In this article, I explore the availability of multiple pitch centers in poprock songs that emerge from the application of what John Covach has called "positional listening." I demonstrate how ...different methods of listening and analysis have a drastic effect on our interpretation of a song's pitch center. Adapting Robert Bailey's term "double-tonic complex," I refer to songs that exhibit multivalent centers as "multi-centric complexes." Through several examples I demonstrate how different instruments-such as lead vocals, guitar, keyboards, or bass-can present their own, sometimes competing, centers. I use a variety of listening strategies and analytical methods in order to demonstrate and justify multiple centric interpretations that emerge when a listener compares a single instrument's projected center with others in pop-rock songs.Allowing for a "thick"interpretation of a pop-rock song's pitch center not only celebrates pop-rock's oft-cited tonal complexity, but also the overlooked complexity of the listening subject. Who is listening? How? And why?
Our paper reflects on our experience with Weaving Music II—a web performance space we built with fifteen artists working across different disciplines. The website and our essay attempt to create ...alternatives to the “at-the-same-timeness” of streaming technologies as well as the forms of listening defined by data capitalism and corporate platforms like Google and YouTube. At the heart of the alternative practices we propose is an embrace of what we see as the creolizing potentiality of the Web and of listening. To unpack these potentialities, the essay and artwork critically reflect on listening that occurs through Afrofuturistic modes of engagement with technology, space and time. We consider the historical origins of Web improvisations, our approach to collaboration using Weaving Music II, and theories of information that move beyond the need for predefined codes of understanding.
Social work can all too often become synonymous with the pressures of child and public protection. Yet at is heart, it is a profession that promotes human rights and challenges social injustices, ...through understandings of marginalisation and oppression. Social work is a global profession, where individual social workers actively engage with a diversity of experiences and situations, seeking to work with people to empower them to take control of and improve their lives. In this final issue of the year, which is slightly smaller, following the previous bumper special edition, we bring together three qualitative papers that capture this abundance, and encourage us to hear voices from those that are often at the margins of social work.
El artículo aborda la pregunta por la tarea de la memoria histórica en Colombia desde una perspectiva filosófica, concentrada en los retos epistemológicos y éticos derivados de la elaboración e ...implementación de iniciativas de memoria en contex- tos de experiencia traumática. Se busca presentar y analizar estos retos desde las consecuencias conceptuales que los contextos traumáticos le plantean a los procesos de elaboración de memoria y a la práctica de escucha de testimonios provenientes de experiencias traumáticas. Se examinan los modos para comprender, desde la filosofía, un aspecto de la tarea de la memoria que puede pasar desapercibido, con el propósito de imaginar e identificar cursos de acción y estrategias de escucha más responsables, inclusivas y plurales. The article addresses the task of historical memory in Colombia from a philosophical perspective focused on the epistemological and ethical challenges posed by the design and implementation of memory initiatives in contexts of traumatic experience. It presents and analyzes those challenges on the basis of the conceptual consequences that traumatic contexts have on processes of elaboration of memory and on the prac- tice of listening to testimonies arising from traumatic experiences. The study also examines ways to understand philosophically an aspect of memory that might go unnoticed, in order to imagine and identify more responsible, inclusive, and plural courses of action and listening strategies.
Focusing on the teaching of listening strategies to second language (L2) learners, this study sought to revisit Renandya and Farrell’s (2011) claims that explicit listening strategy instruction for ...lower-proficiency learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) is a fruitless endeavor. As such, we implemented a quasi-experimental study to measure the effectiveness of a metacognitive intervention for a convenience sample of lower-proficiency (CEFR A2) Japanese university EFL learners (n = 129). The training program focused on an explicit process-based approach, involving integrated experiential learning tasks and guided reflections, to develop learners’ L2 listening skills. Data collection consisted of TOEIC® test scores, listening comprehension tests, cloze tests, a listening self-efficacy questionnaire, and a post-treatment survey. While the training program was received favorably by students, and students displayed a slightly more confident stance towards listening in their L2, we were unable to find any strong empirical evidence that our lower-proficiency EFL learners’ listening performance improved. As such, these results provide evidence of a potential proficiency threshold for EFL learners to start to benefit from a strategy-focused metacognitive intervention.
PDF
