Conference Agenda

In 1946, two years before Miles Davis and his associates gathered in New York to record the Birth of The Cool sessions in New York City, pianist Dave Brubeck and his fellow graduate composition students of French Modernist Darius Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland, CA formed and recorded the Dave Brubeck Octet. Like his East Coast counterparts, Brubeck was experimenting with Modernist techniques–polytonality, polymeter, dissonance–in a jazz setting while also evoking the much older Western classical traditions of fugue, counterpoint, and canon. The result was an eclectic series of arrangements of occasionally indecipherable standards and originals, an early example of an academic jazz composers collective, where many of Brubeck’s later signatures, particularly the use of odd meters, were first displayed. This important group, which included composers Dave Van Kriedt, Bill Smith and Jack Weeks, along with future jazz stars Paul Desmond and Cal Tjader, was active in the Bay Area until 1953, but only recorded a few times for Fantasy Records. While Birth of the Cool has often been canonized as the beginning of the cool movement in jazz, I argue that Brubeck’s Octet reveals a similar conception was being developed simultaneously, with little to no contact with the former. Through dissertation work creating a collected edition of scores from the original Octet parts, and subsequent performances and recordings of these works, I have gained a unique familiarity with this music and its importance to the development of the later Third Stream, Gunther Schuller’s term for classical tradition fused with jazz. Of particular interest is placing this music in a lineage that begins with Rhapsody in Blue and carries into the novelty groups of the 1930s, like John Kirby and Raymond Scott, before moving into the heavily arranged West Coast experiments of the 1950s. The fusion of classical tropes with jazz was certainly not new in 1946, but little work has reflected its continued development through the middle of the 20th Century, and while Brubeck is recognized for his later breakthroughs in jazz, his early work is rarely considered.

The presenter has gathered source materials to create a catalog of 1400 American company bands from ca. 1870-1960. Comprised of employees, these groups offer a cross section of American society in intersection with businesses and amateur music making. Not created for the purpose of advertising, most of these bandsmen worked for non-consumer industries (steel mills, paper mills, mines, textile plants, automobile factories, railroads, etc.) While a 1920s-era study noted 150 such bands, the movement has never been documented before now and havr been forgotten.

The bands include those that endured into the 21st century (Boeing Concert Band, IBM Band) some that lasted briefly (shipyard bands during both World Wars) and all manner in betwee. They played at national events: early NFL football games, the World Series, the Indianapolis 500, and the Miss America Pageant. Some toured extensively.

Emphasis will be placed on the images gathered of these bands in performance and the repertoire they played. Many bands played self-written marches dedicated to their employer, some with unique oddities betraying the amateur status of their composers. While the assumption would be that the bands all white men, in fact women's company drum and bugle corps flourished in World War I. The Hawaiian Islands featured a number of Filipino sugar plantation bands, Native American employees in the Southwest played in company bands, and a number of African American bands existed with Pullman and other Midwest industries. Colonies such as the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and major projects like the Panama Canal also featured employee bands.

More than a few trained musicians successfully made a career out of leading employee bands, T. H. Rollinson, Victor Grabel, and many founding members of the American Bandmasters’ Association led these groups at one point or another. In addition, musicians tired of the grind of touring with professional bands (Gilmore, Sousa, circus bands, etc.) settled down and retired to lead a company band (most famously Herbert L. Clarke and Frank Simon). The poster format will allow the catalog to be examined by attendees and give ample opportunity to show rare photos and sheet music from these groups.

We use trichord subsets to discuss Z-related set classes, and prove an analogue of Patterson's First Theorem involving the difference between the multiplicities of trichord subsets in a Z-pair and its complement.

Schenkerian analysis (SchA) has great potential to form a symbiotic relationship with the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence (AI). Through an examination of current trends in state-of-the-art AI systems, previous models for computational SchA, and how current trends may be applied to computer SchA, this presentation aims to propel discussion on a promising future of SchA with AI. Vitally, this presentation considers how models for AI SchA may be built ethically, responsibly, and in the best interest of the human analyst.

Reimagining the sounds of improvisation from before the age of recording will always remain a speculative pursuit, despite recent developments and discoveries in the study of historical European music making (e.g. Gjerdingen 2007; Sanguinetti 2012; Gooley 2018; Baragwanath 2020; Byros 2022). My poster reports findings from a survey of preluding collections from T. Giordani (1770s) to C. Schumann (1895): I discuss the interaction of harmonic and gestural/textural features as the prelude communicates that it is being improvised and--later on--gives a clear sonic cue that a composed work is about to begin (cf. Mirka 2005; Hepokoski and Darcy 2006; Schwitzgebel 2025).

