“Children’s music” is usually presumed to be unsophisticated, predictable, and devoid of analytical interest. By analyzing selected works by Raffi (a Canadian-Armenian singer-songwriter boasting thirty albums of children’s music across a fifty-year career 1976-present), I show—to the contrary—that fascinating musical phenomena worthy of rigorous theoretical study occur frequently within this music. Furthermore, middle-ground reductions (as visual aids to quickly summarize a song’s voice leading) highlight three distinct compositional periods, each presenting a novel aesthetic. Both factors demonstrate an extraordinary degree of musical sophistication across Raffi’s career.

Early-period compositions, though simple, exhibit compelling similarities to Classical-era compositional tendencies. As Raffi’s style evolves, he introduces chromaticism in provocative ways. The emergence of voice-leading oddities demarcate an elaborate, Romantic-era-inflected middle period. Raffi’s third period—a distinct late style—differs markedly from these earlier aesthetics. Laconic, austere, isolated, backward-looking, abnormal: I take these descriptors from Said (2007) and Straus (2008). Though it may be surprising to analyze the music of a children’s troubadour using an aesthetic orientation associated primarily with late Beethoven, such a framing encapsulates Raffi’s most recent four albums and professional trajectory within the 21^st century. I explore this late style using four of Straus’s six late-style adjectives to interrogate Raffi’s modern aesthetic—an aesthetic far more in line with popular idioms.

Although the relative transparency of Raffi’s music (readily divided into early, middle, and late) and the average age of his fans would seem to preclude the sort of analytical attention normally paid to composers within the classical canon, I will show that this repertoire contains surprising harmonic, voice-leading, and formal originality. Furthermore, Raffi’s three style periods (including a distinct late style that dialogues directly with the scholarship of Said and Straus) are overflowing with engaging music deserving of greater analytical attention. With this foundation, I position children’s music within the broader music-theoretical space.

This talk investigates how Western-originated tonality operates in post-colonial Korean popular music through a rhetorical device called “terminal opening” (Park 2025). Terminal opening manipulates the sense of closure typically associated with the stepwise descent to tonic by (mis)placing it at the beginning of a phrase. Doing so plays with listeners’ expectation of melodic closure and its formal implication (Agawu 1992). By examining terminal openings in Korean popular music in an 85-song corpus spanning 1946 to 2026, I shows that European tonality has been adopted and localized by Korean listening public.

This talk is organized into three sections. First, I introduce the concept of terminal opening along with its five rhetorical flavors: declaration, persistence, midstream, retrospection, and renewal. Second, I analyze two representative songs. The first, the 1982 Korean theme song for Froggy Big-eyes adapts material from the 1973 Japanese original Kerokko Dematan. While lyrics and much of the melodic and harmonic content remain closely aligned, the Korean version introduces a significant recomposition: a declarative terminal opening built on a clear me‑re‑do gesture that announces the protagonist. The second example, Shin Seung‑hun’s 1992 hit, “Invisible Love,” opens with a direct quotation of Beethoven’s “Ich liebe dich” (WoO 123), which itself contains a declarative terminal opening articulated through the scale-degrees pattern 5-3-2-1 in G major. When this gesture returns in the chorus, now in E minor, the amorous declaration in Beethoven transforms into bitter persistence in Shin, reflecting the protagonist’s grief. Third, I engage with the discussion about the tonality and racism through the lens of terminal opening in Korean popular songs (Yust 2024). The prevalent use of terminal openings in these songs suggests that the listening public is familiar with features of Western-originated tonality, enough to intuit its rhetorical play. In other words, regardless of its origin, Koreans made the tonality as their own musical language. I argue that tonality is not what musicologists claim it to be, but what musicians do and listeners hear.

Accessible education centers are not optimally set up for college music education. While accommodations like extra time or limited-distraction testing work well in knowledge-based courses, they do not always translate well to skills-based courses such as keyboard or aural skills. As a result, instructors often resort to case-by-case solutions, requiring creativity, trial and error, and a great deal of time. Looking to music theory pedagogy for guidance (Parsons 2015, Kochavi 2009, Pacun 2009) reveals that most publications are limited to individual and anecdotal solutions. In this presentation, we bridge this gap by proposing strategies for skills-based musicianship classes based on principles of Universal Design Learning (UDL) and the Social Model of Disability (Morris 2009, Sandahl & Auslander 2005).

