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Description
This project is a small scale investigation of various factors concerning "Flow" in Piano Performance. "Flow" is the sweet spot where ability and challenge are about equal, and usually high (Csikszentmihalyi 1990). Piano performance is a state of playing the piano with some intent to perform. In this case, the intent is to create something new or improvise. Improvisation is one form of expressive creativity on the piano stemming from some knowledge and extrapolation upon that knowledge (Nachmanovitch 82). Creativity is essential to the development of new music, and though extensive literature exists on both creativity and music independently, there is a gap in research regarding links between the two (Macdonald et al. 2006). This project aims to address some of these gaps by working with piano players and non-musicians of various technical skill levels to examine the "Flow" state in improvisation as well as potential factors affecting creative performance. Factors such as listening, self-confidence, frustration in methodology, and meditation practices were found to correlate positively with technical skill. Participants who completed the practice program were able to reconstruct challenges and enter the "Flow" state in improvisation regardless of high or low technical scores.
ContributorsDorr, Alexander Nathan (Author) / Kaplan, Robert (Thesis director) / Parker, John (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Based on the techniques of spectralism and using Grisey's "Partiels" as a model, my thesis composition combines my desire to explore computer music, visual mediums, and my personal desire to create meaning in music through integrating manipulated recordings of "place" in a piece for string orchestra and fixed electronics. My thesis paper includes spectralism history, analysis of "Partiels," and analysis of my own composition.
ContributorsBrown, Bethany Carolyn (Author) / Suzuki, Kotoka (Thesis director) / Schmelz, Peter (Committee member) / School of Music (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Three high-school and college-level band directors were interviewed about how their ensemble students (both individually and collectively) are affected during times of tragedy and how they responded to the situation. Tragedies discussed included student deaths, school-wide incidents, national emergencies, and other instances of shared grief. Questions that guided the research were: (1) In what musical or non-musical ways do band directors aid their students in the grieving process? (2) How do band directors handle their own personal emotions, both in front of their students and privately? and (3) What resources and previous experiences have prepared band directors to handle a grief situation, and what additional methods may have prepared them more effectively? Interviews were qualitatively analyzed for common themes and compared with literature related to responding to student grief. Four main themes emerged from the study: (1) contextual factors affect stakeholders' responses, (2) band directors make many decisions when handling student grief, (3) band directors recall responses of the wider community, and (4) band directors experience personal impact. Implications for the field included suggestions for band directors to consider non-musical student needs in their orientations to teaching, for the band director community to communicate about student grief situations, and for social workers and administrators to ensure that classroom teachers receive training and information on how to help students with grief. Recommendations for further research included replicating the study with other demographic areas, examining the students' experiences themselves, conducting a survey-based study about the topic, and exploring the role mentors have in shaping band directors' philosophies on this topic.
ContributorsPeters, Alaina Rose (Author) / Schmidt, Margaret (Thesis director) / Hoffer, Julie (Committee member) / School of Music (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
In this paper we explore the design, implementation, and analysis of two different approaches for providing music recommendations to targeted users by implementing the Gram-ART unsupervised learning algorithm. We provide a content filtering approach using a dataset of one million songs which include various metadata tags and a collaborative filtering approach using the listening histories of over one million users. The two methods are evaluated by their results from Million Song Dataset Challenge. While both placed near the top third of the 150 challenge participants, the knowledge gained from the experiments will help further refine the process and likely produced much higher results in a system with the potential to scale several magnitudes.
ContributorsMeiss, Trevor (Author) / Meuth, Ryan (Thesis director) / Miller, Phill (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The transition to lead-free solder in the electronics industry has benefited the environment in many ways. However, with new materials systems comes new materials issues. During the processing of copper pads, a protective surface treatment is needed to prevent the copper from oxidizing. Characterizing the copper oxidation underneath the surface treatment is challenging but necessary for product reliability and failure analysis. Currently, FIB-SEM, which is time-consuming and expensive, is what is used to understand and analyze the surface treatment-copper oxide(s)-copper system. This project's goals were to determine a characterization methodology that cuts both characterization time and cost in half for characterizing copper oxidation beneath a surface treatment and to determine which protective surface treatment is the best as defined by multiple criterion such as cost, sustainability, and reliability. Two protective surface treatments, organic solderability preservative (OSP) and chromium zincate, were investigated, and multiple characterization techniques were researched. Six techniques were tested, and three were deemed promising. Through our studies, it was determined that the best surface treatment was organic solderability preservative (OSP) and the ideal characterization methodology would be using FIB-SEM to calibrate a QCM model, along with using SERA to confirm the QCM model results. The methodology we propose would result in a 91% reduction in characterization cost and a 92% reduction in characterization time. Future work includes further calibration of the QCM model using more FIB/SEM data points and eventually creating a model for oxide layer thickness as a function of exposure time and processing temperature using QCM as the primary data source. An additional short essay on the role of SEM on the continuing miniaturization of integrated circuits is included at the end. This paper explores the intertwined histories of the scanning electron microscope and the integrated circuit, highlighting how advances in SEM influence integrated circuit advances.