Can we imagine a parallel analytical universe in which the central prototype for the sentence (Caplin 1998) is not the opening sentence of Beethoven's sonata Op. 2, no. 1, but rather Ries's prelude Op. 60, no. 19? What musical features should we pay attention to in such an analytical exploration? How can we re-orient ourselves to the improvisatory sounds of the opening of Beethoven's Tempest sonata (Hamilton 2008; Rabinovitch 2022), which reflect very closely the conventions of preluding? How can we read notated documents like M. Clementi's (1787) "Musical Characteristics" or R. Schumann's Novelette Op. 21, no. 8 (1838, cf. Bartoli & Roudet 2013) as simulated improvisations with intentional errors and course corrections in spontaneous playing?

My poster proposes some answers to these questions through both a corpus of preludes and deep analytical dives into specific exemplars.

My poster describes an experimental pilot study that examines whether listeners can accurately distinguish between human-composed and AI-generated music from Udio. Hypothesis 1 (H₁) posits that listeners will not be able to tell the difference between human-composed and AI-generated music. In particular, listeners might have difficulty discerning certain genres over others, particularly EDM, given its more technological-sounding nature and the fewer possible confounds such as recording quality. In terms of expertise, Hypothesis 2 (H₂) posits that experts will be significantly better at distinguishing between AI-generated and human-composed music than non-experts. Lastly, Hypothesis 3 (H₃) posits that there will be a positive correlation between the performance on the listening test with both familiarity and confidence.

Participants in this study (n = 16, 8 with musical training) were presented with a side-by-side layout of similar excerpts and were asked to select which one they thought was human-composed. Nonparametric analyses such as Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis Tests were conducted. Overall, participants were not able to accurately distinguish between human-composed and AI-generated music, regardless of genre. There were also no significant differences in accuracy when it came to musical expertise, regardless of genre. Interestingly, neither familiarity nor confidence were significant predictors of performance on the test.

Music that is composed by Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and the creation of these technologies continue to emerge at a rapid rate. While most of the recent literature has focused on technological development, fewer studies have considered the experiences of human listeners (Civit et al., 2022). Several studies use a brief listening test to see if AI can trick listeners (Leemhuis et al., 2020; Kong & Huang, 2021), while others are focused on human bias and the evaluations of AI compositions (Hong et al., 2022; Shank et al., 2023). These studies do not experimentally account for factors such as musical training and style. Furthermore, even though these studies were published within the last few years, it remains important to continually evaluate GenAI models, given their rapid development. In other words, is GenAI reaching a point where humans can no longer distinguish between AI-generated and human-composed music?

New Zealand composer Jenny McLeod’s (1941-2022) substantial expansion of Dutch composer Peter Schat’s (1935-2003) Tone-Clock Theory (TCT) through her unpublished manuscript Tone-Clock Theory Expanded: Chromatic Maps I & II (1994) is not only a radical rethinking of post-tonal harmony, but also offers unique new approaches for contemporary composition. Whereas Schat’s conception of TCT deals exclusively with twelve ‘chromatic tonalities,’ (twelve-tone collections that are derived from the twelve trichordal set-classes and are organized into ‘hours’ based on their interval-classes), McLeod’s expanded theory functions as a ‘map’ of all chromaticism by identifying a myriad of previously uncatalogued harmonic networks and providing detailed entries on all 220 of Allen Forte’s pitch-class sets. This led to the development of many innovative compositional techniques specific to TCT, which she utilized while composing her 24 Tone-Clock Pieces (1989-2005) for solo piano, resulting in beautiful short works that expertly balance the highest level of musicality with deep layers of mathematical structure.

To date, little has been written about McLeod’s creative applications of her Tone-Clock expansion, and it is only through a detailed analysis of these works using TCT itself that one can properly gain insight into both her compositional process and her exploration of these complex interconnected harmonic networks. In this paper, I will present a detailed analysis of Tone Clock Piece VIII (1995), showing how McLeod was able to practically apply her expanded version of the theory to her creative work, and to demonstrate how TCT functions as the preferred analytical methodology for such pieces.

At the highest levels of competition in the Marching Arts, judges expect near-perfect ensemble synchronization of music and movement. Drumlines in particular are closely scrutinized, as a group of twenty drummers attempt to coordinate dense and complex rhythms on instruments that are unforgiving of mistakes; just one drummer playing slightly out of time might be noted by a judge. In a performance practice that demands timing perfection, it might be assumed that expressive timing is completely absent, but this is not the case. Connecting theories of groove to the practice and knowledge of drum corps drumlines, I argue that competitive drumlines rely on the embodied sensation of microtiming “feels” to aid in their synchronization of complex rhythms.

