Culturally sensitive strategies for automatic music prediction

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-112).Music has been shown to form an essential part of the human experience-every known society engages in music. However, as universal as it may be, music has evolved into a variety of genres, peculiar to particular cultures. In fact people acquire musical skill, understanding, and appreciation specific to the music they have been exposed to. This process of enculturation builds mental structures that form the cognitive basis for musical expectation. In this thesis I argue that in order for machines to perform musical tasks like humans do, in particular to predict music, they need to be subjected to a similar enculturation process by design. This work is grounded in an information theoretic framework that takes cultural context into account. I introduce a measure of musical entropy to analyze the predictability of musical events as a function of prior musical exposure. Then I discuss computational models for music representation that are informed by genre-specific containers for musical elements like notes. Finally I propose a software framework for automatic music prediction. The system extracts a lexicon of melodic, or timbral, and rhythmic primitives from audio, and generates a hierarchical grammar to represent the structure of a particular musical form. To improve prediction accuracy, context can be switched with cultural plug-ins that are designed for specific musical instruments and genres. In listening experiments involving music synthesis a culture-specific design fares significantly better than a culture-agnostic one. Hence my findings support the importance of computational enculturation for automatic music prediction. Furthermore I suggest that in order to sustain and cultivate the diversity of musical traditions around the world it is indispensable that we design culturally sensitive music technology.by Mihir Sarkar.Ph.D

MODELLING GAMAKAS OF CARNATIC MUSIC AS A SYNTHESIZER FOR SPARSE PRESCRIPTIVE NOTATION

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Singing from the Village

Singing from the Village brings to light some basic problems in education for a village school near Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, South India. While problems of poverty, social strife, possible over use of rote learning, lack of critical and creative thinking are discussed, the focus of this study is the problem of how the children hear western melodies differently because of the musical vocabulary their ears and brains have become accustomed to in their village. Singing from the Village attempts to examine village songs and compare them to a western children\u27s song, Praise Him, Praise Him sung each day at the school. Praise Him, Praise Him sounds very different when the children sing it at this school than it does in a western school setting. One possible reason for this discrepancy is that the musical influences of the children are different from that of western children. Indian children hear their mothers sing in the village, they hear cinema music through the media, they hear tribal music down the street, and they hear western choruses at school. They seem to enjoy the songs in closely varying degrees. However, matching the pitches of some western songs seems to be difficult for them. It is quite possible that the pitches are difficult to sing because the melodies of the village and the melodies of western children\u27s songs have a different musical vocabulary. Praise Him, Praise Him seems to be built on tertian harmony of western music, using minor thirds and less glissandi passages. The village music seems to be based mostly on intervals smaller than a third, though occasionally there are larger intervals with limited usage. Many gamakas (similar to glissandi and ornamentation in western music) are used in village singing. Singing from the Village concludes that the song styles and melodies are different because they are based on the different ways melodic intervals are used or not used in South Indian and western folk and children\u27s songs. By giving an overview of the general and specific problems related to education at this school and discovering the differences in the melodies of the songs gathered, the author shows the possibilities of future research which would describe the musical vocabulary of the village in greater detail. With completion of such research, much like Zoltán Kodály, encouraging teachers and students to compose songs based on the musical vocabulary of this area could be the catalyst these children need to learn basic academic skills, critical thinking, and creativity. Learning to think critically and creatively could encourage these children to address the problems of poverty, social strife, and education as they become leaders in the future

Emotional responses to Hindustani raga music: the role of musical structure

In Indian classical music, ragas constitute specific combinations of tonic intervals potentially capable of evoking distinct emotions. A raga composition is typically presented in two modes, namely, alaap and gat. Alaap is the note by note delineation of a raga bound by a slow tempo, but not bound by a rhythmic cycle. Gat on the other hand is rendered at a faster tempo and follows a rhythmic cycle. Our primary objective was to (1) discriminate the emotions experienced across alaap and gat of ragas, (2) investigate the association of tonic intervals, tempo and rhythmic regularity with emotional response. 122 participants rated their experienced emotion across alaap and gat of 12 ragas. Analysis of the emotional responses revealed that (1) ragas elicit distinct emotions across the two presentation modes, and (2) specific tonic intervals are robust predictors of emotional response. Specifically, our results showed that the ‘minor second’ is a direct predictor of negative valence. (3) Tonality determines the emotion experienced for a raga where as rhythmic regularity and tempo modulate levels of arousal. Our findings provide new insights into the emotional response to Indian ragas and the impact of tempo, rhythmic regularity and tonality on it

Pedagogical practices of a guru teaching an Indian music ensemble in the United States

The purpose of this study was to examine pedagogical practices of an Indian music professor, or guru, who teaches an Indian music ensemble in a United States institution of higher learning. The role of the world music professor has been refined and redefined over the last decade. The guru-shishya paramparā system of teaching has reached a crossroad; new conditions challenge this approach. The focus of this study was to investigate, through the lens of the guru, tensions that exist between Indian pedagogy and Western pedagogy. The research design was a single-case ethnographic study that utilized participant observation in an Indian music ensemble class. I expanded Schippers’s (2009) Twelve Continuum Transmission Framework by adding aesthetics to the continuum of the framework. I used this framework as a tool to examine Indian music transmission, through a distinct pedagogical viewpoint of a guru leading a non-Western music ensemble. In this study I noted factors that influence world music transmission in Indian music education at the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School. Information regarding attitudes and the reasons for certain pedagogical practices in Indian music education can provide insight to ensemble instructors and to administrators interested in building Indian music programs. This research has implications outside of Indian music education and for music department directors interested in expanding music programs

How Gifted Indian American Students and Their Families Perceive Factors of Success

There is a sparsity of research focusing on the experiences of Asian-Indian American students. This study describes how gifted Indian American students and their families perceived factors contributing to students’ academic success. Specifically, this study used a qualitative case study design to describe the perceptions of four families. The data collection of open-ended interviews, observations of students during school, and student-selected artifacts were utilized for an in-depth understanding of their perspectives on home, school, culture, and self. Through analysis, the following themes emerged: academic home climate, parents push—in a good way, planning for the future, the gifted label, participants’ schools in the United States, teachers matter, values of Indian culture, challenges of living in the United States, the model minority stereotype, parents’ educational backgrounds, competition, motivation, and mindset: intelligence results from work ethic. Results indicated that participants believed a confluence of these factors contributed to the students’ academic success.