ContributorsSmith, Bethany Blair (Co-author) / Marion, Branch Kelly (Co-author) / Cruz, Hernandez (Co-author) / Kimberly, McGuiness (Co-author) / Adams, James (Thesis director) / Krause, Stephen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The aim of this paper is to investigate the B-casein fractions in Scandinavian and Icelandic milk for evidence to either support or refute the claim that the A1 variant of B-casein is diabetogenic in adolescent populations. Based on the theory that differences in milk protein composition explain a lower incidence of Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) in Iceland when compared to surrounding Nordic countries, an informative poster was created so that a more educated decision can be made by those wishing to take preventative measures against the incidence of the disease. This paper includes a basic background behind the epidemiology of T1D and the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations. Next, comparison between milk protein composition and consumption in Iceland against the other Nordic countries is performed through an in-depth literature review. The review was conducted using PubMed databases until December of 2018. Key findings of this investigation raise concerns regarding the decision between optimizing milk producing rates or breeding for milk devoid of diabetogenic proteins. The current literature on the impact of cattle genetics on the protein composition of milk sheds light on the safety of Icelandic dairy and the resulting health of their population. Icelandic dairy has been evidenced to contain lower levels of A1 b-casein and is considered less diabetogenic. For these reasons, this author would recommend the consumption of Icelandic dairy products over those from other regions.
ContributorsThunberg, Carly Marie (Author) / Morse, Lisa (Thesis director) / Grgich, Traci (Committee member) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Hyperspectral imaging is a novel technology which allows for the collection of reflectance spectra of a sample in-situ and at a distance. A rapidly developing technology, hyperspectral imaging has been of particular interest in the field of art characterization, authentication, and conservation as it avoids the pitfalls of traditional characterization techniques and allows for the rapid and wide collection of data never before possible. It is hypothesized that by combining the power of hyperspectral imaging with machine learning, a new framework for the in-situ and automated characterization and authentication of artworks can be developed. This project, using the CMYK set of inks, began the preliminary development of such a framework. It was found that hyperspectral imaging and machine learning as a combination show significant potential as an avenue for art authentication, though further progress and research is needed to match the reliability of status quo techniques.
ContributorsChowdhury, Tanzil Aziz (Author) / Newman, Nathan (Thesis director) / Tongay, Sefaattin (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
The meanings and values that people assign to music and the material culture that music creation offers make excellent data sources for uncovering new and transformative aspects of culture. Gospel music is a subculture that emphasizes a unique performance style, and is based upon culturally specific religious, social, musical, and historical contexts. Students in the ensemble who musically developed through a Western classical-based connective strand may experience some adjustment from what they know and develop new skills to navigate across cultural difference. The purpose of this study was to document how participants in a specific university gospel choir setting navigated across cultural differences for gospel choir study and performance. Participants were recruited and interviewed a total of three times about their experience in the ensemble. Questions that guided the study focused on three areas: religious difference, social difference, and musical difference. An in-case analysis of each participant showed that overall, experiences in the choir were positive. Participants from a variety of diverse backgrounds approached new cultural learning differences such as physical movement, aural music learning, religious text, and performance context with an open mind and an individualized way of navigating through difference. In order for participants to reach a point where they felt that they had cultural competency in a new musical area, in this case, the establishment of a strong community was especially essential because of the assumptions attached to this ensemble and because of many of the participants' initial limited understanding of cultural markers for learning music that draw on improvisatory and aural means. This study implies that there are connections between each cultural difference that are related. For the educator intending to introduce new cultural competencies in their classrooms, considering the dynamics in which cultural differences might interact with each other is essential.