Keil (1966) argues “participatory discrepancies,” or microtiming variations present in human performance produce an “engendered feeling” that makes music swing or groove. Others have found that jazz drummers intentionally adjust their timing ahead or behind the beat to produce different “timing feels” (Butterfield 2006, Iyer 2002). Curiously, drumlines attempt to eliminate participatory discrepancies between performers, while also relying on various microtiming feels, like playing ahead or behind the beat, to synchronize their performance in complex sonic environments on the football field.

Drawing upon fieldwork with the 2023 Bluecoats drumline, in addition to my own experiences as a drumline practitioner, I illustrate how aspects of microtiming and groove play a crucial role in getting drummers to synchronize. Certain performance scenarios demand different timing feels, and drummers use their bodily familiarity with these feels to adjust their drumming and achieve a synchronized performance. Finally, I argue the drummer’s awareness and use of microtiming and groove as a pedagogical tool demonstrates the role embodied rhythm and meter play in coordinating ensemble performance of complex rhythms.

The makerspace model is an effective but underutilized pedagogical approach in music theory. A makerspace is a place where tools and technologies are available for people of varying ages and skill levels to construct and share artifacts (Sheridan et. al., 2014). An artifact is a tangible object such as a musical composition, electronic musical instrument, or interactive audio processing system that serves as a representation of a student’s mental construction of knowledge (Halverson and Sheridan 2014). Although makerspaces have been prominent in STEM fields for some time, studies have recently demonstrated their efficacy in music education and music theory pedagogies (Hable 2025).

We present outcomes of makerspace learning in two environments: a rigorous weeklong summer program for high school students in a large urban center, and an elective semester-long seminar for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students at a music school situated within a major university. We assess the kinds of music theory knowledge students acquired through their experiences, and exhibit their remarkable work represented by audio, video and physical artifacts. Students worked in the popular software patching environment Max/MSP, incorporating low-cost sensors and microcontrollers running code written in Micropython, Circuitpython and C++. These projects demonstrate learning trajectories which increased student agency and competency in music theory and technology. They also addressed persistent inequties in music education prevalent in an underserved, urban community.

Onlookers will be able to perform on student-designed electronic musical instruments as part of our interactive poster.

Jeremy Dutcher’s song “Sakomawit” from the album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa raises complex issues of voice, agency and authorship. Throughout the album Dutcher, a Wolastoqiyik member of the Tobique First Nation, and producer BUFFLO sample wax-cylinder recordings of Maliseet songs held in a Canadian archive. Theories of agency can address components of voice, but they also seek to situate agency outside of an actual human performer/composer. This can simplify the analytical process, especially when artists collaborate (as is often the case in popular music), but what of situations in which it feels important to highlight the actual people involved beyond simply acknowledging their authorship? In this presentation, I explore three primary voices–-the sample, Dutcher, and BUFFLO–and trace how they emerge and interact throughout the piece.

By “voice” I refer to the sounding presence of a real or imagined source, similar but not identical to agents and personas. Analyzing voice allows us to better see the actual creators and acknowledge their work, rather than attributing it to an imaginary actor. This re-insertion of the actual, historical creator as an intentional participant in the creative process is particularly important when creators belong to populations that are often overlooked or suppressed.

Alongside this analysis, I explore how to ethically incorporate my own (white settler colonial) voice by following the guidelines suggested by Hardman (2022), privileging the Indigenous voices who created the song, engaging in self-reflection, and presenting my analysis graphically. This last is accomplished through a crankie box, a novel way of engaging listeners.

While scat singing— the jazz vocal practice of improvising with “nonsense” syllables (Kernfeld, 2002) —produces the desired timbral variety of the heterogeneous sound ideal (Wilson, 1999), the structural consequences of the phonetic or timbral patterns invites further investigation. This paper begins that investigation by exploring a novel corpus of musically and phonetically transcribed solos, specifically examining the distribution of syllable types in relation to musical variables like phrase structure, metrical accent, and melodic contour.
Guided by Bauer’s (2007) method of phonemic analysis for scat solos and building on Slawson’s (1968) observation that vowel quality and timbre share common acoustic correlates, this study treats vowel, consonant, and syllable choice as timbral decisions. Our corpus will contain five solos apiece from ten distinguished scat singers. This dataset allows observation of large-scale conventions and individual tendencies. Transcriptions crucially include phones, phrasal and metrical position, size and direction of semitone change, and chord factor. Each transcription will be cross-checked by a musician and a linguist.
Our preliminary results suggest that syllables that begin with sibilants are almost always used to signal the beginnings of phrases. Metrically, systematic consonant alternations tend to correspond to on-beat-off-beat (i.e. swing) phrasing. Syllables with nasal consonant nuclei almost always fall on off-beats and follow higher pitches, as part of descending melodic contours. Melodic ascent is typically reinforced by timbral brightening, with vowels shifting higher and/or frontward as pitch rises, while descent aligns with timbral darkening, movement toward lower/backer vowels, consistent with Patten and McBeath (2024).
Through our corpus analysis, we demonstrate that jazz vocalists systematically deploy phones to signal and reinforce musical structure. This finding challenges the characterization of scat syllables as “nonsense” and suggests that vocalists draw on implicit knowledge of phonetic-structural relationships like those found in spoken language. Our analysis links music and language studies, contributing to debates about the relationship between linguistic and musical cognition (see Temperley, 2022). This research opens avenues for future work examining how listeners process these phonetic cues during music perception and whether similar patterns emerge in other forms of non-lexical singing across musical traditions.

