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- All Subjects: Performance
- Creators: Norton, Kay
- Creators: Rockmaker, Jody
Description
The integration of yoga into the music curriculum has the potential of offering many immediate and life-long benefits to musicians. Yoga can help address issues such as performance anxiety and musculoskeletal problems, and enhance focus and awareness during musical practice and performance. Although the philosophy of yoga has many similarities to the process of learning a musical instrument, the benefits of yoga for musicians is a topic that has gained attention only recently. This document explores several ways in which the practice and philosophy of yoga can be fused with saxophone pedagogy as one way to prepare students for a healthy and successful musical career. A six-week study at Arizona State University was conducted to observe the effects of regular yoga practice on collegiate saxophone students. Nine participants attended a sixty-minute "yoga for musicians" class twice a week. Measures included pre- and post- study questionnaires as well as personal journals kept throughout the duration of the study. These self-reported results showed that yoga had positive effects on saxophone playing. It significantly increased physical comfort and positive thinking, and improved awareness of habitual patterns and breath control. Student participants responded positively to the idea of integrating such a course into the music curriculum. The integration of yoga and saxophone by qualified professionals could also be a natural part of studio class and individual instruction. Carrie Koffman, professor of saxophone at The Hartt School, University of Hartford, has established one strong model for the combination of these disciplines. Her methods and philosophy, together with the basics of Western-style hatha yoga, clinical reports on performance injuries, and qualitative data from the ASU study are explored. These inquiries form the foundation of a new model for integrating yoga practice regularly into the saxophone studio.
ContributorsAdams, Allison Dromgold (Author) / Norton, Kay (Thesis advisor) / Hill, Gary (Committee member) / McAllister, Timothy (Committee member) / Micklich, Albie (Committee member) / Standley, Eileen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The craft of improvisation at the organ has survived a long period of dormancy and is experiencing a strong resurgence in the twenty-first century. This project seeks to establish a precedence for the value of notated music as a resource in learning improvisation, and then, through music analysis, provide examples of how that process can develop. The result of the ideas presented here is a pathway whereby any disciplined organist can learn to imitate composed music, assimilate the musical ideas, and innovate through the act of spontaneous improvisation.
ContributorsHoward, Devon (Author) / Marshall, Kimberly (Thesis advisor) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Kocour, Michael (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Rockmaker, Jody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
For the ancient Greeks, music not only was esteemed for its social and entertaining value, but also because it reflected the beauty of the gods and their creations. Music furthermore “embodied larger universal principles and served as a vehicle for higher understanding.” According to Lippmann, the ancients believed that the universe “contains a harmony that controls both spatial and temporal phenomena” and “we can come to know the divine order of harmony more readily in ourselves than in the external world.” Gaining self-knowledge and awareness of one’s place in the world are significant and music is a means of gaining this consciousness. Ancient Greeks believed that music was inspired by the Greek goddesses known as the Muses. In this paper, I argue that, by gifting humans with divinely inspired music, the Muses help humans achieve this mindfulness of one‟s place in the world and attain immortality.
ContributorsSanders, Lauren (Author) / Norton, Kay (Thesis director) / Arena, Paul (Committee member) / Bruhn, Karen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
Stress can negatively impact performance. The negative impact can be modulated through cognitive appraisals. The two types of cognitive appraisals are how people perceive a situation and have different implications for how people experience difficult, potentially stressful tasks. A threat appraisal tends to elicit negative emotions, whereas a challenge appraisal tends to elicit positive emotions. Emotions elicited from a cognitive appraisal also affect attention and were hypothesized to have different performance implications for central versus peripheral aspects of the task. Sixty-three participants recruited from a large southwestern university were randomly assigned to a threat or challenge appraisal condition. They performed a timed, stressful, novel, and complex card categorization task. Participants with the threat appraisal felt more negative emotions and perceived the task to be more stressful and difficult than participants with a threat appraisal. Performance on central aspects, peripheral aspects, and overall were not affected by appraisal.
ContributorsYang, Charles (Author) / Shiota, Michelle (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Fingerboard study is an essential component of the college guitar curriculum. A Course on Guitar Fingerboard Melody and Harmony is a method to acquire and integrate fundamental music vocabulary for the guitar performer, interpreter, improvisor, and composer, the end goal being mastery of musical vocabulary to enable artistic freedom and creative depth. This class design facilitates a solid foundation of fundamental components and provides a framework for further study and integration. It offers a concise yet intense course that consolidates, codifies, explores, and applies scale, interval, and chord vocabulary through interpretive, compositional, and improvisational engagement. This project aspires to contribute to the discipline of guitar, its canon, and its pedagogy. This programmed curriculum offers a comprehensive one-year, two-semester, college-level course on fundamental music vocabulary on the guitar fretboard. Its design facilitates a solid foundation for fundamental musical components, equips the student with a working scale and chord vocabulary, reveals how vocabulary is generated on any fretted instrument, and provides a framework for further study and integration. Semester one facilitates in-depth scale and interval study, while semester two investigates triads and seventh chords, reflecting one, two, three, and four voices textures. Each unit contains lessons, assignments, and integration activities. This document provides both teacher edition, units one through four, and student workbook, units five through eight.