UDL-based strategies benefit all students, not just those with disabilities. For example, in order to empower students within the learning process, we subtly check in with a thumbs-up-thumbs-down response or a “throat-vote” scale from 1-5. This allows those with social anxiety or other invisible disabilities to participate nonverbally. Additionally, to reduce cognitive load and ensure our students can focus effectively on the task at hand, we present information in a variety of ways. For instance, when we verbally instruct students to “learn the first two bars,” we also post instructions on the board for their continued reference. Providing multiple ways for our students to perceive information is beneficial to students with verbal and visual processing delays as well as ever-shortening attention spans. Lastly, we provide practice schemata with built-in, step-by-step structures for piano, singing, and dictation practice. Rather than proceeding directly from hands-alone to hands-together performance, we offer steps that reinforce music theory knowledge with explicit skill scaffolding. These schemata are especially beneficial to students with executive functioning difficulties, underdeveloped fine motor skills, or those who are new to practicing altogether.

Teaching basic musicianship classes is something we all have to do but teaching them well is something we get to do. With deeper consideration of our students’ needs, we can better support all types of learners that come through our classrooms and equip them better for their future as musicians.

Qinqiang 秦腔 stands as one of China’s most ancient regional opera forms. Originating in Northwest China, this traditional opera has contributed significantly to Chinese cultural history and played a pioneering role in the development and proliferation of other operatic traditions (Du 2007). Three microtonally ambiguous “mysterious” scale degrees in traditional qinqiang opera have long been debated in the scholarly literature. Four competing theories exist in the literature, yet none agree on which scale degrees are actually microtonally altered, or by how much. Drawing on a corpus of 104 audio clips from five operas over seven decades (1956–2024), we apply the pyAMPACT toolkit—to perform note-level audio analysis and estimate precise pitch and onset data. Our findings challenge prior characterizations of these notes as microtonal inflections, thereby providing a clearer picture of this vital scale theory of qingqiang.

To collect the data for analysis, we selected passages from the most well-known qinqiang operas. In order to illuminate the tuning issue through comparison across multiple performers and time periods, we chose different recordings of the same passages. After isolating vocals using Unmix and Ultimate Vocal Remover (audio separation software), we applied pyAMPACT (Python-based Automatic Music Performance Analysis and Comparison Toolkit) for transcript-informed pitch analysis.

Our computational analysis reveals new insights that challenge previous scholarship: in the bitter tone scale, scale degrees 3 and 4 approximate equal temperament tuning (neither sharp nor flat microtonally), while scale degree 7 consistently lies one full semitone lower (contradicting microtonal descriptions). In the florid tone scale, both scale degrees 4 and 7 approximate equal temperament tuning, though both 4 and ♯4 occur. Moreover, we identified a historical shift from 4 to ♯4 around 2000, coinciding precisely with the First China Qinqiang Opera Art Festival. We hope that our computational analysis will contribute to updating scholarly understanding of these mysterious notes in qinqiang opera.

Recent efforts in music theory pedagogy emphasize accessibility and inclusive teaching practices, yet the specific needs of dyslexic learners remain underrepresented. Undergraduate theory classrooms often privilege rapid symbol decoding, notational fluency, and working memory efficiency, which can disadvantage neurodiverse students. Leading research on dyslexia (Shaywitz) highlights the cognitive strengths many dyslexic learners bring, including pattern recognition and big-picture thinking, yet traditional timed or symbol-heavy exercises may fail to capture these abilities. Case studies in music theory (Parsons) show that slow-paced, scaffolded instruction allows dyslexic students to externalize thought processes, reducing cognitive overload and revealing musical insight that might otherwise remain hidden. Multimodal approaches (Louden) that combine auditory, visual, and kinesthetic input can enhance comprehension for neurodiverse learners.

