Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality

Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality PDF Author: Richard Parncutt
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262377373
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
A fascinating interdisciplinary approach to how everyday Western music works, and why the tones, melodies, and chords combine as they do. Despite the cultural diversity of our globalized world, most Western music is still structured around major and minor scales and chords. Countless thinkers and scientists of the past have struggled to explain the nature and origin of musical structures. In Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality, music psychologist Richard Parncutt offers a fresh take, combining music theory—Rameau’s fundamental bass, Riemann’s harmonic function, Schenker’s hierarchic analysis, Forte’s pitch-class set theory—with psychology—Bregman’s auditory scene, Terhardt’s virtual pitch, Krumhansl’s tonal hierarchy. Drawing on statistical analyses of notated music corpora, Parncutt charts a middle path between cultural relativism and scientific positivism to bring music theory into meaningful discourse with empirical research. Our musical subjectivity, Parncutt explains, depends on our past musical experience and hence on music history and its social contexts. It also depends on physical sound properties, as investigated in psychoacoustics with auditory experiments and mathematical models. Parncutt’s evidence-based theory of major-minor tonality draws on his interdisciplinary background to present a theory that is comprehensive, creative, and critical. Examining concepts of interval, consonance, chord root, leading tone, harmonic progression, and modulation, he asks: Why are some scale tones and chord progressions more common than others? What aspects of major-minor tonality are based on human biology or general perceptual principles? What aspects are culturally arbitrary? And what about colonial history? Original and provocative, Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality promises to become a foundational text in both music theory and music cognition.

Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality

Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality PDF Author: Richard Parncutt
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262377373
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 473

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fascinating interdisciplinary approach to how everyday Western music works, and why the tones, melodies, and chords combine as they do. Despite the cultural diversity of our globalized world, most Western music is still structured around major and minor scales and chords. Countless thinkers and scientists of the past have struggled to explain the nature and origin of musical structures. In Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality, music psychologist Richard Parncutt offers a fresh take, combining music theory—Rameau’s fundamental bass, Riemann’s harmonic function, Schenker’s hierarchic analysis, Forte’s pitch-class set theory—with psychology—Bregman’s auditory scene, Terhardt’s virtual pitch, Krumhansl’s tonal hierarchy. Drawing on statistical analyses of notated music corpora, Parncutt charts a middle path between cultural relativism and scientific positivism to bring music theory into meaningful discourse with empirical research. Our musical subjectivity, Parncutt explains, depends on our past musical experience and hence on music history and its social contexts. It also depends on physical sound properties, as investigated in psychoacoustics with auditory experiments and mathematical models. Parncutt’s evidence-based theory of major-minor tonality draws on his interdisciplinary background to present a theory that is comprehensive, creative, and critical. Examining concepts of interval, consonance, chord root, leading tone, harmonic progression, and modulation, he asks: Why are some scale tones and chord progressions more common than others? What aspects of major-minor tonality are based on human biology or general perceptual principles? What aspects are culturally arbitrary? And what about colonial history? Original and provocative, Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality promises to become a foundational text in both music theory and music cognition.

Voice Leading

Voice Leading PDF Author: David Huron
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026233545X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
An accessible scientific explanation for the traditional rules of voice leading, including an account of why listeners find some musical textures more pleasing than others. Voice leading is the musical art of combining sounds over time. In this book, David Huron offers an accessible account of the cognitive and perceptual foundations for this practice. Drawing on decades of scientific research, including his own award-winning work, Huron offers explanations for many practices and phenomena, including the perceptual dominance of the highest voice, chordal-tone doubling, direct octaves, embellishing tones, and the musical feeling of sounds “leading” somewhere. Huron shows how traditional rules of voice leading align almost perfectly with modern scientific accounts of auditory perception. He also reviews pertinent research establishing the role of learning and enculturation in auditory and musical perception. Voice leading has long been taught with reference to Baroque chorale-style part-writing, yet there exist many more musical styles and practices. The traditional emphasis on Baroque part-writing understandably leaves many musicians wondering why they are taught such an archaic and narrow practice in an age of stylistic diversity. Huron explains how and why Baroque voice leading continues to warrant its central pedagogical status. Expanding beyond choral-style writing, Huron shows how established perceptual principles can be used to compose, analyze, and critically understand any kind of acoustical texture from tune-and-accompaniment songs and symphonic orchestration to jazz combo arranging and abstract electroacoustic music. Finally, he offers a psychological explanation for why certain kinds of musical textures are more likely to be experienced by listeners as pleasing.

Studying Sound

Studying Sound PDF Author: Karen Collins
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262362910
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
An introduction to the concepts and principles of sound design practice, with more than 175 exercises that teach readers to put theory into practice. This book offers an introduction to the principles and concepts of sound design practice, from technical aspects of sound effects to the creative use of sound in storytelling. Most books on sound design focus on sound for the moving image. Studying Sound is unique in its exploration of sound on its own as a medium and rhetorical device. It includes more than 175 exercises that enable readers to put theory into practice as they progress through the chapters.

