The Virtual Guru and Beyond: the Changing Role of Teacher in North Indian Classical Music

This project, which encompasses both written and performed aspects, is an exploration of the North Indian classical music tradition as it is taught in twenty-first century California, and a de-exoticization of a musical style that most Americans are unacquainted with. A brief overview of the basic theory, history, and practice of North Indian classical music is followed by a comparison of oral and written musical traditions. A specific composition from the North Indian classical tradition is included as an example of the form and how that form is transmitted. Emerging modes of transmission include multimedia and network technologies; their use, and their limitations, are investigated, along with deeper questions of pedagogical utility

From novel to familiar : the learning of pitch intervals and event frequencies in microtonal music systems

This PhD project aims to investigate the learning of novel music systems during brief exposures (up to 20 minutes). Specifically, it examined the learning of microtonal pitch systems, including the learning of their pitch interval structure and the frequency of occurrence of each pitch member of the systems. Five experiments have been conducted and the findings are separately submitted to peer-reviewed journals for publication. The submitted manuscripts are provided as individual chapters in this thesis. Experiment 1 and 2 are presented in manuscript (MS) 1, 3 is presented in MS 2, while 4 and 5 are presented in MS 3. Experiments in MS 1 explored the influence of structural similarity on the learning of novel tuning systems. Non-musicians were exposed to microtonal tuning systems that are different from the western tonal system (12-tone equal temperament or 12TET) in terms of temperament (equal or unequal) and pitch intervals (based on frequency ratio(s) or frequency difference). It was hypothesized that systems that are structurally similar to 12TET in terms of temperament and pitch interval definitions (such as 11TET) would be learned more rapidly than those that are dissimilar (such as the 81 primes scale). This hypothesis was supported in part by earlier evidence on the influence of prior musical knowledge on the learnng of unfamiliar music (such as Oram & Cuddy (1995) and Rohrmeier & Widdess (2012)). Participants were tested on their memory of the relative pitches of each tuning system as well as their knowledge of which relative pitches correspond to which tuning system (pitch membership). Results indicate better pitch memory for the tuning system with two frequency ratios (Tuning system: WF) while learning of pitch membership was not found after a brief exposure. Given the findings in MS 1, MS 2 targeted the incidental learning of a microtonal scale that follows a pitch interval structure similar to WF in MS 1, which is unequal tempered with two frequency ratios. This MS extends the data-driven interpretation of MS1 in terms of my overall hypothesis. Thus, a new paradigm is developed and learning of the scale is implied by the level of sensitivity to the incongruent pitch intervals. This paradigm utilises a timbre shift detection task where participants are required to detect a timbre shift in one of the pitches of a microtonal melody. The pitch before the shift is manipulated to be either a member of the scale (congruent), just like the rest of the pitches in the melody, or a pitch from a different musical scale (incongruent). The melodies are arranged such that an incongruent pitch is a statistical cue to an upcoming timbre shift, so that when participants hear an incongruent pitch, they would have high expectation of the imminent shift and therefore respond faster when it comes. However, faster reaction times would only be observed if participants have sufficiently learnt the pitch intervals of the microtonal scale and the relationship between the incongruent pitch and the timbre shift. In other words, a faster reaction time is expected in the condition where an incongruent tone was placed before the timbre shift, than in the condition where the incongruent tone was absent. Non-musicians in MS 2 showed successful learning of both, and this experiment was extended in MS 3 where musicians were tested. Surprisingly, the same results were not observed in musicians who are professionally trained in 12TET only (general musicians) and those who are microtonal music experts (trained in 12TET and also had extensive experience in multiple microtonal tunings). While similar results with those from the non-musicians might be obtained by having a comparative sample of general musicians, the unexpected results among microtonal musicians, ironically, might still be due to their musical experience and practice. MS 3 also interrogated our overall hypothesis further by examining the learning of the frequency of occurrence of pitches of the same microtonal scale (the relative event-frequencies) in non-musicians: a similar approach was previously taken by Loui & Schlaug (2012), who examined the learning of event frequencies of the Bohlen-Pierce scale. The effect of structural similarity was once again investigated by the manipulation of event-frequency of the microtonal scale so as to be similar or dissimilar to the functional hierarchy (difference in usage) of pitches in diatonic music. Participants were exposed to melodies generated based on the similar or dissimilar pattern of event-frequency and goodness-of-fit ratings of pitches of the scale were obtained at random points in the melodies. Results delineate an insignificant effect of structural similarity, since learning was found in both patterns of event-frequency, implied by the positive correlation between the goodness-of-fit rating and the frequency of occurrence of the corresponding pitches, and demonstrated by an analytical model of the results showing the influence of the pitch-class probabilities. This result illustrates the ability to learn event frequencies in a novel musical scale among musically untrained participants. Altogether, the findings in all the experiments indicate that non-musicians can learn aspects of the pitch intervals and event-frequency of an unfamiliar microtonal scale rapidly, and learning is faster when the scale is well-formed and octave-based with two frequency ratios. Inconsistent with predictions, general and microtonal musicians did not show such rapid learning, and how this might relate to the paradigm used is discussed. This project provides informative understanding of how listeners with different musical background and experiences approach and learn a novel music system, which has implications for research in music cognition and perception, traditional and computer music composition, music production, and music performance including improvisation

