Current Research in Systematic Musicology – serie

The future of music archiving and search engines lies in deep learning and big data. Music information retrieval algorithms automatically analyze musical features like timbre, melody, rhythm or musical form, and artificial intelligence then sorts and relates these features. At the first International Symposium on Computational Ethnomusicological Archiving held on November 9 to 11, 2017 at the Institute of Systematic Musicology in Hamburg, Germany, a new Computational Phonogram Archiving standard was discussed as an interdisciplinary approach. Ethnomusicologists, music and computer scientists, systematic musicologists as well as music archivists, composers and musicians presented tools, methods and platforms and shared fieldwork and archiving experiences in the fields of musical acoustics, informatics, music theory as well as on music storage, reproduction and metadata. The Computational Phonogram Archiving standard is also in high demand in the music market as a search engine for musicconsumers. This book offers a comprehensive overview of the field written by leading researchers around the globe.

This book presents a novel method of grafting musical wind instruments by exchanging an instrument’s standard mouthpiece with different tone generators. Using the concrete example of the soprano saxophone, it describes how, with six other tone generators, including brass, double reed, and free reed mechanisms, the saxophone can be extended to nearly every wind instrument category in the von Hornbostel and Sachs classification system. The book demonstrates how it is possible to play these instrument variations with high proficiency, and describes the method of hyper-specialization, including acoustical insights, conservatory training methods and the underlying philosophy. The latter is based on the cultural traditions of the different wind instrument prototypes and the Deep Listening philosophy of cultivating internal diversity, and approach that leads to a new level of wind instrument virtuosity that offers great timbral variety combined with the flexibility of a regular acoustic wind instrument.

This book provides a broad overview of spaciousness in music theory, from mixing and performance practice, to room acoustics, psychoacoustics and audio engineering, and presents the derivation, implementation and experimental validation of a novel type of spatial audio system. Discussing the physics of musical instruments and the nature of auditory perception, the book enables readers to precisely localize synthesized musical instruments while experiencing their timbral variance and spatial breadth.Offering interdisciplinary insights for novice music enthusiasts and experts in the field of spatial audio, this book is suitable for anyone interested in the study of music and musicology and the application of spatial audio mixing, or those seeking an overview of the state of the art in applied psychoacoustics for spatial audio.

This book provides a broad overview of spaciousness in music theory, from mixing and performance practice, to room acoustics, psychoacoustics and audio engineering, and presents the derivation, implementation and experimental validation of a novel type of spatial audio system. Discussing the physics of musical instruments and the nature of auditory perception, the book enables readers to precisely localize synthesized musical instruments while experiencing their timbral variance and spatial breadth.Offering interdisciplinary insights for novice music enthusiasts and experts in the field of spatial audio, this book is suitable for anyone interested in the study of music and musicology and the application of spatial audio mixing, or those seeking an overview of the state of the art in applied psychoacoustics for spatial audio.

This book presents sixteen chapters in Volume 1. This Volume I of the Proceedings of the Worldwide Music Conference 2021 offers a smorgasbord of scientific approaches to music. The congress is one of a kind; it is dedicated not to a specific field but to the interdisciplinary developments and the interaction with the representatives from actual scientific disciplines. The languages of mathematics, computer science, semiotics, palaeography, and medicine are in the mix; geography of the studies is also impressive—Greece, Mexico, China, Russia, India, Poland, and USA, to name just a few. The purpose of such juxtaposition is to see how the terminology, categorical apparatus, and interpretations of music vary from science to science and how this can enrich the terminology of music theory. They cover a wide range of topics that the editors divided into four subfields: music in interdisciplinary contexts, music and current technology, musical instruments and voice, and music pedagogy and medicine. The opening section of the Proceedings is thus dedicated to the idea of interdisciplinarity, relationship of creator of theory of harmony Rameau to sciences of his time, the idea of number in music, co-creation, and the category of musical network. Three more chapters here deal with Russian palaeography, Indian musical genre, and the idea of musical semiotics. It is a kind of opening statement from music theorists. Part two, music and current technology, united three chapters, on “zero gravity” concept in modern music, discussion of scales as mathematical networks, and the innovation in digital music making, transforming it from stationary to mobile applications. The third part, musical instruments and voice, is of special interest because it is in the study of the instruments, the design, acoustic characteristics, and tuning, and sciences have cooperated with music theory for centuries. In addition to instruments, one chapter here is dedicated to voice. The last part, musical pedagogy and medicine, takes the reader even further into the interdisciplinary domain. The Proceedings is written in standard English language, prepared for the pleasure of reading of wide circles of professionals in different fields. The purpose of the editors is to bring this rather diverse set of texts into the context of a fruitful dialogue.

