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abstract: The normal playing range of a brass instrument includes a definitive stopping note in the instrument's low register. However, players have the ability to manipulate their lips to extend the low range beyond this point; notes sounding below an instrument's normal playing range are called pedal tones. The history of pedal tones in trumpet performance and pedagogy has long been a source of confusion and misinformation. Consequently, this paper also discusses the educational value of using pedal tones, includes a brief history of players and teachers who have formulated pedal tone exercise methods, and examines their use within the six most influential method books that promote the use of pedal tones. The six books are Original Louis Maggio System for Brass by Carlton MacBeth, Double High C in 37 Weeks by Roger Spaulding, Systematic Approach to Daily Practice by Claude Gordon, Trumpet Yoga by Jerome Callet, James Stamp Warm-Ups +Studies by Thomas Stevens, and The Balanced Embouchure by Jeff Smiley. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2014

Two experiments were conducted. The first was a control condition and used the probe signal method similar to Greenberg and Larkin (1968) to see if a filter-like attentional mechanism was acting when listeners were presented with pure tone stimuli in the presence of background noise. The second experiment also used the probe signal method of Greenberg and Larkin (1968) to investigate the extent to which listeners direct their attention to a particular fundamental frequency (f0) when detecting complex tones masked by noise. Twenty adult listeners ranging from 23 years to 54 years with a median age of 28 years participated in both experiments. Of the 20 listeners, 8 were male and 14 were female. Both experiments used a Two Interval Forced Choice (2IFC) procedure. There were two types of trials, the target signal trial and the probe signal trial. The target frequency was presented on 71% of trials, and the probe frequencies on the remaining 29%. The results of Experiment 1 were similar to those obtained in Greenberg and Larkin’s (1968) pioneering study. The 1000 Hz target tone was detected at a significantly higher proportion than probe signals differing in frequency (p < 0.05). Detection scores were observed to be higher when probe signals had a frequency close to the 1000 Hz signal compared to when they had a frequency positioned further from the 1000 Hz target tone. Experiment 2 using complex target tones with f0 of 115 Hz (part 1) and 220 Hz (part 2) revealed a similar pattern to Experiment 1. Listener’s detection scores decreased the further the f0 of probe tones were positioned from the f0 of the target tone, revealing the shape of a band-pass filter. This pattern is consistent with the presence of an auditory attentional filter in the f0 domain for complex tones

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The autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls most involuntary functions of the body. Dysfunctions of the ANS can be life-threatening. However, several critical questions related to cardiovascular and breathing regulations remain unclear. One of the open questions is how the system lose control of the vascular tones under certain circumstances. Using the septic shock model induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in isolated and perfused mesenteric arterial rings, we found the vascular hyporeactivity is attributed to the decreased vasoconstriction to α-adrenoceptor agonists. The endotoxin-induced vasodilation can be intervened with endothelin-1 (ET-1), serotonin (5-HT) or vasopressin, which have never been used in clinical treatment. It is unclear how the excitability of endothelium affects vascular tones. Using optogenetics and transgenic mice with channelrhodopsin expression in endothelial cells (ECs), we found selective activation of the ECs induces a fast, robust, reproducible and long-lasting vasoconstriction in isolated and perfused hearts and kidneys. Breathing control by the ANS within the brain becomes abnormal in certain genetic diseases, such as Rett syndrome with defected norepinephrine (NE) system in locus coeruleus (LC). The LC neurons are hyperexcitable while NE release is deficient. Using optogenetics and double transgenic mice with Mecp2 null and channelrhodopsin expression in LC neurons, we found the NE-ergic modulation of hypoglossal neurons was impaired in transgenic mice, which cannot be improved with optostimulation, suggesting that LC neuronal hyperexcitability may not benefit the NE modulation in Rett syndrome. Collectively, our results provide insight into the autonomic dysfunctions using experimental interventions that have barely been used before.