Students of A Course on Guitar Fingerboard Melody and Harmony can expect dramatic strides in their understanding of musical vocabulary, its applications, and their abilities to associate and engage in real-time interpretative, compositional, and improvisational contexts. Fingerboard knowledge greatly enhances sight reading skills and enables the interpreter to find fingerings that express the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic character of any particular musical gesture, and consequently, an entire composition. Guitar composers will be most effective when they know the possibilities and parameters of musical vocabulary on the instrument. Often, the study of vocabulary can inform and expand a composer's sonic palette and conception. For improvisers, fingerboard comprehension allows access to any interval, scale, arpeggio, or voicing the ear desires, regardless of where they happen to find themselves on the instrument in that unique moment.
ContributorsZweig, Phillip (Author) / Kim, Ji Leon (Thesis advisor) / Swartz, Jonathan (Committee member) / Rockmaker, Jody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
"Recontextualizing Music for Social Change" proposes alternative ways through which the traditional setup of a vocal recital may be transformed into a multidisciplinary performance with a specific social purpose. This task might be achieved by the conscious use and merging of elements such as innovation, ritualistic significance of music, and hopes for social change.
Rather than exclusively analyzing the nature of these three elements, this document seeks to exemplify the artistic use of these tools through the description of two doctoral recitals. These performances focus on the portrayal of two specific social issues concerning gender identity: the femme fatale, and sexual identity.
The first performance, "Defatalizing the Femme Fatale: The Voice behind a Stereotype," reflects on the negative connotations of the French femme fatale stereotype. This dangerous image has been perpetuated through popular and mass media since the nineteenth century. The femme fatale has achieved an iconic status thanks to her appealing, damaging, unrealistic, and hypersexualized traits. Nevertheless, this male-constructed stereotype was actually conceived as a parody of female emancipation. "Defatalizing the Femme Fatale" seeks to create awareness of this image through a staged approach of Shostakovich's Michelangelo Suite, feminist poetry and prose, and euphonium music.
The second performance, "Un-Labelling Love: A Scientific Study of Romantic Attachment in Four Seasons," analyses the biological nature of love. According to this perspective, "Un-Labelling Love" transforms a vocal recital into a scientific lecture. This lecture examines four developmental stages of romantic love through the performance of art songs and the inclusion of a narrator, who describes the biological and psychological changes experienced by two research subjects--the performers--during these love stages. Through a plot-twist at the end of the performance, "Un-Labelling Love" also questions the patriarchal assumption that heterosexual kinship represents, by default, the unmarked category of adult pair-bonding. In summary, and based on scientific facts, this vocal performance seeks to encourage social assimilation of non-heterosexual kinship systems.
Rather than exclusively analyzing the nature of these three elements, this document seeks to exemplify the artistic use of these tools through the description of two doctoral recitals. These performances focus on the portrayal of two specific social issues concerning gender identity: the femme fatale, and sexual identity.
The first performance, "Defatalizing the Femme Fatale: The Voice behind a Stereotype," reflects on the negative connotations of the French femme fatale stereotype. This dangerous image has been perpetuated through popular and mass media since the nineteenth century. The femme fatale has achieved an iconic status thanks to her appealing, damaging, unrealistic, and hypersexualized traits. Nevertheless, this male-constructed stereotype was actually conceived as a parody of female emancipation. "Defatalizing the Femme Fatale" seeks to create awareness of this image through a staged approach of Shostakovich's Michelangelo Suite, feminist poetry and prose, and euphonium music.
The second performance, "Un-Labelling Love: A Scientific Study of Romantic Attachment in Four Seasons," analyses the biological nature of love. According to this perspective, "Un-Labelling Love" transforms a vocal recital into a scientific lecture. This lecture examines four developmental stages of romantic love through the performance of art songs and the inclusion of a narrator, who describes the biological and psychological changes experienced by two research subjects--the performers--during these love stages. Through a plot-twist at the end of the performance, "Un-Labelling Love" also questions the patriarchal assumption that heterosexual kinship represents, by default, the unmarked category of adult pair-bonding. In summary, and based on scientific facts, this vocal performance seeks to encourage social assimilation of non-heterosexual kinship systems.
