Category Archives: Science

by | December 3, 2024 · 6:00 am

Adaptive digital instruments and disability

The creation, distribution, and deployment of the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument (AUMI) software represents a project that redefines our understanding of music—its creation, its meaning, and who can make it. AUMI also serves as a broader invitation to embrace innovative thinking beyond the realm of music, challenging traditional notions of normativity, difference, and democratic social relations. The existence of AUMI and the new social dynamics it encourages underscore the significant influence of disability rights and justice advocates, highlighting their impact across diverse social and cultural spheres.

As a digital instrument available for free download, AUMI fosters democratic access to music making. It allows individuals who were previously excluded from composing and performing music to generate a wide range of sounds by controlling a visual cursor through eye, head, hand, and body gestures. AUMI’s technology can track even the smallest body movements, such as eye or chest movements from breathing, enabling users with limited voluntary mobility to create notes, chords, rhythms, and melodies using an apparatus that registers the slightest degrees of motion. When programmed to reduce sensitivity to motion, AUMI supports music composition and performance by individuals with active involuntary movements. This adaptability has significant implications for disability and social justice, highlighting its broader impact on inclusivity and access.

A demonstration video of AUMI.

By overcoming the limitations of outdated technologies and conventions, AUMI creates new opportunities for a diverse range of individuals to engage in music-making. It paves the way for the creation of innovative musical sounds and fosters new social connections among musicians. In doing so, AUMI frees artistic expression from the physical and social constraints that have defined Western art music, allowing for creativity beyond conventional norms.

Instead of perceiving disability as an embarrassing impairment or a deficiency to be fixed or reluctantly accommodated, the disability rights movement embraces the value and potential difference. It draws attention to the harm caused not just to individuals, but to society, by narrow definitions of normalcy and normativity. Disability activism reveals how framing able-bodiedness as the standard leads to artificial, arbitrary, and irrational exclusions that misallocate resources, waste talents, and stifle creativity, invention, and innovation.

This according to “AUMI as a model for social justice” by George Lipsitz, Improvising across abilities: Pauline Oliveros and the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument, ed. by Thomas Ciufo, Abbey L. Dvorak, Kip Haaheim, et al. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2024, 47–63; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2024-9475).

Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

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by | November 25, 2024 · 6:00 am

Performing the imaginary in pop music

In recent years, digital technologies have enabled a blending of the real and imaginary within the broader event sector. Such events have blurred the lines between art, leisure, information, and entertainment, offered in an expanding array of multimedia spectacles. These advancements have enhanced visual presentations, incorporating programming, lighting, projections, special effects, and holograms to create seamless combinations of reality and fantasy. The rise of holographic companies in stage design has allowed audiences to experience performances by deceased musicians such as Tupac Shakur, Maria Callas, Roy Orbison, Teresa Teng, and Whitney Houston. Digital holography has also paved the way for virtual pop stars, including Hatsune Miku from Japan and Luo Tianyi from China. These characters are products of a blend of voice software, idol industry frameworks, and fan-driven creativity, enabling entirely new forms of entertainment and audience engagement.

Promotional material for a Whitney Houston hologram concert.
Luo Tianyi, a virtual pop star from China.
A Tupac Shakur hologram performs a live concert.

Like digital technologies, social media and smartphones are deeply embedded in the environments and material circumstances through which we experience, interpret the world, and connect with others. Rather than external forces acting on us, such tools are integral to our daily lives. Platforms–the systems, processes, and relationships they encompass–have also become increasingly significant in shaping, mediating, and expanding our understanding and experience of popular music. The rise of digital platforms, streaming services, and social media requires a rethinking of the economies and industries of popular music, along with the evolving dynamics between recorded and live music. This is particularly relevant in the context of live performances, where digital technology has played a significant role during a period when live events gained increasing commodity value within the “experience economy”, especially as concert ticket prices skyrocketed and the cost of recorded music formats fell.

This according to “Stages, platforms, streams: The economies and industries of live music after digitalization” by Zhang Qian and Keith Negus (Popular music and society 44/5 [2021] 539–557; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2021-17913).

Below, watch a Maria Callas hologram performance, backed by a live symphony orchestra and a video of a Teresa Teng hologram performance with Jay Chou.

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by | October 10, 2024 · 6:00 am

Emotionality, music, and mental health

Recent research on personality indicates that trait negative emotionality, often referred to as neuroticism, is linked to how young people use music for emotional regulation. This suggests that those with higher levels of neuroticism may turn to music as a way to manage their emotions. However, the emotional factors that connect neuroticism, musical emotion regulation, and mental health remain unclear. Investigating both adaptive and maladaptive forms of musical emotion regulation has revealed potential strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of neuroticism on internalizing symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, in youth.

