Matching Items (20)
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- All Subjects: Music
- Creators: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Description
The purpose of this study is to analyze the stereotypes surrounding four wind instruments (flutes, oboes, clarinets, and saxophones), and the ways in which those stereotypes propagate through various levels of musical professionalism in Western culture. In order to determine what these stereotypes might entail, several thousand social media and blog posts were analyzed, and direct quotations detailing the perceived stereotypical personality profiles for each of the four instruments were collected. From these, the three most commonly mentioned characteristics were isolated for each of the instrument groups as follows: female gender, femininity, and giggliness for flutists, intelligence, studiousness, and demographics (specifically being an Asian male) for clarinetists, quirkiness, eccentricity, and being seen as a misfit for oboists, and overconfidence, attention-seeking behavior, and coolness for saxophonists. From these traits, a survey was drafted which asked participating college-aged musicians various multiple choice, opinion scale, and short-answer questions that gathered how much they agree or disagree with each trait describing the instrument from which it was derived. Their responses were then analyzed to determine how much correlation existed between the researched characteristics and the opinions of modern musicians. From these results, it was determined that 75% of the traits that were isolated for a particular instrument were, in fact, recognized as being true in the survey data, demonstrating that the stereotypes do exist and seem to be widely recognizable across many age groups, locations, and levels of musical skill. Further, 89% of participants admitted that the instrument they play has a certain stereotype associated with it, but only 38% of people identify with that profile. Overall, it was concluded that stereotypes, which are overwhelmingly negative and gendered by nature, are indeed propagated, but musicians do not appear to want to identify with them, and they reflect a more archaic and immature sense that does not correlate to the trends observed in modern, professional music.
ContributorsAllison, Lauren Nicole (Author) / Bhattacharjya, Nilanjana (Thesis director) / Ankeny, Casey (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Prior expectations can bias evaluative judgments of sensory information. We show that information about a performer's status can bias the evaluation of musical stimuli, reflected by differential activity of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Moreover, we demonstrate that decreased susceptibility to this confirmation bias is (a) accompanied by the recruitment of and (b) correlated with the white-matter structure of the executive control network, particularly related to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). By using long-duration musical stimuli, we were able to track the initial biasing, subsequent perception, and ultimate evaluation of the stimuli, examining the full evolution of these biases over time. Our findings confirm the persistence of confirmation bias effects even when ample opportunity exists to gather information about true stimulus quality, and underline the importance of executive control in reducing bias.
ContributorsAydogan, Goekhan (Co-author, Committee member) / Flaig, Nicole (Co-author) / Larg, Edward W. (Co-author) / Margulis, Elizabeth Hellmuth (Co-author) / McClure, Samuel (Co-author, Thesis director) / Nagishetty Ravi, Srekar Krishna (Co-author) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Biofeedback music is the integration of physiological signals with audible sound for aesthetic considerations, which an individual’s mental status corresponds to musical output. This project looks into how sounds can be drawn from the meditative and attentive states of the brain using the MindWave Mobile EEG biosensor from NeuroSky. With the MindWave and an Arduino microcontroller processor, sonic output is attained by inputting the data collected by the MindWave, and in real time, outputting code that deciphers it into user constructed sound output. The input is scaled from values 0 to 100, measuring the ‘attentive’ state of the mind by observing alpha waves, and distributing this information to the microcontroller. The output of sound comes from sourcing this into the Musical Instrument Shield and varying the musical tonality with different chords and delay of the notes. The manipulation of alpha states highlights the control or lack thereof for the performer and touches on the question of how much control over the output there really is, much like the experimentalist Alvin Lucier displayed with his concepts in brainwave music.
