Backing tracks/play-along materials: origins of several currently popular platforms and strategies for their use.

The objective of this research is to discuss if the use of backing tracks/play-along materials can be an effective method for musical development. For this end, I interviewed six influential musicians who answered particular questions in order to have a better understanding about the real-world scenario of the use of backing track materials. Based on their answers, I found that the learning engagement and/or musical development happen when specific strategies while using such materials are made

Proceedings of the 25th International Seminar of the ISME Commission on Research. Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa, Brazil

This book includes twenty-three contributions developed form papers presented at the 2014 Research Commission Seminar of the International Society for Music Education (ISME). This was the 25th biennial ISME Research Commission Seminar, making it the most established research gathering of its type in the world. Over three hundred and seventy pages of peer-reviewed contributions are penned by scholars from the five continents working in the field’s state-of-the-art. Embracing diverse methodologies authors focus on topics including early childhood, inclusion, creativity, performance, perception, instrumental teaching, teacher education, primary, post-primary and informal education. Founded in 1954, affiliated to UNESCO and present in over eighty countries, ISME is the premiere international organisation for music education

Proceedings of the 25th International Seminar of the ISME Commission on Research. Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa, Brazil

This book includes twenty-three contributions developed form papers presented at the 2014 Research Commission Seminar of the International Society for Music Education (ISME). This was the 25th biennial ISME Research Commission Seminar, making it the most established research gathering of its type in the world. Over three hundred and seventy pages of peer-reviewed contributions are penned by scholars from the five continents working in the field’s state-of-the-art. Embracing diverse methodologies authors focus on topics including early childhood, inclusion, creativity, performance, perception, instrumental teaching, teacher education, primary, post-primary and informal education. Founded in 1954, affiliated to UNESCO and present in over eighty countries, ISME is the premiere international organisation for music education

The Symphony of State: São Paulo\u27s Department of Culture, 1922-1938

In 1920s-30s São Paulo, Brazil, leaders of the vanguard artistic movement known as “modernism” began to argue that national identity came not from shared values or even cultural practices but rather by a shared way of thinking, which they variously designated as Brazil’s “racial psychology,” “folkloric unconscious,” and “national psychology.” Building on turn-of-the-century psychological and anthropological theories, the group diagnosed Brazil’s national mind as characterized by “primitivity” and in need of a program of psychological development. The group rose to political power in the 1930s, placing the artists in a position to undertake such a project. The Symphony of State charts this previously unexamined intellectual project and explains why elite leaders believed music to be the most-promising strategy for developing the national mind beyond primitivity. In 1935, they founded the São Paulo Department of Culture and Recreation in order to fund music education, train ethnomusicologists, commission symphonies, and host performances across the city. Until now, historians of twentieth-century Brazil have praised music as a critical site for marginalized groups to sound out political protest. But The Symphony of State shows the reverse has also been true: elite groups used music as a top-down civilizing project designed to naturalize racial hierarchies and justify class difference. The intellectual history portion of the dissertation turns on archival sources, newspaper accounts, personal correspondence, modernist literature, and the period’s scholarly journals. The examination of literary form, discourse analysis, and marginalia lends depth to a carefully-documented study of ideas. Then, The Symphony of State brings to bear an innovative reading of ethnographic field books, vinyl records, and music scores to show that the department’s scholarship and symphonic compositions alike furthered the narrative of a nation jeopardized by primitivity. What is more, the department’s composers employed musical properties such as harmony and dissonance as metaphors to convince listeners that a harmonious society required the maintenance of racial and class hierarchies. In bringing further clarity to the department’s intellectual project, the sections featuring music analysis speak to the value of reading music as an historical text. The dissertation accomplishes multiple goals. It uncovers the theory of national psychology driving the musical institution; examines ethnographic material to further understand racial and regional prejudice in the period; and analyzes concert music commissioned and performed by the municipal department. The examination of the musical institution reveals a moment in Brazilian history in which national identity was constructed atop the notion of a shared psychology and in which modernity was believed to come with the musical tuning of the body politic and the training of its mind