A study involving 1,137 college undergraduate students aged 17 to 21 identified four forms of emotion regulation related to music listening—rumination, discharging negative emotions, avoidant coping, and a preference for sad music—that may mediate the impact of neuroticism on internalizing symptoms. These findings remained robust even after controlling for general (non-musical) emotion regulation and coping strategies. Overall, the research integrates four complementary perspectives on neuroticism and musical emotion regulation: deductive (from mainstream psychology), inductive (from music psychology), musical coping with stress, and negative trait-congruence (the idea that a preference for sad music reflects negative emotionality). The study also highlighted the potential link between neuroticism and problematic musical emotion regulation strategies, which are often associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety in young people.

This according to “Neuroticism, musical emotion regulation, and mental health” by Dave Miranda (Psychomusicology: Music, mind and brain 31/2 [2021] 59–73; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2021-8687).

October 10 is World Mental Health Day.

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by | March 26, 2024 · 5:57 pm

Courtship dance step sounds of the blue-capped cordon-bleu

While vocalizations have been elucidated in various songbird studies, non-vocal sounds have received less attention. In the blue-capped cordon-bleu (Uraeginthus cyanocephalus), both sexes perform courtship displays that are accompanied by singing and distinct body movements (i.e., dance). A previous study revealed that cordon-bleu courtship bobbing includes multiple rapid steps. This behavior is quite similar to human tap dancing, because it can function simultaneously as a visual and acoustic signal.

In many cases, the acoustic signal value of such steps (along with the high-speed step movements) produce non-vocal sounds that have amplitudes similar to vocal sounds. In this sense, step behavior strongly affects step sound amplitude. Additionally, the dancing step sounds were substantially louder than feet movement sounds in a non-courtship context, and the amplitude range overlapped with that of song notes. These observations support the notion that, in addition to song, cordon-bleus produce acoustic signals with their feet.

Read more in “Songbird tap dancing produces non-vocal sounds” by Nao Ota, Manfred Gahr, and Masayo Soma (Bioacoustics: The international journal of animal sound and its recording 26.2 [2017], 161–168). Find it in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature.

Below is the step-dancing performed by male and female Uraeginthus cyanocephalus (blue-capped cordon-bleu) captured on a research video by the authors.

Related Bibliolore posts:

https://bibliolore.org/2018/05/21/angelic-bird-musicians/
https://bibliolore.org/2014/11/13/afghan-perceptions-of-birdsong/

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by | January 24, 2024 · 6:00 pm

Mindfulness and music learning

The practice of mindfulness can stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, the part of the autonomic nervous system that counteracts the effects of stress in our minds and bodies. Research on mindfulness and meditation has shown that these practices have the capacity to decrease the size of the amygdala, known as the brain’s “panic button” in charge of responses associated with fear, anxiety and strong emotions.

Mindfulness has become increasingly common in the workplace, the healthcare profession, and many school programs.  In recent years, the incorporation of deep breathing techniques, mindful movements, and guided visualizations has also been used at all levels of music teaching, allowing students to leave stressors behind while fully engaging in the learning experience. For instance, when music students learn to utilize their breath as an anchor, they learn to connect to the present moment, to reflect on their playing with self-compassion, and to nurture deeper listening skills.

Some of the possible benefits of mindfulness for musicians include:

Improvement of students’ mood during lessons, making the learning process a positive experience.

Increased body awareness and mind/body connection, promoting healthy technique.

Decreased tension while playing. Increased active listening, shaping, phrasing and musicality.

Improvement in capacity to focus and concentrate during lessons and performances.

Improvement in memorization and reduction in performance anxiety.

Increased self-compassion and kindness in the face of mistakes.

Celebrate International Education Day (January 24) by reading “Mindfulness in music teaching: Practical applications to piano lessons” by Fernanda Nieto (MTNA e-journal 14.3 [February 2023], 28-29). Find it in RILM Abstracts with Full Text.

Below are further ideas from the text related to mindfulness and piano instruction.

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by | October 6, 2023 · 6:00 am

The emergence of the digital humanities

Digital humanities is an umbrella term for branches of humanities disciplines (such as linguistics, literature, history, music, art and religious studies) in which digital technologies are used: as the application of digital technologies and methods humanities objects (e.g., works of music, literature, art) or as the application of humanities methods to digital objects (e.g. digital sound recordings, videos, websites and graphics). Examples of such interdisciplinary applications include digital coding, storage, archiving, searching, processing, and analysis of humanities objects as well as historical, linguistic, cultural research into digital objects.