ContributorsQuach, Andrew Duc (Author) / Helms Tillery, Stephen (Thesis director) / Feisst, Sabine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Advances in computational processing have made big data analysis in fields like music information retrieval (MIR) possible. Through MIR techniques researchers have been able to study information on a song, its musical parameters, the metadata generated by the song's listeners, and contextual data regarding the artists and listeners (Schedl, 2014). MIR research techniques have been applied within the field of music and emotions research to help analyze the correlative properties between the music information and the emotional output. By pairing methods within music and emotions research with the analysis of the musical features extracted through MIR, researchers have developed predictive models for emotions within a musical piece. This research has increased our understanding of the correlative properties of certain musical features like pitch, timbre, rhythm, dynamics, mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC's), and others, to the emotions evoked by music (Lartillot 2008; Schedl 2014) This understanding of the correlative properties has enabled researchers to generate predictive models of emotion within music based on listeners' emotional response to it. However, robust models that account for a user's individualized emotional experience and the semantic nuances of emotional categorization have eluded the research community (London, 2001). To address these two main issues, more advanced analytical methods have been employed. In this article we will look at two of these more advanced analytical methods, machine learning algorithms and deep learning techniques, and discuss the effect that they have had on music and emotions research (Murthy, 2018). Current trends within MIR research, the application of support vector machines and neural networks, will also be assessed to explain how these methods help to address the two main issues within music and emotion research. Finally, future research within the field of machine and deep learning will be postulated to show how individuate models may be developed from a user or a pool of user's listening libraries. Also how developments of semi-supervised classification models that assess categorization by cluster instead of by nominal data, may be helpful in addressing the nuances of emotional categorization.
ContributorsMcgeehon, Timothy Makoto (Author) / Middleton, James (Thesis director) / Knowles, Kristina (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
Due to increasing lack of resources and funding for budding student musicians, it is often not possible for this demographic to create, record, and produce their original music in the same high-budget studio environment in which music has been traditionally made. The objective of this project is to explore alternatives which are more accessible to young independent musicians and reveal the most cost-efficient routes to obtain a high-quality result. To make this comparison, the group created budget recordings of their original music in a bedroom in true DIY fashion, and then recorded the same songs in a professional music studio using the best music and recording equipment available. The DIY recordings were mixed and mastered by the group members themselves, as well as separately by a professional audio engineer. The studio recordings were also mixed and mastered by a professional audio engineer, resulting in three final products with varying costs and quality. Ultimately, the group found that without mixing and mastering experience, it is very difficult to achieve high quality results. With the same budget recorded tracks, the group found that quality of the final product vastly increased when a professional audio engineer mixed and mastered the tracks. As far as the quality of the result, the studio recorded tracks were by far the best. Not only was the quality of the sounds from the high-end music and recording equipment much higher, the band had more freedom to be creative without the responsibility of simultaneously serving as recording engineers as was the case in the low budget recordings. The group concluded that this project was highly successful and demonstrated that high quality results could be obtained on a budget. The DIY recording techniques used in this project prove that independent musicians without access to expensive equipment and resources can still produce high quality music at the cost of more effort to serve as audio engineers in addition to musicians. However, recording in a studio with the help of a producer and professional audio engineers affords creative freedom and an increase in sound quality that is simply not possible to reproduce without the equipment and expertise that money can buy.
ContributorsBonk, Alan (Co-author) / Dhuyvetter, Nicholas Alan (Co-author) / Wickham, Kevin (Co-author) / Tobias, Evan (Thesis director) / Swoboda, Deanna (Committee member) / W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The result of hundreds of hours of work is a few minutes of music. I am mechanical engineering student with a passion for music. The objective of this creative project was to learn as much as I could about music theory, composition, orchestration, notation, recording, and mixing, and to create some music of my own. I learned a great deal in my two semesters of work. My music was focused on small ensembles of strings and piano. I created over ten hours of musical audio sketches and produced notation for four pieces for the piano and strings. The finished scores fit together with similar tones and textures, all sharing a minor tonality. The first piece, "Little Machine," is a simple, methodical piano piece created in the style of second species counterpoint. The second piece, "Searching" is a duet between a piano and a cello. For most of the piece, the two instruments share a rhythmic sense of mutual independence, yet neither part can exist without the either. "Something Lost" is a piano solo written with a variety of sections and a unifying idea that pervades through the piece. Finally, "3 Strings & Piano" is a melancholy adagio written for the piano, two cellos, and a double bass. Overall, this project has helped to prepare me for a lifetime of continued learning and composition. In the future I will continue to write music, and I hope to specifically learn more about the tools and techniques used by professionals in the industry so that I can find more efficient ways to produce my own music.