This book gathers a set of works highlighting significant advances in the areas of music and sound. They report on innovative music technologies, acoustics, findings in musicology, new perspectives and techniques for composition, sound design and sound synthesis, and methods for music education and therapy. Further, they cover interesting topics at the intersection between music and computing, design and social sciences.  Chapters are based on extended and revised versions of the best papers presented during the 6th and 7th editions of EIMAD–Meeting of Research in Music, Arts and Design, held in 2020 and 2021, respectively, at the School of Applied Arts in Castelo Branco, Portugal. All in all, this book provides music researchers, educators and professionals with authoritative information about new trends and techniques, and a source of inspiration for future research, practical developments, and for establishing collaboration between experts from different fields.

This book gathers a set of works highlighting significant advances in the areas of music and sound. They report on innovative music technologies, acoustics, findings in musicology, new perspectives and techniques for composition, sound design and sound synthesis, and methods for music education and therapy. Further, they cover interesting topics at the intersection between music and computing, design and social sciences.  Chapters are based on extended and revised versions of the best papers presented during the 6th and 7th editions of EIMAD–Meeting of Research in Music, Arts and Design, held in 2020 and 2021, respectively, at the School of Applied Arts in Castelo Branco, Portugal. All in all, this book provides music researchers, educators and professionals with authoritative information about new trends and techniques, and a source of inspiration for future research, practical developments, and for establishing collaboration between experts from different fields.

This Volume II of the Proceedings of the Worldwide Music Conference 2021 continues the line of publications of the first volume in a highly interdisciplinary mode. This time, we offer eight chapters that provide the in-depth study of music in four large sub-fields: mathematics, language and theory of narrative, evolution and perception, and, finally, sociology. The first chapter, by Roman Ruditsa, is devoted to the study of structural pitch organization. This is based upon a formal logical interpretation of the idea of pitch. The chapter contains formal definitions of such objects as tones, intervals, and interval systems and a demonstration of the logical relationships that exist between them. The second chapter, in the same mathematical venue, by Celina Richter and Stefan E. Schmidt, revisits the millennial question of the essence of an interval, using highly advanced mathematical language, the categories of monoid and the algebraic theory of measurement. The next block is dedicatedto language and narrative; the first chapter is by Vincent Meelberg. Here, the reader will find fascinating developments in the ongoing deliberations on this elusive category. The name of Trevor Rawbone, perhaps, does not need an introduction to those involved with cognitive studies of music. This time, his chapter deals with the idea of the language of musical thought, which shifts the traditional discussion of language into a very new dimension. Carlos Almada begins a new section in the book, the one dedicated to evolution and perception. He begins with Darwin and takes us through the exciting path of development of the science of evolution, which he masterfully connects to his model of derivative analysis of music. The question of psycho-physiological foundation of the ethnic hearing, raised in the chapter by Аlla V. Toropova and Irina N. Simakova, is a difficult one. The idea of ethnic character of music had been a part of traditional musicology and usually was expressed in specific language of humanities. The chapter by Daniil Shutko on the theoretical ideas of the legendary professor of St. Petersburg conservatory, Dr. Tatiana Bershadskaya, was difficult to put into any category. Her concept of music was truly universal and interdisciplinary. At the same time, the concept and Shutko’s description are as closely focused on music theory in a narrow and precise sense as possible. The art and culture of consumption of wine in correlation with the choice of music for listening is a theme for a true connoisseur. It becomes even more intriguing when the authors, Diego Pérez-Fuertes, Emma Juaneda-Ayensa and Cristina Olarte-Pascual, add to the discussion the special circumstance of the pandemic and the way human spirit meets this challenge in the most graceful way.

