This is a study of Prehistoric musical instruments from Scandinavia and the different meanings they could have had in the Prehistoric society. I have described the different types of possible music instruments and the different categories that they belong to. I have also written about their different functions that could have been for example ritual artefacts, shamanic tools or useful instruments in hunting. Two case studies are also presented in the essay, the Falköpingsflute and the Balkåkradrum.

<p>This is a study of Prehistoric musical instruments from Scandinavia and the different meanings they could have had in the Prehistoric society. I have described the different types of possible music instruments and the different categories that they belong to. I have also written about their different functions that could have been for example ritual artefacts, shamanic tools or useful instruments in hunting. Two case studies are also presented in the essay, the Falköpingsflute and the Balkåkradrum.</p>

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Polyphonic or multiple music instrument detection is a difficult problem compared to detecting single or solo instruments in an audio recording. As music is time series data it be can modelled using sequence learning methods within deep learning. Recently, temporal convolutional networks (TCN) have shown to outperform conventional recurrent neural networks (RNN) on various sequence modelling tasks. Though there have been significant improvements in deep learning methods, data scarcity becomes a problem in training large scale models. Weakly labelled data is an alternative where a clip is annotated for presence or absence of instruments without specifying the times at which an instrument is sounding. This study investigates how TCN model compares to a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model while trained on weakly labelled dataset. The results showed successful training of both models along with generalisation on a separate dataset. The comparison showed that TCN performed better than LSTM, but only marginally. Therefore, from the experiments carried out it could not be explicitly concluded if TCN is convincingly a better choice over LSTM in the context of instrument detection, but definitely a strong alternative. / Polyfonisk eller multipel musikinstrumentdetektering är ett svårt problem jämfört med att detektera enstaka eller soloinstrument i en ljudinspelning. Eftersom musik är tidsseriedata kan den modelleras med hjälp av sekvensinlärningsmetoder inom djup inlärning. Nyligen har ’Temporal Convolutional Network’ (TCN) visat sig överträffa konventionella ’Recurrent Neural Network’ (RNN) på flertalet sekvensmodelleringsuppgifter. Även om det har skett betydande förbättringar i metoder för djup inlärning, blir dataknapphet ett problem vid utbildning av storskaliga modeller. Svagt märkta data är ett alternativ där ett klipp kommenteras för närvaro av frånvaro av instrument utan att ange de tidpunkter då ett instrument låter. Denna studie undersöker hur TCN-modellen jämförs med en ’Long Short-Term Memory’ (LSTM) -modell medan den tränas i svagt märkta datasätt. Resultaten visade framgångsrik utbildning av båda modellerna tillsammans med generalisering i en separat datasats. Jämförelsen visade att TCN presterade bättre än LSTM, men endast marginellt. Därför kan man från de genomförda experimenten inte uttryckligen dra slutsatsen om TCN övertygande är ett bättre val jämfört med LSTM i samband med instrumentdetektering, men definitivt ett starkt alternativ.

This thesis concerns with the recognition of music instruments from isolated notes. Music instrument recognition is a relatively nascent problem fast gaining importance not only because of the academic value the problem provides, but also for the potential it has in being able to realize applications like music content analysis, music transcription etc. Line spectral frequencies are proposed as features for music instrument recognition and shown to perform better than Mel filtered cepstral coefficients and linear prediction cepstral coefficients. Assuming a linear model of sound production, features based on the prediction residual, which represents the excitation signal, is proposed. Four improvements are proposed for classification using Gaussian mixture model (GMM) based classifiers. One of them involves characterizing the regions of overlap between classes in the feature space to improve classification. Applications to music instrument recognition and speaker recognition are shown. An experiment is proposed for discovering the hierarchy in music instrument in a data-driven manner. The hierarchy thus discovered closely corresponds to the hierarchy defined by musicians and experts and therefore shows that the feature space has successfully captured the required features for music instrument characterization.