The piano works of Leopoldo Miguéz (1850-1902)

Brazilian composer Leopoldo Américo Miguéz (1850–1902) lived in the cosmopolitan city of Rio de Janeiro at a time when the prevailing cultural background of the aristocracy was still prominently European. His entire production consisted of thirty-eight works with opus numbers and few other works that have not yet been published, all of which were influenced by European romantic music traditions while demonstrating no strong connection with Brazilian local and popular culture. He wrote a small quantity of twelve piano works represented in ten opus numbers, one collection of pieces without opus number, and one unpublished piece. These are mostly in short forms such as mazurkas, nocturnes, and character pieces with suggestive titles in the manner of short piano works by Brahms, Chopin, Fauré, Grieg, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Schumann. With few exceptions, no great significance has been attributed to his piano works throughout the written history of Brazilian music. This is partly due to the lingering effect of two lines of negative criticism published during and after his lifetime that hurt his reputation and turned him into an obscure and forgotten composer. One was regarding his symphonic works, which were heavily influenced by Wagner, Berlioz, and Liszt. The other was in the context of an enduring process of nationalization of Brazilian arts and a rupture from European influences in the beginning of the 20th century. The music of Miguéz fell greatly out of favor during this campaign, resulting in lasting damage to his name that has yet to be reversed. The purpose of this dissertation is to draw attention to his pianistic output, asserting its integrity, quality, and valuable contribution to the development of music in Brazil. Biographical information as well as in-depth musical analysis of each piano work are supplied in the course of the narrative. My hope is that by providing and disseminating this information, Leopoldo Miguéz will be better understood, accepted, and more often performed

Language Translation in Localizing Religious Musical Practice

The focus of this Special Issue is language translation in the process of localizing religious musical practice. As an alternative to related concepts (such as contextualization and indigenization), musical localization is presented by ethnomusicologists Monique Ingalls, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, and Zoe Sherinian in Making Congregational Music Local in Christian Communities Worldwide (Routledge, 2018) as an effective way to account for the complex, diverse, and shifting ways in which religious communities embody what it means to be local through their musical practices: Musical localization is the process by which Christian communities take a variety of musical practices - some considered \u27indigenous, \u27 some \u27foreign, \u27 some shared across spatial and cultural divides; some linked to past practice, some innovative - and make them locally meaningful and useful in the construction of Christian beliefs, theology, practice, and identity.https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/books/1064/thumbnail.jp

Language Translation in Localizing Religious Musical Practice

The focus of this Special Issue is language translation in the process of localizing religious musical practice. As an alternative to related concepts (such as contextualization and indigenization), musical localization is presented by ethnomusicologists Monique Ingalls, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, and Zoe Sherinian in Making Congregational Music Local in Christian Communities Worldwide (Routledge, 2018) as an effective way to account for the complex, diverse, and shifting ways in which religious communities embody what it means to be local through their musical practices: “Musical localization is the process by which Christian communities take a variety of musical practices – some considered ‘indigenous,’ some ‘foreign,’ some shared across spatial and cultural divides; some linked to past practice, some innovative – and make them locally meaningful and useful in the construction of Christian beliefs, theology, practice, and identity.” (13) This Special Issue shows the balance of translation priorities that local congregations can weigh as they work, between externally prescribed guidelines and exclusively local realities; between translations more oriented to the source language and culture, making that reality more plain, or to the recipients, ensuring that the meaning is adequately transferred to a new context; and between even the decision to translate or not, perhaps choosing to sing the songs of another culture and language as they are while risking appropriation