Contemporary Chinese music often suggests a conflict between the evocation of tradition and the present. In many instances, this results from innovative compositional approaches that synthesize apparent opposite musical epistemologies: the deeply-rooted pentatonic traditions inherited from Chinese music theory, and the compositional techniques that characterize contemporary Western art music (Everett 2007 and 2015). This strategy is exemplified in Chinese composer Chen Qigang’s cello concerto Reflet d’un temps disparu (“Reflections of a Vanished Time”, 1995–96). Building upon the framework proposed in Rao 2002, I propose a way to analyze the symbolic meaning in this work that results from the synthesis of pentatonic and atonal elements in a manner that is emblematic of trends in contemporary Chinese music in general (Rao 2000 and 2007).

In Reflet, Chen employs Chinese pentatonic elements, including ancient melodies and anhemitonic pentatonic collections, which I argue could be understood as symbols of the past, held in memory. In contrast, atonal elements, such as semitones and chromatic collections, seem to suggest the present, experienced in the current moment. The pentatonic and atonal elements first appear as distinct in texture, timbre, and rhythm. In the course of the work, however, these elements undergo progressive synthesis, which can be understood as an attempt to bridge temporal distances, bringing the remembered past into the present and projecting the present back into the past. More specifically, the work’s chromatic collections (inherently atonal) emerge from combinations of pentatonic collections.

As the synthesis of pentatonic and chromatic collections develops, the persistent semitone tension emerges, resulting from “minimally intersected” pentatonic collections (Rao 2002). This semitone tension, manifesting at both local and structural levels, becomes increasingly pronounced throughout the piece and ultimately stronger in the synthesis, suggesting an impossibility of superimposing different temporal spaces and inability to recapture the past, with memory serving only as an echo of lived experience. The work’s title, “Reflections of a Vanished Time,” reinforces this temporal symbolism; despite the many attempts to reflect on and reconnect with the past, it remains irreconcilable with the present.

At many institutions, students with specializations across classical, jazz, and hip-hop performance, composition of a variety of contexts, and recording engineers must complete (or pass out of) aural skills courses. As such, introductory courses often become a complex confluence of students from a variety of backgrounds and experience levels, despite initial prescreening attempts. In this poster, I demonstrate how assignments outside the introductory aural skills classroom can be dually scaffolded through the use of multi-dimensional choiceboxes, accounting for both (1) various levels of prior student experience, modifying student workload to match their level of comfort with course materials, and (2) a broad set of specializations across genre, synthesizing curricular learning objectives with a decolonized collection of musical practices and approaches.

Psychological research into reading music has typically focused on either sight-reading (Goolsby 1994, Kopiez & Lee 2008) or rehearsal for performance (e.g. Chaffin et al 2013). Another important kind of music reading is analysis, aiming at an understanding of musical structure. Here we investigate the cognitive processes involved in such “reading for comprehension.” We focus on analysis of musical form, using pieces from the Classical period, viewing such analytic activities as open-ended problem solving tasks that allow for multiple paths to multiple solutions. Our goals are a) present a process model of, and b) identify the role of prior analytic knowledge in, such analytic behaviors. In our first experiment, we employed two piano sonata movements by Mozart (K290 and K576, first movements, both Type 3 sonatas). Five advanced undergraduate music majors were videorecorded as they analyzed the form and other elements of each movement as fully as possible in 15 minutes. A task analysis based on the authors’ professional experience as music theorists as well as theoretical treatises (Caplin 1998, Hepokoski & Darcy 2006, Hanninen 2012) provided an initial model for coding and analyzing participants’ verbalizations and score annotations. Participants’ methods fell into two categories, hierarchic (decomposing larger segments of the music into elements for further elaboration) and linear (working from the beginnings to the ends of larger segments). Analysts having more theoretical patterns and concepts at their disposal combine the two; others operate mostly linearly. Participants’ behaviors were modelled as incrementally developing a frame-based memory structure, with goal-setting and solution-finding processes modelled as functions for segmentation, event identification, and event association. In Experiment 2, “fills in the gaps” of Experiment 1 via eye tracking; we employed K439b/I as analytic material. Data to date indicates that both novice and advanced participants focus on significant elements of structure (thematic presentation and return). Expertise, e.g. using the medial caesura as diagnostic for understanding this Type 2 movement’s structure, affects number, length, and focus of fixations. Additionally, expertise promotes better memory for musical content, as attested by performance on an implicit memory task, asking if bits of score had been seen.

