Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Houston, 1998. / Includes the author's textbook: Music literacy for singers : a comprehensive and sequential system for building basic sightsinging skills (1 score (iv, 577 leaves)) which contains sight-singing exercises for 1-4 voices. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-57).

Thesis--University of Nebraska, 1958. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves, 144-146).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-198).

Musical engagement can take many forms, from the lone pianist rehearsing in their study, to the headphone-wielding teenager on the bus, or even the orchestral musician on stage. Although much music research dissociates the performer from the listener (a differentiation starkly demonstrated in the layout of the concert hall), in this thesis I consider the performer and listener as two sides of the same coin. This thesis therefore empirically investigates musical prediction in the solo performer and the solo listener, then brings these together by investigating musical predictions in a turn-taking musical interaction. I begin by presenting a theoretical account of musical prediction. I propose a common mechanism to underlie predictions during both music performance and music listening, based on motor simulation of observed (seen or heard) music. This theory is developed from that of Pickering and Garrod (2013), and is suggested to span communicative joint action contexts. I then present three sets of experiments. In the first, I use eye-tracking to show that pianists incrementally process musical progressions during sight-reading. By measuring the rate of regression from an anomalous musical bar, I demonstrate that musicians look back to earlier portions of a melody more often when they read a bar that forms a less common musical progression than when they read a bar that forms a more common musical progression. This effect parallels that found for anomalous word reading in language, and provides a promising new paradigm through which to investigate music processing. In the second set of experiments, I use the timing of turn-end judgements to show that non-expert music listeners use tonality cues to predict the end of a musical solo. By presenting listeners with musical turns in two different styles: jazz improvisation or free improvisation, I show that the use of a tonal framework facilitates the accuracy of turn-end judgements. I confirm that this benefit is based on tonal information by filtering the extracts to either include or exclude pitch information. When pitch information is removed from the (tonal) jazz improvisations, turn-end accuracy falls. No such detriment is induced by removing pitch information for the (non-tonal) free improvisations, or by removing other spectral information. In the third set of experiments, I use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate turn-taking. Turn-taking involves listening to a partner, predicting when they will end and hence when to come in oneself, and finally entering for one’s own part accurately. In my first experiment I apply TMS to the primary motor cortex and suggest that the predictability of a partner’s part modulates the timecourse of one’s own motor preparation. In my second experiment I apply TMS to the dorsal premotor cortex (involved in motor simulation) and demonstrate that when a partner’s part is in one’s own motor repertoire, the dPMC plays a causal role in the accuracy of one’s own performance. This involvement of the dPMC is consistent with motor simulation being used to predict a partner’s ending in a turn-taking context. Together this set of experiments explores prediction in music production and comprehension. My studies of music reading and music listening indicate that prediction is similar across comprehension domains. My studies of interaction indicate that comprehension may depend on production processes. I suggest that together my findings therefore imply that predictions made by performers and listeners are based on similar processes, and more specifically, that prediction during comprehension may involve motor simulation.

abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes, preferences, and practices of Arizona high school choral directors towards sight-singing skills, and student success in group sight-singing evaluations, the teaching of sight singing including preference for a specific sight-singing system, and the instructional practices employed in daily rehearsals. High school choral directors from the state of Arizona (N = 86) completed an online researcher-designed questionnaire that gathered demographic information as well as information regarding directors' attitudes towards sight-singing instruction, which exercises are used for sight-singing instruction, and directors' self-perceived ability not only to sight sing but also to teach sight singing. Independent variables such as teaching experience, level of education, the system they were trained to use as a student, the system they currently use in the classroom, their self-perceived ability to sight sing, their self-perceived ability to teach sight singing, their choir's sight-singing rating at festival, and their daily instructional practices (as measured by minutes per week of sight-singing instruction) were used to investigate potential differences in attitudinal responses. Multivariate analyses of variance were conducted to investigate potential differences in responses according to various independent variables. Significant differences were found in responses to statements of the importance of sight-singing instruction according to level of teaching experience and time spent on sight-singing instruction in the classroom. No significant differences were found for statements of directors' attitudes toward sight-singing instruction according to level of education or prior training. Results indicate that Arizona high school directors are a seasoned and highly education group of professionals who understand and believe strongly that sight-singing instruction should be a part of their choral music rehearsals. These directors use a variety of systems and resources to teach sight-singing and all dedicate time to sight-singing each week in their rehearsals. Despite the overwhelming support for teaching sight-singing in daily choral rehearsals, there is a lack of participation in choral adjudication festivals where group sight singing is assessed. Further research is suggested to investigate the lack of participation of Arizona high school choral teachers in the group sight-singing component of the state choral adjudication festivals. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music Education 2013