The aim of the study was to find out how working conditions in different music schools and schools of arts are, or has been, for teachers on oboe and bassoon, and how the conditions may affect the regrowth of these instruments. The interviews were performed with teachers on bassoon and oboe; two active teachers and one former teacher. Experience shows that it can be difficult to recruit these instruments to orchestra courses for young people. An assumption was made in the study that the conditions for these instruments in the schools of music and arts are not the best, which was indicative of the survey. The results of the study show that the interviewed teachers on these instruments struggle with a whole series of problems such as poor facilities, too short teaching time, few students that require many hourly based employments and many time consuming journeys. It also shows that adaption has occurred to different conditions on different schools where also the recruiting of students works differently. The problem can be traced to scarce financial resources, absence of a national structure for music development or principals with indifference, ignorance or lack of mandate from the politics to take responsibility for a good qualitative development that leads to diversity and a vibrant music scene. / Syftet med studien har varit att ta reda på hur arbetsförhållanden på olika musik- och kulturskolor, där några pedagoger verkar eller ha verkat, påverkar återväxten för instrumenten oboe och fagott. Intervjuer har genomförts med två aktiva pedagoger och en före detta pedagog. Erfarenheter visar att det kan vara svårt att rektytera dessa instrument till orkesterkurser för unga. Ett antagande gjordes i studien att förutsättningarna på musik- och kulturskolorna för dessa instrument inte är det bästa vilket var vägledande för undersökningen. Resultatet av studien visar att intervjuade pedagoger på dessa instrument brottas med en hel rad problem såsom dåliga lokaler, för kort undervisningstid, få elever som kräver många olika timanställningar och många tidskrävande resor. Den visar också att anpassning har skett till olika förhållanden på olika skolor där även rekryteringen ser olika ut. Problematiken kan härledas till för knappa ekonomiska resurser, avsaknaden av en nationell struktur för musikens utveckling, eller chefers ointresse, okunskap eller avsaknad av uppdrag från politiskt håll att ta ansvar för en god kvalitativ utveckling som leder till mångfald och ett levande musikliv.

