoven-Ära bis etwa 1850. Gleichwohl wird ein eher systematischer Ansatz verfolgt, der Übertragungen auch auf die Improvisation über Modelle der Wiener Klassik sowie eine Fortentwicklung zur Gruppenimprovisation, Akkordinstrument + Melodieinstrument(e)/Vokalstimme(n) gestattet. / This article addresses improvisation as a perspective complementary to interpretation and analysis in the explication of a work and its style. In order to bridge the shock that often results when an instrumentalist trained in playing literature leaves the safe haven of the printed score, a methodical guide to improvisation is offered that enables the player to conquer the newly won freedom by first introducing restrains before one eventually transgresses these initial boundaries. The method addresses tonal improvisation and is oriented around compositional models of the time following Beethoven, ca. 1850. At the same time a rather systematic approach is employed that allows crossover into improvisation over models drawn from Viennese classicism as well as extension activities involving group-improvisation and the combination of chordal instruments, melody instruments, and voice.

Text in Afrikaans / Art History, Visual Arts & Musicology / D.Mus. (Musiekwetenskap)

We investigated age-related differences in neural activation associated with recognition of familiar melodies, a process that requires retrieval from musical semantic memory and leads to a feeling of familiarity. We used sparse sampling fMRI to determine the neural correlates of melody processing and familiarity by comparing activation when listening to melodies versus signal-correlated noise, and to familiar versus unfamiliar melodies, respectively. Overall, activity in the bilateral superior temporal gyrus correlated well with melody processing. Familiarity was associated with several frontal regions (bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, and precentral gyrus; left insular cortex), right superior temporal gyrus; left supramarginal gyrus and cingulate gyrus; bilateral putamen and thalamus; cerebellum and brainstem. No significant differences were found between younger and older adults for either melody processing or familiarity based activation. Assessment of familiarity-related group differences using less stringent criteria identified plausible areas; greater activation was seen bilaterally in the superior temporal gyrus in younger adults and in some left parietal regions in older adults. This study adds to the knowledge of musical semantic memory with results based on a large sample (N = 40) that includes older adults. Our findings for activation associated with melody processing and familiarity support some, but not all, previous results of related studies. We were unable to find conclusive evidence of age-related differences in neural correlates of musical semantic memory, while also being the first study (to the best of our knowledge) to search for these differences. / Thesis (Master, Neuroscience Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-16 12:38:10.757

J.D. Salinger’s ‘A Girl I Knew,’ ‘Just Before the War with the Eskimos,’ and ‘Blue Melody,’ contain key thematic and narratological elements that contribute to the development of character through repeated reference to tactile imagery and through each character’s reaction to the sensations associated with tactile images. Salinger’s descriptions of tactile interaction allow readers to see his characters connected in ways that were increasingly difficult in the 1950’s, where widespread cultural changes contributed to increasing physical and emotional distancing. Critics have argued that “vision” is at the heart of many of Salinger’s characters’ struggles, since they “seek” a level of human connectedness not found in other narratives. However, Salinger's stories do not provide a mere record of observed physical characteristics as some claim; instead, they present concrete physical details that take both the character and the reader beyond sight to touch, in an effort to create the intimate space necessary for redemption. Using theoretical work by critics who focus on tactile imagery pinpoints how Salinger’s characters situate themselves in relation to the world around them and how setting and other narrative mechanics influence character. Salinger’s attention to tactile imagery influences character in a profound way creating a “narrative of immediacy” where closeness is further reinforced through tactile physical descriptions, attention to gesture, and use of conversational popular vernacular.

Title of the thesis: Developing pronunciation through musical activities in French lessons Keywords: communicative approach, phonetics, phonology, pronunciation, prosody, activity, music, rhythm, rhythmisation, melody, tempo, intonation, accent, song, rap, facial expressions Abstract: This thesis deals with the teaching of French phonetics, considers the status of phonetics in communicatively oriented teaching, and comes to the fact that the teaching of phonetics and phonology is not a priority in the communicative approach. The work demonstrates the importance of such teaching, and therefore explores how the teaching of pronunciation or some of its components could be made more attractive. Based on the proven relationship of music and language, both as auditory phenomena, this thesis approaches the interwoven elements of these two areas. The aim is to explore how the musical elements, such as: rhythm, melody, tempo, phrasing, etc., could be used in the teaching of French pronunciation - especially at the suprasegmental level. The work offers a basic inventory of exercises which benefit from this characteristic and which has been verified in practice, and in the final analysis summarises their effectiveness in foreign language teaching.

MA, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2012 / This research-report presents a theoretical exploration of musical encoding which has its basis in general semiotic theory. By examining what this reveals about the problematic and mysterious issue of music’s meaning, I argue that the most visceral and direct form of it is found in the manner in which the composer shapes a certain kind of temporal experience (erlebnis) which is engendered by the music itself. This reveals that sensations of goal-directed movement, closure, tension and release are shaped in a phenomenological way against a background of continuity that is established by metrical cyclicity and phrasal periodisation. As a result, the interpretation of certain kinds of accumulative structural effects generated by the gestural (rhythmic and melodic/harmonic) inflections of the temporal and intonational planes become meaningful in a rhetorical, affective (affekten) and topical sense. A study of Ngqoko (Xhosa) overtone-music, as a case study into African indigenous music (as opposed to the examples cited of Western art music), shows that an intensification of the relationships between pitch and rhythm that exist in speech-tone results in the formation of melody and a culturally embedded vocabulary of intonations. I argue that this resultant edifice exists in the music of most cultures and that this ultimately serves as the basis of musical encoding. Therefore musical meaning develops in ways that are completely intrinsic to music.

