| Item Type | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Author | Kevin R. Burke |
| Editor | Mark Nicholas Grimshaw-Aagaard |
| Editor | William Gibbons |
| Abstract | This chapter presents an analytical approach to early video game sound that incorporates both the history of hardware limitations and the innovative software that shaped distinct styles among various developers. My use of the word "systematic" refers to the unique makeup of each gaming hardware. While many systems share similar sound components and forms of sound synthesis, the applications of the hardware are varied and diverse. I consider systematic composition in three configurations: idio-systematic—the software possibilities of the sound system’s primary functions; meta-systematic—the sound system’s functions that emulate or replicate operations that exist outside of the system; and cross-systematic—functions of the sound system that coordinate multiple sound sources. The range of gaming hardware reflected by this chapter includes four types of sound synthesis sources that I approach in detail: Programmable Sound Generators [PSG]; Wavetable Synthesis; Frequency Modulation [FM]; and Pulse-Code Modulation [PCM] samples paired with a Digital Signal Processor [DSP]. Musical examples from Asterix (NES), Bloody Wolf (Turbografx 16), Verytex (Sega Genesis), and Chrono Trigger (SNES) will serve as case studies, but the approach could apply to many other games and systems. |
| Date | 2023 |
| Place | New York |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Book Title | The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound |
| Date Added | 1/14/2022, 2:07:39 PM |
| Modified | 3/26/2023, 10:36:00 AM |
| Item Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Chelsea Burns |
| Abstract | Buck Owens and the Buckaroos’ 1964 hit “Together Again” tells, in ambivalent terms, of a couple’s reunion. The song is best known for Tom Brumley’s pedal steel guitar solo, a quintessential example of the trademark “crying” sound of the instrument. Brumley’s steel stylings emphasize a negative interpretation of the text, and some of the most poignant elements of his remarkable solo were guided by the mechanics of the instrument. I explore the relationship between the limits and special capabilities of the pedal steel guitar, and I discuss how Brumley highlights both of these aspects in this brief yet famous solo, illustrating relationships between text and technics in this iconic recording. |
| Date | 2019/07/01 |
| Language | en |
| Short Title | “Together Again,” but We Keep On Crying |
| Library Catalog | mtosmt.org |
| URL | http://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.19.25.2/mto.19.25.2.burns.html |
| Accessed | 10/28/2019, 4:16:06 PM |
| Volume | 25 |
| Publication | Music Theory Online |
| Issue | 2 |
| Date Added | 10/28/2019, 4:16:06 PM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 1:11:19 PM |
| Item Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Christa Cole |
| Abstract | In this article, I draw on public-facing sources and my violinistic experience to show how attention to performance technique illustrates three different relationships between performance and analysis. In the Largo from J.S. Bach’s Sonata No. 3 for Solo Violin (BWV 1005), multiple-stop chords, string-based affordances, and bowings in turn correspond with, contradict, and create new analytical perspectives. I first collate definitions of interpretation and technique as they relate to performance. Interpretation is non-instrument-specific and deals with decoding and expressing musical meaning; technique is instrument-specific and deals with the granular mechanics of sound production. A multiple-stop intensity model shows that changes in a violinist’s multiple-stop-based effort correspond with significant cadential markers. At the local level, the violinistic “feel” of each quadruple stop aligns with expressive aspects of harmony and form. Heinrich Schenker’s performance recommendations for the Largo’s cadences, by contrast, conflict with a violinist’s experience of how the cadences intersect with instrumental affordances. Although the two perspectives may be reconcilable, actual performances support the instrument-grounded perspective. Finally, I draw on basic bowing motions to create an analytical technique of bowing reduction. My reduction of the Largo reveals a recurring bowing-based motive, which in turn elucidates the source of a performative tension I have experienced when playing the movement. This final example reminds us that technique and interpretation—just like performance and analysis—are inevitably entangled. |
| Date | 2024/09/01 |
| Language | en |
| Short Title | Hands, Fingers, Strings, and Bows |
| Library Catalog | mtosmt.org |
| URL | https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.24.30.3/mto.24.30.3.cole.html |
| Accessed | 7/17/2025, 12:41:24 PM |
| Volume | 30 |
| Publication | Music Theory Online |
| DOI | 10.30535/mto.30.3.1 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Date Added | 7/17/2025, 12:41:24 PM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 1:15:09 PM |
| Item Type | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Author | Jonathan De Souza |
| Abstract | This chapter takes performances by the deaf Beethoven as an instance of body-instrument interaction. Prior research in music theory, drawing on cognitive linguistics, suggests that Beethoven’s music was shaped by conceptual metaphors, which are both culturally specific and grounded in the body. Yet this chapter shows that players’ experience is not simply embodied but also technical. To that end, the chapter explores cognitive neuroscience, ecological psychology, and phenomenology. Patterns of auditory-motor coactivation in players’ brains are made possible by the stable affordances of an instrument. These auditory-motor connections support performative habits, and they may be reactivated and recombined in perception and imagination—supporting Beethoven’s auditory simulations after hearing loss, for example. |
| Date | 2017 |
| Language | eng |
| Library Catalog | wrlc-gm.primo.exlibrisgroup.com |
| Place | New York, NY |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| ISBN | 978-0-19-027113-8 |
| Series | Oxford Studies in Music Theory |
| Book Title | Music at hand: instruments, bodies, and cognition |
| Date Added | 7/17/2025, 1:16:09 PM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 1:17:42 PM |
| Item Type | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Author | Jonathan De Souza |
| Abstract | How do listeners relate to musial instruments that they do not play? This chapter investigates technically mediated modes of listening in the context of Haydn’s horn music. The valveless horns in Haydn’s orchestra had distinctive pitch affordances, which gave rise to several idiomatic figures. This instrumental invariance can shape tonal expectations, affecting how the music appears to listeners. Haydn (and other composers) also used horn calls in compositions for other instrumental forces. If situated listeners are attuned to schematic instrumental textures—if, for example, they can hear virtual horns in a string quartet or piano piece—this implies that their perception is grounded in multimodal experiences of instruments. Like performance, then, listening is both embodied and conditioned by technology. |
| Date | 2017 |
| Language | eng |
| Library Catalog | wrlc-gm.primo.exlibrisgroup.com |
| Place | New York, NY |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| ISBN | 978-0-19-027113-8 |
| Series | Oxford Studies in Music Theory |
| Book Title | Music at hand: instruments, bodies, and cognition |
| Date Added | 7/17/2025, 1:16:43 PM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 1:18:04 PM |
| Item Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | David B. Easley |
| Abstract | This article explores the structures of guitar riffs in early American hardcore punk rock and their role in the creation of meaning within the genre. Drawing upon a corpus analysis of recordings by Bad Brains, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, and Minor Threat, the article begins by outlining the main ways in which guitar riffs are structured. Many reflect a structural basis in what I call “riff schemes,” organizing patterns of physical repetition and physical change made by a guitarist’s fretting hand. There are four main types, which are defined by the location of repetition within the riff (at the beginning or at the end) and whether the type of repetition is exact or altered: (1) Initial Repetition and Contrast, (2) Statement and Terminal Repetition, (3) Statement and Terminal Alteration, and (4) Model and Sequential Repetition. These schemes may also play an expressive role in song narratives of energy, intensity, and aggression, all of which are common tropes in oral histories of hardcore. In the final part of the article, I present analyses of two songs that demonstrate this use: Minor Threat’s “Straight Edge” and Black Flag’s “Rise Above.” |
| Date | 2015/03/01 |
| Language | en |
| Library Catalog | mtosmt.org |
| URL | https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.15.21.1/mto.15.21.1.easley.html |
| Accessed | 7/17/2025, 12:52:38 PM |
| Volume | 21 |
| Publication | Music Theory Online |
| DOI | 10.30535/mto.21.1.3 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Date Added | 7/17/2025, 12:52:38 PM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 1:21:55 PM |
| Item Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Nina Sun Eidsheim |
| Abstract | In this article, Nina Sun Eidsheim interrogates the cultural and critical narratives surrounding Maria Callas’s voice and body, particularly the persistent claim that her dramatic weight loss led to vocal decline. Drawing on feminist theory, especially Susan Bordo’s concept of the body as a carrier of culture, Eidsheim explores how Callas’s voice became a site of gendered scrutiny, where vocal timbre, vibrato, and register were interpreted through the lens of bodily control and femininity. Eidsheim introduces a “critical organology” of voice—an interdisciplinary framework that considers the material, physiological, and cultural dimensions of vocal production—to challenge the reductionist view of the voice as merely an instrument shaped by body size. Through this lens, she reveals how critiques of Callas’s voice reflect broader societal anxieties about female appetite, discipline, and power. Ultimately, the article calls for a rethinking of vocal discourse that disentangles voice from entrenched gendered and bodily ideologies, advocating for a more nuanced, materially grounded, and culturally aware understanding of vocal performance. [AI-generated] |
| Date | 2017 |
| Library Catalog | Project MUSE |
| URL | https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/8/article/685647 |
| Accessed | 7/16/2025, 1:40:56 PM |
| Extra | Publisher: Oxford University Press |
| Volume | 33 |
| Pages | 249-268 |
| Publication | The Opera Quarterly |
| DOI | 10.1093/oq/kbx008 |
| Issue | 3 |
| ISSN | 1476-2870 |
| Date Added | 7/16/2025, 1:40:56 PM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 1:27:01 PM |
| Item Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Mark R. H. Gotham |
| Author | Iain A. D. Gunn |
| Abstract | This article is aimed at two groups of readers. First, we present an interactive guide to pitch on the pedal harp for anyone wishing to teach or learn about harp pedaling and its associated pitch possibilities. We originally created this in response to a pedagogical need for such a resource in the teaching of composition and orchestration. Secondly, for composers and theorists seeking a more comprehensive understanding of what can be done on this unique instrument, we present a range of empirical-theoretical observations about the properties and prevalence of pitch structures on the pedal harp and the routes among them. This is particularly relevant to those interested in extended-tonal and atonal repertoires. A concluding section discusses prospective theoretical developments and analytical applications. |
| Date | 2016/12/01 |
| Language | en |
| Library Catalog | mtosmt.org |
| URL | https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.16.22.4/mto.16.22.4.gotham.html |
| Accessed | 7/17/2025, 12:41:41 PM |
| Volume | 22 |
| Publication | Music Theory Online |
| DOI | 10.30535/mto.22.4.3 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Date Added | 7/17/2025, 12:41:41 PM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 1:27:19 PM |
| Item Type | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Author | Mark Katz |
| Editor | Mark Katz |
| Abstract | The concluding chapter proposes five central takeaways from this volume in the form of five theses about music and technology. They are as follows: 1. All music is technological. 2. Our relationship with music technology is fundamentally collaborative. 3. All uses of musical technologies reveal power relationships. 4. The mass mediation of music has not eliminated cultural differences. 5. The study of music technology is the study of people. The five theses are illustrated through a diverse array of examples, including a comparison of the traditional piano and the player piano; the musical demands and possibilities of video games such as Guitar Hero; the use of radio in Nazi Germany; the emergence of the steel drum as a musical instrument in Trinidad; hip hop in Zimbabwe; and the musical handclapping and rope jumping games of African American girls. |
| Date | 2022-09-08 |
| Library Catalog | Silverchair |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780199946983.003.0007 |
| Accessed | 6/16/2025, 3:55:55 PM |
| Extra | DOI: 10.1093/actrade/9780199946983.003.0007 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| ISBN | 978-0-19-994698-3 |
| Pages | 0 |
| Book Title | Music and Technology: A Very Short Introduction |
| Date Added | 6/16/2025, 3:55:55 PM |
| Modified | 6/16/2025, 3:57:08 PM |
| Item Type | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Author | Timothy Koozin |
| Editor | Timothy Koozin |
| Abstract | Chapter 1 focuses on guitar-based expression, showing how we can understand basic moves in guitar playing not only as building blocks in creating songs, but also as musical gestures carrying aural traces of human movement that can project attributes of a fictionalized virtual musical agent. The chapter begins with barre chords that can be grasped on the guitar fretboard at any location within boundaries up and down the guitar neck. Concepts are illustrated with examples selected from a broad range of artists, including the Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Tower of Power, and Lenny Kravitz. The study progresses from basics in how barre chords map to fretboard space, to more complex barre chord figurations and guitar riffs, to extended jazz chords based on familiar barre chord shapes found in songs by Lianne La Havas. |
| Date | 2024-11-15 |
| Short Title | Guitar Voicing I |
| Library Catalog | Silverchair |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197692981.003.0002 |
| Accessed | 7/17/2025, 12:55:54 PM |
| Extra | DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197692981.003.0002 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| ISBN | 978-0-19-769298-1 |
| Pages | 0 |
| Book Title | Embodied Expression in Popular Music: A Theory of Musical Gesture and Agency |
| Date Added | 7/17/2025, 12:55:54 PM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 12:55:54 PM |
| Item Type | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Author | Timothy Koozin |
| Editor | Timothy Koozin |
| Abstract | Following the introduction to guitar barre chords provided in Chapter 1, this chapter continues with guitar chords that utilize open strings, showing how basic fretted chord shapes form “chord spaces” that guitarists navigate creatively. Examples by artists including Tom Petty, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, and Liz Phair provide a framework in exploring songs by Sheryl Crow that use fretboard space to establish axial harmonic relationships, projecting virtual environments and dramatic trajectories that interact with vocal persona. Crow employs G-chord space in an artistically personalized way to craft an individual creative strategy. Blending rock and country style idioms, she creates songs that juxtapose mythic imagery of the American West against realistic narratives of modern romance, crisis, and recovery. Given the easy access to the more materially grounded E minor submediant, G-chord fretboard space offers the potential to musically personify a powerful metaphor: a crisis waiting to happen. |
| Date | 2024-11-15 |
| Short Title | Guitar Voicing II |
| Library Catalog | Silverchair |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197692981.003.0003 |
| Accessed | 7/17/2025, 12:56:05 PM |
| Extra | DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197692981.003.0003 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| ISBN | 978-0-19-769298-1 |
| Pages | 0 |
| Book Title | Embodied Expression in Popular Music: A Theory of Musical Gesture and Agency |
| Date Added | 7/17/2025, 12:56:05 PM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 12:56:05 PM |
| Item Type | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Author | Victoria Malawey |
| Abstract | Similar to what several researchers in the early 1980s dubbed “sonance,” quality comprises more than just timbre, including also intensity, harmonic spectrum, phonation, and changes in sound. Multiple dimensions—including timbre, phonation, onset, resonance, clarity, paralinguistic effects, and loudness—create a singer’s individual vocal quality. Songs recorded and re-recorded by Lucas Silveira demonstrate the dynamic aspects associated with an ever-evolving vocal quality due to the artist’s having undergone hormone replacement therapy. The concept of quality is framed in terms of three different orientations—the physiological, acoustic, and perceptual—all of which are essential to understanding qualitative aspects of vocal delivery, more so than aspects in the domains of pitch and prosody. While sonic markers of identities are fluid social constructions rather than static essential attributes, this chapter considers how qualitative elements may signify artists’ identities and genre. |
| Date | 2020-08-06 |
| Library Catalog | Silverchair |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190052201.003.0004 |
| Accessed | 7/17/2025, 12:50:04 PM |
| Extra | DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190052201.003.0004 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| ISBN | 978-0-19-005220-1 |
| Pages | 0 |
| Book Title | A Blaze of Light in Every Word: Analyzing the Popular Singing Voice |
| Date Added | 7/17/2025, 12:50:04 PM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 1:16:32 PM |
| Item Type | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Author | Paul Théberge |
| Editor | Till Bovermann |
| Editor | Alberto De Campo |
| Editor | Hauke Egermann |
| Editor | Sarah-Indriyati Hardjowirogo |
| Editor | Stefan Weinzierl |
| Abstract | Traditional analysis and classification of musical instruments is often based on an account of the material characteristics of instruments as physical objects. In this sense, their material basis as a kind of purpose-built technology is the primary focus of concern. This chapter takes the position that musical instruments are better understood in terms of their place in a network of relationships—an “assemblage”—with other objects, practices, institutions and social discourses. Particular attention is applied to the violin, the electric guitar and the phonographic turntable as examples. The assemblage is variable, and the same instrument can be used differently and take on different meanings depending on its place within a particular assemblage; indeed, it is the assemblage that allows us to consider devices like turntables as musical instruments even though they were not designed for such purposes. |
| Date | 2017 |
| Language | en |
| Library Catalog | DOI.org (Crossref) |
| URL | http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-981-10-2951-6 |
| Accessed | 4/18/2025, 8:34:40 AM |
| Rights | http://www.springer.com/tdm |
| Extra | DOI: 10.1007/978-981-10-2951-6 |
| Place | Singapore |
| Publisher | Springer |
| ISBN | 978-981-10-2950-9 978-981-10-2951-6 |
| Book Title | Musical Instruments in the 21st Century |
| Date Added | 4/18/2025, 8:35:46 AM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 1:28:10 PM |
| Item Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | John Tresch |
| Author | Emily I. Dolan |
| Abstract | The Renaissance genre of organological treatises inventoried the forms and functions of musical instruments. This article proposes an update and expansion of the organological tradition, examining the discourses and practices surrounding both musical and scientific instruments. Drawing on examples from many periods and genres, we aim to capture instruments’ diverse ways of life. To that end we propose and describe a comparative “ethics of instruments”: an analysis of instruments’ material configurations, social and institutional locations, degrees of freedom, and teleologies. This perspective makes it possible to trace the intersecting and at times divergent histories of science and music: their shared material practices, aesthetic commitments, and attitudes toward technology, as well as their impact on understandings of human agency and the order of nature. |
| Date | 01/2013 |
| Language | en |
| Short Title | Toward a New Organology |
| Library Catalog | DOI.org (Crossref) |
| URL | https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/671381 |
| Accessed | 6/30/2025, 2:58:49 PM |
| Volume | 28 |
| Pages | 278-298 |
| Publication | Osiris |
| DOI | 10.1086/671381 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Journal Abbr | Osiris |
| ISSN | 0369-7827, 1933-8287 |
| Date Added | 6/30/2025, 2:58:49 PM |
| Modified | 6/30/2025, 2:58:49 PM |
| Item Type | Book |
|---|---|
| Author | Brian F. Wright |
| Abstract | The Bastard Instrument chronicles the history of the electric bass and the musicians who played it, from the instrument’s invention through its widespread acceptance at the end of the 1960s. Although their contributions have often gone unsung, electric bassists helped shape the sound of a wide range of genres, including jazz, rhythm & blues, rock, country, soul, funk, and more. Their innovations are preserved in performances from artists as diverse as Lionel Hampton, Liberace, Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, the Supremes, the Beatles, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Jefferson Airplane, and Sly and the Family Stone, all of whom are discussed in this volume. At long last, The Bastard Instrument gives these early electric bassists credit for the significance of their accomplishments and demonstrates how they fundamentally altered the trajectory of popular music. |
| Date | 2024 |
| Language | en-US |
| Library Catalog | press.umich.edu |
| URL | https://press.umich.edu/Books/T/The-Bastard-Instrument2 |
| Accessed | 5/1/2025, 2:16:00 PM |
| Publisher | University of Michigan Press |
| ISBN | 978-0-472-07681-9 |
| Date Added | 5/1/2025, 2:16:00 PM |
| Modified | 7/17/2025, 1:32:52 PM |
Recordings can deceive: the electric bass was used more live and on the road than in studio recordings because one advantage was its portability