Usul As a Musical Idea: The Case of The Usul Zencir

Evaluating the fundamental components of traditional Turkish music, particularly the concepts of "usul" (rhythmic composition) and "makam" (musical mode), as well as their significance in the composition and performance of works, has been a focus not only in musical practice but also in academic music studies. Nevertheless, certain issues pertaining to the functional analysis of rhythms, especially the larger rhythmic cycles, such as what they inherently represent in musical reality, how they are utilized, comprehended, and what roles they play in the composition and performance processes, have not been thoroughly discussed in academic literature. This study delves into the concept of "usul" beyond its role as a rhythmic composition, exploring how it exists as an independent musical idea within the context of tradition, and addressing its importance, function, and definition. The usul "Zencir"s rhythmic pattern, with its temporal complexity and the homogeneous elements within its compound structure, i.e., its ability to combine various constituent usules into an integrated usul, is selected as a focal point for investigation due to its potential to provide valuable insights in this regard. The compositions in the "Zencir" usul by three different composers from various periods (Itrî, Hacı Sadullah Ağa, Tanbûrî Ali Efendi) are examined within the context of this study. Comparative text-based structural and functional analysis methods are employed as the primary tools for examining these compositions. The data is visualized through various tables, and these visuals are used to derive new insights or present findings that could potentially serve as evidence for certain propositions. Cooperative relationships between subunits of usul, melody, and lyrics are explored to provide a deeper understanding of rhythmic patterns. In order to shed light on the role of the usul "Zencir" in shaping musical phrases and motives, forming the thematic content of a composition, and its impact on the syllabic structure of lyrics within the context of composition and performance processes, this study aims to investigate how the concept of "usul" functions as a musical idea within a traditional Turkish music piece. In conclusion, this research provides a detailed and novel perspective on the significance, structural characteristics, and functional attributes of the unique larger rhythmic patterns in traditional Turkish music, particularly within the framework of the usul "Zencir", in the composition and performance processes.Başta "usul" ve "makam" kavramları olmak üzere, geleneksel Türk müziğinin temel bileşenlerini ve bunların eserlerin bestelenmesi ve icrasındaki önemini değerlendirmek, sadece müzik pratiğinde değil, akademik müzik çalışmalarında da odak noktası olmuştur. Bununla birlikte, ritimlerin, özellikle de büyük ritmik döngülerin, müzikal gerçeklikte özünde neyi temsil ettikleri, nasıl kullanıldıkları, anlaşıldıkları, besteleme ve icra süreçlerinde ne gibi roller oynadıkları gibi işlevsel analizlerine ilişkin bazı konular akademik literatürde derinlemesine tartışılmamıştır. Bu çalışma, "usul" kavramını ritmik bir kompozisyon rolünün ötesine taşıyarak, gelenek bağlamında bağımsız bir müzikal fikir olarak nasıl var olduğunu araştırmakta ve önemini, işlevini ve tanımını ele almaktadır. "Zencir" usulünün ritmik kalıbı, zamansal karmaşıklığı ve bileşik yapısındaki homojen unsurlar, yani çeşitli kurucu usulleri bütünleşik bir usulde birleştirme yeteneği ile bu konuda değerli bilgiler sağlama potansiyeli nedeniyle araştırmanın odak noktası olarak seçilmiştir. Farklı dönemlerden üç farklı bestekârın (Itrî, Hacı Sadullah Ağa, Tanbûrî Ali Efendi) "Zencir" usûlündeki besteleri bu çalışma kapsamında incelenmiştir. Karşılaştırmalı metin tabanlı yapısal ve işlevsel analiz yöntemleri, bu kompozisyonları incelemek için birincil araçlar olarak kullanılmaktadır. Veriler çeşitli tablolar aracılığıyla görselleştiriliyor ve bu görseller yeni içgörüler elde etmek veya belirli önermeler için potansiyel olarak kanıt görevi görebilecek bulgular sunmak için kullanılıyor. Usul, melodi ve güfte alt birimleri arasındaki işbirlikçi ilişkiler, ritmik kalıpların daha derinlemesine anlaşılmasını sağlamak için araştırılmaktadır. Bu çalışma, besteleme ve icra süreçleri bağlamında "Zencir" usulünün müzikal cümle ve motiflerin şekillenmesindeki rolüne, bir bestenin tematik içeriğini oluşturmasına ve güftenin hece yapısına etkisine ışık tutmak amacıyla, "usul" kavramının geleneksel bir Türk müziği eserinde müzikal bir fikir olarak nasıl işlev gördüğünü araştırmayı amaçlamaktadır. Sonuç olarak bu araştırma, geleneksel Türk müziğindeki özgün büyük ritmik kalıpların, özellikle "Zencir" usulü çerçevesinde, besteleme ve icra süreçlerindeki önemine, yapısal özelliklerine ve işlevsel niteliklerine ilişkin ayrıntılı ve yeni bir bakış açısı sunmaktadır