Music reading is a complex skill. In order to better understand the reading process and evaluate the effects of teaching intervention, it is essential to measure this skill. Research in the field of music pedagogy has provided a number of studies concerned with the measurement of music reading, using varying methods of assessment. However, the corpus of literature is lacking in organization and clarity, in part due to the fact that the assessment methods come from diverse disciplines and the studies themselves may present a number of inconsistencies. Using a research model based on systematic review, the objective of the thesis is to provide an organized synopsis of music reading assessment methods. The thesis has identified and compiled a corpus of 88 relevant studies, with an emphasis on experimental keyboard research in the Western, classical, tonal tradition, though studies with woodwind, brass, percussion, and vocal instrumentation are included as necessary. The assessment methods employed in the studies are classified according to one of three broad categories: test measurements, eye-tracking measurements, and neurological measurements. The purpose of this guide is to be a reference for researchers and educational practitioners, and includes comparison and summary charts and a concluding index.

The primary purpose of this research paper was to study performance anxiety among middle school students during a sight-reading audition. Furthermore, this sutdy asks whether the manner in which directions are presented by the sight-reading adjudicator during the course of an audition has significant impact on the performance outcome. Participants (n=75) were middle school students attending a highly rated band program in the Miami-Dade County (Miami, FL) area. By use of investigator-derived surveys, levels of trait and state anxiety were determined before and after the sight-reading performance. Means and standard deviations were calculated for perceived anxiety and for the resulting scores of the performance. A t-testcompared the control and experimental groups perceived level of anxiety, where statistically significant results were found at the pp

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Underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) has attracted increasing interest for data transfer in various underwater activities. However, the complexity of the water environment poses considerable challenges to establish aligned and reliable UWOC links. Therefore, solutions that are capable of relieving the requirements on positioning, acquisition and tracking (PAT) are highly demanded. Different from the conventional blue-green light band utilized in UWOC, ultraviolet (UV) light is featured with low solar background noise, non-line-of-sight (NLOS) and good secrecy. The proposed work is directed towards the demonstration and evaluating the feasibility of high- speed NLOS UWOC for easing the strict requirement on alignment, and thus circumvent the issues of scintillation, deep-fading, and complete signal blockage presented in conventional LOS UWOC. This work was first started with the investigation of proper NLOS configurations. Path loss (PL) was chosen as a figure-of-merit for link performance. With the understanding of favorable NLOS UWOC configurations, we established a 377-nm laser-based, the first-of-its-kind NLOS UWOC link. The practicality of such NLOS UWOC links has been further tested in a field trial. Besides the underwater communication links, UV-based NLOS is also appealing to be the link for direct communication across the wavy water-air interface. Investigations for such a direct communication link have been carried out to study data rate, coverage and robustness to the dynamic wave movement, based on the performance of different modulation schemes, including non-return-to-zero (NRZ)-OOK and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). Further this study, an in-Red Sea canal field in-situ test has been conducted, showing strong robustness of the system. In addition, an in-diving pool drone-aided real-application deployment has been carried on. The trial results indicate link stability, which alleviates the issues brought about by the misalignment and mobility in harsh environments, paving the way towards real applications. Our studies pave the way foreventual applications of UWOC byrelieving the strict requirements on PAT using UV-based NLOS. Such modality is much sought-after for implementing robust, secure, and high-speed UWOC links in harsh oceanic environments.

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