The effects of computer-assisted keyboard technology and MIDI accompaniments on group piano students' performance accuracy and attitudes.

Recommendations from the results include using CAI such as the Guide Mode to help group piano students improve in pitch accuracy during the early stages of learning new repertoire. After students feel comfortable with the pitches, practicing with MIDI accompaniments but without the Guide Mode may assist in the development of rhythmic continuity. However, teachers should not assume that the technology is an automatic way of improving piano performance. More time to practice with the technology outside of the classroom setting may be needed to observe any longer term effects on students' performance.Perceptions of MIDI accompaniments and the Guide Mode's effectiveness in helping students improve performance accuracy were generally positive. In open-ended responses, a majority of the participants from the Guide Mode group expressed that practicing with the Guide Mode was the most helpful part of the practice sessions. Students also reported that they made greater improvement when they practiced hands separately. Some subjects also stated that the use of MIDI accompaniments helped keep their rhythm steady. Other subjects believed that the use of technology had no effect on their performance.This study investigated the effects of musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) accompaniment and computer-assisted instruction (CAI) technology on group piano students' performance accuracy and attitudes. Subjects ( N = 29) in this quasi-experimental design were non-keyboard music major college students in four intact third semester piano classes. Two of the classes were assigned to a group that practiced with the Guide Mode on Yamaha Clavinova keyboards and MIDI accompaniment, while the other two classes were assigned to a group that practiced without the Guide Mode but with MIDI accompaniment.The researcher compared the posttest scores to the pretest scores within subjects for significant differences in performance accuracy due to the treatment. Differences in pretest and posttest scores were also compared between the Guide Mode group and the MIDI-only group. Four outliers were identified as possibly skewing the data. When the outliers were removed, the group that practiced with the Guide Mode (n = 19) demonstrated significantly better improvement in total pitch errors in comparison to the control group (n = 10), p < .05. No significant difference in rhythmic errors emerged between groups. Within groups, participants made significant improvement in overall accuracy from pretests to posttests.Subjects' performances of two piano compositions were first recorded as pretests. Afterwards each class practiced the same two compositions with their respective treatment for two weeks in class. Subjects then recorded the two compositions as posttests. Three judges evaluated the pretest and posttest recordings for accuracy in pitch and rhythm. A Likert-type questionnaire investigated subjects' attitudes toward practicing with the Guide Mode and MIDI accompaniment

The Utility of Resistance in Environments for Live Performance with Electronics as Part of a Compositional Strategy

The portfolio of compositions and accompanying commentary presented here deal with three key themes: resistance, liveness, and studioness. In the introduction, resistance is split into two forms: aesthetic and practical. Aesthetic resistance is established as a productively disruptive relationship with a perceived set of musical conventions, building on theoretical work by Kohn (1997), Hegarty (2008) and Thompson (2017). Practical resistance is identified in the relationship between performers and their performance environments, inspired by Noise performance practice and Ferguson’s (2013) writing on the subject, where performers perceive unpredictability and instability in their performance environments as resistant to their authorial control. Following Phelan (2005) and Auslander (2012), liveness is found in real-time public renderings of music where performers look to take advantage of the unique affordances of their live performance situation. Studioness is identified in situations where performers make use of the unique affordances of the studio to make work where the studio’s presence is clearly evident.The portfolio of compositions (comprising two projects: ‘Spectra’ and ‘Slow Loris’) seeks to investigate the relationship between live performance and studio practice in Experimental Electronica. It employs the idea of resistance to help cultivate a condition of liveness within this context. This live practice is then examined in the studio, asking how the resistant qualities of the live material might be expressed in the studio practice? Can these artefacts of resistance be translated into something with an idiomatic studioness? The possibilities of this approach are the focus of both music and commentary. The commentary also deals with resistance in historical and contemporary theorisations of improvisation and live performance with electronics, and expressions of liveness and studioness in Noise and Experimental Electronica, reflecting upon the effectiveness of the author’s compositional methodology and the ongoing relationship between his live practice and studio work

Figures of Speech : Oral History as an Agent of Form in Electroacoustic Music

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version.Reflection on the author’s use of oral history recordings as source material in three electroacoustic works suggests ways in which complementary threads of storytelling and recorded memory can be shaped into purposefully directed forms

An analysis of Mainframe tropics: the imprint of electronic dance music within a work by Mason Bates

The author demonstrates through musical analysis of the written score and observations of a YouTube performance, personal performance, and preparation for performance, that Mason Bates’s 2009 work Mainframe Tropics for horn, violin, and piano is an acoustic realization of a short Electronic Dance Music Set. The analysis validates how the three-movement work follows established forms of EDM tracks and is set with elements of rhythmic modulation and continuance within the beat patterns as written (especially Four-on-the-Floor and Breakbeat) and how Bates’s work uses the influence of one genre of music to create an original idea within another genre of music. In addition to the in-depth musical analysis, there is a step-by-step through-analysis for use by performers and composers to better understand the work and its genesis

Fleeting Strands

stereo acousmatic sound, fixed medi

The Water Is Always Running: Vaporwave, Fluxus, And The Role Of Defamiliarization In Music-Led Virtual Realities

This thesis examines how a Fluxus approach to participatory music can leverage environmental metaphors and affordances, heighten user awareness of their interactions through a making-strange approach to musical interaction, and balance functional and creative user experiences in a meaningful and participatory musical interaction. This research has been conducted using the virtual reality experience The Water Is Always Running. This work presents an unusual music-making environment, a 3D kitchen with dishwashing simulation, to explore how a making-strange approach to musical interaction and participation can heighten the awareness of process for the user. To create this work, ideas have been leveraged from acoustic ecology, vaporwave, virtual reality musical instrument design, and human-centered design

Too fast, too tight, too loud, too bright

It is difficult to imagine that others do not perceive and react to the cultural stimuli as I do when dealing with everyday sensory situations. Unlike most, I have struggled with many different responses to commonplace sensory events during my life. A recent diagnosis of certain symptoms has helped to explain not only my lifelong reactions to sensory stimuli, but also the resulting environments I have created for myself in which I live and work. The four terms I use that most fully describe the affects of this condition are; too fast, too tight, too loud and too bright. Although the first, too fast, is not necessarily considered a sense, it results in an internal reaction to an external visual event. The others are directly related to the sense of touch, the sense of hearing and the sense of sight. I will describe my efforts to construct environments in my Thesis Show where each of these areas of my difficulty are presented to the viewer so that he or she may feel, to a greater or lesser extent, how I perceive my environment

Rendering the real - towards a musical landscape

The research project, RENDERING THE REAL - Towards a Musical Landscape investigates and further develops my studies of Australia's rural landscape within an audiovisual context. My research aims towards the synergistic properties of the seen and heard, where only the sights and sounds of my recorded environments were utilized. The research paper details the use of Apple's Final Cut Pro as the apparatus for creating and composing the works produced throughout the research. The use of the software is detailed within the paper, but also where I find inspiration and appropriation of musical constructs. I'm interested in applying musical and repetitive structures in my approach. My goal is developing and expanding notions in how we can recontextualize known experiences and environments, and in doing such find new appreciations and approaches for moving-image artworks