Black Music Research Newsletter, Winter 1980

BMR NEWSLETTER is devoted to the encouragement and promotion of scholarship and cultural activity in black American music, and is intended to serve as a medium for the sharing of ideas and information regarding current and future research and musical activities in universities and research centers. Articles: Black Concert and Recital Music /Dominique-Rene de Lerma; Black Music and Musical Analysis: William Grant Still\u27s \u27Songs of Separation\u27 as a Point of Departure /Orin Moe; Deford Bailey /Jessica Janice Jones; Old-Time Black Gospel Quartet Contests /Doug Seroff; Foundation News: Why Applications Fail /the staff of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Announcements and Information; Questions and Answers; Research News. Editors: Samuel A. Floyd, Cynthia Burks. Vol. 4, No. 1. 8 pages.https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cbmrnews/1011/thumbnail.jp

Biomechanical Modelling of Musical Performance: A Case Study of the Guitar

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2517 on 07.20.2017 by CS (TIS)Computer-generated musical performances are often criticised for being unable to match the expressivity found in performances by humans. Much research has been conducted in the past two decades in order to create computer technology able to perform a given piece music as expressively as humans, largely without success. Two approaches have been often adopted to research into modelling expressive music performance on computers. The first focuses on sound; that is, on modelling patterns of deviations between a recorded human performance and the music score. The second focuses on modelling the cognitive processes involved in a musical performance. Both approaches are valid and can complement each other. In this thesis we propose a third complementary approach, focusing on the guitar, which concerns the physical manipulation of the instrument by the performer: a biomechanical approach. The essence of this thesis is a study on capturing, analyzing and modelling information about motor and biomechanical processes of guitar performance. The focus is on speed, precision, and force of a guitarist's left-hand. The overarching questions behind our study are: 1) Do unintentional actions originating from motor and biomechanical functions during musical performance contribute a material "human feel" to the performance? 2) Would it be possible determine and quantify such unintentional actions? 3) Would it be possible to model and embed such information in a computer system? The contributionst o knowledgep ursued in this thesis include: a) An unprecedented study of guitar mechanics, ergonomics, and playability; b) A detailed study of how the human body performs actions when playing the guitar; c) A methodologyt o formally record quantifiable data about such actionsin performance; d) An approach to model such information, and e) A demonstration of how the above knowledge can be embeddedin a system for music performance

Still Dreaming of You: Selena\u27s Discourse with and Continuing Impact on American Musical Culture

Selena Quintanilla Perez continues to circulate in popular culture, including MAC cosmetic lines, a Netflix series, and podcasts. As a result, her cultural influence continues to be passed on and shared with future generations. This thesis focuses on three aspects of Selena and Selena y Los Dinos: Selena’s music, Selena’s performance aesthetic, and Selena’s fandom today. Chapter 1 focuses on Selena y Los Dinos’ American musical influences, particularly studying the songs “Enamorada de ti,” “Missing my Baby,” and “Fotos y Recuerdos” and the presence of American genres of new jack swing, R&B, and rock within them. Chapter 2 focuses on Selena’s crossover album Dreaming of You. Within this chapter Selena’s self-presentation is studied and categorized as representing two parts: Selena’s “personaje” or performance character and Selena’s “persona” or personal presentation. The songs “I Could Fall in Love” and “Dreaming of You” are studied to identify how a Mexican American Latina was marketed to a non-Latinx American musical market. Through musical analysis and reception study, these songs reveal that Selena was marketed as a stereotypical “Latin lover” to non-Latinx American audiences. Chapter 3 explores Selena’s digital fandom and the use of digital fan labor to preserve Selena’s legacy in popular culture. Through ethnographic study, four creators of Selena tribute social media accounts are interviewed to explore the world of Selena’s internet. Selena’s fans utilize digital fan labor both as “worker” and “entrepreneur,” as Selena is no longer alive to continue her career. Selena’s fandom allows for fans to showcase both sides of Selena’s self-presentation as well as participate in Selena’s commercialization, including circulating information regarding Selena’s memorabilia through fan meeting events, Selena tribute Facebook pages, group chats, and vlogs. Her legacy lives on through her family and her fans, who continue to advocate for Selena to be remembered not because of her music, or her beauty, but because of who she was