The Psalms and the Folk Songs of a Mystic Turkish Order (with CD)

János Sipos – Éva Csáki, The Psalms and Folk Songs of a Mystic Turkish Order - The Music of Bektashis in Thrace The subject-matter of our book is the psalms and folk song of an Islamic mystic community, the Bektashis of Thrace, the European part of Turkey. Most of the music of Bektashi religious communities is unresearched so far, although their deep respect for traditions, the salient role of music among them and the preservation of pre-Islam customs all indicate that it is worth seeking for traces of the musical culture of ancient Turkic layers among them. Turkish researches into this field have only recently begun, which owes in part to the tension between the majority Sunni and minority Alevi-Bektashi religion and traditions (also embraced by the Kurds, to boot). Between 1999 and 2003 we video-recorded over 900 tunes in 24 Thracian villages from 150 Bektashi men and women. By the end of the fieldwork we felt we had attained our goal: we had recorded the overwhelming majority of their religious hymns and also several of their folk songs. This material seemed sufficient enough to present the musical culture of the community. It was not our job to provide an up-to-date summary of the history of the Bektashi order, but it appeared indispensable to present the most widely accepted variants. Following a brief introduction into Sufi ideas, thoughts will be cited from a book attributed to Haci Bektas Veli and a book by Kaygusuz Abdal dervish. The aim is to bring the reader closer to mystic Islamic thinking and the texts of the religious hymns. The book has several novelties. First of all, there is hardly a study, let alone a book, on folk hymns of the peoples of Turkey. There is none that is devoted to the systematic presentation of the music of a community or region, comparing Turkish folk and religious tunes and interpreting them in a broader context. It is clear however that folk religions preserve a lot of elements of pre-Islam Turkish culture and hence their research is of prime importance for an understanding of Turkish identity, Turkish ethnic and cultural genesis. A broad comparison involving several peoples allows us to establish whether a musical feature is a general or a specific phenomenon. It is also a novelty that hundreds of folk song texts and the sung poems by Bektashi poets are given together with their English translation. Reading the texts one can get an insight into the everyday thought and religious principles of the community. A glossary is also appended to explain special expressions and concepts. All the tunes in the volume were recorded and transcribed by us, thus they are from first-hand experience, and their authenticity is unquestionable. The collection allows us also to present the most typical tunes in audio variants on the CD attached to the book

Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications

The MAVEBA Workshop proceedings, held on a biannual basis, collect the scientific papers presented both as oral and poster contributions, during the conference. The main subjects are: development of theoretical and mechanical models as an aid to the study of main phonatory dysfunctions, as well as the biomedical engineering methods for the analysis of voice signals and images, as a support to clinical diagnosis and classification of vocal pathologies

Semantic Audio Analysis Utilities and Applications.

PhDExtraction, representation, organisation and application of metadata about audio recordings are in the concern of semantic audio analysis. Our broad interpretation, aligned with recent developments in the field, includes methodological aspects of semantic audio, such as those related to information management, knowledge representation and applications of the extracted information. In particular, we look at how Semantic Web technologies may be used to enhance information management practices in two audio related areas: music informatics and music production. In the first area, we are concerned with music information retrieval (MIR) and related research. We examine how structured data may be used to support reproducibility and provenance of extracted information, and aim to support multi-modality and context adaptation in the analysis. In creative music production, our goals can be summarised as follows: O↵-the-shelf sound editors do not hold appropriately structured information about the edited material, thus human-computer interaction is inefficient. We believe that recent developments in sound analysis and music understanding are capable of bringing about significant improvements in the music production workflow. Providing visual cues related to music structure can serve as an example of intelligent, context-dependent functionality. The central contributions of this work are a Semantic Web ontology for describing recording studios, including a model of technological artefacts used in music production, methodologies for collecting data about music production workflows and describing the work of audio engineers which facilitates capturing their contribution to music production, and finally a framework for creating Web-based applications for automated audio analysis. This has applications demonstrating how Semantic Web technologies and ontologies can facilitate interoperability between music research tools, and the creation of semantic audio software, for instance, for music recommendation, temperament estimation or multi-modal music tutorin

Attention Restraint, Working Memory Capacity, and Mind Wandering: Do Emotional Valence or Intentionality Matter?

Attention restraint appears to mediate the relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and mind wandering (Kane et al., 2016). Prior work has identifed two dimensions of mind wandering—emotional valence and intentionality. However, less is known about how WMC and attention restraint correlate with these dimensions. Te current study examined the relationship between WMC, attention restraint, and mind wandering by emotional valence and intentionality. A confrmatory factor analysis demonstrated that WMC and attention restraint were strongly correlated, but only attention restraint was related to overall mind wandering, consistent with prior fndings. However, when examining the emotional valence of mind wandering, attention restraint and WMC were related to negatively and positively valenced, but not neutral, mind wandering. Attention restraint was also related to intentional but not unintentional mind wandering. Tese results suggest that WMC and attention restraint predict some, but not all, types of mind wandering