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Dr. Hal Abeles is a foundational leader in developing music performance assessments, conducting program evaluations of arts partnerships, and publishing basic research on the effects of arts instruction on learning in and across cognitive, social and personal domains. This article explores the theoretical and practical issues in music performance assessment and program evaluation, and how Dr. Abeles clarified, explicated, and created solutions with a broad and deep influence on music and arts education. Dr. Abeles modeled the application of the facet-factorial method for developing assessments of musical performances. Originally designed for assessment of clarinet performance, the method was adapted and re-applied to develop metrics for many other musical instruments, ensembles, and for jazz improvisation. Further extension of the facet-factorial method were used develop tools for assessing teacher professional development and evaluating arts partnerships. In addition, Dr. Abeles conducted seminal research on the effects of arts learning on thinking skills, affective learning, self-confidence and school engagement, published by the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. The study, Learning In and Through the Arts, found significant relationships between participation in the arts and dimensions of cognitive, social and personal development, that were inherent to arts learning and also applicable to student development in other domains and contexts. Additional applied research examined the impact of partnership programs on teachers' pedagogy, leadership, musicianship, and students' interest in pursuing music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A previous study explored the potential to influence the perception of consonance by controlling the spectral components of simultaneous pitches within a chord in sound synthesis using the additive method. This approach involves considering spectral components across in all simultaneously sounding pitches constituting a chord. Components within the range of beatings and roughness are adjusted to gradually enhance or weaken both phenomena. So far, the idea and method were implemented in a basic additive synthesizer, producing simple, abstract, time-invariant timbres. The current study extends this research and addresses challenges associated with implementing the aforementioned consonance-altering mechanism in a more advanced additive synthesizer, applied to the task of resynthesizing the sound of selected acoustic instruments. This study deals with natural, independent evolution of spectral components, wherein consonance undergoes gradual variations over time. Additionally, it presents a solution to mitigate the impact of the mechanism on the overall signal level, arising from the attenuation of selected spectral components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In pitched sounds the ratios between frequencies of spectral components remain close to natural numbers. In acoustic instruments these ratios deviate from exact values due to damping or boundary conditions, complicating use of musical systems defining frequency ratios associated with musical intervals. If such system is imposed on the fundamental frequencies of pitches consisting a chord, higher spectral components may deviate noticeably, strengthening or weakening the effects of beating and roughness caused by their proximity, and changing chord characteristics in terms of consonance-dissonance gradation. Unlike acoustic instruments, sound synthesizers can precisely adjust components of generated signal, and use this phenomenon as a controllable timbre effect. For this purpose spectral components of a chord within the range of beating and roughness are modified to gradually strengthen or weaken both phenomena. The study presents the assumptions of the effect and its implementation in a sound synthesizer based on the additive method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a chord consonance model is established via complex law analysis to improve the accuracy of music emotion calculation. To address the coupling and the uncertainty of the complex law, quantum adaptive method is applied to the chord consonance calculation. Musical tones, with subjective difference and uncertainty, are constructed into interval consonance quantum state using parameter adaptive method. Quantum logic gates are introduced to describe the coupling between musical tones to establish the chord consonance model. Then, a mixed state density matrix is designed to optimize the calculation of consonance. Experimental results are provided to verify the validity and accuracy of the modelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zeqirja Ballata (1943), a Kosovar composer, is in step with the works of his time, more precisely belonging to the postmodernist period. Throughout his musical opus, he showed consistency to the contemporary stylistic elements of the second half of the twentieth century. Among the 157 musical works by the Kosovar composer Zeqirja Ballata, this paper brings the results of the analysis of the musical language used in Echi delle Montagne Maledette. The work in question is atonal, with dominant dissonance followed by short consonance. Comparing with other piano works of Z. Ballata, this work has less dissonant elements. The purpose of this study is to identify stylistic compositional characteristics, and evaluate their impact on the promotion of the contemporeanous style, for which, the analytic format of T. Mançev (2001) served as a theoretical base. The type of research is case study. Employing a qualitative research method, or analysis, the work was analysed including the following musical parameters: general and historical data of the piece, structure, linear expression, consonant structures, rhythm and its components, dynamics and synthesis of musical parameters in the process of concretization. The paper also contains notation tables and examples illustrating concretization moments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consonance and dissonance are frequently invoked in discussions of Gubaidulina's music, particularly in terms of the composer's intentional contrasts between timbres and her golden section-oriented formal planning. In this paper, I use the notion of dissonance