Composed in 1997, Kaija Saariaho’s Mirrors for flute and cello was originally written as a musical game for the CD-ROM Prisma. The piece comprises 48 short musical segments for each instrument whose sequence is decided by the performer(s). In her notes, Saariaho stipulates that: “there should always be a mirror in one or several of the following musical dimensions: rhythm, pitch, instrumental gesture, or timbre” (Saariaho, 1997). These mirrors may exist horizontally and/or vertically, always connecting successive segments and both instruments

Importantly, Saariaho does not define the concept of musical mirror, giving only a few examples in her score notes as hints instead. Her cryptic instruction presents an analytical puzzle: what constitutes a mirrored parameter? How does the visual metaphor of a mirror, connoting simultaneous sameness and opposition, manifest musically? Solving this puzzle is the primary concern of this project. I analyze every segment and mirror using the published score, which presents her arrangements of the segments, comprehensively categorizing the inter-segment relationships into a taxonomy.

This taxonomy demonstrates the wide variety of possible meanings held by musical mirrors in this work, providing deeper insight into Mirrors’ construction for performers and analysts alike. From a performer’s perspective, this taxonomy is a useful reference for those seeking to create their own rendition of this work, by clarifying which segments may and may not be connected. For the analyst, this taxonomy both concretely defines the work’s components and presents them in a way that allows for their quick explication. This makes it a useful teaching tool that provides a straight-forward entry point to 20thC music.

This poster explores the use of constructive competition in music theory education by adapting familiar board games to engage students, promote skill development, and encourage intrinsic motivation. The session will show how playful, low-stakes competition can enhance students’ understanding of core theory concepts, encourage creative thinking, and foster personal growth. By building on traditional gameplay mechanics, educators can create inclusive, collaborative environments that emphasize peer support over comparison or winning.

While competition is sometimes discouraged due to its potential conflict with collaborative learning (Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Kohn, 1986), others argue that both can coexist and motivate students (Tauer & Harackiewicz, 2004). Constructive competition encourages individuals to push beyond their expected abilities (Sheridan & Williams, 2006), enabling students to set personal goals while valuing others’ progress. This fosters a collaborative environment where knowledge is shared to deepen understanding. A meta-analysis of 29 gamification studies found that incorporating game elements in education significantly enhances learning performance (Ho et al., 2022). Competition can support intrinsic motivation by fulfilling core needs of Self-Determination Theory, including autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Ryan & Reeve, 2021), though the environment must be carefully designed to avoid undue pressure (Deci et al., 1981). Key principles of constructive competition design will be presented.

This session will provide concrete examples of adapted games to create a fun yet appropriately challenging environment. Examples include:

• Countdown: Students identify pitches in C clefs and form the longest word from a string of notes and letters within a time limit, strengthening note recognition under time pressure.
• Dobble: Reimagined as a chord-seeking challenge, students identify pairs of chords to modulate between keys, reinforcing harmonic relationships.
• Chaotic Chords: Based on Dutch Blitz, this game requires students to build chords from a communal pool of notes, promoting understanding of chord structures and collaboration under pressure.

These examples serve as a starting point, but the primary goal is to inspire educators to think creatively about incorporating play and constructive competition into their own teaching practices. By adapting existing games to suit learning goals, this session highlights how easy it can be to integrate gameplay into the classroom.

This study explores the development of rhythmic organization in the vocalizations of a juvenile song sparrow, “Tweety,” highlighting a progression from irregularity to regularity and from a tighter to a looser and more flexible connection between repetition and pulse. Drawing on music theory and bioacoustics, the study examines how song sparrows transition through three well-documented stages of vocal learning—subsong, plastic song, and crystallized song—while emphasizing the underexplored rhythmic features of these developmental phases.

In the subsong stage, Tweety’s vocal output consists mainly of irregular rhythms, with only a few repeated motives generating a sense of periodicity. At this early stage, repetition and pulse remain tightly coupled, as rhythmic regularity emerges only in direct repetitions of short musical figures. By the plastic song stage, however, a significant shift occurs: pulse and meter begin to emerge even in passages without literal repetition, suggesting an evolving sense of entrainment. At this stage, Tweety is beginning to establish a sense of periodicity independently of motivic repetition, as well as a capacity for metric hierarchy. Finally, in the crystallized song stage, mature vocalizations display still greater regularity, as well as a still more flexible connection between pulse and repetition. Hierarchical metric structures become more apparent, salient motivic contrasts now play an important role in the structuring of musical time, and motivic repetitions do not always align with the meter.

