Buttons, Handles, and Keys: Advances in Continuous-Control Keyboard Instruments

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Buttons, Handles, and Keys: Advances in Continuous-Control Keyboard Instruments, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/COMJ_a_00297. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with MIT Press Journal's Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving. © 2015, MIT Press Journal

Ensemble Concerts: Symphonic Band and Symphonic Winds, October 6, 2022

Center for the Performing ArtsOctober 6th, 2022Thursday Evening8:00 p.m

Exploring young people's collaborative and creative processes using keyboard and computer based music technologies in formal and non-formal settings

In many UK music education settings, young people (11-17 years old) make music collectively. Despite this we currently lack understanding of the processes involved when collaboratively creating music, particularly when working around music technologies. To date, research has tended to focus on classroom-based collaborative interactions on well-defined tasks, where there is only one correct solution. As a result we know little about 1) the kinds of learning practices that emerge outside of school settings and 2) the processes young people engage in when working on open-ended, creative tasks. Addressing these areas, this research specifically set out to explore the nature of the creative process when composing music collaboratively using keyboards and sampling software, in school, community centre and music camp settings. The contextual relations or features of these different settings, such as the task setting, instruction and technology used and their influence on the creative music-making processes were examined. This was achieved through analysis of the young people's verbal dialogues, which resulted in greater understanding of the relations between context and creativity. The findings show that how the creative and musical content is organised, rather than the physical setting within which it takes place, plays a fundamental role in the types of talk and creative processes that emerge. Drawing on the results of the studies carried out, creativity was conceptualised as a cyclic process, with interdependent phases of exploration, discovery, elaboration, critical listening, refining and editing, recording and saving; with problem finding and discovery being central underlying drivers. Finally, the kinds of verbal dialogues that emerged across all the settings strongly indicated that traditional logical-deductive types of reasoning and talk are not necessary and may even be inappropriate for certain phases of the creative process. This finding is interesting and presents some challenges to our current understanding of collaborative learning. Consequently, it warrants further investigation. In sum, given the contemporary educational emphasis on self-directed and creative learners, the questions addressed in this thesis and the findings on the context and nature of the creative processes, and informal and formal learning, are considered timely and relevant

The Internet of Things Will Thrive by 2025

This report is the latest research report in a sustained effort throughout 2014 by the Pew Research Center Internet Project to mark the 25th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-LeeThis current report is an analysis of opinions about the likely expansion of the Internet of Things (sometimes called the Cloud of Things), a catchall phrase for the array of devices, appliances, vehicles, wearable material, and sensor-laden parts of the environment that connect to each other and feed data back and forth. It covers the over 1,600 responses that were offered specifically about our question about where the Internet of Things would stand by the year 2025. The report is the next in a series of eight Pew Research and Elon University analyses to be issued this year in which experts will share their expectations about the future of such things as privacy, cybersecurity, and net neutrality. It includes some of the best and most provocative of the predictions survey respondents made when specifically asked to share their views about the evolution of embedded and wearable computing and the Internet of Things

Students with autism: A light/sound technology intervention

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of light/sound technology to promote sensory integration which facilitates the learning capacity of children with autism by reducing their high state of arousal, increasing time on task and decreasing acting-out behaviors. This research extended the work of A. Jean Ayres and Lorna King who theorized that the autistic individual\u27s brain does not register, modulate or integrate sensations that most people notice; auditory and visual inputs are ignored more than other types of sensory stimuli. This study utilized light/sound technology to stimulate and desensitize these sensory channels to facilitate processing of incoming stimuli. The technology was furnished by Dr. Harold Russell and was programmed with a microchip to control the frequency patterns. Twelve subjects were selected to participate in this eight week study; only five subjects completed. They represented schools in the Tidewater region of Virginia and Illinois. Inattention, Impulsivity, and Hyperactivity were assessed with The Attention Deficit Disorder Evaluation Scale-Home and School Versions. Comparison of the results of these measures and qualitative data were incorporated into case studies. There was improvement noted in social skills, attention and on-task behavior. The results are supportive of research conducted with learning disabled and AH/HD students conducted by Drs. Carter and Russell