Since the late seventeenth century, Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) has been acknowledged as one of the great organists and composers of the North German tradition. Nowadays, his free organ preludes are considered both as examples of the Stylus Phantasticus, and also as the repertoire in which he developed most of his innovations. My goal is to analyze these works, interpreting the preludes' pitch and textural organization in terms of seventeenth-century music theory, in order to incorporate an awareness of the organist's perspective, and to further the appreciation of Buxtehude's contributions to the organ tradition of his time. Most of the analyses of the preludes written during the past 34 years have focused on explicating their texture, and pitch organization in terms of eighteenth-century tonality as well as the seventeenth-century tradition of musical rhetoric. In contrast, William Porter (1986) and Geoffrey Webber (2007) have analyzed the preludes in terms of a theoretical system contemporary to Buxtehude: the psalm-tone tonalities. Their analyses also draw on Harold Powers's theory (1981) regarding the transition from psalm tones to keys, which proposes an alternative system of church tones based on the organ practice of the early seventeenth century. In my analysis of Buxtehude's free organ preludes I aim to build on these insights and study the musical content in contemporary terms, by integrating a church-tone analysis of the pitch organization with a rhetorical analysis of the texture. My findings suggest an awareness of the church tones as an organizing factor in the preludes' compositional process.

Non-native tones are considered challenging for adult second language speakers to perceive and produce. The current study examined the effect of a laboratory-based intensive training in improving American English speakers’ tone production. Participants’ task was to repeat Mandarin words after the model. There were two conditions in the experiment: in one condition, participants did not get any external feedback; whereas in the other condition, participants received detailed visual feedback, which was the pitch contour of their tone production alongside the native version. Eight participants completed training with no feedback and another eight participants were trained with visual feedback. Results revealed that participants in both groups did not improve their tone production after training, and participants trained with visual feedback did not show more improvement than those trained with no feedback. Given the lack of improvement in participants’ tone production after training, methodological and theoretical limitations with respect to the use of a repetition-based training paradigm are discussed.

Speech recognition has only recently been applied to Cantonese. Considerable effort, however, has been spent in recognizing Mandarin, the standard dialect of Chinese. Prior to this thesis, the only published work on monosyllabic Cantonese tone recognition is from Tan Lee et al. (1993,1995). This thesis is the first of its kind in that it explores memory-based learning as a viable approach for Cantonese tone recognition. The memory-based learning algorithm employed in this thesis outperforms the highly respected and widely used neural network approach. Various numbers of tones and features are modeled to find the best method for feature selection and extraction. To further optimize this approach, experiments are performed to isolate the best feature weighting method, best class voting weights method, and the best number of k-values to implement. A detailed error analysis is also reported. This thesis will prove valuable as a future reference for memory-based learning in application to more complex tasks such as continuous speech tone recognition.

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Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.) PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The spectra of low piano tones have long been known to display unusual, inharmonic characteristics. Surprisingly, precisely this property allowed for fairly successful generation of artificial piano tones by the frequency modulation (FM) synthesis techniques pioneered at Stanford in the 1970s. Though FM synthesis techniques are largely empirical in nature, the close correspondence between the spectra of the FM simulation of piano tones and their actual spectra suggests the hypothesis that there may be a deeper physical connection between frequency modulation and the timbre of string instruments. Recent, highly sophisticated numerical simulations of the physics of pianos have reproduced these characteristic spectra using a geometrically exact form of the equations for vibrating strings. We take these equations as a starting point for an analytical investigation into the connection between modulated waves and instrumental timbre. The content of the investigation is primarily theoretical, establishing approaches and equations which may be used for further exploration. We proceed by deriving the equations of motion from variational principles. The Lagrangian is given careful treatment so that the transverse and longitudinal directions of motion are clearly separated and their coupling is collected in a single interaction term. Approximate equations of motion are then derived. These are shown to have a structure that supports modulated wave behavior. A general form of the solution is offered which has the form a traveling wave plus a correction term. Understanding the correction term demands the solution of a complex set of nonlinear integral equations, though suggestions are made on how determining certain properties of the integral equations would be sufficient for significant insight into the role of modulation effects in the production of distinct musical timbres. Finally, another form of the solution is offered, one more amenable to iterative solution techniques but less transparent in terms of frequency-domain behavior. A discussion regarding the initial conditions and the requirements for the convergence of either of these forms of the solution is given. / 2031-01-01