Today, digital humanities methods are a part of all humanities research. The digital humanities emerged from the first applications of digital calculators and computers in humanities research in the 1950s, primarily in linguistics, but soon also included music research and other disciplines. Since then, its importance has grown steadily with the development of new computer and software technologies.

The basis of many digital music research projects is the digital storage and notation of music. In the mid-1950s, a project at Bell Telephone Laboratories led by Max Matthews (1926–2011, pictured above) developed technology to transmit telephone conversations in digitized form, the MUSIC-N series was the first computer program to generate digital audio through direct synthesis. MUSIC I (1957) and MUSIC II (1958) synthesized simple sounds over a limited number of triangular wave functions. However, it was not until MUSIC III (1960) that the first comprehensive synthesis program emerged. MUSIC IV (mid-1960s) was rewritten in the FORTRAN programming language and revised and expanded as MUSIC V in 1969 at Bell Laboratories. MUSIC V offered more global sound control, the ability to represent individual notes and note patterns, and supported the simulation of performance nuances (such as ritardando and crescendo). MUSIC V’s global parameter differentiation and event list were also precursors to the standard MIDI file format. Today, SAOL (1999) is a MUSIC-N programming language that is part of the MPEG-4 audio standard.

The Plaine & Easy Code was developed by Murray Gould in the early 1964s and later expanded by Gould and Berry S. Brook. It was intended to enable the transfer of musical bibliographic data to electronic data processing devices. The Plaine & Easy Code was a purely monolinear notation, encoded with normal typewriter symbols, with which not only tempo, key, meter, pitch, and durations could be encoded but also some phrasing and ornamentation symbols. Below is an example of the notation.

Below Max Mathews demonstrates his Radio Baton Controller and Conductor software program and performs brief selections by Bach, Chopin, and Beethoven.

Here are some related Bibliolore posts:

Barry & Claire Brook’s excellent incipit adventure
Scrabble™ music

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by | July 28, 2023 · 6:00 am

The brain, age, and music education

Music teachers often deal with clients that are children or young adults. Researchers from the field of neuroscience and the aging brain have, however, demonstrated that music education benefits the brain and cognition throughout a person’s lifespan. They also have noticed the existence of patterns of decline from early adulthood in processing speed and accelerating declines in memory and reasoning. The development and refinement of neuroimaging techniques within the last twenty years or so has allowed for exploration of how the behavior and neurophysiology of musicians may differ (if at all) from non-musicians. Music training affects a wide range of cognitive abilities associated with brain enhancement including verbal processing, intelligence, reading, auditory processing, decision-making, and so on. Researchers have also found enhancements in cognitive flexibility, working memory, and verbal fluency in musicians.

Music training also may induce neuroplastic changes and enhancements. Firstly, brain volume (gray matter and white matter) increases with musical training. Playing a musical instrument has been associated with increased white matter thickness in motor, premotor, and supplementary motor, prefrontal and parietal cortices–in other words, brain volume increases occur with musical training. Secondly, musical training changes connectivity and functional connectivity in the brain. Research has found that changes in the auditory-motor network for young adults over 18 beginning music training suggest that music training can influence brain plasticity even after brain maturation is almost complete.

In some cases, older adults with at least 10 years of musical experience displayed better performance in far-transfer tasks such as nonverbal memory, naming, and executive functioning tests than non-musicians or musicians with less than 10 years of musical experience. Other benefits include reduced age-related decline of fluid intelligence in older musicians, increased inhibition, and increased executive functioning. Overall, current research suggests that lifelong engagement in musical training maintains the brain in a younger state and enhances neural functioning.

Read more in “Music education and the aging brain” by Patricia Izbicki and Christina L. Svec (Contributions to music education 47 [2022], RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2022-6592.

The above image is a mapping of human brain connectivity featuring dorsal and lateral views.

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by | April 24, 2023 · 6:00 am

Mbiras as sensors

The frequencies of pitches produced by a musical instrument are determined by the physical properties of the instrument. Consequently, by measuring the frequency of a pitch, one can infer information about the instrument’s physical properties. By modifying a musical instrument to contain a sample and then analyzing the instrument’s pitch, one can make precision measurements of the physical properties of the sample.

Researchers used the mbira, a 3000-year-old African instrument that consists of metal tines attached to a wooden board; these tines are plucked to play musical pitches. By replacing the mbira’s tines with bent steel tubing, filling the tubing with a sample, using a smartphone to record the sound while plucking the tubing, and measuring the frequency of the sound using a free software tool available on their website, they could measure the density of the sample with a resolution of about 0.012 g/mL.