This book presents a comprehensive review of how acoustic waves are processed by the auditory system into structured sounds such as musical melodies, speech utterances, or environmental sounds. After an introduction, an overview is given of how the ears distribute acoustic information over a large array of frequency channels that contain the auditory information used by the central nervous system to generate a mental image of what is happening around the listener. This process, called auditory scene analysis, consists of two stages. In the first stage, auditory units are formed such as musical tones and speech syllables. Each auditory unit is perceived at a well-defined moment in time, the beat location of that auditory unit. Moreover, from this process of auditory-unit formation, the auditory attributes of these auditory units emerge, such as their timbre, their pitch, their loudness, and their perceived location. Each of these attributes is discussed in the corresponding chapter.  In the second stage of auditory scene analysis, auditory-stream formation, the successive auditory units are integrated into auditory streams, i.e., temporally structured sequences of auditory units that are perceived as emanating from one and the same sound source. Examples of such auditory streams are musical melodies and the utterances of one speaker. The temporal structure of an auditory stream, its rhythm, is determined by the beat locations of its auditory units. The role played by the auditory attributes of the consecutive auditory units is discussed. The melodies of musical streams and the intonation contours of spoken utterances emerge from this process. In music, the beats of parallel streams generally fit into a metric pattern, and, depending on harmony, simultaneous tones can be perceived as consonant or dissonant.Finally, the book contains many sound examples including the MATLAB scripts with which they are generated.

This book presents a comprehensive review of how acoustic waves are processed by the auditory system into structured sounds such as musical melodies, speech utterances, or environmental sounds. After an introduction, an overview is given of how the ears distribute acoustic information over a large array of frequency channels that contain the auditory information used by the central nervous system to generate a mental image of what is happening around the listener. This process, called auditory scene analysis, consists of two stages. In the first stage, auditory units are formed such as musical tones and speech syllables. Each auditory unit is perceived at a well-defined moment in time, the beat location of that auditory unit. Moreover, from this process of auditory-unit formation, the auditory attributes of these auditory units emerge, such as their timbre, their pitch, their loudness, and their perceived location. Each of these attributes is discussed in the corresponding chapter.  In the second stage of auditory scene analysis, auditory-stream formation, the successive auditory units are integrated into auditory streams, i.e., temporally structured sequences of auditory units that are perceived as emanating from one and the same sound source. Examples of such auditory streams are musical melodies and the utterances of one speaker. The temporal structure of an auditory stream, its rhythm, is determined by the beat locations of its auditory units. The role played by the auditory attributes of the consecutive auditory units is discussed. The melodies of musical streams and the intonation contours of spoken utterances emerge from this process. In music, the beats of parallel streams generally fit into a metric pattern, and, depending on harmony, simultaneous tones can be perceived as consonant or dissonant.Finally, the book contains many sound examples including the MATLAB scripts with which they are generated.

This open access book offers a historical context and an overview of the field's current artistic and scientific research. Sonic design includes the construction and performance of acoustic instruments but also recording, editing, mixing, and synthesizing sounds using analog and digital electronic devices. This book explores sonic design from the perspectives of music theory, music perception, embodied cognition, phenomenology, soundscape studies, acoustics, new interfaces for musical expression, sound and music computing, and music information retrieval. The chapters are selected contributions from an international seminar organized to celebrate the achievements of Professor Rolf Inge Godøy at the University of Oslo. As a composer, researcher, teacher, and supervisor, Professor Godøy has been central in developing a holistic approach to sonic design, from theory to practice. This book offers a comprehensive overview of the field's current state, making it essential reading for students, practitioners, and researchers across a wide range of disciplines.

This open access book offers a historical context and an overview of the field's current artistic and scientific research. Sonic design includes the construction and performance of acoustic instruments but also recording, editing, mixing, and synthesizing sounds using analog and digital electronic devices. This book explores sonic design from the perspectives of music theory, music perception, embodied cognition, phenomenology, soundscape studies, acoustics, new interfaces for musical expression, sound and music computing, and music information retrieval. The chapters are selected contributions from an international seminar organized to celebrate the achievements of Professor Rolf Inge Godøy at the University of Oslo. As a composer, researcher, teacher, and supervisor, Professor Godøy has been central in developing a holistic approach to sonic design, from theory to practice. This book offers a comprehensive overview of the field's current state, making it essential reading for students, practitioners, and researchers across a wide range of disciplines.

Offering a groundbreaking interdisciplinary perspective, this book explores the fundamental mechanisms behind music perception by bridging music psychology with computational neuroscience. It models how adaptation and synchronization shape neural responses to music, revealing insights unattainable through traditional brain localization theories. By applying complex systems theory, it shifts the focus from isolated brain regions to dynamic network interactions, providing a holistic and predictive framework with relevance across a broad spectrum of natural sciences. Ideal for researchers across musicology, psychology, neuroscience, as well as complexity and computational science, it opens new paths for understanding the brain’s response to music through scientific precision and cross-disciplinary integration.

