Mead once heard a radio announcer list the movements of a French suite, becoming flustered as he attempted to pronounce the final one. After some hesitation, he sputtered out "GIG-you" and quickly ...started the recording to cover his embarrassment. If only someone had told him it was just a jig with a French accent. The gigue seems to have taken its name from a lively dance of the British Isles. The name "jig" was used for a variety of tunes, but--like its cousins, the hornpipe and the reel-suggested a hearty, leaping dance with possibly bawdy undertones. By the time it was adopted by the French court in the mid-seventeenth century, it had become somewhat more demure, though it kept its quick pace and light-hearted character. The pattern was so commonly used in this type of dance that people often refer to it today as "gigue rhythm."
A meta-analysis was performed on the results of previous studies investigating the association between personality traits and music preferences. Regarding the categorization of personality traits, ...the Big Five and sensation seeking were used most often and were therefore chosen as the most appropriate categories in the meta-analysis. Regarding the categorization of musical style preferences, the five-dimensional MUSIC (mellow, unpretentious, sophisticated, intense, contemporary) model was used most often and was therefore employed in the meta-analysis. Hence, we included studies in the analysis when they had investigated the relationship between at least one of the Big Five personality traits or sensation seeking and at least one of the five MUSIC dimensions. In total, there were 30 subanalyses. All weighted averaged correlation coefficients were very small, with most of them near zero. Only 6 of the 30 coefficients exceeded 0.1 in magnitude (|r|≥0.1). The largest effects were observed for the openness to experience personality trait, which exhibited small correlations with preference for three musical styles. Thus, personality traits barely account for interindividual differences in music preferences. Musical functions are discussed as an alternative explanation for these differences. The predictability of musical style preferences based on individual psychological variables is questioned in general.
•Big Five and sensation seeking were correlated with 5 categories of musical preferences.•Most correlations were small or close to zero; all coefficients averaging to 0.058.•Only 6 of the 30 coefficients exceeded 0.1 in magnitude (|r|≥0.1).•Personality traits barely account for interindividual differences in music preferences.•Musical functions may provide a better explanation for these differences.
The phenomenon of musical consonance is an essential feature in diverse musical styles. The traditional belief, supported by centuries of Western music theory and psychological studies, is that ...consonance derives from simple (harmonic) frequency ratios between tones and is insensitive to timbre. Here we show through five large-scale behavioral studies, comprising 235,440 human judgments from US and South Korean populations, that harmonic consonance preferences can be reshaped by timbral manipulations, even as far as to induce preferences for inharmonic intervals. We show how such effects may suggest perceptual origins for diverse scale systems ranging from the gamelan's slendro scale to the tuning of Western mean-tone and equal-tempered scales. Through computational modeling we show that these timbral manipulations dissociate competing psychoacoustic mechanisms underlying consonance, and we derive an updated computational model combining liking of harmonicity, disliking of fast beats (roughness), and liking of slow beats. Altogether, this work showcases how large-scale behavioral experiments can inform classical questions in auditory perception.
Drawing on a mix of collaborative autoethnography, secondary literature, interviews with leading improvisers, and personal anecdotal material, Jamming the Classroom discusses the pedagogy of musical ...improvisation as a vehicle for teaching, learning, and enacting social justice. Heble and Stewart write that to “jam the classroom” is to argue for a renewed understanding of improvisation as both a musical and a social practice; to activate the knowledge and resources associated with improvisational practices in an expression of noncompliance with dominant orders of knowledge production; and to recognize in the musical practices of aggrieved communities something far from the reaches of conventional forms of institutionalized power, yet something equally powerful, urgent, and expansive. With this definition of jamming the classroom in mind, Heble and Stewart argue that even as improvisation gains recognition within mainstream institutions (including classrooms in universities), it needs to be understood as a critique of dominant institutionalized assumptions and epistemic orders. Suggesting a closer consideration of why musical improvisation has been largely expunged from dominant models of pedagogical inquiry in both classrooms and communities, this book asks what it means to theorize the pedagogy of improvised music in relation to public programs of action, debate, and critical practice.
Western musical styles use a large variety of chords and vertical sonorities. Based on objective acoustical properties, chords can be situated on a dissonant-consonant continuum. While this might to ...some extent converge with the unpleasant-pleasant continuum, subjective liking might diverge for various chord forms from music across different styles. Our study aimed to investigate how well appraisals of the roughness and pleasantness dimensions of isolated chords taken from real-world music are predicted by Parncutt's established model of sensory dissonance. Furthermore, we related these subjective ratings to style of origin and acoustical features of the chords as well as musical sophistication of the raters. Ratings were obtained for chords deemed representative of the harmonic language of three different musical styles (classical, jazz and avant-garde music), plus randomly generated chords. Results indicate that pleasantness and roughness ratings were, on average, mirror opposites; however, their relative distribution differed greatly across styles, reflecting different underlying aesthetic ideals. Parncutt's model only weakly predicted ratings for all but Classical chords, suggesting that listeners' appraisal of the dissonance and pleasantness of chords bears not only on stimulus-side but also on listener-side factors. Indeed, we found that levels of musical sophistication negatively predicted listeners' tendency to rate the consonance and pleasantness of any one chord as coupled measures, suggesting that musical education and expertise may serve to individuate how these musical dimensions are apprehended.