To demonstrate the mbira sensor’s capabilities, they used it to successfully distinguish diethylene glycol and glycerol, two similar chemicals that are sometimes mistaken for each other in pharmaceutical manufacturing (leading to hundreds of deaths).

Unlike existing tools for measuring density, the mbira sensor can be made and used by virtually anyone in the world with access to a smartphone and the free software tool posted on the Internet. Among many possible applications, consumers could use mbira sensors to detect counterfeit and adulterated medications (which represent around 10% of all medications in low- and middle-income countries).

This according to “Musical instruments as sensors” by Heran C. Bhakta, Vamsi K. Choday, and William H. Grover (ACS omega III [2018] 11026–32; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2018-95175). Many thanks to Improbable Research for bringing this article to our attention!

Above, (A, left to right) a conventional mbira, the same instrument with the tines replaced by a length of stainless steel tubing bent into a U shape, and an example easily made from scrap lumber and hardware; (B) the method of using an mbira sensor; and (C) a waveform plot of a sound recording of plucking an mbira sensor, obtained using a smartphone’s voice recorder app and the free online software tool.

Below, Stella Rambisai Chiweshe demonstrates traditional Zimbabwean mbira playing.

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by | March 27, 2023 · 6:00 am

Doktor Eisenbarth’s musical clock

The medieval German town Hann. Münden was home to Johann Andreas Eisenbarth (1663–1727), a colorful figure who became a subject of folklore to the extent that fact and fiction are now difficult to untangle.

A celebrated surgeon who was bestowed with privileges by various members of German royalty, Eisenbarth had no formal medical credentials, nor was he ever officially awarded the title “Doctor”. Nevertheless, his skill and medical innovations are matters of historical record, not least his pioneering contributions to the development of cataract surgery.

Reputed to have traveled with an entourage of up to 120 attendants including musicians, acrobats, and clowns, he is said to have plied his trade in a carnival-like atmosphere. The loud music and revelry served both to attract large crowds—potential customers for Eisenbarth’s services and bottled remedies—and to drown out the cries of his patients, who underwent procedures including tooth extractions and amputations in an era before the advent of anesthetics.

In honor of this now semi-legendary resident, a mechanical clock was installed in the upper story of Hann. Münden’s Rathaus in 1980. After the stroke of noon and a brief pause, an automatic carillon plays the tune of the comical song Ich bin der Doktor Eisenbart as automata depict the doctor extracting a huge, bloody tooth from the mouth of a terrified, gesticulating patient restrained by a hammer-wielding attendant. In addition to these central figures, a juggler, an acrobat, and a flag-bearer suggest the festive nature of Eisenbarth’s medical procedures.

This according to “Dr Eisenbarth’s automated musical clock in Hann. Münden” by Mark Singleton and Sven Heinmann (The music box: An international journal of mechanical music XXVIII/5 [spring 2018] pp. 185–87; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2018-52039).

Today is Eisenbarth’s 360th birthday! Above and below, the good doctor in action.

BONUS: A chance to sing along!

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by | October 31, 2022 · 6:00 am

Skulls and music (non)preference

Related image

This Halloween, let’s see what a series of experiments demonstrated about the influence of skull resonance on music (non)preference.

Listeners were presented with a set of original melodies and were asked to judge how much they enjoyed each selection.

Following the melody judgments, the resonance of each listener’s skull was recorded by firmly pressing a microphone against the temporal bone while the listener tapped on his or her head. The complex spectra recording from this tapping was analyzed to determine the fundamental resonant frequency of that person’s skull.

The skull was not found to directly influence the melodies that the participants selected at all. Participants preferred a wide range of musical keys and these musical keys had no simple relationship to the resonance of the skulls.

However, skull resonance was found to moderately predict the musical keys that people disliked. Unlike the preferred music, the disliked music tended to be found in a very narrow set of musical keys. In addition, the fundamental frequency of the musical keys themselves tended to have a clear set of non-integer, complex mathematical ratios to the skull.

In short, this research suggests that the skull might influence the music that a person dislikes rather than the music a person likes.

This according to “Music of the body: An investigation of skull resonance and its influence on musical preference” by Jitwipar Suwangbutra, et al. (Acoustical Society of America: 165th Acoustical Society of America Meeting/21st International Congress on Acoustics/52nd Meeting of the Canadian Acoustical Association: Lay papers, 2013; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2013-5013).

Many thanks to Improbable Research for bringing this study to our attention! Below, The Skulls discuss funding for future projects.

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