Springer Handbook of Systematic Musicology

Springer Handbook of Systematic Musicology PDF Author: Rolf Bader
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3662550040
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 1089

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Book Description
This unique reference book offers a holistic description of the multifaceted field of systematic musicology, which is the study of music, its production and perception, and its cultural, historical and philosophical background. The seven sections reflect the main topics in this interdisciplinary subject. The first two parts discuss musical acoustics and signal processing, comprehensively describing the mathematical and physical fundamentals of musical sound generation and propagation. The complex interplay of physiology and psychology involved in sound and music perception is covered in the following sections, with a particular focus on psychoacoustics and the recently evolved research on embodied music cognition. In addition, a huge variety of technical applications for professional training, music composition and consumer electronics are presented. A section on music ethnology completes this comprehensive handbook. Music theory and philosophy of music are imbedded throughout. Carefully edited and written by internationally respected experts, it is an invaluable reference resource for professionals and graduate students alike.

Foundations in Music Psychology

Foundations in Music Psychology PDF Author: Peter Jason Rentfrow
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262039273
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 961

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Book Description
A state-of-the-art overview of the latest theory and research in music psychology, written by leaders in the field. This authoritative, landmark volume offers a comprehensive state-of-the-art overview of the latest theory and research in music perception and cognition. Eminent scholars from a range of disciplines, employing a variety of methodologies, describe important findings from core areas of the field, including music cognition, the neuroscience of music, musical performance, and music therapy. The book can be used as a textbook for courses in music cognition, auditory perception, science of music, psychology of music, philosophy of music, and music therapy, and as a reference for researchers, teachers, and musicians. The book's sections cover music perception; music cognition; music, neurobiology, and evolution; musical training, ability, and performance; and musical experience in everyday life. Chapters treat such topics as pitch, rhythm, and timbre; musical expectancy, musicality, musical disorders, and absolute pitch; brain processes involved in music perception, cross-species studies of music cognition, and music across cultures; improvisation, the assessment of musical ability, and singing; and music and emotions, musical preferences, and music therapy. Contributors Fleur Bouwer, Peter Cariani, Laura K. Cirelli, Annabel J. Cohen, Lola L. Cuddy, Shannon de L'Etoile, Jessica A. Grahn, David M. Greenberg, Bruno Gingras, Henkjan Honing, Lorna S. Jakobson, Ji Chul Kim, Stefan Koelsch, Edward W. Large, Miriam Lense, Daniel Levitin, Charles J. Limb, Psyche Loui, Stephen McAdams, Lucy M. McGarry, Malinda J. McPherson, Andrew J. Oxenham, Caroline Palmer, Aniruddh Patel, Eve-Marie Quintin, Peter Jason Rentfrow, Edward Roth, Frank A. Russo, Rebecca Scheurich, Kai Siedenburg, Avital Sternin, Yanan Sun, William F. Thompson, Renee Timmers, Mark Jude Tramo, Sandra E. Trehub, Michael W. Weiss, Marcel Zentner

Melodic Intonation, Psychoacoustics, and the Violin

Melodic Intonation, Psychoacoustics, and the Violin PDF Author: Janina Fyk
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description


Tonal Pitch Space

Tonal Pitch Space PDF Author: Fred Lerdahl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199884404
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Building on the foundation of Lerdahl and Jackendoff's influential A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, this volume presents a multidimensional model of diatonic and chromatic spaces that quantifies listeners' intuitions of the relative distances of pitches, chords, and keys from a given tonic. The model is employed to assign prolongational structure, represent paths through the space, and compute patterns of tension and attraction as musical events unfold, thereby providing a partial basis for understanding musical narration, expectation, and expression. Conceived as both a music-theoretic treatise and a contribution to the cognitive science of music, this book will be of interest to music theorists, musicologists, composers, computer musicians, and cognitive psychologists.

Springer Handbook of Acoustics

Springer Handbook of Acoustics PDF Author: Thomas Rossing
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387304460
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1179

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Book Description
This is an unparalleled modern handbook reflecting the richly interdisciplinary nature of acoustics edited by an acknowledged master in the field. The handbook reviews the most important areas of the subject, with emphasis on current research. The authors of the various chapters are all experts in their fields. Each chapter is richly illustrated with figures and tables. The latest research and applications are incorporated throughout, including computer recognition and synthesis of speech, physiological acoustics, diagnostic imaging and therapeutic applications and acoustical oceanography. An accompanying CD-ROM contains audio and video files.

A People's Music

A People's Music PDF Author: Helma Kaldewey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108486185
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Chronicles the history of jazz over the complete lifespan of East Germany, from 1945 to 1990, for the first time.

The Soundscape of Modernity

The Soundscape of Modernity PDF Author: Emily Thompson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262701068
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
A vibrant history of acoustical technology and aural culture in early-twentieth-century America. In this history of aural culture in early-twentieth-century America, Emily Thompson charts dramatic transformations in what people heard and how they listened. What they heard was a new kind of sound that was the product of modern technology. They listened as newly critical consumers of aural commodities. By examining the technologies that produced this sound, as well as the culture that enthusiastically consumed it, Thompson recovers a lost dimension of the Machine Age and deepens our understanding of the experience of change that characterized the era. Reverberation equations, sound meters, microphones, and acoustical tiles were deployed in places as varied as Boston's Symphony Hall, New York's office skyscrapers, and the soundstages of Hollywood. The control provided by these technologies, however, was applied in ways that denied the particularity of place, and the diverse spaces of modern America began to sound alike as a universal new sound predominated. Although this sound—clear, direct, efficient, and nonreverberant—had little to say about the physical spaces in which it was produced, it speaks volumes about the culture that created it. By listening to it, Thompson constructs a compelling new account of the experience of modernity in America.