Treatise (D.M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.M.) Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Michael B. Bakan, Florida State University, College of Music. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed 6-26-07). Document formatted into pages; contains 71 pages. Includes biographical sketch. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D.M.A.)--Arizona State University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [91]-92).

This experiment was based upon earlier research involving beginning musicians' perception of how handedness interferes with their performance of melodic instruments, (VanAlstine, 2006) and the analysis of earlier studies by Laeng and Park (1999) involving the impact of handedness in playing the piano traditionally and in a "reversed" fashion. This study was conducted involving the performance of musical examples on the recorder where the subjects played in a traditional manner, as well as with reversed hand position. Laeng and Park found left-handed beginning and experienced musician's grouped subjects performed better upon a reversed keyboard than performing upon a traditional keyboard, Laeng and Park (1999). VanAlstine hypothesized that beginning musicians would play more correct notes with their dominant hand when playing the melodic examples, whereas advanced students would show less specialization when performing the musical examples with either hand. There were 60 subjects total, 30 beginning players from Carterville Intermediate School and 30 advanced players from the southern Illinois area, including the Southern Illinois University Carbondale School of Music. Subjects were given an Edinburgh-styled handedness test to identify them as either left- or right-handed performers. The subjects were further divided into groups of 15 beginning left-handed players, 15 beginning right-handed players, 15 advanced left-handed players and 15 advanced right-handed players. Subjects played short musical examples on the recorder with traditional fingering and then with reversed hands. The performance was evaluated by two judges. Beginning right-handed musicians who performed upon the "reversed" recorder played as well as performers who were left-handed and played the soprano recorder traditionally, with their dominant hand on the top half of the instrument. The left- and right- handed advanced musicians played the musical examples equally well in both the traditional style and in the "reversed style."

abstract: Music training is associated with measurable physiologic changes in the auditory pathway. Benefits of music training have also been demonstrated in the areas of working memory, auditory attention, and speech perception in noise. The purpose of this study was to determine whether long-term auditory experience secondary to music training enhances the ability to detect, learn, and recall new words. Participants consisted of 20 young adult musicians and 20 age-matched non-musicians. In addition to completing word recognition and non-word detection tasks, each participant learned 10 nonsense words in a rapid word-learning task. All tasks were completed in quiet and in multi-talker babble. Next-day retention of the learned words was examined in isolation and in context. Cortical auditory evoked responses to vowel stimuli were recorded to obtain latencies and amplitudes for the N1, P2, and P3a components. Performance was compared across groups and listening conditions. Correlations between the behavioral tasks and the cortical auditory evoked responses were also examined. No differences were found between groups (musicians vs. non-musicians) on any of the behavioral tasks. Nor did the groups differ in cortical auditory evoked response latencies or amplitudes, with the exception of P2 latencies, which were significantly longer in musicians than in non-musicians. Performance was significantly poorer in babble than in quiet on word recognition and non-word detection, but not on word learning, learned-word retention, or learned-word detection. CAEP latencies collapsed across group were significantly longer and amplitudes were significantly smaller in babble than in quiet. P2 latencies in quiet were positively correlated with word recognition in quiet, while P3a latencies in babble were positively correlated with word recognition and learned-word detection in babble. No other significant correlations were observed between CAEPs and performance on behavioral tasks. These results indicated that, for young normal-hearing adults, auditory experience resulting from long-term music training did not provide an advantage for learning new information in either favorable (quiet) or unfavorable (babble) listening conditions. Results of the present study suggest that the relationship between music training and the strength of cortical auditory evoked responses may be more complex or too weak to be observed in this population. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Speech and Hearing Science 2017

Pain and performance anxiety (PA) are common problems among string players. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess and compare PA and prevalence rates and locations of pain in violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists. Subjects completed a questionnaire that included sections on demographics, musical background, practice habits, musculoskeletal problems, non-musculoskeletal problems, and PA. Anthropometric data were gathered on all 115 subjects. Results show that there are differences in both pain and PA across instrument groups. Violinists reported the highest number of pain sites, followed by violists, bassists, and cellists. The left shoulder was the most-often reported pain site, followed by the neck and right shoulder. Aching was the most cited term selected to describe pain. Several anthropometric indices were significantly correlated with pain, notably right thumb to index finger span in both cellists and bassists. In all instrument groups, at least one pain site was significantly correlated with one of four PA questions. Results warrant the development of intervention strategies and further study of the relationship between pain and performance anxiety.