This project responds to broader calls for integrating empirical analysis with musical interpretation in both music analysis and bioacoustics. By combining spectrograms, proportional notation, and projection analysis, it offers a novel perspective on the rhythmic development of songbirds. The findings contribute to our understanding of how meter emerges in non-human vocal learning. Ultimately, Tweety’s developmental trajectory in song learning involves a transition from irregularity to structured metric organization, accompanied by a gradual decoupling of motive and pulse.

Music theory teachers often observe that students who report difficulty learning mathematics also find music theory challenging, and researchers typically report positive correlations between mathematical and musical abilities. The specific nature of a math/music link is unclear, however, and the association is likely not causal. Rather, shared etiological factors probably underlie success in both fields.

The original experiment I will present relies on something akin to subitization — the ability to immediately and accurately determine quantity without actually counting. Upon briefly glimpsing both randomly and geometrically arranged dots, participants were asked to indicate their quantity. All participants performed significantly better when dots were arranged in geometric patterns, but this improvement was smallest for participants with low aptitude for music theory and greatest for participants with high aptitude for music theory. This suggests that the oft-cited math/music connection is more likely attributable to pattern recognition than to a general sense of numbers as quantities. I will discuss some practical pedagogical implications of these results.

A common defense of the narrow curricular focus on the music of the European aristocracy in music theory curricula is that it allows students to deeply explore a musical language which remained largely consistent over more than two hundred years. Though this explanation ignores the actual systemic biases which undergird this approach, a focus on the “Common Practice Period” continues to provide the structure of many institutions’ theory courses, even as a greater diversity of composers, performers and musical cultures are being used to champion the same fundamental topics and course objectives.

If theory pedagogy is indeed best served by a large, consistent repertoire of music, then our curricula can benefit from the acknowledgement that we are in the midst of a new Common Practice: the tools, techniques and musical languages of modern studio production. Much like the harmonic language of Mozart, Brahms and others, contemporary songwriters, performers and producers draw upon a consistent vocabulary — not just of chords and melodic devices, but of timbres, formal devices, effects and even collaboration — to create a body of music which spans across decades, genres and cultures.

This paper shares a curricular revision to the four-semester theory curriculum that more fully embraces the tools, techniques and practices used to create the popular genres of music today, helping us make our classes more relevant and our music graduates more marketable, and remove implicit barriers of entry to not only our programs but our discipline as a whole.

Over the past century, Schoenberg’s serialism has inspired organizational paths in works that extend beyond modernist concert music. While heavy metal might seem an unlikely candidate for Schoenbergian influence, the way Blotted Science employs rows within their 2011 EP The Animation of Entomology is decidedly twelve-tone. This paper analyzes the four songs on the EP, charting their resemblance to notable twelve-tone composers (namely Schoenberg, Berg, and Perle), while considering how serial and atonal analytical tools may shed light on melodic and harmonic considerations in metal more broadly. My analysis of Jarzombek’s compositional process draws from myriad atonal analytical techniques, including fuzzy transposition (Straus 2003), mosaics (Mead 1988), set classes (Forte 1973 and Rahn 1980), csegs (Marvin/Laprade 1987), row order positions (rops) (Headlam 1985 and Mead 1988), and consideration of hexachordal combinatoriality (Babbitt 1961), with each illuminating different intricacies within the musical language of Blotted Science. Though the use of serial rows in metal music is certainly rare, and perhaps even unique to Blotted Science, the row segmentations comprise familiar metal collections common to both the harmonic and melodic content of the genre. Diminished seventh chords, octatonic scales, major and minor triads, tertian jazz extensions, and even whole-tone scales all feature within metal’s vernacular. My analysis of The Animation of Entomology bridges atonal materials and methodologies, demonstrating their utility in metal analysis. The majority of metal music research focuses on form, though scholars continue to create new methodologies well suited to the idiosyncrasies of metal, focusing largely on rhythm, timbre, and instrumentation. Pitch and harmony have seen comparatively little representation, relegated to secondary or even tertiary consideration within analysis. Analyzing Blotted Science not only explores the intricacies of twelve-tone composition in one particular band but also increases the depth of metal analysis by introducing techniques particularly suited to the genre’s dissonant sound world.

