Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- All Subjects: Music
Description
Digital sound synthesis allows the creation of a great variety of sounds. Focusing on interesting or ecologically valid sounds for music, simulation, aesthetics, or other purposes limits the otherwise vast digital audio palette. Tools for creating such sounds vary from arbitrary methods of altering recordings to precise simulations of vibrating objects. In this work, methods of sound synthesis by re-sonification are considered. Re-sonification, herein, refers to the general process of analyzing, possibly transforming, and resynthesizing or reusing recorded sounds in meaningful ways, to convey information. Applied to soundscapes, re-sonification is presented as a means of conveying activity within an environment. Applied to the sounds of objects, this work examines modeling the perception of objects as well as their physical properties and the ability to simulate interactive events with such objects. To create soundscapes to re-sonify geographic environments, a method of automated soundscape design is presented. Using recorded sounds that are classified based on acoustic, social, semantic, and geographic information, this method produces stochastically generated soundscapes to re-sonify selected geographic areas. Drawing on prior knowledge, local sounds and those deemed similar comprise a locale's soundscape. In the context of re-sonifying events, this work examines processes for modeling and estimating the excitations of sounding objects. These include plucking, striking, rubbing, and any interaction that imparts energy into a system, affecting the resultant sound. A method of estimating a linear system's input, constrained to a signal-subspace, is presented and applied toward improving the estimation of percussive excitations for re-sonification. To work toward robust recording-based modeling and re-sonification of objects, new implementations of banded waveguide (BWG) models are proposed for object modeling and sound synthesis. Previous implementations of BWGs use arbitrary model parameters and may produce a range of simulations that do not match digital waveguide or modal models of the same design. Subject to linear excitations, some models proposed here behave identically to other equivalently designed physical models. Under nonlinear interactions, such as bowing, many of the proposed implementations exhibit improvements in the attack characteristics of synthesized sounds.
ContributorsFink, Alex M (Author) / Spanias, Andreas S (Thesis advisor) / Cook, Perry R. (Committee member) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Tsakalis, Konstantinos (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The business models of the music industry are currently experiencing rapid changes. Services such as Spotify, SoundCloud, and Pandora offer methods of consuming music unlike any the industry has seen before. Consumers have shifted from wanting products (digital music and CDs) to using streaming services (Spotify, Pandora, etc.). This study analyzes the motivation for these changes and considers why people choose the avenues by which they experience music.
ContributorsDugan, Emma (Co-author) / Foley, Meghan (Co-author) / Bhattacharjya, Nilanjana (Thesis director) / Ingram-Waters, Mary (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The tradition of building musical robots and automata is thousands of years old. Despite this rich history, even today musical robots do not play with as much nuance and subtlety as human musicians. In particular, most instruments allow the player to manipulate timbre while playing; if a violinist is told to sustain an E, they will select which string to play it on, how much bow pressure and velocity to use, whether to use the entire bow or only the portion near the tip or the frog, how close to the bridge or fingerboard to contact the string, whether or not to use a mute, and so forth. Each one of these choices affects the resulting timbre, and navigating this timbre space is part of the art of playing the instrument. Nonetheless, this type of timbral nuance has been largely ignored in the design of musical robots. Therefore, this dissertation introduces a suite of techniques that deal with timbral nuance in musical robots. Chapter 1 provides the motivating ideas and introduces Kiki, a robot designed by the author to explore timbral nuance. Chapter 2 provides a long history of musical robots, establishing the under-researched nature of timbral nuance. Chapter 3 is a comprehensive treatment of dynamic timbre production in percussion robots and, using Kiki as a case-study, provides a variety of techniques for designing striking mechanisms that produce a range of timbres similar to those produced by human players. Chapter 4 introduces a machine-learning algorithm for recognizing timbres, so that a robot can transcribe timbres played by a human during live performance. Chapter 5 introduces a technique that allows a robot to learn how to produce isolated instances of particular timbres by listening to a human play an examples of those timbres. The 6th and final chapter introduces a method that allows a robot to learn the musical context of different timbres; this is done in realtime during interactive improvisation between a human and robot, wherein the robot builds a statistical model of which timbres the human plays in which contexts, and uses this to inform its own playing.