In this investigation, the aim was to explore optimal performance experiences through the lived experience of flow amongst professional full-time and part-time orchestral musicians. The study followed an IPA approach and data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Eight professional orchestral musicians took part in the study, three full-time and five part-time. The study endeavoured to identify factors that influence flow positively and negatively and to ascertain whether there are factors unique to South African context. The findings identified four superordinate themes: factors that influence flow, performance environment, impact of life experiences, and comparing the flow experiences of full-time and part-time orchestral musicians. The first superordinate theme, Factors that influence flow, included subordinate themes instrument, repertoire, conductor, venue, fellow-players and balancing the level of challenge and skill. The second superordinate theme, Performance environment included the following two subordinate themes: solo-, chamber- and orchestral settings, and rehearsal- or performance settings. The third superordinate theme, Impact of life experiences, explored maturity, emotional investment as well as life experiences as subordinate themes. Lastly, the differences between the experiences of full-time- and part-time orchestral musicians regarding their view of the musical activities in which they engage, formed the fourth superordinate theme. This theme included responses about income, available time and frequency of playing, pressure and playing music for the love of it. In conclusion, it became apparent that both full-time and part-time professional orchestral musicians can relate to the experience of flow and that multiple factors exist which can positively or negatively affect their flow experiences. / Mini Dissertation (MMus)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Music / MMus / Unrestricted

The purpose of the present study was to examine the ability of musicians to preattentively process musical and phonemic information, as assessed by event-related potentials (ERPs), compared with nonmusicians. Participants were musicians (N=22; at least 10 years of formal training) and nonmusicians (N=22; no musical training) from the Virginia Tech community. Participants focused on a video and were instructed to ignore auditory stimuli. Simultaneous to the video presentation, auditory stimuli (60dB) in an oddball paradigm (80% standard, 20% deviant) were presented in 4 conditions (500 stimuli each): chord, phoneme, chord interval, and tone interval. EEG was recorded during each condition. The mismatch negativity (MMN) was identified by subtracting ERPs to standard auditory stimuli from ERPs to deviant auditory stimuli for each of the four qualitatively different conditions. Superior preattentive auditory processing in musicians was found most obviously during the presentation of chords, with no evidence of such superiority during phonemic processing and interval processing. As predicted, during the tone interval condition, musicians had a greater MMN peak amplitude in the central region, and had a greater MMN mean amplitude in the anterior frontal, frontal, frontocentral, and central regions. Contrary to the hypothesis, this did not emerge in the chord, phoneme, or chord interval conditions. As predicted, the MMN latency was shorter for musicians than nonmusicians in the frontocentral region during the phoneme condition. Contrary to the hypothesis, this did not emerge in the chord, chord interval, or tone interval conditions. Differential hemisphere effects were found between groups for MMN latency in the phoneme condition but not the others. Contrary to the hypotheses, no differences were found for MMN amplitude. As predicted, and consistent with Koelsch et al. (1999), musicians were more likely to exhibit an MMN than nonmusicians in the chord condition. Finally, there was the expected stronger preattentive processing in the right hemisphere MMN for the musical stimuli. Contrary to the literature, there was an unexpected stronger right hemisphere bias for phonemic stimuli. / Master of Science

The term creativity will be used in this paper to denote the unique imposition of the personality upon, in this case, the instrument selected and the work performed. The result of the creativity, the performance, is in the indefinable but, to a competent judge, readily recognizable area of true artistry, and represents, at best, a spontaneity resulting from interaction with unconscious processes after the conscious mastery of the technical problems of the particular instrument. For the purposes of this study, May's definition of anxiety is as good and workable as any: "Anxiety is the apprehension cued off by a threat to some value which the individual holds essential to his existence as a personality. In the case of the musician, the threatened value is his desire (and necessity, in terms of his self concept) to pursue music as a career. When his career is threatened or depreciated, the result is anxiety, which manifests itself in various forms of irrational behavior, physical symptoms, and inadequate adjustments to everyday situations.

[Truncated abstract] This study extends understanding of the careers of classical instrumental musicians within the cultural industries, and ascertains the extent to which professional practice is reflected within current classical performance-based music education and training. Little is known about the careers of classically trained instrumental musicians in terms of the activities in which they engage and the skills and attributes used to sustain their professional practice, and there is also widespread lack of understanding about the music industry and the wider cultural industries. The extent to which education and training reflects the careers of music performance graduates has gained heightened exposure at the same time as higher education institutions have become increasingly accountable for the employability of graduates, and yet much of the available literature has only tangential relevance and there remains a shortage of literature relating to the complex area of creative practice. The research approach for the study bridges both the interpretive and normative paradigms. Using survey and interview methods, the study employs three distinct but interrelated data collections to investigate sustainable professional practice through analysis of musicians’ careers, performance-based education and training, and the cultural industries. The study identifies the longitudinal characteristics of musicians’ professional practice and presents in a conditional matrix the intrinsic and extrinsic influences that impact upon it. The study proposes a practitioner-focussed Arts Cultural Practice (ACP) framework that consists of four practitioner-focussed, non-hierarchical groups which were determined through analysis of the major foci characterising roles within the cultural industries. As such, the ACP framework represents a new paradigm of sustainable practice that circumvents existing barriers; submitting a non-hierarchical view of cultural practice that clearly indicates the potential for an exciting diversity of holistic practice often not considered by practitioners. The ACP curricular model posits the collaborative delivery of generic skills across artforms. This study substantiates the generic skills used by artists throughout the cultural industries, and confirms the rationale for education and training which considers the sustainability of music graduates’ careers as arts cultural practitioners. Thus, individual strengths and talents should be developed according to the intrinsic and extrinsic influences which drive the passion for arts practice.