to mediate between several competing theories of Gubaidulina's music and theories of timbre more broadly. Certain passages in her Meditation on the Bach Chorale "Vor deinen Thron tret' ich hiermit" (1993) are identified as dissonant based on her compositional theories and on sketch material from the Paul Sacher Stiftung, and on further examples drawn from her Am Rande des Abgrunds (2002). Broadly speaking, "dissonant" sounds are closer to white noise than "consonant" sounds, aligning with empirical studies of dissonance perception as well as with spectralist compositional theories. However, Gubaidulina's music uses this extended notion of dissonance particularly musically; dissonances have specific structural roles in a work and resolve to consonances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contrast between consonance and dissonance is vital in making music emotionally meaningful. Consonance typically denotes perceived agreeableness and stability, while dissonance disagreeableness and a need of resolution. This study addresses the perception of consonance/dissonance in single intervals and chords with two empirical experiments conducted online. Experiment 1 explored the perception of a representative sample of intervals and chords to investigate the overlap between the seven most used concepts (Consonance, Smoothness, Purity, Harmoniousness, Tension, Pleasantness, Preference) denoting consonance/dissonance in all the available (60) empirical studies published since 1883. The results show that the concepts exhibit high correlations, albeit these are somewhat lower for non-musicians compared to musicians. In Experiment 2 the stimuli's cultural familiarity was divided into three levels, and the correlations between the key concepts of Consonance, Tension, Harmoniousness, Pleasantness, and Preference were further examined. Cultural familiarity affected the correlations drastically across both musicians and non-musicians, but in different ways. Tension maintained relatively high correlations with Consonance across musical expertise and cultural familiarity levels, making it a useful concept for studies addressing both musicians and non-musicians. On the basis of the results a control for cultural familiarity and musical expertise is recommended for all studies investigating consonance/dissonance perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enjoying music reliably ranks among life's greatest pleasures. Like many hedonic experiences, it engages several reward-related brain areas, with activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) most consistently reflecting the listener's subjective response. Converging evidence suggests that this activity arises from musical "reward prediction errors" (RPEs) that signal the difference between expected and perceived musical events, but this hypothesis has not been directly tested. In the present fMRI experiment, we assessed whether music could elicit formally modeled RPEs in the NAc by applying a well-established decision-making protocol designed and validated for studying RPEs. In the scanner, participants chose between arbitrary cues that probabilistically led to dissonant or consonant music, and learned to make choices associated with the consonance, which they preferred. We modeled regressors of trial-by-trial RPEs, finding that NAc activity tracked musically elicited RPEs, to an extent that explained variance in the individual learning rates. These results demonstrate that music can act as a reward, driving learning and eliciting RPEs in the NAc, a hub of reward- and music enjoyment-related activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We counted trichords in a database of vocal polyphony. In modern terminology, the most common in the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries were major (in semitones: 047), minor (037), suspended (027), unnamed (025, 035), and diminished (036). Prevalence profiles correlated with predictions of simple models of roughness and harmonicity; sometimes also with evenness (pitch-class spacing), but not diatonicity. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, 047 and 037 became more relatively prevalent, after which profiles stabilized. Our results imply that today the C/D of trichords depends mainly on familiarity, roughness, and harmonicity. C/D is best understood in an interdisciplinary, psychohistoric approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social groups debating contested issues aim to talk in the media to convey their opinions. The extent to which their voices trigger the presence of their views in the news can be evaluated through the analysis of consonance, which is the co-occurrence, in the same news item, of an actor's voice and her/his preferred viewpoint on the debated topic. However, consonance must be analyzed with diversity to pinpoint which speakers actually get the chance to convey their views. In this study, consonance and diversity were investigated in the context of newspaper coverage of immigration in Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom (2013-2014). The results show that national authorities, immigrants, proimmigration nongovernmental organizations, and radical right-wing politicians have the potential to trigger their preferred views on immigration when talking in the news, but it is authorities who mostly get the chance to speak and put forward their favorite viewpoints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perturbation theory is a new theoretical model that accounts for the arrangement from more to less pleasant in the perception of musical intervals and their classification as consonant and dissonant intervals, just as they are accepted in Western musical practice. This model includes an analysis of pairs of tones that allows a justification of interval quality degree and an entirely new point of view of the critical band effect to explain the distinction between consonant and dissonant intervals. The resolution of these two ancestral questions of musical acoustics and psychoacoustics in turn allow one to understand the particularities of the equal temperament scale, the nature of the major and minor chords and the ambiguous behavior of the fourth and augmented fourth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frequency ratios for the just diatonic scale are obtained by identifying