ContributorsKrzyzaniak, Michael Joseph (Author) / Coleman, Grisha (Thesis advisor) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Artemiadis, Panagiotis (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
When dancers are granted agency over music, as in interactive dance systems, the actors are most often concerned with the problem of creating a staged performance for an audience. However, as is reflected by the above quote, the practice of Argentine tango social dance is most concerned with participants internal experience and their relationship to the broader tango community. In this dissertation I explore creative approaches to enrich the sense of connection, that is, the experience of oneness with a partner and complete immersion in music and dance for Argentine tango dancers by providing agency over musical activities through the use of interactive technology. Specifically, I create an interactive dance system that allows tango dancers to affect and create music via their movements in the context of social dance. The motivations for this work are multifold: 1) to intensify embodied experience of the interplay between dance and music, individual and partner, couple and community, 2) to create shared experience of the conventions of tango dance, and 3) to innovate Argentine tango social dance practice for the purposes of education and increasing musicality in dancers.
ContributorsBrown, Courtney Douglass (Author) / Paine, Garth (Thesis advisor) / Feisst, Sabine (Committee member) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Music can be an incredibly powerful tool, and in an age where technology allows us to connect with those that don’t live near us, finding ways to use music to encourage that bonding can be incredibly beneficial. Particularly, in a global pandemic such as COVID-19, finding ways to connect with others remotely is more important than ever. In this study, I will be looking at how one artist in particular, Tessa Violet, manages to continue to not only grow her community, but also encourage her community to bond with each other. She achieves this by finding various ways, unique to her and her branding, that allows her community to connect with each other. By using her platform to give scavenger hunts to her fanbase, promoting and fostering community growth through various platforms, and livestreaming in ways unique to her style, she is able to connect her audience with each other. By engaging and observing these various actions on her part, I am able to see and experience this community bonding myself. I also look at ways this might be able to expanded to other artists and their communities as well. The hope is that the internet and social media can be just another form of music encouraging people to connect with one another.
ContributorsPartin, Eli (Author) / Ingram-Waters, Mary (Thesis director) / Ring, Dan (Committee member) / Arts, Media and Engineering Sch T (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Runaway is the 34 minute short film released alongside Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” album in 2010. The overall purpose of my project is to conduct a descriptive analysis of this film to analyze its visual messages and how they are influenced by the album’s lyrics as well. To dissect Runaway, I researched multiple perspectives of the film to further inform and provide a holistic view of the decoded messages in addition to my own analysis. Through use of the Stuart-Hall encoding and decoding model, I found multiple meanings for respective sections of Runaway and ultimately constructed a narrative path mirroring that of the album.
ContributorsBezawada, Ajay K (Author) / Ingram-Waters, Mary (Thesis director) / Chris, Lambert (Committee member) / Travis, Bean (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This essay examines national leaders’ shaping of K-pop into a foreign export, specifically looking into how K-pop is used as a soft power for South Korea. I also examine how effective K-pop is as a soft power. Because of its growing global popularity and use of K-pop artists for international relations, such as Red Velvet performing for Kim Jong Un, we might expect K-pop to act as the gateway into South Korean culture, often being the first exposure that other countries have into this country’s way of life. Through a qualitative analysis of resources ranging from news articles, videos, and social media posts, we see that K-pop idols, a term for K-pop celebrities, are heavily groomed and shaped by their labels to promote the South Korean national brand. Combined with a well-made business model to appeal to different countries, they also create sentiment for South Korean culture throughout the world with the support of the government and a strong fanbase. This plan is extremely effective in generating revenue for a multitude of South Korean brands beyond K-pop and even fosters South Korean affection in North Korea.
ContributorsMendez, Audrey F (Author) / Ingram-Waters, Mary (Thesis director) / Sandoval, Mathew (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This thesis examines the representation of female Korean pop stars in music videos, specifically looking into how these music videos serve as a medium for communicating gender ideals. I examine K-Pop's damaging presentations of women and the multilayered ways that such representations shape the “ideal” woman, societal expectations, societal treatment, and its consequences. South Korea, as a country of total media saturation and high technological advancement, leaves individuals surrounded with various ways to “learn” gender and properly enact it in their daily life. This builds and reinforces gender constructs on systemic and personal levels. K-Pop is unique in its strict organizational structure and emphasis on conformity, and both of those aspects lend to an even more intense and streamlined depiction of what a South Korean woman is meant to be. The music video is an ideal cultural artifact to examine due to the overlapping audio and visual elements, including lyrics, choreography, makeup, and outfits.
ContributorsCorreia, Madison (Author) / Ingram-Waters, Mary (Thesis director) / Carrasco, Clare (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor)
Created2022-05