Text Data Analysis in Chinese Folk Music with Effective Clustering Model toward Feature Identification of Inheritance

Folk music based on big data analysis can provide valuable insights into the history, culture, and evolution of traditional music. By understanding the historical and cultural contexts of folk music, one better appreciate its value and contribute to its continued development and inheritance. Big data analysis can help identify patterns and trends in the performance, distribution, and reception of folk music across time and space. In this paper designed a Weighted Clustering Euclidean Feature (WCEF) model to evaluate folk music on the development of inheritance. Initially, the text data is extracted from folk music for the estimation of features in the big data analysis. Secondly, the WCEF model uses a clustering model for a subset of the folk music dataset with Weighted Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (WNMF). With the clustered model feature extraction is computed with Named Entity Recognition (NER). The NER model uses the Euclidean distance estimation for the computation of features in the folk data analysis. Finally, the WCEF model uses the deep learning model for the classification of inheritance in folk music. The experimental analysis stated that the WCEF model effectively classifies the folk music words and their contribution to inheritance

Arabic Music Genre Identification

Published by: Semarak Ilmu Publishing. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is one data science application crucial for different tasks such as recommendation systems, genre identification, fingerprinting, and novelty assessment. Different Machine Learning techniques are utilised to analyse digital music records, such as clustering, classification, similarity scoring, and identifying various properties for the different tasks. Music is represented digitally using diverse transformations and is clustered and classified successfully for Western Music. However, Eastern Music poses a challenge, and some techniques have achieved success in clustering and classifying Turkish and Persian Music. This research presents an evaluation of machine learning algorithms' performance on pre-labelled Arabic Music with their Arabic genre (Maqam). The study introduced new data representations of the Arabic music dataset and identified the most suitable machine-learning methods and future enhancements.Peer reviewe

Scoring practices in marches for the windband from Lully to Beethoven (With arrangements of selected examples for the modern wind-band)

Thesis (D.M.A.)--Boston University

The Solo Cello Music of Kamran Ince

The Turkish-Americal composer Kamran Ince (born 1960) has written two works for solo cello, Tracing for cello and piano (1994) and the MKG Variations for cello alone (1998). This document discusses both and attempts to place them in the context of Ince\u27s oeuvre and of the cello literature of the late twentieth century.The research is based in part on interviews with the composer and the cellists who have performed and commissioned the pieces, and in part on analysis of the scores. The analysis of the two works reveals a composer interested in Turkish and western modal structures, in pointillist vertical chords, in the independent use of melody and harmony, in free forms, and in sudden changes of mood and atmosphere. Ince has been well described as a post-minimalist, but those two pieces for cello also show strong influences from well-known cello works by Robert Schumann and J.S. Bach in addition to self-quotations from Ince\u27s own works.The paper also discusses Ince\u27s early background as a serious cellist and its possible influence on the shape and content of his later compositions for the instrument

Automatic transcription of traditional Turkish art music recordings: A computational ethnomusicology appraoach

Thesis (Doctoral)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Electronics and Communication Engineering, Izmir, 2012Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 96-109)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxi, 131 leavesMusic Information Retrieval (MIR) is a recent research field, as an outcome of the revolutionary change in the distribution of, and access to the music recordings. Although MIR research already covers a wide range of applications, MIR methods are primarily developed for western music. Since the most important dimensions of music are fundamentally different in western and non-western musics, developing MIR methods for non-western musics is a challenging task. On the other hand, the discipline of ethnomusicology supplies some useful insights for the computational studies on nonwestern musics. Therefore, this thesis overcomes this challenging task within the framework of computational ethnomusicology, a new emerging interdisciplinary research domain. As a result, the main contribution of this study is the development of an automatic transcription system for traditional Turkish art music (Turkish music) for the first time in the literature. In order to develop such system for Turkish music, several subjects are also studied for the first time in the literature which constitute other contributions of the thesis: Automatic music transcription problem is considered from the perspective of ethnomusicology, an automatic makam recognition system is developed and the scale theory of Turkish music is evaluated computationally for nine makamlar in order to understand whether it can be used for makam detection. Furthermore, there is a wide geographical region such as Middle-East, North Africa and Asia sharing similarities with Turkish music. Therefore our study would also provide more relevant techniques and methods than the MIR literature for the study of these non-western musics

Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Folk Music Analysis, 15-17 June, 2016

The Folk Music Analysis Workshop brings together computational music analysis and ethnomusicology. Both symbolic and audio representations of music are considered, with a broad range of scientific approaches being applied (signal processing, graph theory, deep learning). The workshop features a range of interesting talks from international researchers in areas such as Indian classical music, Iranian singing, Ottoman-Turkish Makam music scores, Flamenco singing, Irish traditional music, Georgian traditional music and Dutch folk songs. Invited guest speakers were Anja Volk, Utrecht University and Peter Browne, Technological University Dublin