musical intervals corresponding to Lissajous figures. The demonstration integrates the engineering physics of Lissajous patterns with the recognition of musical intervals through simple ear training. A free HTML5 app has been developed for this class activity and the program can be run online or downloaded to the desktop. A video is provided illustrating the use of the software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper has the purpose of determining the rating scales of the generic and specific competences for directives and workers linked to the tourist activity in a town, which allow them to act in consonance with the aspired sustainability pattern. For this reason, the expert's method was used, which meant in an empirical way a considerable contribution in determining the mentioned competences. Finally, the reliability and validity of the rating scales were statistically tested in a sample of 97 executives and 154 employees from 25 organizations linked to the tourist activity in Viñales town, Pinar del Río province. For the analysis of the reliability, the Alpha of Cronbach Coefficient was used, proving that the data are mutually consistent, and for the analysis of the validity the Factorial Analysis was used, by this means it was inferring that the scales represent precisely the aspects to be measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In sixth century BC, Pythagoras discovered the mathematical foundation of musical consonance and dissonance. When auditory frequencies in small-integer ratios are combined, the result is a harmonious perception. In contrast, most frequency combinations result in audible, off-centered by-products labeled "beating" or "roughness;" these are reported by most listeners to sound dissonant. In this paper, we consider second-order beats, a kind of beating recognized as a product of neural processing, and demonstrate that the data-driven approach of Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) allows for the reconstruction of the order in which interval ratios are ranked in music theory and harmony. We take advantage of computer-generated sounds containing all intervals over the span of an octave. To visualize second-order beats, we use a glissando from the unison to the octave. This procedure produces a profile of recurrence values that correspond to subsequent epochs along the original signal. We find that the higher recurrence peaks exactly match the epochs corresponding to just intonation frequency ratios. This result indicates a link between consonance and the dynamical features of the signal. Our findings integrate a new element into the existing theoretical models of consonance, thus providing a computational account of consonance in terms of dynamical systems theory. Finally, as it considers general features of acoustic signals, the present approach demonstrates a universal aspect of consonance and dissonance perception and provides a simple mathematical tool that could serve as a common framework for further neuro-psychological and music theory research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical chords are combinations of two or more tones played together. While many different chords are used in music, some are heard as more attractive (consonant) than others. We have previously suggested that, for reasons of biological advantage, human tonal preferences can be understood in terms of the spectral similarity of tone combinations to harmonic human vocalizations. Using the chromatic scale, we tested this theory further by assessing the perceived consonance of all possible dyads, triads, and tetrads within a single octave. Our results show that the consonance of chords is predicted by their relative similarity to voiced speech sounds. These observations support the hypothesis that the relative attraction of musical tone combinations is due, at least in part, to the biological advantages that accrue from recognizing and responding to conspecific vocal stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An estimate of lifetime noise exposure was used as the primary predictor of performance on a range of behavioral tasks: frequency and intensity difference limens, amplitude modulation detection, interaural phase discrimination, the digit triplet speech test, the co-ordinate response speech measure, an auditory localization task, a musical consonance task and a subjective report of hearing ability. One hundred and thirty-eight participants (81 females) aged 18–36 years were tested, with a wide range of self-reported noise exposure. All had normal pure-tone audiograms up to 8 kHz. It was predicted that increased lifetime noise exposure, which we assume to be concordant with noise-induced cochlear synaptopathy, would elevate behavioral thresholds, in particular for stimuli with high levels in a high spectral region. However, the results showed little effect of noise exposure on performance. There were a number of weak relations with noise exposure across the test battery, although many of these were in the opposite direction to the predictions, and none were statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. There were also no strong correlations between electrophysiological measures of synaptopathy published previously and the behavioral measures reported here. Consistent with our previous electrophysiological results, the present results provide no evidence that noise exposure is related to significant perceptual deficits in young listeners with normal audiometric hearing. It is possible that the effects of noise-induced cochlear synaptopathy are only measurable in humans with extreme noise exposures, and that these effects always co-occur with a loss of audiometric sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experiment was conducted to explore the effect of the pitch strength of pure tones constituting a dyad on the accuracy of musical interval identification. Pitch strength was controlled by presenting the intervals in different frequency regions and varying their duration. The intervals were organized into 18 blocks made up by a combination of three octaves: the second (65.4-130.8 Hz), the fourth (261.6-523.3 Hz), and the sixth octave (1047-2093 Hz), and six tone durations, ranging 50-2000 ms in the second octave, and 10-500 ms in the two higher ones. The results indicate that interval