Building on Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), this paper examines how historical and contemporary pedagogical strategies can reduce extraneous cognitive demands in music theory instruction. Historical approaches, such as shape-note singing, highlight pattern recognition and the integration of auditory and visual elements, while contemporary multimodal digital tools provide ways to clarify structural relationships and reinforce musical patterns. Movement-based rhythm exercises and perceptual listening tasks support working memory and attention (Chenette). Sequenced exercises that use kinesthetic and visual cues help guide students’ attention toward underlying musical concepts, allowing engagement with complex material without being overwhelmed by simultaneous decoding demands. These strategies create a framework for designing instruction that aligns with neurodiverse strengths while maintaining rigorous learning objectives.

This paper also introduces revised theory and aural-skills assignments designed specifically to support dyslexic learners. Tasks are structured to scaffold learning steps, integrate multimodal reinforcement, and provide alternative visual cues, enabling students to focus on musical structure and conceptual understanding rather than rapid symbol decoding. Findings from Shaywitz and CLT highlight the need for more explicit guidance for instructors on accommodating diverse learning profiles and point toward classroom-based studies to determine the most effective strategies. By presenting concrete revisions grounded in research, this work demonstrates practical ways to make postsecondary theory instruction more accessible while maintaining academic rigor and encourages further exploration of adaptive approaches that foster deeper musical understanding for all students.

The Callous Daoboys’ “Schezophrenia Legacy” greets its listeners with a seemingly chaotic shift from aggressive metalcore screaming to a nasal Emo vocal singing style and emotional lyrics and vice versa. Yet, a closer look at the song’s formal construction and timbral content presents a coherent musical construction. This paper argues that timbral genre-signifying contrasts in “Schezophrania Legacy” superimpose two verse-chorus teleologies and reinterprets the song’s vocal screaming to an emo-coded form of vocal scream antithetical to the track’s opening masculine-coded metalcore vocals. This paper introduces recontextualized timbral invariance (RTI) to analyze the transition from metalcore to emo timbral markers. RTIs recontextualize timbral segments that share a similar timbral profile but whose context transforms what type of genre signifier they represent. Using RTIs to identify transformations of genre-transforming segments, this paper identifies a dual verse-chorus teleological structure generated from the contrasting metalcore and emo sections of the song transitioning from one to the other through shared timbral markers. This paper then uses this timbral and formal analysis to identify how the music’s narrative demonstrates a shift from a masculine-coded metalcore screaming style of the opening with subversive masculine screaming signified by the Emo genre, unfolding the song’s narrative through timbral and genre transformations. Considering the role of emo and metalcore shared timbral markers not only helps unravel its complex dual structure, but also transforms its seemingly chaotic use of genre into a rich and multifaceted narrative.

This study examines Tan Dun’s Water Concerto through a large-scale timbral palindrome—timbre–rhythm–pitch–rhythm–timbre (t–r–p–r–t)—that shapes an evolving formal process. Across this trajectory, perceptual focus shifts through distinct sonic parameters, reconfiguring the relation between human agency and natural material. Listening thus becomes an active, embodied practice through which musical form emerges from sustained attunement to water's fluid and transformative acoustic behavior, consonant with Chinese aesthetic traditions of water as ceaselessly changing. Through spectrographic, psychoacoustic, and motivic analysis, this study demonstrates how diverse water sounds organize the listening experience. It draws on Stephen McAdams's (1999) model of timbre as a multidimensional perceptual space to ground spectrographic interpretation, Arnie Cox's (2011) mimetic hypothesis to theorize embodied engagement with sonic gesture, and Tim Ingold's (2007) account of material processes to conceptualize water's acoustic behavior as active and relational.

The concerto comprises a prelude and three movements structured by the timbral palindrome articulated through the solo percussion. In the opening t section, bowed waterphone gestures produce dense, inharmonic spectra lacking a stable fundamental, directing perceptual focus toward timbre. The r section emerges through water-cup drumming, whose sharper attacks and regular amplitude envelopes shift attention toward rhythmic salience. In the central p section, the water gong stabilizes overtone structures, enabling pitch definition that becomes thematically developed in the orchestra before culminating in an extended vibraphone passage. When this instrumental order reverses in the third movement, perceptual transformation accelerates and parameters may overlap, maintaining a fluid reweighting of listening priorities.