Music teacher experiences of trauma sequelae in the elementary general music classroom: a case study

Music educators routinely encounter challenging behaviors in their classrooms. Due to the ubiquity of trauma in our society and the multiple intersections between trauma-related disorders and emotional/behavioral disorder diagnoses, it is possible that challenging behaviors are influenced by trauma and, therefore, require specialized responses. In this study, I investigated the identification of and response to trauma sequelae, the changes to biological and psychological function occurring post-trauma, within an elementary general music classroom for students with severe emotional/behavioral disorders. The questions (a) What were the perceptions of the general music teacher in this study regarding their ability to identify students’ potential trauma triggers?; (b) What were the perceptions of the general music teacher in this study regarding their ability to accurately identify typical trauma reactions including hyperarousal, intrusion, constriction, doublethink, dissociation, and disempowerment?; (c) In what ways did the general music teacher in this study respond to student trauma reactions including hyperarousal, intrusion, constriction, doublethink, dissociation, and disempowerment?; and (d) What barriers, if any, impeded the elementary general music teacher’s appropriate responses to trauma reactions including hyperarousal, intrusion, constriction, doublethink, dissociation, and disempowerment? guided this study. Taking a qualitative approach, the bounded system for this instrumental case study was defined as one music class section, including the students, their music teacher, the classroom assistants, and the paraprofessional staff assigned to that section in a special education setting. The study was conducted in two phases. In Phase One, or the archiving phase, I sought to better qualify the trauma history of the student participants. Through documentation review and interviews with the school’s admissions director, I was able to identify the traumatic experiences that might have influenced behaviors observed in the music classroom. Phase Two of the study included in-person observations in the music room, within the context of the larger school community, and in an online class session, including field notes, sketches of the environment, and videotaping of the class, teacher and researcher free journaling, guided journaling, and adult participant interviews. As the data were analyzed, moments of convergence and divergence surrounding issues of connection, disconnection, and attunement emerged. These moments occurred in multiple ways between all participants within the case. Trauma responses including hyperarousal, intrusion, constriction, doublethink, dissociation, and disempowerment were observed during the class meeting times. The music teacher in the study maintained an accurate perception of her ability to identify trauma responses and acknowledged that externalized behaviors were more likely to identify and respond to than those that were internalized. Although she agreed that the behaviors warranted intervention, she struggled to connect them to the underlying trauma influencing the behaviors. When responding in an attuned manner, leveraging principles of trauma-informed care, she was routinely able to meet the needs of the students and de-escalate trauma-related behaviors. Barriers to the music teacher’s response included lack of attunement to the needs of the students, inadequate pre- in-service instruction specific to music pedagogy for students with advanced behavioral health needs, scheduling and collaboration conflicts, lack of access to educational and biopsychosocial documentation, and the experiencing of secondary traumatic stress symptoms. In refining trauma theory in the context of elementary general music teacher experiences of trauma sequelae, I documented an additional facet of the crucial adult response to children with trauma. The case was consistent with patterns outlined in existing trauma research. Music was a mediator and catalyst for emotional response. By utilizing a trauma-informed approach, music teachers might be able to meet extensive behavioral needs with compassion, strengthen relationships, create more avenues for access in general music, and avoid re-traumatization in the classroom

Computed fingertip touch for the instrumental control of musical sound with an excursion on the computed retinal afterimage

In this thesis, we present an articulated, empirical view on what human music making is, and on how this fundamentally relates to computation. The experimental evidence which we obtained seems to indicate that this view can be used as a tool, to systematically generate models, hypotheses and new technologies that enable an ever more complete answer to the fundamental question as to what forms of instrumental control of musical sound are possible to implement. This also entails the development of two novel transducer technologies for computed fingertip touch: The cyclotactor (CT) system, which provides fingerpad-orthogonal force output while tracking surface-orthogonal fingertip movement; and the kinetic surface friction transducer (KSFT) system, which provides fingerpad-parallel force output while tracking surface-parallel fingertip movement. In addition to the main research, the thesis also contains two research excursions, which are due to the nature of the Ph.D. position. The first excursion shows how repeated and varying pressing movements on the already held-down key of a computer keyboard can be used both to simplify existing user interactions and to implement new ones, that allow the rapid yet detailed navigation of multiple possible interaction outcomes. The second excursion shows that automated computational techniques can display shape specifically in the retinal afterimage, a well-known effect in the human visual system.Computer Systems, Imagery and Medi