identification improves with increasing pitch strength of the interval's component tones. The identification scores were much lower in the second octave than in the two higher ones and in all octaves identification worsened as the interval's duration was shortened. The intervals were most often confused with intervals of similar size rather than with their inversions and intervals of similar sonic character. This finding suggests that the main cue for the identification of harmonic intervals is the pitch distance between two tones. However, in the low pitch range, when the tone pitches are less salient, the impression of consonance may become a helpful, although not very effective cue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widely studied subspace and linear filtering methods for noise reduction require the noise correlation matrix to be invertible. In certain application scenarios, however, this matrix is either rank deficient or very ill conditioned, so this requirement cannot be fulfilled. In this paper, we investigate possible solutions to this important problem based on subspace techniques for single-channel time-domain noise reduction. The eigenvalue decomposition is applied to both the speech and noise correlation matrices to separate the null and nonnull subspaces. Then, a set of optimal and suboptimal filters are derived from the nullspace of the noise signal. Through simulations, we observe that the proposed filters are able to significantly reduce noise without introducing much distortion to the desired signal. In comparison with the conventional Wiener approach, the developed filters perform significantly better in improving both the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) score when the noise correlation matrix is rank deficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experimental studies are carried out to reduce the jet noise using co-axial swirlers in the form of curved vanes fixed in an annular passage. The swirl numbers considered for the present work ranged from 0 to 1.31, and the corresponding swirl vane angles ranged from 0 to 60°. The nozzle pressure ratios studied ranged from 1.8 to 6. The acoustic far field study at subsonic conditions revealed the presence of transonic tones for the non-swirl jet. However, swirl eliminates the transonic tones and a weak swirl is most efficient for noise reduction at subsonic conditions. The centerline total pressure measurements indicate the reduced core length for the swirl jets compared to the non-swirl jets. At supersonic conditions, the non-swirl jet emits the highest noise at all the emission angles compared to the swirl jets. The swirl jets are free from screech tones, and have lower amounts of shock associated noise, even at high nozzle pressure ratios. The centerline total pressure measurements and schlieren visualization studies show that shock cell spacing and the number of shock cells are reduced in the swirl jets compared to the non-swirl jet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IN A RECENT NATURE PAPER, MCDERMOTT ET AL. (2016) conclude that the perception of consonance arises from familiarity with the conventions of Western harmonic music and is relatively unconstrained by auditory neurobiology. We refute this idea, citing cross-cultural, developmental and comparative evidence to the contrary, and raising concerns over McDermott et al.'s methodology. We conclude that although familiarity plays an important role in shaping tonal preferences, it must not be cast in opposition to clear biological constraints. Biology and culture (nature and nurture) interact to shape how we experience music, and theories that neglect the former do so at their peril. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are lyrical emotions expressed in music? This paper explores the correlation between affect-carrying lyrics and musical features such as beat strength, duration, pitch height, consonance, and mode. Using computer-aided musicology software music21 and the NRC emotion lexicon, we conduct a corpus study on 1,895 folk and popular song lead-sheets encoded as MusicXML. The study reveals that metrical strength and note lengths are highly correlated with affects, while correlations of pitch height, consonance, and mode are in general less significant, at times contradicting previous research. Measurements of minor vs. major chordal context and tonal certainty, however, reveal certain previously unknown differences among emotional states. The paper uses a larger dataset of observations and gives greater values of significance than has appeared in symbolic corpus analysis of emotions in the past, and includes general discussions and directions for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Fast ripples (FR, 250–500 Hz) in the intraoperative corticogram have recently been proposed as specific predictors of surgical outcome in epilepsy patients. However, online FR detection is restricted by their low signal-to-noise ratio. Here we propose the integration of low-noise EEG with unsupervised FR detection. Methods Pre- and post-resection ECoG ( N = 9 patients) was simultaneously recorded by a commercial device (CD) and by a custom-made low-noise amplifier (LNA). FR were analyzed by an automated detector previously validated on visual markings in a different dataset. Results Across all recordings, in the FR band the background noise was lower in LNA than in CD ( p < 0.001). FR rates were higher in LNA than CD recordings (0.9 ± 1.4 vs 0.4 ± 0.9, p < 0.001). Comparison between FR rates in post-resection ECoG and surgery outcome resulted in positive predictive value PPV = 100% in CD and LNA, and negative predictive value NPV = 38% in CD and NPV = 50% for LNA. Prediction accuracy was 44% for CD and 67% for LNA. Conclusions Prediction of seizure outcome was improved by the optimal integration of low-noise EEG and unsupervised FR detection. Significance Accurate, automated and fast FR rating is essential for consideration of FR in the intraoperative setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MAJOR-MINOR AND CONSONANCE-DISSONANCE ARE two profound elements of Western tonal music, and have strong affective connotations forWestern listeners. This review summarizes recent evidence on the neurocognitive basis of major-minor and consonancedissonance by presenting studies on their processing and