Western listeners detect boundary hierarchy in Indian music: a segmentation study

How are listeners able to follow and enjoy complex pieces of music? Several theoretical frameworks suggest links between the process of listening and the formal structure of music, involving a division of the musical surface into structural units at multiple hierarchical levels. Whether boundaries between structural units are perceivable to listeners unfamiliar with the style, and are identified congruently between naïve listeners and experts, remains unclear. Here, we focused on the case of Indian music, and asked 65 Western listeners (of mixed levels of musical training; most unfamiliar with Indian music) to intuitively segment into phrases a recording of sitar ālāp of two different rāga-modes. Each recording was also segmented by two experts, who identified boundary regions at section and phrase levels. Participant- and region-wise scores were computed on the basis of "clicks" inside or outside boundary regions (hits/false alarms), inserted earlier or later within those regions (high/low "promptness"). We found substantial agreement—expressed as hit rates and click densities—among participants, and between participants’ and experts’ segmentations. The agreement and promptness scores differed between participants, levels, and recordings. We found no effect of musical training, but detected real-time awareness of grouping completion and boundary hierarchy. The findings may potentially be explained by underlying general bottom-up processes, implicit learning of structural relationships, cross-cultural musical similarities, or universal cognitive capacitie

A Study in Fiddle Tunes from Western North Carolina

A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Music at Chapel Hill by David Parker Bennett in 1940