Orchestral–soloist interaction further articulates this perceptual arc. String glissandi intensify the inharmonicity of the bowed waterphone, reinforcing timbral focus, while percussive brass mouthpiece writing amplifies rhythmic articulation in the r section. In the central p section, pentatonically inflected orchestral lines combine with the soloist’s water shaker gestures, integrating pitch, rhythm, and timbre into a unified perceptual field. As the soloist moves across the stage toward the vibraphone, the musical dialogue becomes rearticulated as spatial and gestural interaction. Collectively, these processes position water not merely as sound source but as active material agent, shaping form through perceptual transformation.

In Connecticut or Ancient style fife and drum corps, a colonial tradition still practiced today in New England, drummers commonly lengthen rolls to achieve an “open” or “unmetered” sound (Mazur 2005). This approach to roll timing results in stretched beats and an unsteady tempo. This paper takes an interdisciplinary and practitioner-centered approach to analyze this rhythmic phenomenon and understand the musical and social mechanisms by which this drumming practice operates.

Theories of groove and microtiming have long examined microscopic irregularities of rhythm, particularly in jazz and funk music (Keil 1966, Iyer 2002, Butterfield 2006, Danielsen et al. 2024). However, it is curious to see such flexible timing in a musical practice that is centered around marching and playing to a steady beat. Drawing on these theories and utilizing Music Information Retrieval technology (Thompson 2021), we analyze timing data of recorded fife and drum corps performances and find a systematic inequality between beat intervals that do and do not contain rolls.

The historical, community, and folk traditions of this practice are considered alongside this data. We conducted interviews with practitioners who explained that performers are familiar with this rhythmic interpretation, but were either unaware of it while performing, or do not have an agreed upon community term to describe the technique. These interviews highlight the vernacular nature of these temporal irregularities, as it is tradition to learn the timing of rolls aurally rather than through instruction or notation. We interpret this phenomenon in the context of folk musical traditions (Seeger 2001) and the pedagogical aurality of community music making (Turino 1999).

This interdisciplinary approach illustrates how rhythmically irregular stretched rolls are performed and understood by practitioners of the ancient fife and drum corps style. More broadly, the quantitative analysis of timing data is contextualized by historical, social, and pedagogical elements of this unique music tradition, highlighting that there is no single way of understanding a musical practice.

As musicians, we emphasize exactness in our performances, tempered with “human” attributes such as timbral nuances. Interestingly, the reverse applies to the technology we use, which we program to simulate human performance while maintaining a standard of “mechanical” precision. Notably, the curious coexistence of these scenarios manifests in the Vocaloid community. Vocaloid, a vocal synthesizer program developed by Crypton Future Media, offers a selection of voice banks marketed as “virtual singers.” Some users enjoy the program because it allows them to write music for these virtual singers that is “not possible for a [human] to sing” (Yamada 2017), only to be covered by human singers who faithfully replicate those songs’ “machinelike” feats. Meanwhile, other user utilize Vocaloid’s various tools for manipulating virtual singers’ pitch and timbre, with many aiming to approximate humanlike vocal delivery. Thus, the human artist emulates the virtual singer who pushes human bounds of speed, vocal range, and other facets of performance, while the virtual singer—programmed by the composer but perceived as an independent agent—emulates the human singer in an attempt to bypass its software limitations. In this paper, I share examples that highlight the fascinating products of humans and machines viewing each other as idealized singers, drawing from Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of the “body without organs” (BwO). I aim to demonstrate how artistic expression in the Vocaloid fandom calls into question the divide between human and machine, encouraging the listener to partake of the “pleasure in the confusion of boundaries” (Haraway 1985).

It is well known that pop-rock form is based on AABA quaternary forms that evolved to have opening compound A sections that featured a consistent progression from verse to chorus roles (with optional prechoruses and postchoruses). In contrast, B sections traditionally have only one contrasting role such as a bridge, interlude, solo, breakdown, or rap break. However, analyses of recent pop music have shown isolated examples of B sections with multiple roles. This raises two questions: how common are these compound B sections, and do they feature a consistent progression of roles? To address these questions, we analyzed the top 25 pop-rock songs from 2010–2015 (150 songs total) according to the roles and blends identified by de Clercq, Stroud, Barna, and Osborn. Regarding frequency, we found that over 24% of these songs featured compound B sections. Regarding construction, we found that most compound B sections began with a dedicated B-section role before moving on to B-section blends. Accordingly, we found that recent pop-rock music often features compound B sections, and there are common progressions amongst their B-section roles. Our presentation also explores how compound B sections enhance the final chorus in (1) songs with postchoruses, in which the full chorus may be delayed until after an initial postchorus and (2) songs with riserchoruses, in which the compound B section may contain a riser role that engenders a drop-chorus blend as the final chorus.