how it is affected by maturation, musical enculturation, and music training. Based on recent findings in the field, it is proposed that both classifications, particularly consonance-dissonance, have partly innate, biologically hard-wired properties. These properties can make them discriminable even for newborn infants and individuals living outside the Western music culture and, to a small extent, reflect their affective connotations in Western music. Still, musical enculturation and active music training drastically modify the sensory/acoustical as well as affective processing of major-minor and consonance-dissonance. This leads to considerable variance in psychophysiological and behavioral responses to these musical classifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Original fMRI data often contains a variety of noise caused by the operator, the equipment, the environment, etc. To suppress the noise, many processing methods based on smoothing have been proposed to analyze the fMRI data. In this study, a layered data reduction mechanism is presented to alleviate the influence of noise while retaining the spatial construction of the fMRI data. The layered data reduction method consists of two layers criteria to reduce the noise voxels: (a) the isolated voxel; (b) the isolated generated cube. The 1-layer data reduction procedure aims to remove all those isolated voxels whose corresponding generated cube only contains one single voxel under a preset threshold ξ . The 2-layer data reduction procedure is aimed at removing those isolated generated cubes whose corresponding final cube only contains one single generated cube. A simplified genetic algorithm (SGA) is proposed to determine the optimum threshold ξ adaptively. Meanwhile, to avoid that some useful information would be lost on account of all the isolated voxels and isolated generated cubes being reduced directly, a compensation mechanism taking advantage of multivariate RV measure is used to decrease the probability of incorrect data reduction. The classical FCM (Fuzzy c-means) method is adopted to cluster the data having been implemented by the layered data reduction method. Extensively experimental results show that the proposed layered data reduction method is effective and can efficiently improve the clustering accuracy on the hybrid data and the real fMRI data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consonance is a major feature in harmonic music that has been related to how pleasant a sound is perceived. Consonant chords are defined by simple frequency ratios between their composing tones, whereas dissonant chords are defined by more complex frequency ratios. The extent to which such simple ratios in consonant chords could give rise to preferences and processing advantages for consonance over dissonance has generated much research. Additionally, there is mounting evidence for a role of experience in consonance perception. Here we review experimental data coming from studies with different species that help to broaden our understanding of consonance and the role that experience plays on it. Comparative studies offer the possibility of disentangling the relative contributions of species-specific vocalizations (by comparing across species with rich and poor vocal repertoires) and exposure to harmonic stimuli (by comparing populations differing in their experience with music). This is a relative new field of inquiry, and much more research is needed to get a full understanding of consonance as one of the bases for harmonic music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a 12-dimensional tonal space in the context of theTonnetz, Chew’s Spiral Array, and Harte’s 6-dimensional Tonal Centroid Space. The proposed Tonal Interval Space is calculated as the weighted Discrete Fourier Transform of normalized 12-element chroma vectors, which we represent as six circles covering the set of all possible pitch intervals in the chroma space. By weighting the contribution of each circle (and hence pitch interval) independently, we can create a space in which angular and Euclidean distances among pitches, chords, and regions concur with music theory principles. Furthermore, the Euclidean distance of pitch configurations from the centre of the space acts as an indicator of consonance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers the technical features which Geoffrey Hill has appropriated from his precursor John Milton. These features enabled Hill to evolve a poetics, in his recent work, which is cognizant of the formal possibilities of modernism, but which overcomes their political and cultural dangers. Hill's Miltonic poetics, alternatively, offer a politics, and ultimately a metaphysics, which understands fine distinctions, and specific unities, between its often recalcitrant materials. While drawing upon Hill's critical responses to Milton, the article also deploys materials from the archive to consider the cruxes out of which some of Hill's recent work has found its instigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To make post-tonal harmony more accessible, many music scholars derive various theories, which rely on the traditional notions of consonance and dissonance, to describe the quality of a chord. Most of these theories use the quality of an interval as the criterion to measure the proportion between the consonances and dissonances within a chord. All intervals can be categorized as either consonances or dissonances except for one—the tritone. Although traditionally in tonal music, the tritone was perceived as a dissonance; its quality in twentieth-century music, however, has been challenged by many scholars. It may sound like a dissonant (Paul Hindemith), a consonant (Joseph Straus), or a neutral interval (Charles Seeger). If different viewpoints abound in the tritone’s quality, do we hear it as adding the consonant or dissonant sound to a chord? Confronted with this issue, this article suggests an alternative way of perceiving all intervals—their space—and further proposes a method that assists us in hearing a chord in terms of its degree of compactness. Based on this method, we can experience the dynamics created by the confrontation between spatial and compact chords, and find post-tonal harmony more accessible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The auditory cortex is well-known