ContributorsSchichtel, Jacob (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra (Thesis director) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Concentrated Solar Power and Thermal Energy Storage are two technologies that are currently being explored as environmentally friendly methods of energy generation. The two technologies are often combined in an overall system to increase efficiency and reliability of the energy generation system. A collaborative group of researchers from Australia and the United States formed a project to design solar concentrators that utilize Concentrated Solar Power and Thermal Energy Storage. The collaborators from Arizona State designed a Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage system for the project. It was initially proposed that the system utilize Dowtherm A as the Heat Transfer Fluid and a tin alloy as the storage material. Two thermal reservoirs were designed as part of the system; one reservoir was designed to be maintained at 240˚ C, while the other reservoir was designed to be maintained at 210˚ C. The tin was designed to receive heat from the hot reservoir during a charging cycle and discharge heat to the cold reservoir during a discharge cycle. From simulation, it was estimated that the system would complete a charging cycle in 17.5 minutes and a discharging cycle in 6.667 minutes [1]. After the initial design was fabricated and assembled, the system proved ineffective and did not perform as expected. Leaks occurred within the system under high pressure and the reservoirs could not be heated to the desired temperatures. After adding a flange to one of the reservoirs, it was decided that the system would be run with one reservoir, with water as the Heat Transfer Fluid. The storage material was changed to paraffin wax, because it would achieve phase change at a temperature lower than the boiling point of water. Since only one reservoir was available, charging cycle tests were performed on the system to gain insight on system performance. It was found that the paraffin sample only absorbs 3.29% of the available heat present during a charging cycle. This report discusses the tests performed on the system, the analysis of the data from these tests, the issues with the system that were revealed from the analyses, and potential design changes that would increase the efficiency of the system.
ContributorsKocher, Jordan Daniel (Author) / Wang, Robert (Thesis director) / Phelan, Patrick (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The distinctions between the neural resources supporting speech and music comprehension have long been studied using contexts like aphasia and amusia, and neuroimaging in control subjects. While many models have emerged to describe the different networks uniquely recruited in response to speech and music stimuli, there are still many questions, especially regarding left-hemispheric strokes that disrupt typical speech-processing brain networks, and how musical training might affect the brain networks recruited for speech after a stroke. Thus, our study aims to explore some questions related to the above topics. We collected task-based functional MRI data from 12 subjects who previously experienced a left-hemispheric stroke. Subjects listened to blocks of spoken sentences and novel piano melodies during scanning to examine the differences in brain activations in response to speech and music. We hypothesized that speech stimuli would activate right frontal regions, and music stimuli would activate the right superior temporal regions more than speech (both findings not seen in previous studies of control subjects), as a result of functional changes in the brain, following the left-hemispheric stroke and particularly the loss of functionality in the left temporal lobe. We also hypothesized that the music stimuli would cause a stronger activation in right temporal cortex for participants who have had musical training than those who have not. Our results indicate that speech stimuli compared to rest activated the anterior superior temporal gyrus bilaterally and activated the right inferior frontal lobe. Music stimuli compared to rest did not activate the brain bilaterally, but rather only activated the right middle temporal gyrus. When the group analysis was performed with music experience as a covariate, we found that musical training did not affect activations to music stimuli specifically, but there was greater right hemisphere activation in several regions in response to speech stimuli as a function of more years of musical training. The results of the study agree with our hypotheses regarding the functional changes in the brain, but they conflict with our hypothesis about musical expertise. Overall, the study has generated interesting starting points for further explorations of how musical neural resources may be recruited for speech processing after damage to typical language networks.
ContributorsKarthigeyan, Vishnu R (Author) / Rogalsky, Corianne (Thesis director) / Daliri, Ayoub (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
This creative project focused on the process of making an album from scratch. From songwriting to recording, this three-year project ended with the release of a ten-song album available on all streaming platforms. The goal of this project was to experience the same general process as professional recording artists and gain a better understanding of the music industry.
ContributorsStone, Amanda (Author) / Myers, Nathan (Thesis director) / Steiner, Kiernan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of Music, Dance and Theatre (Contributor)
Created2023-05
ContributorsStone, Amanda (Author) / Myers, Nathan (Thesis director) / Steiner, Kiernan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of Music, Dance and Theatre (Contributor)
Created2023-05