This book offers a holistic perspective, integrating linguistics, speech/musical acoustics, and their cognitive interfaces. We are privileged to commemorate Sir C.V. Raman's seminal 1920 paper on Musical Acoustics by presenting cutting-edge research in speech and musical acoustics within these Proceedings of Frontiers of Research in Speech and Music 2024.Over the past century, scientific advancements have been monumental, spanning from macro to femto scales. In India, speech and musical acoustics have been fostered since the 1920s, with theoretical and experimental tools evolving significantly. Methodologies for speech and music analysis have progressed from early spectral domain linear features to nonlinear stochastic analysis and, most recently, to neural network-based machine learning architectures for audio feature extraction. The development of bio-sensors has provided profound insights into autonomic and central nervous system function under various speech signals and musical genres. Modern analytical techniques also enable the assessment of speech and language disorders, with a special focus on interventional music therapy.The FRSM-2024 proceedings cover diverse topics, including:●        Novel speech and music signal processing techniques.●        Speech-language pathology and its applications.●        Analysis of linguistic variations across Southeast Asian language families.●        Speech characteristics in individuals with language disorders.●        The concept of improvisation in Hindustani classical music.●        Emotional appraisal from music and speech signals.●        Application of music technology in profile analysis.●        Neuro-cognition in speech, music, and interdisciplinary domains.The editors anticipate that this publication will be a valuable resource for the acoustical community, and its interdisciplinary nature will engage young scientists, students, music practitioners, speech scientists, linguists, neuroscientists, and music therapists, inspiring further contributions to this rich field.

This book provides a clear and accessible explanation of acoustics, focusing on how wind instruments produce sound. It connects the physical principles of musical instruments with science and mathematics, encouraging readers to think scientifically about familiar phenomena in music. While stringed and percussion instruments allow us to see and feel vibrations, making sound production intuitive, wind instruments rely on invisible air vibrations. Understanding these requires knowledge of acoustics, which extends beyond high school physics into university-level science and engineering. However, this book aims to explain these concepts in a way that is understandable even to those without a technical background. To accommodate different levels of expertise, the book is divided into two parts. The first, Reading Part, uses only text and diagrams to explain acoustic principles, minimizing mathematical formulas. It targets a broad audience, from middle and high school brass band members to adult wind instrument players. Since basic information is easily found online, simple definitions (e.g., “pitch corresponds to frequency”) are intentionally omitted to maintain focus and clarity. The second part, the Technical Part, presents the same topics in a more technical manner, incorporating mathematical formulas and scientific reasoning. Each chapter in the Technical Part corresponds directly to one in the Reading Part, allowing readers to gain a foundational understanding before delving into more complex material. This structure — combining general and technical content in one volume — is relatively rare. Readers are encouraged to explore the sections that suit their interests and needs. The goal is to show how school-level science and math are directly related to the physics of musical instruments. In particular, the book aims to inspire middle and high school readers to approach music and instruments from a scientific perspective. The hope is that readers of all backgrounds will find value in the content and, over time, feel motivated to explore the specifyingTechnical Part as their understanding deepens.

Musical Performance covers many aspects like Musical Acoustics, Music Psychology, or motor and prosodic actions. It deals with basic concepts of the origin or music and its evolution, ranges over neurocognitive foundations, and covers computational, technological, or simulation solutions. This volume gives an overview about current research in the foundation of musical performance studies on all these levels. Recent concepts of synchronized systems, evolutionary concepts, basic understanding of performance as Gestalt patterns, theories of chill as performance goals or historical aspects are covered. The neurocognitive basis of motor action in terms of music, musical syntax, as well as therapeutic aspects are discussed. State-of-the-art applications in performance realizations, like virtual room acoustics, virtual musicians, new concepts of real-time physical modeling using complex performance data as input or sensor and gesture studies with soft- and hardware solutions are presented. So although the field is still much larger, this volume presents current trends in terms of understanding, implementing, and perceiving performance.

Musical Performance covers many aspects like Musical Acoustics, Music Psychology, or motor and prosodic actions. It deals with basic concepts of the origin or music and its evolution, ranges over neurocognitive foundations, and covers computational, technological, or simulation solutions. This volume gives an overview about current research in the foundation of musical performance studies on all these levels. Recent concepts of synchronized systems, evolutionary concepts, basic understanding of performance as Gestalt patterns, theories of chill as performance goals or historical aspects are covered. The neurocognitive basis of motor action in terms of music, musical syntax, as well as therapeutic aspects are discussed. State-of-the-art applications in performance realizations, like virtual room acoustics, virtual musicians, new concepts of real-time physical modeling using complex performance data as input or sensor and gesture studies with soft- and hardware solutions are presented. So although the field is still much larger, this volume presents current trends in terms of understanding, implementing, and perceiving performance.

