Two empirical studies identified and tested strengths of dynamic cues that assist listeners in identifying tonal centers. The hypothesis that it is rare intervals, rather than physical properties of tones or static representations such as scales and triads, that play a significant role in a musician's perceptual process of key identification led to the first experimental study of context sufficiency in perception of tonality. Musicians extrapolated tonal centers upon aural presentation of subsets of a major diatonic set with an accuracy mean of 87%. Univalent trichords gave 100% clearer indication of tonal center than did multivalent trichords. The strength of the tonality percept was further explored by examining effects of temporal ordering and by evaluating relationships between formal training and test scores. In a second experiment, listeners judged appropriateness of tonal centers after hearing paired dyads consisting of the rarest intervals in the major set: the tritone and the two minor seconds. Listeners indicated strongest impressions of tonal center when the tritone was heard as a simultaneity. Test performance showed a stronger correlation with listeners' abilities to identify tonal centers in actual music than with listeners' status as musicians or nonmusicians. These results are interpreted as evidence of a widespread cognitive skill that interprets tonality as a system of tonal relations rather than just an abstracted collection of tones or a system governed by the psychophysical attributes of tones.

Tonal Structure versus Function: Studies of the Recognition of Harmonic Motion

Key signatures and enharmonic equivalence are taken as points of departure for a study of the diatonic–chromatic relationship. Key signatures are modelled by signature vectors, i.e. seven-dimensional vectors with integer coordinates, each coordinate indicating the number of sharps (+) or flats (−) assigned to one of the seven letter names. A definition of standard signature vectors (those corresponding to the usual key signature of some major key) is readily formulated. These constructions do not depend on any convention regarding enharmonic equivalence of note names, but enharmonic equivalence (EE) conditions are intimately connected with key signatures, and in fact may also be formalized in terms of signature vectors, called in this context EE vectors. The canonical EE vector gives rise to a familiar twelve-note enharmonic system, but other systems are possible. Connections with maximal evenness and other properties familiar in diatonic set theory are investigated. The usual staff notation, inc...

Enharmonic systems: A theory of key signatures, enharmonic equivalence and diatonicism

The role of music analysis is to enlighten our understanding of a piece of music. The role of musical performance analysis is to help us understand how a performer interprets a piece of music. The current work provides a tool which combines music analysis with performance analysis. By combining music and performance analysis in one system new questions can be asked of a piece of music: how is the structure of a piece reflected in the performance and how can the performance enlighten our understanding of the piece's structure?

The current work describes a unified database which can store and present musical score alongside associated performance data and musical analysis. Using a general purpose representation language, Performance Mark-up Language (PML), aspects of performance are recorded and analysed. Data thus acquired from one project is made available to others. Presentation involves high-quality scores suitably annotated with the requested information. Such output is easily and directly accessible to musicians, performance scientists and analysts.

We define a set of data structures and operators which can operate on musical pitch and musical time, and use them to form the basis of a query language for a musical database. The database can store musical information (score, gestural data, etc.). Querying the database results in annotations of the musical score.

The database is capable of storing musical score information and performance data and cross-referencing them. It is equipped with the necessary primitives to execute music-analytical queries, and highlight notes identified from the score and display performance data alongside the score.

/pdf/a-system-for-the-analysis-of-musical-data-4r5y5hzi57.pdf

A System for the Analysis of Musical Data

This article documents the history of the Seminar in Formal Methods Series at Mills College, Oakland, California. Inaugurated in 1981, the series was conceived as a forum for the presentation and dissemination of recent developments in several disciplines, such as art and technology, experimental aesthetics and applied formal methods in music. The article includes brief descriptions of each seminar, biographical information about the speakers and a selected bibliography of relevant books, articles and recordings.

The Mills College Center for Contemporary Music's Seminar in Formal Methods Series: A Documentary Survey

This article aims to elaborate Horacio Vaggione’s theoretical approach towards electronic music composition and his understanding of the musical structure, and to discuss how some of his key concepts come into presence during the compositional experience of temporality. Following the introduction of object-oriented composition and musical networks, I will discuss the concept of morphology alongside an investigation of how these ideas relate to temporality. In addition to this inquiry, I will briefly explore the possibilities of an ontological discussion on Vaggione’s compositional mindset and how his temporal perspective differs from some of his colleagues.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/4271906877E778387F36458FC246FD90/S1355771820000072a.pdf/div-class-title-exploring-temporality-in-horacio-vaggione-s-compositional-thought-div.pdf

Exploring Temporality in Horacio Vaggione’s Compositional Thought

Computer Music from Colgate

Author(s): Curtis Roads, Marc Battier, Clarence Barlow, John Bischoff, Herbert Brün, Joel Chadabe, Conrad Cummings, Giuseppe Englert, David Jaffe, Stephan Kaske, Otto Laske, JeanClaude Risset, David Rosenboom, Kaija Saariaho, Horacio Vaggione Reviewed work(s): Source: Computer Music Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 40-63 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3680297 . Accessed: 19/02/2012 20:36

Conrad Cummings

Papers

Computer Music from Colgate

Symposium on Computer Music Composition

Musique Numerique@@@Hybrid Musics@@@Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media