Her Bright Blazon Forever Unstained

Just a few lyrics today, nothing more, nothing less. Lyrics of joy. Lyrics of home. Lyrics of who we are as a nation. Might we never forget who we are again. [excerpt

Music and Aggression: The Impact of Sexual-Aggressive Song Lyrics on Aggression-Related Thoughts, Emotions, and Behavior Toward the Same and the Opposite Sex

Three studies examined the impact of sexual-aggressive song lyrics on aggressive thoughts, emotions, and behavior toward the same and the opposite sex. In Study 1, the authors directly manipulated whether male or female participants listened to misogynous or neutral song lyrics and measured actual aggressive behavior. Male participants who were exposed to misogynous song lyrics administered more hot chili sauce to a female than to a male confederate. Study 2 shed some light on the underlying psychological processes: Male participants who heard misogynous song lyrics recalled more negative attributes of women and reported more feelings of vengeance than when they heard neutral song lyrics. In addition, men-hating song lyrics had a similar effect on aggression-related responses of female participants toward men. Finally, Study 3 replicated the findings of the previous two studies with an alternative measure of aggressive behavior as well as a more subtle measure of aggressive cognitions. The results are discussed in the framework of the General Aggression Model

Hippocampal sclerosis affects fMR-adaptation of lyrics and melodies in songs

Songs constitute a natural combination of lyrics and melodies, but it is unclear whether and how these two song components are integrated during the emergence of a memory trace. Network theories of memory suggest a prominent role of the hippocampus, together with unimodal sensory areas, in the build-up of conjunctive representations. The present study tested the modulatory influence of the hippocampus on neural adaptation to songs in lateral temporal areas. Patients with unilateral hippocampal sclerosis and healthy matched controls were presented with blocks of short songs in which lyrics and/or melodies were varied or repeated in a crossed factorial design. Neural adaptation effects were taken as correlates of incidental emergent memory traces. We hypothesized that hippocampal lesions, particularly in the left hemisphere, would weaken adaptation effects, especially the integration of lyrics and melodies. Results revealed that lateral temporal lobe regions showed weaker adaptation to repeated lyrics as well as a reduced interaction of the adaptation effects for lyrics and melodies in patients with left hippocampal sclerosis. This suggests a deficient build-up of a sensory memory trace for lyrics and a reduced integration of lyrics with melodies, compared to healthy controls. Patients with right hippocampal sclerosis showed a similar profile of results although the effects did not reach significance in this population. We highlight the finding that the integrated representation of lyrics and melodies typically shown in healthy participants is likely tied to the integrity of the left medial temporal lobe. This novel finding provides the first neuroimaging evidence for the role of the hippocampus during repetitive exposure to lyrics and melodies and their integration into a song

The Minor Fall, the Major Lift: Inferring Emotional Valence of Musical Chords through Lyrics

We investigate the association between musical chords and lyrics by analyzing a large dataset of user-contributed guitar tablatures. Motivated by the idea that the emotional content of chords is reflected in the words used in corresponding lyrics, we analyze associations between lyrics and chord categories. We also examine the usage patterns of chords and lyrics in different musical genres, historical eras, and geographical regions. Our overall results confirms a previously known association between Major chords and positive valence. We also report a wide variation in this association across regions, genres, and eras. Our results suggest possible existence of different emotional associations for other types of chords.Comment: Royal Society Open Science, 201

DopeLearning: A Computational Approach to Rap Lyrics Generation

Writing rap lyrics requires both creativity to construct a meaningful, interesting story and lyrical skills to produce complex rhyme patterns, which form the cornerstone of good flow. We present a rap lyrics generation method that captures both of these aspects. First, we develop a prediction model to identify the next line of existing lyrics from a set of candidate next lines. This model is based on two machine-learning techniques: the RankSVM algorithm and a deep neural network model with a novel structure. Results show that the prediction model can identify the true next line among 299 randomly selected lines with an accuracy of 17%, i.e., over 50 times more likely than by random. Second, we employ the prediction model to combine lines from existing songs, producing lyrics with rhyme and a meaning. An evaluation of the produced lyrics shows that in terms of quantitative rhyme density, the method outperforms the best human rappers by 21%. The rap lyrics generator has been deployed as an online tool called DeepBeat, and the performance of the tool has been assessed by analyzing its usage logs. This analysis shows that machine-learned rankings correlate with user preferences.Comment: This is a pre-print of an article appearing at KDD'1

A STUDY OF DEIXIS USED IN TOP FIVE WALDJINAH’S POPULAR KERONCONG SONGS LYRICS

This study aims to describe the types of deixis used in top five Waldjinah’s popular keroncong song lyrics and to find out the dominant types also the reason why the type of deixis is dominantly used. The song lyrics are associated in the study of deixis since they will express the singer’s or song writer’s feeling and emotion including some expressions of human thoughts, ideas, opinions, and others. The descriptive method with qualitative approach was involved to identify the deixis found in top five Waldjinah’s popular keroncong songs lyrics. The data of this study were obtained from top five popular keroncong songs lyrics performed by Waldjinah entitled Walang Kekek, Yen Ing Tawang Ana Lintang, Anoman Obong, Tanjung Perak and Rondo Kempling. There are some following steps for collecting the data: printing out the lyrics, identifying and classifying deixis into their types (person deixis, place deixis, time deixis, social deixis, and discourse deixis), underlining each type, tabulating and calculating the types of deixis to find out the dominant type and analyzing to find the cause of the most dominant type of deixis. The findings of this study showed that there were five types of deixis found in top five Waldjinah’s popular keroncong song lyrics, namely 58 occurrences of person deixis (38.7%), 48 occurrences of spatial or place deixis (32%), 10 occurrences of temporal or time deixis (6.7%), 9 occurrences of discourse deixis (6%), and 25 occurrences of social deixis (16.7%). Based on the findings, it can be concluded that person deixis was the most dominant type used than the other types. It is in accordance with the function of person deixis that mostly deal with the people interaction. Therefore, the person deixis found in top five Waldjinah’s popular keroncong song lyrics are used to maintain interaction between Waldjinah as a singer and her audience during performance. The importance of using person deixis especially in keroncong song lyrics should be considered by the keroncong song writers. Thus, they are expected to use many popular deixis so that the young generations as the listeners who will preserve the keroncong song existence in the future can become more understand even enjoy to hear the keroncong song