Genre and/as Distinction: The Mars Volta and the Symbolic Boundaries of Progressive Rock

In the early 2000’s, The Mars Volta’s popularity among prog(ressive) rock fandom was, in many ways, a conundrum. Unlike 1970s prog rock that drew heavily on Western classical music, TMV members Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala routinely insisted on the integral importance of salsa music to their style and asserted an ambivalent relationship to classic prog rock. This thesis builds on existing scholarship on cultural omnivorousness to assert that an increase in omnivorous musical tastes since prog rock’s inception in the 1970s not only explains The Mars Volta’s affiliation with the genre in the early 2000s, but also explains their mixed reception within a divided prog rock fanbase. Contrary to existing scholarship that suggests that the omnivore had largely supplanted the highbrow snob, this study suggests that the snob persisted in the prog rock fanbase during progressive rock’s resurgence (ca. 1997-2012), as distinguished by their assertion of the superiority of prog rock through discourses of musical complexity adapted from classical music. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theorization of the “fields of cultural production" and research in musical border studies (especially that of Alejandro L. Madrid), this thesis studies the social distinctions that occur both within (between the snobs and the omnivores), as well beyond the genre of progressive rock (between prog rock and other genres). Building on Jack Hamilton’s work on race in rock music, it suggests that progressive rock originated in the 1970s as a genre in which “authenticity” was coded as white, European, heteronormative, masculine, and middle- to upper-class, which informed prog snobs’ claims to cultural superiority. By the late 1990s, however, omnivorous listening practices had become the dominant mode of appreciating progressive rock, and the principle of snobbish exclusion lost ground to a concern for cultural diversity, identifiable by performed omnivorousness. Online fan forums and reviews that discuss The Mars Volta demonstrate that the snobs and omnivores struggled for dominance during the prog resurgence. While the omnivores understood sonic and visual signifiers of Rodriguez-Lopez’s and Bixler-Zavala’s Puerto Rican and Chicano heritage (respectively) as social progress within the historically non-diverse context of progressive rock, the snobs understood these signifiers as noise. Both positions have the effect of essentializing The Mars Volta’s identities, which are better understood fluidly through the descriptor “border kids.” This thesis concludes that, while the struggles between the snobs and omnivores result in symbolic boundaries at the intersection of race, class, gender expression, and geographic origin both within and beyond progressive rock, these struggles also contributed to the resurgence of progressive rock as a stable field and genre.Master of Art

Jackie Mittoo At Home and Abroad: The Cultural and Musical Negotiations of a Jamaican Canadian

Donat Roy ‘Jackie’ Mittoo (1948-1990) made significant contributions to the genres of rock steady and reggae as a musician, producer and musical director of Studio One in Jamaica. He is renowned for the number of recordings that he arranged at Studio One, as well as his own instrumental recordings that featured the organ. He was also among a number of Jamaican musicians who migrated to Canada at the end of the 1960s and was active on the music scene in Toronto, as well as in the UK and the USA. Although Mittoo’s significance to the emergence and dissemination of Jamaican popular music (JPM) is acknowledged by music industry personnel, most studies focus on the big names of reggae and the theme of social protest in their music. Little attention is given to the role of session musicians such as Mittoo and the instrumental recordings that they created. This study attempts to redress this oversight; it will offer the first in-depth account of the career and instrumental recordings of Jackie Mittoo. This dissertation is in two parts. The first section presents a career biography which situates Mittoo’s role within the collective experience of Jamaican session musicians at home in Jamaica, and abroad in the centers of JPM production in Canada, the UK, and the USA. In part two of this dissertation, I examine four strategies that he used in his instrumental arrangements—straight covers, covers with multiple sources, paraphrases, and remixes— and discuss the complexities associated with his body of work