In nineteenth-century expositions, expanded closing functions intensify the question of how closure becomes audible to a listener. While existing accounts prioritize key, cadence, and thematic layout (Caplin 1998; Beach 2017; Grant 2022), I propose that endings are signaled through a bar-level metrical mechanism. In Schubert’s D.810 (I), I argue that one-bar repetition sustains weak-beat-centered hearing across expanded formal spans. At the closure, a unified texture—whether homorhythmic or monophonic—re-centers the listener on the downbeat, allowing the ending to register.
Case Study: Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor, D.810 (I)

I develop this claim through two contexts (exposition):

1. First Theme Closing (mm. 31–41): The cadential 6/4–V at m. 31 initiates a cadential drive, yet closure is deferred. Instead, Violin I utilizes continuous one-bar repetition to highlight beat 3. By sustaining this phenomenal accent against the notated downbeat through m. 40, the repetition prolongs the closing function. At m. 41, a unified, homorhythmic texture weakens these weak-beat cues, re-centers the downbeat, and clarifies the transitional boundary.
2. Subordinate Theme (mm. 61–101): This large-scale sentence is built from a one-bar unit, "motive x." While the theme begins with stable downbeat accents, persistent repetition eventually strengthens beat 3. This metrical conflict overrides the sense of closure, even at the perfect authentic cadence in m. 91. The ending remains elusive until mm. 100–101, where the texture contracts to a single line in Violin I. This contraction suspends the metrical competition and stabilizes downbeat-centered hearing, finally allowing the sentence to sound settled.
Testing the Mechanism: D.887 (I)
To test this model, I turn to Schubert’s D.887 (I) at m. 54. Though often analyzed as a strong tonic completion (Beach 1994; Hepokoski and Darcy 2006), this arrival also initiates a transitional span (Navia 2021). The metrical evidence explains this "closing effect": one-bar repetitions project a stable beat-2 accent until the texture unifies, re-centering the downbeat. Consequently, the meter registers as an ending even when it does not mark a formal boundary.
Conclusion
These cases demonstrate how one-bar repetition and homorhythmic texture shape metrical hearing in expanded passages. By resolving metrical competition, Schubert produces audible endings that warrant further study in other irregular nineteenth-century expositions.

Disney animated musicals are known for their “magical” and “nostalgic” sound. They are distinct enough as a genre that listeners can decide fairly accurately whether or not a song was produced by Disney, even if they have never heard the song before (King 2025). Despite this phenomenon, musicians have not yet agreed upon what musical elements are responsible for the Disney sound. This paper explores the role of song type as a defining feature of the Disney sound by drawing on studies of categorization. Categorization activities require people to decide what elements in the available objects are similar enough to be included in a group or are different enough to be excluded. While structural alignment theory is useful in the exploration of genre definitions, it does not identify which essential features are required for genre membership (Gentner and Markman 1994; 1997; 2005; Markman and Gentner 1993). Tversky (1977) shows that people generally do not consider every feature of an object when performing grouping tasks. Instead, they focus on a limited number of the most salient features, called “diagnostic features.” Tversky develops an experimental protocol for determining which features are most diagnostic. Diagnostic features change with context, so a feature that is diagnostic for one set of objects may change if a single feature changes. Despite its promise in identifying the features responsible for categorizing music into genres and styles, Tversky’s protocol has not been widely adopted by scholars exploring musical categorization. In this paper, I apply Tversky’s protocol to genre categorization with a focus on song type as a diagnostic feature in the Disney sound. Participants may group objects by either song type or Disney/non-Disney. Preliminary results indicate that song type is highly diagnostic for all song type combinations. Cases where participants sorted by Disney/non-Disney exhibit similarities in vocal timbre, mood, and production quality. These findings, as well as subsequent planned studies, help inform musical categorization research by determining what musical features are most salient to listeners.