Accessing structure of samba rhythms through cultural practices of vocal percussions

In the field of computer music, melodic based forms of vocalizations have often been used as channels to access subject’s queries and retrieve information from music databases. In this study, we look at percussive forms of vocalizations in order to retrieve rhythmic models entrained by subjects in Samba culture. By analyzing recordings of vocal percussions collected from randomly selected Brazilian subjects, we aim at comparing emergent rhythmic structures with the current knowledge about Samba music forms. The database of recordings was processed using a psychoacoustically inspired auditory model and further displayed on loudness and onset images. The analyses of emergent rhythmic patterns show intriguing similarities with the findings in previous studies in the field and put different perspectives on the use of vocal forms in music information retrieval and musicology

Accessing Structure of Samba Rhythms Through Cultural Practices of Vocal Percussion

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Reimagining the Collective: Black Popular Music and Recording Studio Innovation, 1970-1990

This dissertation examines developments in the production practices of black popular music in the recording studio from 1970 to 1990. The year 1970 marked a transition in the recording practice of popular music that had a distinct impact on styles marketed as R&B, soul, and funk. Multitracking in the 1950s and 1960s had paved the way for a transformed production process, one initiated by Les Paul’s and Sidney Bechet’s overdubbing experiments in the 1940s. The collective sound of instrumentalists and vocalists heard on records no longer resulted from live-to-tape recordings of group performances, but was increasingly the product of constructed representations, as separate layered events were cut to multitrack tape. When mixed together, these overdubbed tracks presented the listener with the impression of collective, interactive performances. Features central to the ethos of R&B music making – vocals in call and response, instruments in apparent rhythmic dialogues, and funky syncopation usually resulting from interactive group dynamism – were increasingly the product of the technologically mediated process of overdubbing, and performed often by one musician singing all of the parts or layering several instruments. By 1990, in part due to the popularity of newly developed drum machines, MIDI sequencers, samplers, and digital synthesizers, to record collectively in R&B-based black popular music was the exception rather than the norm. This study considers new practices of record production that developed in this era of multitrack recording and electronic experimentation through an examination of four case studies: Stevie Wonder’s recordings in the early 1970s; Prince’s recordings from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s; Michael Jackson’s composition and recording process from this same period; and the mid-to-late 1980s sampling and sequencing processes of Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad production collective. The producers of these recordings, well aware of the collective ethos of earlier black music styles, conceived imaginative ways to imbue overdubbed recordings with the vibrancy of multiple performative voices. One-man band practices employed by Stevie Wonder and Prince, the recording studio experimentation and vocal composition of Michael Jackson, and the layered sampling of Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad represented different innovative techniques that developed in the recording studio. These methods considered and staged features of collectivity in different ways, and in doing so, used recording studio technologies such as overdubbing and synthesizer programming to reimagine collective performance. Although the historical narrative of black popular music often focuses on large funk ensembles and interactive performance styles during the l970s, the period represents a shift for many musicians from a social, interactive means of music making to a personal, introspective, often isolated process of sonic experimentation. This process transformed and reinvented the collective interaction and improvisation common in many African American music styles into a technologically mediated process of constructing recordings through layering. Although these musicians continued to perform in traditional collectives in live concerts during this period, the recording studio and the live concert increasingly represented distinct sites of music making, as the studio became a locus for introspection and experimentation. The tradition of group performance became the muse for increasingly un-collective methods in the recording studio, while producers developed different technological and performative methods to reimagine the collective

Sonic Phantoms Compositional explorations of perceptual phantom patterns

I use the term ‘Sonic Phantoms’ to refer as a whole to a cohesive collection of sound compositions that I have developed over the past five years (2009-2014; fifty pieces, structured in four separate collections / series), dealing at a fundamental level with perceptual auditory illusions. For the creation of this compositional body of work, I have developed a syncretic approach that encompasses and coalesces all kinds of sources, materials, techniques and compositional tools: voices (real and synthetic), field recordings (involving wilderness expeditions worldwide), instrument manipulation (including novel ways of ‘preparation’), object amplification, improvisation and recording studio techniques. This manifests a sonic-based and perceptive-based understanding of the compositional work, as an implicitly proposed paradigm for any equivalent work in terms of its trans-technological, phenomena-based nature. By means of the collection of pieces created and the research and contextualisation presented, my work with ‘Sonic Phantoms’ aims at bringing into focus, shaping and defining a specific and dedicated compositional realm that considers auditory illusions as essential components of the work and not simply mere side effects. I play with sonic materials that are either naturally ambiguous or have been composed to attain this quality, in order to exploit the potential for apophenia to manifest, bringing with it the ‘phantasmatic’ presence. Both my compositions and research work integrate and synergise a considerable number of disparate musical traditions (Western and non-Western), techno-historical moments (from ancient / archaic to electronic / computer-age techniques), cultural frameworks (from ‘serious’ to ‘popular’), and fields of interest / expertise (from the psychological to the musical), into a personal and cohesive compositional whole. All these diverse elements are not simply mentioned or referenced, but have rather defined, structured and formed the resulting compositional work

