<p> Catalyzed by the invention of magnetic tape recording, audio production has transformed from technical to artistic, and the roles of producer, engineer, composer, and performer have merged for many forms of music. However, while these roles have changed, the way we interact with audio production tools has not and still relies on the conventions established in the 1970s for audio engineers. Users communicate their audio concepts to these complex tools using knobs and sliders that control low-level technical parameters. Musicians currently need technical knowledge of signals in addition to their musical knowledge to make novel music. However, many experienced and casual musicians simply do not have the time or desire to acquire this technical knowledge. While simpler tools (e.g. Apple's <i>GarageBand</i>) exist, they are limiting and frustrating to users. </p><p> To support these audio-production novices, we must build audio-production tools with affordances for them. We must identify interactions that enable novices to communicate their audio concepts without requiring technical knowledge and develop systems that can understand these interactions. </p><p> This dissertation advances our understanding of this problem by investigating three interaction types which are inspired by how novices communicate audio concepts to other people: <i>language, vocal imitation,</i> and <i> evaluation</i>. Because learning from an individual can be time consuming for a user, much of this dissertation focuses on how we can learn general audio concepts offline using crowdsourcing rather than user-specific audio concepts. This work introduces algorithms, frameworks, and software for learning audio concepts via these interactions and investigates the strengths and weaknesses of both the algorithms and the interaction types. These contributions provide a research foundation for a new generation of audio-production tools. </p><p> This problem is not limited to audio production tools. Other media production tools&mdash;such as software for graphics, image, and video design and editing&mdash;are also controlled by low-level technical parameters which require technical knowledge and experience to use effectively. The contributions in this dissertation to learn mappings from descriptive language and feedback to low-level control parameters may also be adapted for creative production tools in these other mediums. The contributions in this dissertation can unlock the creativity trapped in everyone who has the desire to make music and other media but does not have the technical skills required for today's tools.</p>

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2001. Graduate Programme in Music. / Typescript. Includes the author's compositions: Squeeze theorem : for two violas and solo clarinet ; I want to tell you something ... : an algorithmic electroacoustic composition in two movements ; Phase diagram : for hand-held contact microphones, phonograph turntable, mixing board and qualizer ; Prism : algorithmic étude ; and Rill : for flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello and two contrasting shakers. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-112). Discography: leaves 113-114. Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ66413.

<p> Kulitta is a Haskell-based, modular framework for automated composition and machine learning. A central idea to Kulitta's approach is the notion of abstraction: the idea that something can be described at many different levels of detail. Music has many levels of abstraction, ranging from the sound we hear to a paper score and large-scale structural patterns. Music is also very multidimensional and prone to tractability problems. Kulitta works at many of levels of abstraction in stages as a way to mitigate these inherent complexity problems.</p><p> Abstract musical structure is generated by using a new category of grammars called probabilistic temporal graph grammars (PTGGs), which are a type of parameterized, context-free grammar that includes variable instantiation, a feature usually only found in grammars for programming languages. This abstract structure can be turned into full music through the use of constraint satisfaction algorithms and equivalence relations based on music theoretic concepts. An extension to an existing algorithm for learning PCFGs provides a way to learn production probabilities for these grammars using corpora of existing music. Kulitta's modules for these features are able to be combined in different ways to support multiple styles of music.</p><p> Kulitta's important contributions include (1) algorithms and a generalized Haskell implementation to support PTGGs, (2) additional formalization of existing musical equivalence relations along with a new equivalence relation for modeling jazz harmony, (3) an empirical evaluation strategy for measuring the performance of automated composition algorithms, and (4) the extension of a machine-learning algorithm for PCFGs to support a much broader category of grammars (inclusive of PTGGs) via the use of an oracle. Kulitta's musical performance is also promising, demonstrating both stylistic versatility and aesthetically pleasing results.</p>