Puerto Rican rap, trap, and reggaeton musician Bad Bunny has a distinct musical style that has helped skyrocket his success in recent years. One significant characteristic that can be heard across his studio recorded albums is a marked, phonated inhalation, colloquially described as a gasp, where the back of the tongue closes on the velum. While most popular music post-production involves the removal of breath, Bad Bunny includes these phonated gasps as structurally significant additives in the studio versions of several songs. hile most timbral analyses concern description, visualization, or perception in music (Spreadborough, 2022; Heidemann, 2016; Duguay 2022; Spreadborough and Anton-Mendez, 2019), Wallmark (2022) discusses the [ae] vocable in Megan Thee Stallion’s raps as being percussive or formally significant. Weinstein (2016) discusses the significance of breath in studio produced music as “pointing to the lingering aura of the musicians who produced them,” highlighting the intentional portrayal of authenticity and humanity through recorded music. In this paper I provide a corpus study that defines and examines the function of phonated gasps across seven of Bad Bunny’s studio albums. Building on Wallmark (2022), I define six functional categories and provide detailed analyses of select musical examples to demonstrate each. Because these gasps do not occur in live performance, I argue that they are structurally significant, intentional accentuations added in post-production that contribute to the listening experience. Drawing from Krims (2000) and Weinstein (2016), I argue that the gasps function as identity markers that indicate authenticity and sincerity. The gasps can function as formal section markers (the start or end of a section), be structural to the phrase (hypermetrically connected), signify a shift in vocal register, emphasize the text, signify an upcoming change in accompaniment texture, or function as percussive rhythmic filler. Across the seven albums, over half of the gasps are used to emphasize text (namely explicit sexual acts, emotions, or national pride). My analyses highlight the intentional use of phonated inhalations as a way of marking authenticity and significant moments in Bad Bunny’s non-live performances.

In his 1987 orchestration of Frontispice, a two-piano work by Ravel, Boulez goes beyond Ravel’s original conception and creates an entirely new layer of rhythmic complexity through timbral choices alone. So far, this work and this crucial feature have received no analytical attention. Inspired by Nancarrow, Carter, and especially Ligeti, Boulez alternates instruments and adds doublings at specific moments – for example, striking a tubular bell every five eighth-notes of a melody – to create multiple layers of repetitive structures on each polyphonic line. This unique meld of timbre and rhythm creates a dialogue between Boulez, Ravel’s own reputation as innovative orchestrator, and contemporary rhythmic thought, making this work an important document of Boulez’s later methods of composition.

In this paper, I will first give a brief overview of Boulez’s thoughts on timbre, particularly his concept of “analysis,” then place Frontispice in the context of Boulez’s late works, focusing on his interest in periodic rhythmic processes. Then, after briefly analyzing the original Ravel piece, I will separate the texture of Boulez’s orchestration into instrumental groups, examining the rhythmic processes in each level. Finally, I reflect on how these techniques might interact with perception and discuss the whole texture as part of a listening experience.

Other sources examining Boulez’s use of rhythm typically emphasize pre-compositional material (Koblyakov 1989), often through sketch study (Lin 2012, O’Hagan 2016). By contrast, I focus on the surface details of the work and the listener’s perspective, comparing it to Boulez’s other late works to inform my approach; with this methodology, I aim to demonstrate that much can be learned of Boulez’s late style even without centering pre-compositional strategies.

“Tha Crossroads” by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony represents the first widely known instance of a common conceptual problem in rap scholarship: are these performers singing or rapping? Mitchell Ohriner distinguishes between the two practices by labeling such examples as those which “sound very much like singing to me” (Ohriner 2024). To bring greater specificity to the distinction between rapping and singing, this paper employs both close readings and mini-corpus methodologies to examine the differences along six parameters: intonation, melismas, vibrato, syllables per measure, rhymes per phrase, and inter-verse melodic repetition/variation. Furthermore, this paper argues for the recognition of a hybrid type of delivery, melodic rap, that exhibits characteristics of both rapping and singing. By establishing norms for these distinct modes of delivery, this paper provides analysts with tools for tracking trends and novelty in each. For clarity, this paper is concerned with rapping as an activity rather than a genre label and focuses exclusively on verses rather than choruses or hooks.

This project charts the six parameters across 99 verses of singing, rapping, and melodic rapping. There is some overlap and variability between practices and their parameters, but the difference in ranges for each parameter across each practice is significant: syllable count for sung verses range 2.13 to 7 per measure, melodic-rapped verses range 4 to 16.13, and rapped verses range 6.88 to 17.75. Rhymes per phrase are also noteworthy, with song verses range .5 to 3, melodic-rapped verse range 1 to 11.5, and rapped verses range 2.5 to 27. Melismas are not a consistent element of sung verses but their presence, along with vibrato, signifies singing. Another parameter that sets singing apart from rapping and melodic rapping concerns the music’s relationship between verses. Consistent with common practice, each of the verses of a song follow the same melodic pattern (Covach 2005). By contrast, each verse in rapped and melodic-rapped tracks present unique melodic patterns, preserving the improvisatory nature of rap. This paper will also examine verses where the vocal practice utilizes a unique mixture of parametric norms as well as instances of melodic rapping outside of rap music.