Statistical Regularities in Melodic Phrases: Effects on Aesthetic Ratings

Universals appear in a number different forms, from naturally occurring mathematical universals like the Fibonacci series, phi, and fractal scaling, to aesthetic universals like the golden ratio in architecture and other facets of human behavior like dance and religious belief. Music is another example of a powerful human universal. Further, within music there are a number of statistical regularities that have been empirically observed nearly universally. One such example would be the division of the octave into 12 equidistant tones. There are also a number of universal regularities that pertain specifically to melodic phrasing. This paper will examine four such statistical regularities of melodic phrases: namely, that there is an increased prevalence of smaller intervals over larger intervals (defined as Rule 1 throughout this dissertation), that larger intervals tend to ascend and smaller intervals tend to descend (defined as Rule 2 throughout this dissertation), that the overall contour of melodic phrases tend to ascend and then descend (defined as Rule 3 throughout this dissertation), and that melodic phrases tend to end on the tonic note (defined as Rule 4 throughout this dissertation). Here I look at the aggregate influence of these four regularities in melodic phrases, as they have hereto only been studied individually. In an initial series of experiments, labeled throughout this dissertation as Experiments1A, 1B, 1C, and 1D, attempt to determine the degree that these regularities collectively and individually influence people’s melodic preferences, their perception of well formed-ness, and their ratings of the interestingness of a series of artificially generated melodies that follow or violate the four melodic regularities to different degrees and in different combinations. In a further set of experiments, labeled throughout this paper as Experiments 2A and 2B, I will test which, if any, of these regularities can be explicitly identified by experimental subjects. Lastly, in Experiment 3, I tested how malleable melodic preferences are, and whether people’s preferences can be influenced or changed by exposure to certain types of melodic phrases – specifically, whether melodies that are in general rated low on aesthetic appeal can come to be regarded as more appealing through repeated exposure. In order to test these questions, I have generated a large bank of 16-note melodic phrases (64 in total) representing each of the four aforementioned regularities and their combinations. In these artificially generated melodies, all notes were rhythmically consistent, with all notes being quarter notes. All melodies were also in the key of C Major and played at 120 beats per minute. The various melodies can be quantitatively operationalized along the lines of the extent to which they follow or violate each of the four regularities. Across the whole set of melodies, all possible combinations of rule following or rule violation are explored. This provides a substantially varied set of melodic stimuli for individuals to respond to, with control over many remaining aspects of the melodies (e.g., key, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, harmony, timbre), for the purposes of assessing the influence and importance of each of these regularities on aesthetic response. First, in Experiment 1A, I wanted to determine the possible predictive power of each of these rules both individually and in combinations. In order to do that, I piggybacked on a method used by Reber (1969) in his research into implicit learning. Reber’s technique involved exposing people to a pool of stimuli demonstrating a certain statistical regularity or regularities (i.e., pseudo-words generated with a Markov chain) during a learning phase, then exposing them to stimuli that either adhere to or violate the regularity or regularities to which they were exposed, and to elicit their ratings along a few possible dimensions. In this present case, since people generally accumulate a large amount of musical experience simply by exposure and listening over the course of their lives (unlike the Reber studies that involve a learning phase to expose people to the rules governing the artificial system), an experiment that tests musical regularities would not need such a learning phase, as that has already occurred over the course of the lives of the participants. Therefore, in Experiment 1A, participants were simply exposed to a few examples of each of the melodic rule combinations; after each melody, they were asked to rate the phrase’s well-formedness, preference, and interestingness. In other words, after hearing each melody people specified how well-formed the phrase seemed, how interesting the phrase was, and their preference for the melody, along a seven-point Likert scale. The results of this study were first used to examine the possible correlations between these various three dependent measures of well-formedness, preference, and interestingness dependent upon the combination of the phrase regarding the four regularities being used here. As all of the variables showed high positive intercorrelations, they were combined via a principal components analysis, and the resulting factor scores were used as the dependent variable in a set of hierarchical linear modeling analyses (or HLM). Akin to multiple regression, HLM also takes into account the nested structure of the data (that is, with observations nested within individual raters). These HLM analyses allow an exploration of the extent to which each regularity predicts aesthetic response, and how these relationships vary across participants who themselves differ in their overall ratings. The technique of HLM is described in more detail later in the dissertation. The key finding from Experiment 1A is strong influence of a tonic versus non-tonic ending on aesthetic response: melodies that end on the tonic note are rater significant higher than those not ending on the tonic note. This effect is so strong that it appears to overwhelm the effects of the three other melodic regularities. To more sensitively probe for the effects of the other variables, the next few Experiments, 1B and 1C, attempted to control for the overwhelming influence a tonic ending seems to have on people’s perceptions of melodic phrases. Experiment 1B is simply a reanalysis of the data from Experiment 1A, but with trials ending on the tonic analyzed separately from those not ending on the tonic. While this is a step in the right direction when it comes to trying to understand the effects of the remaining regularities, it is possible that the context of providing ratings on trials where tonic and non-tonic endings were intermixed may have influenced the ratings. Experiment 1C was an attempt to