ContributorsCrane, Janelle Elizabeth (Author) / Thompson, Jason (Thesis director) / Schmidt, Margaret (Committee member) / School of Music (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The story of graphene truly began in what was simply a stub in the journal Physical Review not two years after the end of World War II. In 1947, McGill University physicist P.R. Wallace authored “The Band Theory of Graphite” and attempted to develop a foundation on which the structure-property relationship of graphite could be explored; he calculates the number of free electrons and conductivity of what he describes as “a single hexagonal layer” and “suppos[es] that conduction takes place only in layers” in bulk graphite to predict wave functions, energies at specific atomic sites in the hexagonal lattice, and energy contours using a tight binding approximation for a hypothesized version of what we now call ‘armchair-style’ graphene. While Wallace was the first to explore the band structure and Brillouin Zones of single-layer graphite, the concept of two-dimensional materials was not new. In fact, for years, it was dismissed as a thermodynamic impossibility.
Everything seemed poised against any proposed physical and experimental stability of a structure like graphene. “Thermodynamically impossible”– a not uncommon shutdown to proposed novel physical or chemical concepts– was once used to describe the entire field of proposed two-dimensional crystals functioning separately from a three-dimensional base or crystalline structure. Rudolf Peierls and Lev Davoidovich Landau, both very accomplished physicists respectively known for the Manhattan Project and for developing a mathematical theory of helium superfluidity, rejected the possibility of isolated monolayer to few-layered crystal lattices. Their reasoning was that diverging thermodynamic-based crystal lattice fluctuations would render the material unstable regardless of controlled temperature. This logic is flawed, but not necessarily inaccurate– diamond, for instance, is thermodynamically metastable at room temperature and pressure in that there exists a slow (i.e. slow on the scale of millions of years) but continuous transformation to graphite. However, this logic was used to support an explanation of thermodynamic impossibility that was provided for graphene’s lack of isolation as late as 1979 by Cornell solid-state physicist Nathaniel David Mermin. These physicists’ claims had clear and consistent grounding in experimental data: as thin films become thinner, there exists a trend of a decreasing melting temperature and increasing instability that renders the films into islands at somewhere around ten to twenty atomic layers. This is driven by the thermodynamically-favorable minimization of surface energy.
Everything seemed poised against any proposed physical and experimental stability of a structure like graphene. “Thermodynamically impossible”– a not uncommon shutdown to proposed novel physical or chemical concepts– was once used to describe the entire field of proposed two-dimensional crystals functioning separately from a three-dimensional base or crystalline structure. Rudolf Peierls and Lev Davoidovich Landau, both very accomplished physicists respectively known for the Manhattan Project and for developing a mathematical theory of helium superfluidity, rejected the possibility of isolated monolayer to few-layered crystal lattices. Their reasoning was that diverging thermodynamic-based crystal lattice fluctuations would render the material unstable regardless of controlled temperature. This logic is flawed, but not necessarily inaccurate– diamond, for instance, is thermodynamically metastable at room temperature and pressure in that there exists a slow (i.e. slow on the scale of millions of years) but continuous transformation to graphite. However, this logic was used to support an explanation of thermodynamic impossibility that was provided for graphene’s lack of isolation as late as 1979 by Cornell solid-state physicist Nathaniel David Mermin. These physicists’ claims had clear and consistent grounding in experimental data: as thin films become thinner, there exists a trend of a decreasing melting temperature and increasing instability that renders the films into islands at somewhere around ten to twenty atomic layers. This is driven by the thermodynamically-favorable minimization of surface energy.
ContributorsShulman, Neal Arthur (Author) / Adams, James (Thesis director) / Islam, Rafiqul (Committee member) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The Mizrahi Jews have greatly influenced current Israeli culture through their music and food. The Mizrahi immigrated from Middle Eastern countries and brought with them their music and food. Their music has changed slowly over time. Musiqa Mizrahit started as music the Mizrahi brought with them when the immigrated to Israel. As they adjusted to Israeli society, they began switching the Arabic words to Hebrew. Musiqa Mizrahit really took off with the creation of cassette recordings that allowed anyone to cheaply record music and share it. As Musiqa Mizrahit became more accessible, it slowly gained popularity across Israel. As popularity for the genre, it slowly became accepted in Israeli society. Up until then, Musiqa Mizrahit had been discriminated against and was not considered part of Israeli culture. Nowadays, Musiqa Mizrahit is very popular and widely accepted in Israel. The food was accepted by the Ashkenazi in the first two decades of the countries existence by the widespread Israeli pushback in Mandatory Palestine and into the existence of the brand new country. now many of the Mizrahi foods are considered part of the Israeli national cuisine.
ContributorsKoester, Samantha Lanette (Author) / Shemer, Judith (Thesis director) / Ali, Souad (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor, Contributor, Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05