Il est raisonnable de considérer qu'un auditeur ne perçoit pas la musique comme une simple séquence de sons, pas plus que le compositeur n'a conçu son morceau comme tel. La musique est en effet constituée de motifs dont l'organisation intrinsèque et les relations mutuelles participent à la structuration du propos musical, et ce à plusieurs échelles simultanément. Cependant, il est aujourd'hui encore très difficile de définir précisément le terme de concept musicale. L'un des principaux aspects de la musique est qu'elle est en grande partie constituée de redondances, sous forme de répétitions exactes et variées. L'organisation de ces redondances permet de susciter une attente chez l'auditeur. Une surprise peut alors être créée en présentant des éléments qui ne correspondent pas à cette attente. Ce travail de thèse se base sur l'hypothèse que les redondances, l'attente et la surprise sont des éléments essentiels pour la description de la structure musicale d'un segment. Un certain nombre de questions découlent de ce constat: quels sont les éléments musicaux qui participent à la structure d'un objet musical ? Quelles sont les dépendances entre ces éléments qui jouent un rôle essentiel dans la structuration d'un objet musical ? Comment peut-on décrire une relation entre deux éléments musicaux tels que des accords, des motifs rythmiques ou mélodiques ? Dans ce manuscrit, des éléments de réponse sont proposés par la formalisation et l'implémentation d'un modèle multi-échelle de description de la structure d'un segment musical : les Graphes Polytopiques à Relations Latentes (GPRL/PGLR). Dans ce travail, les segments considérés sont les sections successives qui forment une pièce musicale. Dans le cas de la pop, genre musical sur lequel se concentre ce travail, il s'agit typiquement d'un couplet ou d'un refrain, de 15 sec. environ, comprenant un début et une fin bien définis. En suivant le formalisme PGLR, les relations de dépendance prédominantes entre éléments musicaux d'un segment sont celles qui relient les éléments situés à des positions homologues sur la grille métrique du segment. Cette approche généralise sur le plan multi-échelle le modèle Système&Contraste qui décrit sous la forme d'une matrice 2×2 le système d'attente logique au sein d'un segment et la surprise qui découle de la réalisation de cette attente. Pour des segments réguliers de taille 2^n, le PGLR peut être représenté sur un n-cube (carré, cube, tesseract, ...), où n est le nombre d'échelles considérées. Chaque nœud du polytope correspond à un élément musical fondamental (accord, motif, note...), chaque arête représente une relation entre deux nœuds et chaque face représente un système de relations. La recherche du PGLR correspondant à la meilleure description de la structure d'un segment musical s'opère par l'estimation jointe : de la description du polytope (un n-polytope plus ou moins régulier) ; de la configuration du graphe sur le polytope, permettant de décrire le flux de dépendance et les interactions entre les éléments par des implications élémentaires systémiques au sein du segment ; la description de l'ensemble des relations entre les nœuds du graphe. Le but du modèle PGLR est à la fois de décrire les dépendances temporelles entre les éléments d'un segment et de modéliser l'attente logique et la surprise qui découlent de l'observation et de la perception des similarités et des différences entre ces éléments. Cette approche a été formalisée et implémentée pour décrire la structure de séquences d'accords ainsi que de segments rythmiques et mélodiques, puis évaluée par sa capacité à prédire des segments inconnus. La mesure utilisée pour cette évaluation est la perplexité croisée calculée à partir des données du corpus RWC POP. Les résultats obtenus donnent un large avantage à la méthode multi-échelle proposée, qui semble mieux à même de décrire efficacement la structure des segments testés. / In this thesis, we approach these questions by defining and implementing a multi-scale model for music segment structure description, called Polytopic Graph of Latent Relations (PGLR). In our work, a segment is the macroscopic constituent of the global piece. In pop songs, which is the main focus here, segments usually correspond to a chorus or a verse, lasting approximately 15 seconds and exhibiting a clear beginning and end. Under the PGLR scheme, relationships between musical elements within a musical segment are assumed to be developing predominantly between homologous elements within the metrical grid at different scales simultaneously. This approach generalises to the multi-scale case the System&Contrast framework which aims at describing, as a 2×2 square matrix, the logical system of expectation within a segment and the surprise resulting from that expectation. For regular segments of 2^n events, the PGLR lives on a n-dimensional cube (square, cube, tesseract, etc...), n being the number of scales considered simultaneously in the multi-scale model. Each vertex in the polytope corresponds to a low-scale musical element, each edge represents a relationship between two vertices and each face forms an elementary system of relationships. The estimation of the PGLR structure of a musical segment can then be obtained computationally as the joint estimation of : the description of the polytope (as a more or less regular n-polytope) ; the nesting configuration of the graph over the polytope, reflecting the flow of dependencies and interactions as elementary implication systems within the musical segment, the set of relations between the nodes of the graph. The aim of the PGLR model is to both describe the time dependencies between the elements of a segment and model the logical expectation and surprise that can be built on the observation and perception of the similarities and differences between elements with strong relationships. The approach is presented conceptually and algorithmically, together with an extensive evaluation of the ability of different models to predict unseen data, measured using the cross-perplexity value. These experiments have been conducted both on chords sequences, rhythmic and melodic segments extracted from the RWC POP corpus. Our results illustrate the efficiency of the proposed model in capturing structural information within such data.