Musical organics: a heterarchical approach to digital organology

Gaining a comprehensive understanding of new musical technologies is fraught with difficulties. The digital materials from which they are formed are of such diverse origins and nature, that they do not match traditional organological classifications. This article traces the history of musical instrument classifications relevant to the understanding of new instruments, and proposes an alternative approach to the centuries-old tree-structure of downwards divisions. The proposed musical organics is a multi-dimensional, heterarchical, and organic approach to the analysis and classification of both traditional and new musical instruments that suits the rhizomatic nature of their material design and technical origins. Outlines of a hypothetical organological informatics retrieval system are also presented

A fossil biting midge (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) from early Eocene Indian amber with a complex pheromone evaporator

The life-like fidelity of organisms captured in amber is unique among all kinds of fossilization and represents an invaluable source for different fields of palaeontological and biological research. One of the most challenging aspects in amber research is the study of traits related to behaviour. Here, indirect evidence for pheromone-mediated mating behaviour is recorded from a biting midge (Ceratopogonidae) in 54 million-year-old Indian amber. Camptopterohelea odora n. sp. exhibits a complex, pocket shaped structure on the wings, which resembles the wing folds of certain moth flies (Diptera: Psychodidae) and scent organs that are only known from butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) so far. Our studies suggests that pheromone releasing structures on the wings have evolved independently in biting midges and might be much more widespread in fossil as well as modern insects than known so far

Hierarchy and position usage in ‘mixed’ metrical structures

Musical metre is commonly formalised in hierarchical terms, and defined or represented on the basis of regular, interacting pulse streams. These hierarchies are often merely asserted a priori, though systematic studies by Palmer and Krumhansl and Prince and Schmuckler suggest that such hierarchies are also strongly manifest in the relative usage of metrical positions: a strong metrical position is also a frequently used one. If position usage provides an insight into metrical structure, then this may provide a way of engaging with a wider range of metrical structures, including ‘mixed’ metres (5/8, 7/8 ) which are excluded by many systems of well-formedness invoked in the canonical studies of ‘simple’ metres (2/4, 3/4 ). This article assesses whether position usage in mixed metres is similarly indicative of the metrical structures asserted for them by music theory. The complete set of Bartók’s solo piano works in 7/8 (223) provides the primary case study repertoire. This is complemented by a look at the more ambiguous 8/8 (323), as part of considering how position usage might relate to distinctions between syncopation and mixed metre. An introductory discussion of sample size also provides new data and observations for larger corpora of common practice music by Bach. Brief analytical comments keep the study grounded in ‘the music’ throughout

Environmental Reporting Regulations and Reporting Practices

This study explores how four different types of environmental reporting regulations affect reporting practices. Accounting Act requirements, accounting standard requirements, accounting standard recommendations, and no regulation/voluntary disclosure are associated with different levels of reporting obligations. Disclosures made by enterprises subject to regulations are compared with those of enterprises that are not. There are separate regression models for each type of regulation. The sample consists of 235 enterprises from the private and public sectors. Content analysis is used to measure environmental disclosure. Enterprises subject to regulations report significantly more types of the information content required by law than other enterprises, which is in line with the higher regulatory legitimacy risk. There is no such difference in disclosure between the two groups of enterprises for the information required and recommended by the accounting standard. This may suggest that pragmatic, cognitive, and moral legitimacy issues outweigh the regulatory legitimacy risk for these types of information, or that legitimacy risks are generally low. Enforcement of regulations will increase the regulatory risk. For information that is voluntary for all enterprises to disclose, enterprises that are not subject to any regulations report significantly more types of information than those that are. This result is not in line with predictions made from any of the four types of legitimacy. Some alternative explanations are discussed. Since regulatory regimes may include several types of means, the main contribution is the comparison of four types of regulations within the same regime, as opposed to analysing only one type of regulation at a time such as in the extant literature. The study also explores different types of legitimacy, and addresses the lack of research on environmental reporting in the public sector.This work has benefitted from the support of the foundations Stiftelsen Den Nordenfjeldske Handelshøyskole and Adolf Øiens Fond

Effects of instructed timing and tempo on snare drum sound in drum kit performance

This paper reports on an experiment investigating the expressive means with which performers of groove-based musics signal the intended timing of a rhythmic event. Ten expert drummers were instructed to perform a rock pattern in three different tempi and three different timing styles: “laid-back,” “on-the-beat,” and “pushed.” The results show that there were systematic differences in the intensity and timbre (i.e., sound-pressure level, temporal centroid, and spectral centroid) of series of snare strokes played with these different timing styles at the individual level. A common pattern was found across subjects concerning the effect of instructed timing on sound-pressure level: a majority of the drummers played laid-back strokes louder than on-the-beat strokes. Furthermore, when the tempo increased, there was a general increase in sound-pressure level and a decrease in spectral centroid across subjects. The results show that both temporal and sound-related features are important in order to indicate that a rhythmic event has been played intentionally early, late, or on-the-beat, and provide insight into the ways in which musicians communicate at the microrhythmic level in groove-based musics. This research has been published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. © Acoustical Society of America