Cette thèse propose d’observer les ambiances sonores (i.e. sons, cris, paroles, bruits, moments de silence, etc.) et les musiques qui interviennent dans les cultes de la Mère des dieux, de Dionysos et de Déméter dans l’Athènes archaïque et classique, et d’en cerner les fonctions et significations. La composante sonore des cultes grecs, peu prise en considération dans les reconstructions historiques de la religion grecque ancienne, du moins jusqu’à récemment, joue un rôle pourtant fondamental tant dans la pratique rituelle que dans le récit. Ces deux formes d’expression de la religion – pratique rituelle et récit – sont d’ailleurs indissociables dans les témoignages anciens, de la même façon que les éléments imaginaires truffent les représentations inspirées de l’expérience rituelle. En examinant différents types de sources, parmi lesquelles les œuvres littéraires et les images sur vase demeurent les plus nombreuses et les plus instructives, et en abordant les différents aspects cultuels (pratique et récit / éléments imaginaires et réels) comme un ensemble cohérent, la phonosphère propre à chaque divinité se révèle de façon parfois frappante. Une telle démarche globalisante permet de mieux saisir l’expérience religieuse des Grecs, tout en favorisant une meilleure appréhension de certains phénomènes encore aujourd’hui sujets à controverses, par exemple le « ménadisme » et l’extatisme rituel. Car il ressort des témoignages que la musique, les sons et le silence, par leur pouvoir de communication notamment, remplissent des fonctions précises dans la pratique et le récit. Alors que certains sons et musiques visent à plaire à la divinité et, ainsi, à gagner sa faveur, par exemple, d’autres, investis de l’empreinte sonore de la divinité, exercent une emprise sur les mortels, emprise expérimentée dans le cadre de la pratique rituelle comme un moment de contact avec le divin. De cette emprise exercée par le moyen de la musique et des sons, peut résulter, dans certains cas, une guérison, une régulation des instabilités internes. Par ailleurs, la terminologie sonore dans la littérature se montre pratiquement toujours porteuse de sens, et permet de reconnaître l’univers évoqué et la ou les figure(s) divine(s) concernée(s). Répertorier les termes sonores propres à l’un ou l’autre culte facilite le repérage des associations établies entre certaines divinités, permettant ainsi des interprétations plus justes de certains passages de la littérature. D’un autre côté, la recherche sur les instruments de musique révèle des goûts et des tendances, possiblement attribuables dans certains cas à des changements significatifs survenus dans la sphère religieuse et politique de l’Athènes de la fin du Ve siècle. Par exemple, l’introduction progressive du tympanon dans l’univers dionysiaque à partir de la deuxième moitié du Ve siècle suggère une appropriation du culte de la Mère de dieux et de son instrument de prédilection par le peuple athénien. Cette observation, basée sur des témoignages de l’époque, contribue à illustrer la distinction que faisaient les Athéniens entre une religion considérée comme ancestrale, et une autre aux multiples formes et pour ainsi dire « additionnelle ». À cet égard, observer les éléments sonores dans les cultes mène non seulement à une meilleure connaissance desdits cultes, mais également à une meilleure compréhension de la société athénienne et des événements importants qui l’ont marquée. L’étude des sons, de leur place et de leurs fonctions dans la pratique et les récits contribue à l’approfondissement des connaissances concernant la religion grecque et les procédés de communication qu’elle met en place entre la sphère des mortels et celle des dieux, tout en favorisant une meilleure définition du milieu social et culturel dans lequel elle a évolué. / This thesis will consider the sound atmosphere (including cries, speech, noises and moments of silence) and music in the cults of the Great Mother, Dionysus and Demeter in Archaic and Classical Greece and their roles and meanings. Until recently, the audible component of Greek cults has rarely been considered by historical reconstructions. However, it played a fundamental role both in ritual practice and tales. These two expressions of religion – ritual practice and tales – are inextricably linked in ancient storytelling, just as representations inspired by the rituals are rife with imaginary elements. Examining different types of sources – of which the literary works and painted vases are the most numerous and enlightening – and considering the various cultural ingredients (tales and ritual practice, the imaginary and the real) as a coherent whole can provide insight into the phonosphere unique to each god in striking ways. This comprehensive approach leads to a better understanding of the religious experience of the Greeks, including certain phenomena that remain controversial today, such as maenadism and ecstatic ritual. The sources reveal that through their communicative power, music, sounds and silence filled specific functions in the ritual practices and tales. While some sounds and music were intended to please the god and hence gain favour, others bearing the god’s sonic signature held sway over mortals during rituals as a moment of personal contact with the divine. In certain cases, this aural sway could bring healing and a balancing of internal instability. Moreover, the sound vocabulary found in the literature almost invariably carries meaning that makes it possible to recognize the world and divine figures it describes. Cataloguing the sound vocabularies of individual cults/deities helps identify the relationships between certain gods. This in turn can clarify interpretations of certain passages in the literature. Similarly, research on musical instruments reveals tastes and trends, which could be attributed to the significant 5 changes in the religious and political spheres of Athens in the late 5th century BC. For example, the progressive introduction of the tympanum to the Dionysian world starting in the first half of the 5th century BC suggests that Athenians appropriated the cult of the Great Mother and the instrument most commonly associated with it. This observation, based on contemporary accounts, corroborates the distinction Athenians made between an ancestral religion and an “additional” multifaceted one. In that respect, investigating the sound atmosphere in these cults improves our understanding of not only the cults themselves, but also Athenian society as a whole and the milestone events that shaped it. Studying the sounds and their place and function in ritual practice and tales deepens our knowledge of Greek religion and the methods of communication it established between the realms of mortals and the gods. It also allows us to better characterize the social and cultural environments in which it developed