resolve this issue by exposing participants to two separate blocks of melodic phrases. One block consisted of melodic phrases that ended on the tonic, and the other block was melodic phrases that did not end on the tonic. It was thought that these two Studies would show essentially the same results upon analysis; however, the results of Experiments 1B and 1C had some similarities but were not exactly the same. The differences are that with melodic phrases that do end on the tonic, Rule 1 showed an influence in both Experiments 1B and 1C, showing a quadratic effect in Experiment 1B and a linear effect in Experiment 1C. Further, when only hearing melodic phrases that do not end on the tonic, in Experiment 1B, Rule 3 showed an influence on people’s aesthetic ratings, and in Experiment 1C, Rule 2 showed an influence. Again, there is no clear reason why these differences appeared in the two sets of results. However, it seems logical to assume that of the two different sets of results, Experiment 1C would show a clearer picture because experimental participants were exposed to two discrete blocks of phrases, phrases that either did or did not end on the tonic, whereas in Experiment 1B, they heard them all mixed up, exactly as in Experiment 1A. This difference, either being exposed to both melodic phrases that do and do not end on the tonic mixed together in the same block, or in the two types of melodic phrases in two separate blocks, seems the most logical reason for the differences between the results of Experiments 1B and 1C. So in this case, the types of melodic phrases one is hearing at the moment seems to influence the way people aesthetically perceive melodic information. Experiment 1D was something of a post-script to these studies and represented a further exploration of several different types of non-tonic endings. The main finding here was that listeners do not appear to discriminate between these endings. Rather, the effect of the tonic versus non-tonic ending appears to be very much an all-or-none effect. In sum, at the very least, Experiments 1A through 1D indicate that, apart from the large positive impact of a tonic (compared to a non-tonic) ending, the remaining three melodic regularities show very subtle effects, which will require additional sophisticated experimental research to better understand. Next, in Experiment 2, in order to try to further inform the nature of how these melodic regularities are mentally represented, I attempted to determine which of the regularities could be explicitly identified by participants. To do this, participants were exposed to a number of melodies that adhered to all four of the proposed regularities, and after hearing the bank of melodic phrases, they were asked to identify any characteristics that were shared by all the phrases they have just heard. The results showed that 67% of participants were able to identify that each phrase seemed to ascend then descend (Rule 3), and 58% of participants were able to articulate that each phrase ended on the tonic note (Rule 4). The idea here is that if the regularity or combination of regularities influences people’s ratings of well formedness, preference or interestingness, and they are unable to explicate the regularities, then these regularities must be operating on an unconscious or implicit level. In this case, melodic contour did not seem to have a predictable influence in the first set of experiments done here, but the tonic did. Therefore, the tonic ending again appears to influence people\u27s aesthetic ratings and they can generally explicitly specify the occurrence of this regularity in melodic phrases. In the next study, Experiment 2B, participants were trained on the four regularities, and then asked to decide if a phrase adhered to a particular rule or not. Here, participants were able to accurately decide if a phrase ended on the tonic (Rule 4) 70% of the time. The other three rules showed markedly lower, approximately chance-level, accuracy. In a final study, Experiment 3, I tried to replicate a finding that previously showed that exposure to initially unpreferred aesthetic stimuli causes people to like them even less (Meskin, Phelan, Moore, & Kieran, 2013). The rationale for this is that in some real-world cases, at least some people come to enjoy even ‘difficult’ aesthetic productions – for instance, the atonal music of Schoenberg, the works of Stravinsky, or free jazz. Is part of this dynamic simply acquiring enough exposure to overcome an initial negative bias? To explore this issue, here I exposed participants to only phrases that did not end on the tonic, since they were shown in Experiment 1A to have the lowest aesthetic ratings. The results showed that although the mean difference in the ratings did not seem to significantly change, the direction of their actual ratings did, as evident by the sign test. In other words, people did rate the melodies lower after being exposed to similar non-tonic ending phrases, but the degree to which they rated them less was not statistically significant. This is broadly in line with Meskin et al.’s (2013) findings for visual art. These studies collectively show that regarding the nature of people’s mental representations of melodic phrases and the statistical regularities of interest here, people are able to articulate that a phrase ends on the tonic with and without explicit instruction, and also phrases that end on the tonic elicit higher aesthetic ratings. In other words, of the three melodic regularities that are the core topic of this dissertation, a tonic ending appears to be the most different from the others – it has the most potent effect on aesthetic liking, and it is recognized and identified more readily and explicitly than the other three regularities. These experiments help shed some light on the nature of the mental representations listeners use while engaged in music listening and also help to understand the nature of melodic statistical regularities and how they influence people’s perception of melodic material. As mentioned, these universal regularities have not been previously studied as an aggregate, so understanding whether or not they are interdependent and whether they can be ordered or ranked according to their influential power over people’s preferences and reports of well formedness and interestingness would benefit researchers trying to understand how people develop their preferences and how much power individual composers have over the artistic rules governing their own compositions. In the future, one could imagine analyzing rhythmic components to music the same way melodic components were analyzed here, and even observe the possible differences in mood states and emotions that different combinations of these regularities, and other types of musical regularities, might elicit