A common movie and video game trope—identified here as the “Leap of Faith”—involves a protagonist either jumping across a ledge or falling from a deadly height without fully knowing whether they will survive. By examining John Powell’s use of harmonic, textural, and timbral cues in “Test Drive” from the animated film How to Train Your Dragon (2010), I argue that the building and release of tension across multiple parameters significantly modifies the narrative outcome of these “Leap of Faith” scenes. Given program notes which describe themes from “Test Drive” as helping to “mimic flight” and “reassure the audience,” I examine how musical tension and release manifest this apparent and tangible sense of lost or gained control during flight. Following Lerdahl (2001), I identify the musically multiparametric “pivot points” which punctuate these “Leap of Faith” scenes with sudden accumulations and releases of tension. In considering how orchestral gestures (Goodchild 2016), and texture (De Souza 2015) provide an additional means of modulating tension by varying the number, and timbral content, of auditory streams in differentiated textures, I approach these “pivot points” not only as cadential arrivals, but as points of segmentation that direct the viewer’s attention toward specific narrative goals. Given how music impacts perception of visual events on screen (Cohen 2013, Tan 2017), two different scenes which use shared musical material from “Test Drive” are examined to further investigate how the alignment of such pivot points impacts communicative inference. I argue that, in altering the alignment of this musical tension and release with various visual elements in a scene, Powell’s composition “mimics” a narratively rich aerial experience by metaphorically and gesturally embodying a struggle between the turbulent, conflicting forces of falling and the balance of physical and kinetic forces experienced in flight. By comparing several uses of this “Leap of Faith” trope, it becomes evident that the musical pivot need not occur at the same point of a character’s flight—rather, the tension and release of the pivot signals to the audience when (or whether) everything is going to be okay.

Philip Ewell’s 2019 SMT plenary address, “Music Theory’s White Racial Frame” challenged many music theorists to take a hard look at our curriculums, teaching materials, and repertoire choices. Many of us recognized that changes must be made, but few appropriate pedagogical resources exist that address this task. Ewell’s 2020 MTO article shared that only 1.67% of musical examples in the seven popular undergraduate textbooks making up 96% of the US market were by nonwhite composers. While Justin London’s 2022 MTO response cited new contributions dedicated to music by women, those, along with Melissa Hoag’s 2022 Expanding the Canon text, don’t necessarily serve the Hispanic or Latin American students who are contributing to the rapidly growing numbers of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) across the country. Despite the fact that that Hispanics and Latinos—nearly 20% of the US population—are the largest racial or ethnic minority in the nation and likely in many of our classrooms, the music, styles, and genres of Iberian and Latin American composers continue to be ignored by our field.

This poster examines the absence of these voices in our pedagogical resources by cataloguing the number of Iberian and Latin American artists and musicians included in the seven textbook editions surveyed by Ewell in his 2020 MTO article and subsequent 2023 book. Because a newer edition of each surveyed text has since been released, the poster will document any additional inclusions of Iberian/Latin American voices and also examine two popular OER texts used in classrooms throughout the country.

In an effort to honor the diversity of my Hispanic/Latinx students, I hope to begin a conversation about our efforts to diversify our repertoire and pedagogical materials. Because I encourage my students to approach their music theory studies as a means for providing deeper understanding of their own musical experiences, I seek to expand the canon to include music composed by people who look like and come from the same cultural backgrounds as them. Thus, as they learn more about our beautifully diverse world of music, they will know it is a world in which they belong.

Theories of harmonic function usually fall into content and context-based theories. The former theorizes function in terms of similarity to prototypical triads, generally the tonic, dominant, and subdominant chords. The latter categorizes chords into functions based on their movement to and from other harmonies. While context-based theories provide insightful methods for tracking how chords behave, why chords behave this way cannot be fully explained without some reference to their scale-degree content. Previous content-based approaches have also left a gap, as they do not present a space for chromatic chords that includes precise placement for the degree of similarity to a prototype.

To fill this gap, I provide an expanded space of functional similarity for minor and major triads in tonal classical music. Single applications of P, L, and R generate the first level of similarity to a prototype, and compound operations, such as PL and PLP, produce the second and third levels of functional similarity. The theory presented possesses both theoretical and analytical advantages. In addition to refining the criteria by which harmonies belong in a given function class, the space also provides great power to deal with functional, but highly chromatic textures, excavating both functional coherency and expressive flexibility.