What is a musical instrument? What are the musical instruments of the future? This anthology presents thirty papers selected from the fifteen year long history of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). NIME is a leading music technology conference, and an important venue for researchers and artists to present and discuss their explorations of musical instruments and technologies.Each of the papers is followed by commentaries written by the original authors and by leading experts. The volume covers important developments in the field, including the earliest reports of instruments like the reacTable, Overtone Violin, Pebblebox, and Plank. There are also numerous papers presenting new development platforms and technologies, as well as critical reflections, theoretical analyses and artistic experiences.The anthology is intended for newcomers who want to get an overview of recent advances in music technology. The historical traces,meta-discussions and reflections will also be of interest for longtime NIME participants. The book thus serves both as a survey of influential past work and as a starting point for new and exciting future developments.

This book comprises twelve articles which cover a range of topics from musical instrument acoustics to issues in psychoacoustics and sound perception as well as neuromusicology. In addition to experimental methods and data acquisition, modeling (such as FEM or wave field synthesis) and numerical simulation plays a central role in studies addressing sound production in musical instruments as well as interaction of radiated sound with the environment. Some of the studies have a focus on psychoacoustic aspects in regard to virtual pitch and timbre as well as apparent source width (for techniques such as stereo or ambisonics) in music production. Since musical acoustics imply subjects playing instruments or singing in order to produce sound according to musical structures, this area is also covered including a study that presents an artificial intelligent agent capable to interact with a real ('analog') player in musical genres such as traditional and free jazz.

What is a musical instrument? What are the musical instruments of the future? This anthology presents thirty papers selected from the fifteen year long history of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). NIME is a leading music technology conference, and an important venue for researchers and artists to present and discuss their explorations of musical instruments and technologies.Each of the papers is followed by commentaries written by the original authors and by leading experts. The volume covers important developments in the field, including the earliest reports of instruments like the reacTable, Overtone Violin, Pebblebox, and Plank. There are also numerous papers presenting new development platforms and technologies, as well as critical reflections, theoretical analyses and artistic experiences.The anthology is intended for newcomers who want to get an overview of recent advances in music technology. The historical traces,meta-discussions and reflections will also be of interest for longtime NIME participants. The book thus serves both as a survey of influential past work and as a starting point for new and exciting future developments.

This book comprises twelve articles which cover a range of topics from musical instrument acoustics to issues in psychoacoustics and sound perception as well as neuromusicology. In addition to experimental methods and data acquisition, modeling (such as FEM or wave field synthesis) and numerical simulation plays a central role in studies addressing sound production in musical instruments as well as interaction of radiated sound with the environment. Some of the studies have a focus on psychoacoustic aspects in regard to virtual pitch and timbre as well as apparent source width (for techniques such as stereo or ambisonics) in music production. Since musical acoustics imply subjects playing instruments or singing in order to produce sound according to musical structures, this area is also covered including a study that presents an artificial intelligent agent capable to interact with a real ('analog') player in musical genres such as traditional and free jazz.

Nonlinearities are a crucial and founding principle in nearly all musical systems, may they be musical instruments, timbre or rhythm perception and production, or neural networks of music perception. This volume gives an overview about present and past research in these fields. In Musical Acoustics, on the one hand the nonlinearities in musical instruments often produce the musically interesting features. On the other, musical instruments are nonlinear by nature, and tone production is the result of synchronization and self-organization within the instruments. Furthermore, as nearly all musical instruments are driven by impulses an Impulse Pattern Formulation (IPF) is suggested, an iterative framework holding for all musical instruments. It appears that this framework is able to reproduce the complex and perceptionally most salient initial transients of musical instruments. In Music Psychology, nonlinearities are present in all areas of musical features, like pitch, timbre, or rhythm perception. In terms of rhythm production and motion, self-organizing models are the only ones able to explain sudden phase-transitions while tapping. Self-organizing neural nets, both of the Kohonen and the connectionist types are able to reproduce tonality, timbre similarities, or phrases. The volume also gives an overview about the signal processing tools suitable to analyze sounds in a nonlinear way, both in the Fourier-domain, like Wavelets or correlograms, and in the phase-space domain, like fractal dimensions or information structures. Furthermore, it gives an introduction to Physical Modeling of musical instruments using Finite-Element and Finite-Difference methods, to cope with the high complexity of instrument bodies and wave couplings. It appears, that most musical systems are self-organized ones, and only therefore able to produce all unexpected and interesting features of music, both in production and perception.