Pons profiles Samir LanGus, a Moroccan musician who plays Gnawa music, an ancestral art form originating from Sub-Saharan African countries. Gnawa culture is a blend of pre-Islamic African cultures ...and Sufism, brought to Morocco by formerly enslaved Africans. The music tells the stories of their journey, trials, and history, capturing their pain and serving as a way to survive psychologically. Gnawa music is a mix of various African languages and instruments, with the guembri being an essential instrument for this style. LanGus, trained by Gnawa master Hamid el Kasri, believes that his music also resonates with the experiences of Black Americans. Gnawa music is often played during ritualistic ceremonies and is described as mysterious and spiritual. It establishes links between community members and represents freedom and liberation. LanGus sees similarities between Gnawa music, blues, and jazz, as they all originate from Africa.
The paper analyses the evolution of the vibraphone in the development of musical styles. The vibraphone is recently built instrument in comparison to other percussion instruments. Its original ...version was built just over 100 years ago – in 1916. Although the evolution of the vibraphone is not a new subject of research in foreign literature, it is usually examined in the context of jazz performers. There are fewer works that discuss the evolution of the vibraphone in the development of various musical styles, and there are none that mention the Baltic countries, specifically Lithuania. During the research, the methods of analysis, synthesis and generalization of scientific literature and repertoires were used.
The analysis of scientific literature showed that since 1921, when the vibraphone was presented at the World Instrument Exhibition in the United States, the performance style of this musical instrument has changed significantly, both in terms of timbre and technique. In the modern world of music, the vibraphone is used not only for melodic lines, but also for accompaniment, counterpoint, rhythm and harmony, damping, sound suppression and complex pedaling. This is a modern school of vibraphone performance. Unfortunately, due to historical and political circumstances in Lithuania, the vibraphone has not become a part of the music culture and is still considered a niche instrument.
Are there universal patterns in musical preferences? To address this question, we built on theory and research in personality, cultural, and music psychology to map the terrain of preferences for ...Western music using data from 356,649 people across six continents. In Study 1 (N = 284,935), participants in 53 countries completed a genre favorability measure, and in Study 2 (N = 71,714), participants in 36 countries completed an audio-based measure of preferential reactions to music. Both studies included self-report measures of the Big Five personality traits and demographics. Results converged to show that individual differences in preferences for Western music can be organized in terms of five latent factors that are invariant (i.e., universal) across countries and that generalize across assessment methods. Furthermore, the patterns of correlations between personality traits and musical preferences were largely consistent across countries and assessment methods. For example, trait Extraversion was correlated with stronger reactions to Contemporary musical styles (which feature rhythmic, upbeat, and electronic attributes), whereas trait Openness was correlated with stronger reactions to Sophisticated musical styles (which feature complex and cerebral attributes often heard in improvisational and instrumental music). The patterns of correlations between musical preferences and gender differences, ethnicity, and other sociodemographic metrics were also largely invariant across countries. Together, these findings strongly suggest that there are universal patterns in preferences for Western music, providing a foundation on which to develop and test hypotheses about the interactions between music, psychology, biology, and culture.
ABSTRACT
Robert Gjerdingen's schema theory focuses the long‐debated ‘galant’ style concretely onto an inventory of stock musical phrases, or ‘galant schemata’. The rich historico‐cognitive discourse ...sparked by this growing ‘schematicon’ has provided significant theoretical evidence for their historical situatedness, coherence and objectivity; however, there remains a shortage of empirical studies that problematise their contexts of applicability, as well as descriptiveness within full galant works. In light of this, the present investigation schematically interprets three varied works by the eighteenth‐century composer C. P. E. Bach, who is known for pushing the boundaries of the galant style: the Magnificat in D, Wq. 215; Die Israeliten in der Wüste, Wq. 238 (all applicable movements); and the ‘Württemberg’ Sonatas, Wq. 49 (opening movements). Similar proportions of each vocal work are found to be covered by galant schemata (55 per cent and 46 per cent, respectively), atypical schema variants (17 per cent and 24 per cent respectively) and non‐schematic space (25 per cent each), whilst the ‘Württemberg’ Sonatas yielded more (82 per cent) typical schemata, fewer (3 per cent) atypical schemata and reduced (13 per cent) non‐schematic space. Comparisons and analyses within and between these works and schematic categories reveal potential additions to the galant schematicon; highlight the existence of interactions between galant schemata, higher‐level schemas and partimenti schemata; and elucidate both fluid and strict understandings of Gjerdingen's galant category within eighteenth‐century music. Consequently, they focus the question of schema historicity back onto their galant situatedness and establish an important evidence‐based framework from which the Gjerdingenian galant category – and the schemata which constitute it – may be further elucidated.
The music produced by Los Jaivas emphasizes a decolonial attitude toward preserving Indigenous values as an integral part of the way of life of for generations of Chileans. keywords: decolonial ...aesthesis, Chilean rock, Rodolfo Kusch, decolonial attitude La praxis en América lleva a un distanciamiento de las raíces de nuestra nacionalidad. Contextos y simpatías En los campos de la musicología y la sociología de la música en Chile, salvo los notables ejemplos de Salas (2003), González (2012, 2013), Ponce (2008) y Barr-Melej (2017), las prácticas culturales y musicales asociadas con el género del rock se han estudiado desde el periodismo, la biografía y la historia (Stock 2014). Sin embargo, para muchos estudiosos, el género rock y la música pop representan productos ideológicos y culturales ligados a las instituciones, lógicas y prácticas de producción y de consumo capitalistas (ver Britto García 1991). Hacia el final de los años sesenta el rock chileno se resitúa: desaparecen las canciones cantadas en inglés y las convenciones genéricas que especificaban la temática amorosa adolescente del rock 'n' roll.
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