An Exploration into North Indian Classical Music: Raga, Alif Laila, and Improvisation.

This thesis explores three themes: North Indian classical music, the individual Alif Laila, and the philosophical connection each has to improvisation. The process that was followed to analyze the interactions between raga in the North Indian classical tradition and one well-known musician's path within that tradition bridges theory with individual insight. Alif Laila is the individual at the center of the study. As a prominent professional sitarist living in the Washington, D.C. region, her input is analyzed placing focus on individuality within the life of a traditionally trained musician living and teaching in a Western context. Her expression in traditional sharing of musical knowledge from teacher to student, in raga performance and in musical philosophy expand upon the new generation of teacher/performers who translate their craft in order to continue their tradition of North Indian classical music. Improvisation, both as a social and musical design, extends the scholarly research and personalized ethnography to complete the thesis

Exploring America’s musical identity: a comparison study of Indianist piano pieces by Amy Beach and Arthur Farwell

This document compares the purposes and philosophies that guided the composition of Indianist pieces by Amy Beach and Arthur Farwell. By relating Beach’s and Farwell’s output to movements of the early twentieth century, including antimodernism and American nationalism, this study suggests ways in which Beach and Farwell deviated from previously established trends. Through each Indianist piece that attempted to arrange Native American songs, Beach and Farwell introduced new strategies for incorporating melodic transcriptions. Musical analyses within the document reflect Beach’s and Farwell’s goals for writing Indianist pieces, including their intentions for how to communicate with audiences. Both composers’ usage of dissonances, manipulation of melodic motives, and treatment of text shaped each piece’s portrayal of Native American music. Beach’s and Farwell’s Indianist pieces are further analyzed in relation to current musical practices, tracing the process through which compositional practices became more inclusive and diverse during the later twentieth century

David Amram\u27s Sonata for Piano: A merger of contemporary classical and jazz styles

Born in 1930 in Philadelphia, David Werner Amram III is among the most prolific composers in the United States. His published compositions encompass a wide variety of genres including orchestral and chamber works, operas, choral works, and works for solo instruments.;Written in 1960, Sonata for Piano, a three-movement sonata, is one of the most jazz-influenced piano sonatas written in the first six decades of the twentieth century. The sonata is an amalgamation of traditional western art forms and jazz idioms. This study provides an analysis of major musical elements (melodic and harmonic procedures, texture, rhythm, and performance considerations) that contribute to the overall structure and character of the sonata.;The research document also provides an overview of selected piano solo pieces of jazz influence written between 1900 and 1960. The major jazz elements found in these pieces may serve as a reference guide in determining the significance of Sonata for Piano. A short biography of the composer is included. The appendices contain Amram\u27s comments from a telephone interview with the author and a list of published works by the composer. This document may serve as a resource for musicians and scholars who are interested in pursuing further studies of this work or other works of David Amram