<p> This dissertation examines the aesthetics of the mid-20th century musical avant-garde from an Arendtian perspective. I focus on three musical figures: Glenn Gould, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Helmut Lachenmann. Each of these figures worked through the legacy of musical structuralism by staging various encounters with aspects of musical performance. My reevaluation of these musical figures is oriented by a reading of the contemporaneous political theories of Hannah Arendt, as found in <i>The Human Condition, On Revolution,</i> and <i> Between Past and Future,</i> in particular. In these Cold War era texts, Arendt argues that human cultures are constituted through the exemplary actions of individuals, who risk their lives for the sake of communal principles, thereby imprinting these contestable societal norms upon public consciousness. </p><p> Arendt&rsquo;s account of action, revolution and political judgment have much in common with a broader performative turn that was taking place in avant-garde artistic practices of the same time (c. 1950 &ndash; 1970). This turn resituated the ontology of the musical work from the notated page to the physical acts and technologies of sound production. Of deeper provenance, however, is the fact that Arendt&rsquo;s political theories have an important basis in her appropriation of Kantian aesthetics. I argue that the Kantian inspired elisions of politics and art in her theory justifies re-mapping her political concepts onto art. I refer to these re-mappings as inversions to draw attention to the pivotal role that performance plays in Arendt&rsquo;s theories, operating as a hinge between political and aesthetic categories. I do so also to ground a material history of the encounters with musical formalism that took place in the creative practices of my musical subjects. Thus my title, <i>Action Aesthetics,</i> refers to this attempt to re-infuse Arendt&rsquo;s political theory of exemplary action into the modernist musical legacy of Kantian aesthetics.</p><p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4167. Adviser: Allen Renear. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-207) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Title on DVD: MELT. Vita. Advisor : Todd Winkler. Rock copy 2 : includes supplementary digital materials. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 147-162).

<p> This dissertation looks at the popular American folksong revival in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region during the Cold War and Civil Rights era. Examination of folk revival scholarship, local media reports and cultural geography, and the collected interviews and oral histories of Washington area participants, reveals the folk and blues revival was a mass mediated phenomenon with contentious factions. The D.C. revival shows how restorative cultural projects and issues of authenticity are central to modernity, and how the function of folksong transformed from the populist, labor oriented Old Left to the personalized politics of the New Left. This study also significantly disrupts often romantic scholarship and political narratives about the folk revival and redirects the intellectual attention on New York, Chicago, and San Francisco towards the nation's capital as an overlooked site of cultural production. Washington's "folk world" of music clubs, coffeehouses, record collectors, disc jockeys, performers, folklorists, and folk music aficionados drove folk music studies towards context and cultural democracy, but the local insistence on apolitical, traditional, and rural forms of folksong as the most genuine reinscribed racial and class hierarchies even as they enhanced Washington's status. Washington, D.C., shifted the loose folk revival "movement" into permanent cultural institutions and organizations, and the city gained a cosmopolitan reputation for authentic folk music that intermingled with its regional culture and identity as the nation's capital and site of public protest.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2599. Adviser: Dara Goldman. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-147) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

This thesis explores a series of relationships between music and acoustics in order to develop a basis for discussing and critiquing aesthetics in post-Cagean experimental music. Specifically, it examines the acoustic and aesthetic theories that inform the practice of American composers La Monte Young and Alvin Lucier. One particular theme - the sine wave - emerges, both as a prominent feature in the work of these two composers, and also as a nexus point between music and acoustics. Pursuing this theme, the thesis begins by looking at issues in the science, technology, and ideology of acoustics in relation to the study of musical sound in the late nineteenth century. It then aims to situate the sine wave historically, culturally and technologically within a range of scientific and aesthetic practices in operation in the first half of the twentieth century. Finally, it explores the deployment of concepts from the field of acoustics by artists of the avant-garde, and considers what contribution these factors played in broadening the developing discourse of sound within the arts. These discussions then inform detailed investigations into the work of both Lucier and Young, examining their use of sine waves to explore and produce simple acoustic phenomena. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)