to be critical for music perception, including the perception of consonance and dissonance. Studies on the neural correlates of consonance and dissonance perception have largely employed non-invasive electrophysiological and functional imaging techniques in humans as well as neurophysiological recordings in animals, but the fine-grained spatiotemporal dynamics within the human auditory cortex remain unknown. We recorded electrocorticographic (ECoG) signals directly from the lateral surface of either the left or right temporal lobe of eight patients undergoing neurosurgical treatment as they passively listened to highly consonant and highly dissonant musical chords. We assessed ECoG activity in the high gamma (γhigh, 70-150 Hz) frequency range within the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and observed two types of cortical sites of interest in both hemispheres: one type showed no significant difference in γhigh activity between consonant and dissonant chords, and another type showed increased ghigh responses to dissonant chords between 75 and 200 ms post-stimulus onset. Furthermore, a subset of these sites exhibited additional sensitivity towards different types of dissonant chords, and a positive correlation between changes in ghigh power and the degree of stimulus roughness was observed in both hemispheres. We also observed a distinct spatial organization of cortical sites in the right STG, with dissonant-sensitive sites located anterior to nonsensitive sites. In sum, these findings demonstrate differential processing of consonance and dissonance in bilateral STG with the right hemisphere exhibiting robust and spatially organized sensitivity toward dissonance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consonance/dissonance (C/D) level of a triadic chord is not a fixed or absolute value. Rather, it is fluid, since C/D depends both on a chord's sonic characteristics and on the musical context in which it appears. To test the fluidity of C/D--the extent to which C/D perception is dependent on musical context--4 types of chords (major, minor, augmented, and diminished triads) were presented in isolation ("without musical context") and as part of a short cadence (IV-V-I, "with musical context"). The C/D level of each chord was judged, as was the overall C/D and pleasantness/unpleasantness (P/U) level of the cadences. When isolated, major triads were considered most consonant, followed by minor and diminished triads, while augmented triads were judged most dissonant. In the context of a musical cadence, this rank order remained the same. However, evaluations of the dissonance of augmented and diminished chords varied depending on each chord's functional position within the cadence. For instance, diminished triads were relatively consonant when on the subdominant, while augmented triads were relatively dissonant when on the tonic. These findings lend support to the hypotheses that: (a) the degree to which the harmonic function of a chord is familiar, and (b) the degree to which a chord's stability (and hence also the listener's expectation) is violated contribute to the perception of C/D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreground subtraction in global redshifted 21 cm measurements is limited by frequencydependent (chromatic) structure in antenna beam patterns. Chromatic beams couple angular structures in Galactic foreground emission to spectral structures that may not be removed by smooth functional forms. We report results for simulations based on two dipole antennas used by the Experiment to Detect the Global EoR Signature (EDGES). The residual levels in simulated foreground-subtracted spectra are found to differ substantially between the two antennas, suggesting that antenna design must be carefully considered. Residuals are also highly dependent on the right ascension and declination of the antenna pointing, with rms values differing by as much as a factor of 20 across pointings. For EDGES and other groundbased experiments with zenith pointing antennas, right ascension and declination correspond directly to the local sidereal time and the latitude of the deployment site, hence chromatic beam effects should be taken into account when selecting sites. We introduce the 'blade' dipole antenna and show, via simulations, that it has better chromatic performance than the 'fourpoint' antenna previously used for EDGES. The blade antenna yields 1-5 mK residuals across the entire sky after a 5-term polynomial is removed from simulated spectra, whereas the fourpoint antenna typically requires a 6-term polynomial for comparable residuals. For both antennas, the signal-to-noise ratio of recovered 21 cm input signals peaks for a 5-term polynomial foreground fit given realistic thermal noise levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines various intersections of noise and femininity, through which noise has been feminised and the feminine has been produced as noisy. Feminised musical genres, such as mainstream pop, have been dismissed as excessive, banal and extraneous noise. Noise has also been feminised by a number of recent historiographical and curatorial projects that have sought to amplify the creative work of women in experimental and electronic music. Using a cybernetic understanding of noise as an explanatory metaphor, I suggest that these projects threaten the integrity of a patrilineal ‘dotted line’ that characterises histories of musical noise and sonic experimentalism. This cybernetic metaphor is also applied to Pauline Oliveros’Willowbrook generations and reflections(1976) and the performances of noise artist Phantom Chips, so as to identify the production of a feminised noise in and through music. I suggest that these curatorial projects and musical practices raise important questions as to if, when and how feminised noise becomes feminist noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of this study, published in a previous issue of this journal, discussed the Polytonalité Harmonique system, proposed by Darius Milhaud in 1923, from the perspective of the Molino & Nattiez's tripartitional categories of the "immanent" and "poietical" levels. In continuation, this second part examines the system of "harmonic polytonality", and some early controversies surrounding polytonality, from the perspective of the "esthesic level". It is also