ContributorsVázquez Morillas, Mario (Author) / Norton, Kay (Thesis advisor) / Reber, William F. (Thesis advisor) / Kopta, Anne (Committee member) / Bowditch, Rachel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
According to the United States Department of Labor, the predicted percentage growth of jobs in music performance for 2012-22 is less than half the predicted percentage growth in overall national employment for the same period. While university music performance core curricula prepares students to attain their goals, which can include positions in orchestral, chamber, or solo settings, only a small number of such positions are predicted in the future job market. One possible solution to help students succeed as modern-day musicians is the implementation of curricula that emphasizes innovation and entrepreneurship in music performance. This paper comprises three parts: (1) a study intended to identify core curricula requirements for the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Violin Performance in the United States; (2) a sample Career Plan; and (3) a Syllabus for an Innovative Music Performance Course.
The first section of this document contains a summary of the requirements for DMA violin performance courses, based on a large survey of university programs in the U.S., both public and private. Using Petersons’ catalogue of “Graduate Programs in the Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences,” thirty-five U.S. institutions (public and private) that offer DMA in violin performance degrees and publicize their core requirements online have been analyzed. This study reveals that distribution of hours required in music performance curricula have changed little in the last forty years. A career plan is provided as a practical tool to help students navigate their own careers in the twentieth century. This document culminates with a Syllabus for an Innovative Music Performance course designed to remedy the deficits in the current core curriculum.
The first section of this document contains a summary of the requirements for DMA violin performance courses, based on a large survey of university programs in the U.S., both public and private. Using Petersons’ catalogue of “Graduate Programs in the Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences,” thirty-five U.S. institutions (public and private) that offer DMA in violin performance degrees and publicize their core requirements online have been analyzed. This study reveals that distribution of hours required in music performance curricula have changed little in the last forty years. A career plan is provided as a practical tool to help students navigate their own careers in the twentieth century. This document culminates with a Syllabus for an Innovative Music Performance course designed to remedy the deficits in the current core curriculum.
ContributorsStrahm, Kathleen Ariel (Author) / Swartz, Jonathan (Thesis advisor) / Creviston, Christopher (Committee member) / Humphreys, Jere T (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Swoboda, Deanna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This document examines the many ways in which the arts can benefit rural areas. It aims to illuminate potential opportunities found in rural areas for all types of artists, and discusses important points on building arts programs, organizations, and events in these areas. Having a strong arts presence can positively impact the economy, education system, community and well-being in rural areas. The arts help to strengthen community identity, provide exposure to new artistic experiences while preserving local culture, create a more resilient economy, strengthen the education system, and provide a creative outlet for community members. Musicians visiting a rural community have access to a unique and fulfilling opportunity to create, advocate, share and learn. Creating short and long term arts programs and organizations within these communities is an important way of guaranteeing a more sustainable presence of the arts. This document outlines rural areas and their typical characteristics, discusses the impact the arts can have on the rural economy, education system, and well being of the community and its individuals, and explores the many opportunities and experiences available to visiting artists and musicians in rural areas. It also discusses key issues and approaches when creating arts programs, events, and organizations in rural areas. Interviews with rural residents, artists and musicians, and arts advocates, along with the author’s personal experiences and observations provide unique insight into arts advocacy in rural areas, and why it is important.
ContributorsOff, Sarah Nicole (Author) / Jiang, Danwen (Thesis advisor) / Schmidt, Margaret (Thesis advisor) / Rockmaker, Jody (Committee member) / Campbell, Andrew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
The modern day tubist has an expanded collection of solo tuba repertoire that continues to grow in quantity and in difficulty, making it necessary to utilize all the tools available to improve musicianship and performance ability. In this capacity, the use of transcribed material serves as a vital method of cross training in order to develop skills which assist the performance of modern tuba literature. Rather than focusing on transcriptions solely to engage with musical eras that the tuba would not otherwise have access to, the tubist can use transcribed material as supplementary or even prerequisite repertoire.
This project examines a cross training style of studying transcriptions for the advancing tubist. Similar to how athletes cross train in two or more sports to improve their abilities, the tubist may cross train with transcriptions in order to improve the technical and musical skills required in modern tuba literature. Transcribed materials will be used to develop facility in the areas of technique, phrasing, and stylistic interpretation using three unique pieces of standard solo tuba repertoire; Krzysztof Penderecki’s Capriccio, the John Williams Tuba Concerto, and Anthony Plog’s Three Miniatures.
This project examines a cross training style of studying transcriptions for the advancing tubist. Similar to how athletes cross train in two or more sports to improve their abilities, the tubist may cross train with transcriptions in order to improve the technical and musical skills required in modern tuba literature. Transcribed materials will be used to develop facility in the areas of technique, phrasing, and stylistic interpretation using three unique pieces of standard solo tuba repertoire; Krzysztof Penderecki’s Capriccio, the John Williams Tuba Concerto, and Anthony Plog’s Three Miniatures.
ContributorsNetzer, Travis (Author) / Swoboda, Deanna (Thesis advisor) / Ericson, John (Committee member) / Rockmaker, Jody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016