Cadences of Choreomusicality: Investigating the Relationship Between Sound and Movement in Staged Performances of Popping and Animation in the United Kingdom

This practice-led doctoral research explores the relationship between staged performances of popping, closely related movement practices such as animation (in dance) and music in the United Kingdom. Through an experiential, choreographic and critical methodology, I consider the ways that popping artists are able to shift, bend and distort perceptions of their performances through complex uses of musicality. Popping is a dance form that is included under the umbrella of street dance, which encompasses a wide range of dance practices with their origins in social and vernacular contexts. I scrutinise the musical trends and characteristics of popping and animation specifically, despite street dance forms usually being considered as a collective. This extensive focus reveals a range of selective rhythmical and textural nuances that engage the spectator in a world of choreomusical play. Placing practice at the centre of my investigation, I carry out a series of choreographed projects and reflect on these experiences from the position of dancer/performer and choreographer. Additionally, I consider the work of other popping artists in the field, presenting extensive choreomusical analysis of a selection of their work. Drawing from interviews that I conducted with nine UK street dance artists, I use a range of practitioner-led terminology to demonstrate the metaphorical vocabulary that they have employed to articulate their choreomusical practices and complicate notions of musicality. Drawing from the fields of choreomusical theory and Animation (in film) studies, I explore the value systems that frame ideas of the music-dance relationship in dance studies, developing an appropriate analytical lens which privileges close relationships between popping, animation and music on stage. I interrogate the anxieties that infiltrate close choreomusical relationships, in order to privilege the complex skill and musical sensitivities that poppers develop through their craft. Given intrinsic connections between animation and Animation, I utilise perspectives from the latter field of study to explore the illusionary potential of the moving body on stage. This, I argue, blurs distinctions between the real and the artificial and ultimately contributes to choreomusical tension and resolve. Through extensive analysis in a range of performance contexts, I contend that this specific, detailed investigation of popping and animation can inform and contribute to the fields of choreomusicology and dance studies.AHR

The Sampling of Bodily Sound in Contemporary Composition: towards an embodied analysis

Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictions.The listener’s experience as an embodied subject is at the centre of this work. Embodied experience forms the basis for analyses of three contemporary compositions that sample bodily sound, in order to question how such works represent and mediate the body. The possible applications of this embodied methodology are illustrated through three case studies: Crackers by Christof Migone (2001), A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure by Matmos (2001) and Ground Techniques (2009) by Neil Luck. The findings of each analysis are placed within discussion of critical and theoretical concerns related to the (re)presentation, mediation and manipulation of the body both as materiality and as social construct, using, in particular, work by Hansen (2004) and Wegenstein (2006). The sampling practices of these works lead to the fragmentation of the represented bodies, in which margins between bodily interiors and exteriors are frequently crossed, bringing about a reconfiguration of the musical subject. Furthermore, the celebration of the bodily origins of these works complicates notions of recorded sound as disembodied. The analytical methodology developed in this thesis derives from a consideration of approaches in a number of fields: feminist musicology, music psychology, embodied cognition, phenomenology, music and gesture and new media theory. The sensations and affective responses of the listening body are discussed alongside an examination of how listening is shaped by processes of technological mediation. This thesis attends to both the body that is listening and the body that is listened to. I argue that it is not adequate to understand the works studied as merely representing the body, but suggest it would be more appropriate to understand the relationship between work and body as multi-faceted, conceptualising the body and recorded sound as mutually framing. This uncovers not only technology as mediation, but also the body as mediation. Finally, the case studies are used to reflect upon the limits of the embodied analysis methodology and its potential for wider application.This study was part-financed with the aid of a studentship from University College Falmouth and a grant from The Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust