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ABSTRACT This article provides a detailed response to Markus Neuwirth and Martin Rohrmeier's article ‘Wie wissenschaftlich muss Musiktheorie sein?’, published in the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie in 2016. I undertake to nuance their call for the wholesale adoption of machine‐assisted corpus‐based methods in music theory through a detailed appreciation of work‐specific analysis as is has been practiced in American music theory. The argument unfolds through three case studies: of David Lewin's 1982 analysis of Schubert's ‘Auf dem Flusse’; of Vasili Byros's more recent approach to the Eroica Symphony; and then of Lewin again, on Schubert's ‘Morgengruß’. By means of these examples, I probe where corpus‐based methods can enhance traditional approaches and what new avenues of research they make possible, but I also emphasise those aspects of work‐specific analysis that elude their grasp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music has long served as a bridge between science and nature, allowing for the artistic expression of natural and human‐made phenomena. While music has been used in geomorphology as an engaging teaching strategy, its application in specific scientific inquiries within geomorphology remains relatively unexplored. Drawing on the morphological similarities between music and terrain relief, this work introduced a novel music‐based method for modelling and expressing terrain relief based on the drainage basin profile (DBP). It converts terrain relief into pitches and time values according to mapping rules and then describes terrain relief in an audible form. Based on 5 sample areas and 360 drainage basins on the Loess Plateau, we developed the application of the proposed method on four core geomorphic tasks, including landform interpretation, analysis, recognition and classification. Experimental results show that (1) terrain music can interpret the terrain relief and landform evolution processes through its musical structure and rhythmic variations; (2) music derivatives are related to different terrain features, such as terrain relief, terrain variation intensity, landform evolution degree and terrain complexity, and have a well‐functioning relationship with a series of conventional terrain derivatives; (3) leveraging machine learning techniques, the terrain music method is effective for landform recognition, achieving an overall accuracy of 88.85% and a mean accuracy of 88.85%; and (4) via a case study in Northern Shaanxi, music modelling successfully divided it into 12 distinct landform regions and 8 landform types. Different landform regions exhibit clear regional boundaries and gradual transition zones, while specific landform regions share prominent terrain, spatial clustering and landform processes. Our delineation provides reasonable and effective landform differentiation but captures additional bed‐rock mountain features compared with a traditional method. This study highlights that music is not only an artistic expression but also a valuable research paradigm for a wide range of geomorphic tasks, offering fresh perspectives and enhancing our understanding of loess landforms. The results show a promising effort to integrate music theory into practical geomorphic tasks, demonstrating the potential of using music as a medium for conveying and analysing spatial information in geomorphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Philip Ewell's book, "On Music Theory," which has generated both positive and negative reactions. The author praises Ewell's ability to engage readers with his storytelling and provocative style. The article focuses on Ewell's claims about the racist views of Heinrich Schenker and their influence on his music theory. The author refrains from commenting on broader cultural and political contexts and instead examines the "infection thesis" proposed by Ewell. The article aims to provide a balanced assessment of Ewell's arguments and their implications for music theory. [Extracted from the article]

David Temperley's book, "The Musical Language of Rock," explores the conventions and language of rock music. Temperley argues that experienced rock listeners unconsciously understand these conventions and can detect deviations from them. The book combines theory and analysis, using musical examples to develop theoretical models. Temperley examines various aspects of rock music, including harmony, emotion, complexity, melody, rhythm, and form. He also considers the historical development of rock and its formal functions. The book offers new insights and perspectives on the musical language of rock. [Extracted from the article]

7 Hasty, Christopher F., 1999: ' Just in Time for More Dichotomies: a Hasty Response ', Music Theory Spectrum, 21/ii, pp. 275 - 93. 8 Husserl, Edmund, 1970: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: an Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. David Carr (Chicago: Northwestern University Press). 9 London, Justin, 1999: ' Hasty's Dichotomy ', Music Theory Spectrum, 21/ii, pp. 260 - 74. 10 London, Justin, [ 2004 ] 2012: Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter, 2nd rev. edn (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press). The animating claim of Christopher Hasty's I Meter as Rhythm i is that meter is a phenomenon which is produced as it goes along. [Extracted from the article]

10 Hasty, Christopher, 2020: Meter as Rhythm, 20th anniversary edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press). In my work on musical interaction in jazz improvisation (Michaelsen [14] and [15]), I have grappled with the nature of the connections occurring between musicians in what Chris Stover ([17]) calls the "improvisational moment".[1] By what process can I propose a hearing of the relationships that emerge from a moment of interaction? Hasty considers numerous contexts, from a single sound's becoming to the projective play of many sounds over longer time spans, but he always foregrounds the I experience i of those sounds at precise moments in time. [Extracted from the article]

The Formenlehre (theory of the musical form), inaugurated by Adolf Bernhard Marx after Beethoven's death and witnessed by several treatises at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, has left traces in the writings and works of Béla Bartók, Alban Berg, Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. Chamber music (especially string quartets) is the area in which the dialogue with the past is most tangible. The adoption of traditional concepts is associated with significant changes of thematic structures and developmental techniques. Thus, the transformations of the harmonic thinking are paralleled by the way the composers dealt with phrase organisation and syntactic functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might artificial neural networks (ANNs) inform cognitive science? Often cognitive scientists use ANNs but do not examine their internal structures. In this paper, we use ANNs to explore how cognition might represent musical properties. We train ANNs to classify musical chords, and we interpret network structure to determine what representations ANNs discover and use. We find connection weights between input units and hidden units can be described using Fourier phase spaces, a representation studied in musical set theory. We find the total signal coming through these weighted connection weights is a measure of the similarity between two Fourier structures: the structure of the hidden unit's weights and the structure of the stimulus. This is surprising because neither of these Fourier structures is computed by the hidden unit. We then show how output units use such similarity measures to classify chords. However, we also find different types of units—units that use different activation functions—use this similarity measure very differently. This result, combined with other findings, indicates that while our networks are related to the Fourier analysis of musical sets, they do not perform Fourier analyses of the kind usually described in musical set theory. Our results show Fourier representations of music are not limited to musical set theory. Our results also suggest how cognitive psychologists might explore Fourier representations in musical cognition. Critically, such theoretical and empirical implications require researchers to understand how network structure converts stimuli into responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a new generation network based on transformers and guided by the music theory to produce high‐quality music work. In this study, the decoding block of the transformer is used to learn the internal information of single‐track music, and cross‐track transformers are used to learn the information amongst the tracks of different musical instruments. A reward network based on the music theory is proposed, which optimizes the global and local loss objective functions while training and discriminating the network so that the reward network can provide a reliable adjustment method for the generation of the network. The method of combining the reward network and cross entropy loss is used to guide the training of the generator and produce high‐quality music work. Compared with other multi‐track music generation models, the experimental results verify the validity of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Footnotes 1 The challenge extends well beyond Hepokoski and Darcy's sonata types or MC defaults. If these compositions are part of Hepokoski and Darcy's corpus, then we have to assume that including them does not change the models for which sonata theory advocates. One of the most significant achievements of James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy's I Elements of Sonata Theory i (2006) is its reduction of the vast diversity of sonata practice to five overarching types. In all, sonata theory's typology allows us to survey the wide domain of sonata practices with fresh clarity. [Extracted from the article]

Atkinson suggests that the problem was that, apart from being extremely expensive and not very reliable, guitar synths were essentially different instruments, which could not be played like a normal guitar - and few guitarists were willing to make the effort to learn to play them from scratch. "Iconic" is a grossly over-used term; yet the electric guitar genuinely is iconic, held in high reverence by many musicians and fans, and instantly evoking a strong set of cultural associations. Also, discussed is the guitar-synth - electronic guitars (or guitar-like instruments) designed to control a synthesiser. [Extracted from the article]