suggested that the more general, and actually fundamental principle behind the system of "harmonic polytonality" - i.e., the compositional choice, among all possible "dissonant" vertical aggregate chords, of those which are decomposable into traditional "consonant" chords (accords classés) - applies well beyond the early twentieth-century répertoire, including later composers, such as Messiaen, Ligeti, Schnittke, Glass, Widmer, and Krieger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ReRAM’s low voltage and low current programmability are attractive features to solve the scaling issues of conventional floating gate Flash. However, read instability in ReRAM is a critical issue, due to random telegraph noise (RTN), sensitivity to disturb and retention. In this work, the array-level characteristics of read stability in 50 nm Al x O y ReRAM are investigated and a circuit technique to improve stability is proposed and evaluated. First, in order to quantitatively assess memory cell stability, a method of stability characterization is defined. Next, based on this methodology, a proposal to improve read stability, called “stability check loop” is evaluated. The stability check loop is a stability verification procedure, by which, instability improvement of 7×, and read error rate improvement of 40% are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The damping of an oscillator is, next to the effective mass and the stiffness, one of the key parameters that determine its frequency response as well as its noise. Since there are numerous different applications for oscillating microstructures, there are also numerous requirements for the shape of the respective resonance peak. While fabricating the right mass and stiffness to obtain a desired resonance frequency is, in general, a basic task, designing a micro-oscillator featuring an intended damping is not trivial. We present a way of utilizing the surrounding air to adjust the passive damping of a laterally oscillating micromechanical system. This is shown to hold in a relatively wide range by comparing analytical models and finite volume method simulations with measurements of a number of micro-electro-mechanical test structures with optical readout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ventral striatal activity has been previously shown to correspond well to reward value mediated by music. Here, we investigate the dynamic brain response to music and manipulated counterparts using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Counterparts of musical excerpts were produced by either manipulating the consonance/dissonance of the musical fragments or playing them backwards (or both). Results show a greater involvement of the ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens both when contrasting listening to music that is perceived as pleasant and listening to a manipulated version perceived as unpleasant (backward dissonant), as well as in a parametric analysis for increasing pleasantness. Notably, both analyses yielded a ventral striatal response that was strongest during an early phase of stimulus presentation. A hippocampal response to the musical stimuli was also observed, and was largely mediated by processing differences between listening to forward and backward music. This hippocampal involvement was again strongest during the early response to the music. Auditory cortex activity was more strongly evoked by the original (pleasant) music compared to its manipulated counterparts, but did not display a similar decline of activation over time as subcortical activity. These findings rather suggest that the ventral striatal/nucleus accumbens response during music listening is strongest in the first seconds and then declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the spatial politics of contemporary performance spaces constructed through DIY, improvised noise scenes. Noise (as something performed) is often categorized as “experimental,” “free,” or “avant garde.” It carries associations of emancipation, eschewing as it does conventional musical training, and the constraints of formal compositional and linguistic expression. Unfolding as a debate between the two authors, this article reflects on the contributions post-structural feminist theory brings to an understanding of where and how women practitioners negotiate noise-performance spaces. By considering noise as a conceptual object as well as noise as sonic performance, and by reflecting on debates around radical democracy, the authors debate the issue of female-only performance spaces and their implications on what we can express and how we might be understood. This contribution seeks to initiate further debate on the inherent complexities of how women create and negotiate spaces of noise performance in the face of normative assumptions and associations that have simplified the debate – for example, that the loud, discordant, and arrhythmic is obnoxious, dangerous, and historically a masculine domain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

TWO EXPERIMENTS EXAMINEDWHETHER DISCRIMINATION of component pitches in a harmonic interval is affected by the consonance or dissonance of the interval. A sin- gle probe pitch (B or C) was followed by a two note harmonic interval including that pitch (e.g., C then C-F# or C-G) or not including it (e.g., C then B-F# or B-G). On each trial, subjects indicated by key press whether the probe note was repeated in the following interval. The target note in the interval either matched the probe or differed by one semitone (B or C). The other note produced a consonant (e.g., perfect fifth) or dissonant (e.g., tritone) context for the target. Pitch discrimination was faster and more accurate in consonant intervals than dissonant, when the context note was higher than the target (Experiment 1), but there was no effect of consonance when the target was higher (Experiment 2). We conclude that the perception of the lower but not the upper pitch in a two note harmonic interval is affected by the interval's consonance or dissonance. We discuss the results in terms of the theoretical framework of processing fluency and aesthetics proposed by Winkielman, Schwarz, Fazendeiro, and Reber (2003). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The association between musical consonance and pleasantness, and between musical dissonance and unpleasantness (“consonance effect”) is well established. Furthermore, a number of studies suggest the main involvement of the left hemisphere in the perception of dissonance and that of the right hemisphere in the perception of consonance. In the present study, the consonance effect was studied in a callosotomized patient, D. D. C. and in a control group. In binaural presentations, the patient did not attribute different pleasantness judgements to consonant and dissonant chords, differently from the control group who showed the consonance effect. However, in dichotic presentations (e.g. a chord in one ear and white noise in the other ear), a trend towards the consonance effect was found in D. D. C., but only when chords were presented in his right ear (left hemisphere), whereas the control group confirmed the known hemispheric asymmetry in labelling the pleasantness of consonant and dissonant chords. These results suggest that the right-hemispheric superiority in appreciating consonance might hide the inability of the right hemisphere to classify dissonant chords as unpleasant in the split-brain, whereas the left hemisphere seems capable to differently label the pleasantness of consonant and dissonant chords, even if it is more sensitive to dissonance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses musical consonance and dissonance measurement. Topics discussed include fundamental frequency, harmonics and musical tones. Other topics such as chromatic scale, data collection and musical scales are also discussed. Data sets, choir rehearsals and musical trainings are also mentioned.

A band pass ΣΔ modulator using three different noise shaping based cross coupling techniques is proposed here. The effective use of time interleaving technique along with noise cross-coupling improves the performance of the modulator. Three variations of the conventional architecture are proposed - simple cross-coupling, extended cross-coupling and dual extended cross-coupling, which enhances effective order of noise shaping for a band pass modulator without significant overhead. By using extended cross-coupling and dual extended cross coupling architectures, the order of NTF is improved and it is evident that the proposed architectures shows a better in-band noise rejection with relaxed circuit specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When two musical notes with simple frequency ratios are played simultaneously, the resulting musical chord is pleasing and evokes a sense of resolution or "consonance". Complex frequency ratios, on the other hand, evoke feelings of tension or "dissonance". Consonance and dissonance form the basis of harmony, a central component of Western music. In earlier work, we provided evidence that consonance perception is based on neural temporal coding in the brainstem (Bones et al., 2014). Here, we show that forlisteners with clinically normal hearing, aging is associated with a decline in both the perceptual distinction and the distinctiveness of the neural representations of different categories of two-note chords. Compared with younger listeners, older listeners rated consonant chords as less pleasant and dissonant chords as more pleasant. Older listeners also had less distinct neural representations of consonant and dissonant chords as measured using a Neural Consonance Index derived from the electrophysiological "frequency-following response." The results withstood a control for the effect of age on general affect, suggesting that different mechanisms are responsible for the perceived pleasantness of musical chords and affective voices and that, for listeners with clinically normal hearing, age-related differences in consonance perception are likely to be related to differences in neural temporal coding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented regarding the philosophy of educational resonance, the use of ocular metaphors, and the difficulties associated with the reliance on ocular metaphors. Topics discussed include the interdisciplinarity, studies and theory of sound, the limits in perception about sound and vibration, and the presentation of resonances in relation to consonance and dissonance.

Many human musical scales, including the diatonic major scale prevalent in Western music, are built partially or entirely from intervals (ratios between adjacent frequencies) corresponding to small-integer proportions drawn from the harmonic series. Scientists have long debated the extent to which principles of scale generation in human music are biologically or culturally determined. Data from animal "song" may provide new insights into this discussion. Here, by examining pitch relationships using both a simple linear regression model and a Bayesian generative model, we show that most songs of the hermit thrush [Catharus guttatus) favor simple frequency ratios derived from the harmonic (or overtone) series. Furthermore, we show that this frequency selection results not from physical constraints governing peripheral production mechanisms but from active selection at a central level. These data provide the most rigorous empirical evidence to date of a bird song that makes use of the same mathematical principles that underlie Western and many non-Western musical scales, demonstrating surprising convergence between human and animal "song cultures." Although there is no evidence that the songs of most bird species follow the overtone series, our findings add to a small but growing body of research showing that a preference for small-integer frequency ratios is not unique to humans. These findings thus have important implications for current debates about the origins of human musical systems and may call for a reevaluation of existing theories of musical consonance based on specific human vocal characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes audio demonstrations and experiments that I use in my university level, general education mathematics course “Sounding Number: Music and Mathematics from Ancient to Modern Times.” These particular experiments illustrate frequency, timbre, pitch, beats, spectra, dissonance, tuning, and scale construction, which are a subset of the topics covered in the class. They can be performed with the free, open-source audio editor and recorder Audacity®. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]