A Recording, Performance Guide, and Composer Interviews: Six New Original Works for Trios Involving Saxophone, Commissioned for the Rogue Trio and Lotus

abstract: This project includes a recording, composer biographies, performance guides, and composer questionnaires for seven original works commissioned for either the Rogue Trio or Lotus. The members of the Rogue Trio are violinist Kathleen Strahm, saxophonist Justin Rollefson, and pianist Mary Cota. Lotus’s members include Samuel Detweiler, Justin Rollefson, and Kristen Zelenak on saxophone. Both ensembles are based in Tempe, Arizona. All seven original compositions were recorded at Tempest Recording in February of 2018. The first piece, Four Impersonations (2016), was commissioned by the Rogue Trio and written by Theo Chandler (b.1992) for violin, soprano saxophone and piano. The second piece was written by Spencer Arias (b. 1990) titled He Said There Was No Sound (2015) for violin, alto saxophone, and piano. The final work is titled Cabinet Meeting (2017), composed by Zachary Green (b. 1993) for violin, alto and tenor saxophone, and piano. The first piece commissioned by Lotus and composed by Spencer Arias is titled As I escape, the water calms (2017) for soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, and tenor saxophone. The second piece was composed by Graham Cohen (b. 1999), titled Introduction and Toccata (2017), written for soprano, alto, and baritone saxophones. The third piece, titled Everything that rises, was written by David “Clay” Mettens (b. 1990) in 2014 for three soprano saxophones. Samuel Detweiler, Justin Rollefson and Tyler Flowers originally commissioned this piece. The final piece commissioned by Lotus was written by Matthew Kennedy (b. 1987) titled Triceratops: tasty grooves for saxophone trio (2017) for alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones.Dissertation/ThesisFour Impersonations, Movement I: An outwardly-confident adolescent demanding recognition - Theo ChandlerFour Impersonations, Movement II: A grumpy hermit ignoring the attention of a suitor - Theo ChandlerFour Impersonations, Movement III: A skinny, shy boy standing in the rain - Theo ChandlerFour Impersonations, Movement IV: Subordinates mocking an authority figure - Theo ChandlerHe Said There Was No Sound - Spencer AriasCabinet Meeting, Movement I: Introduction - Zachary GreenCabinet Meeting, Movement II: Jared Kushner, mysterious robot - Zachary GreenCabinet Meeting, Movement III: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, lonesome cowboy - Zachary GreenCabinet Meeting, Movement IV: Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci, in candid conversation with the New Yorker - Zachary GreenCabinet Meeting, Movement V: Betsy DeVos Secretary of Education - Zachary GreenCabinet Meeting, Movement VI: Ben Carson Secretary of Housing and Urban Development - Zachary GreenCabinet Meeting, Movement VII: Attorney General Jeff Sessions, responding to questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee - Zachary GreenAs I escape, the water calms - Spencer AriasIntroduction and Toccata - Graham CohenEverything that rises - David “Clay” MettensTriceratops - Matthew KennedyDoctoral Dissertation Music 201

Towards Anthropomorphic Robot Thereminist

Theremin is an electronic musical instrument considered to be the most difficult to play which requires the players hands to have high precision and stability as any position change within proximity of the instruments antennae can make a difference to the pitch or volume. In a different direction to previous developments of Theremin playing robots, we propose a Humanoid Thereminist System that goes beyond using only one degree of freedom which will open up the possibility for robot to acquire more complex skills, such as aerial fingering and include musical expressions in playing the Theremin. The proposed system consists of two phases, namely calibration phase and playing phase which can be executed independently. During the playing phase, the System takes input from a MIDI file and performs path planning using a combination of minimum energy strategy in joint space and feedback error correction for next playing note. Three experiments have been conducted to evaluate the developed system quantitatively and qualitatively by playing a selection of music files. The experiments have demonstrated that the proposed system can effectively utilise multiple degrees of freedoms while maintaining minimum pitch error margins

iPulse: October 2021

Issues: October 2021 [Fall Week 3]: They\u27re Back and Ready to Win; A Hidden Gem in Boca Raton; Transitioning to Fall on Campus; It\u27s Star Trek Day!\u27 Are Smaller iPhones the Next Big Thing; Growing Up Immersed in Culture; The Biggest Week in Fashion; The Perks of a Multifaceted Student; Welcoming Chloe McCoy October 2021 [Fall Week 4]: Carlos Avendaño is the Conductor of His Own Path; A Hidden Gem in Boca Raton; Calling All Açai Bowl Fanatics; Dune is Coming; Is Amazon Taking Its Technology to Concerts?; Writing Her Way to Success; Celebrities Care About Sustainability; The NFL\u27s Most Surprising Star; A New Face at Lynn October 2021 [Fall Week 5]: A New Location For New Students; 2021 Lynn Concerto Competition Winners Announced; Top 5 Best Fashion Influencers; Delicious Boca Bites; Fan Conventions in Full Swing; Apple\u27s New Feature for Mental Health; More Time and More Opportunities; Playlist of Champions; Seattle\u27s Superhuman; 13 Minutes October 2021 [Fall Week 6]: Hidden Gems of Boca Raton; Flagging Down a New Experience; Lynn Creates Impact for the United Nations SDG Action Week; Animal Testing; Rocky IV: Rematch; College of Communication and Design Announces Plans for NFT Museum; Conservatory Presents In-Person/General Public Guest Artist Recital on Nov. 6; Making a Difference and Inspiring Others; Person on the Street: A Shout-Out to a Teammate; Can the Cats Finally Claw to the Top?; An Olympian Among Ushttps://spiral.lynn.edu/studentnews/1258/thumbnail.jp

A Music-Therapy Robotic Platform for Children with Autism: A Pilot Study

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience deficits in verbal and nonverbal communication skills including motor control, turn-taking, and emotion recognition. Innovative technology, such as socially assistive robots, has shown to be a viable method for Autism therapy. This paper presents a novel robot-based music-therapy platform for modeling and improving the social responses and behaviors of children with ASD. Our autonomous social interactive system consists of three modules. Module one provides an autonomous initiative positioning system for the robot, NAO, to properly localize and play the instrument (Xylophone) using the robot’s arms. Module two allows NAO to play customized songs composed by individuals. Module three provides a real-life music therapy experience to the users. We adopted Short-time Fourier Transform and Levenshtein distance to fulfill the design requirements: 1) “music detection” and 2) “smart scoring and feedback”, which allows NAO to understand music and provide additional practice and oral feedback to the users as applicable. We designed and implemented six Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI) sessions including four intervention sessions. Nine children with ASD and seven Typically Developing participated in a total of fifty HRI experimental sessions. Using our platform, we collected and analyzed data on social behavioral changes and emotion recognition using Electrodermal Activity (EDA) signals. The results of our experiments demonstrate most of the participants were able to complete motor control tasks with 70% accuracy. Six out of the nine ASD participants showed stable turn-taking behavior when playing music. The results of automated emotion classification using Support Vector Machines illustrates that emotional arousal in the ASD group can be detected and well recognized via EDA bio-signals. In summary, the results of our data analyses, including emotion classification using EDA signals, indicate that the proposed robot-music based therapy platform is an attractive and promising assistive tool to facilitate the improvement of fine motor control and turn-taking skills in children with ASD