This book is a radical attempt to explain musical meaning as the complex fabric of tension and relaxation resulting from the courses of the individual musical elements: e.g. rhythm, where the musical tension manifests itself by the opposition between strong and weak beats - or harmony, where the chords of the tonal cadence generate courses of tension and relaxation. It is strongly emphasized that the total structure of contributors to the web of tension/relaxation, in short, the musical style, is constantly changing, and it is an error to believe that any musical way of articulation is eternal: new ways of expression arrive and others drop out gradually - precisely as with ordinary language. This consideration, however, implies that too many and radical changes over a short period of time are foredoomed to go over the head of the ordinary listener. The radical modernism of the 1950s illustrates how composers in their endeavour to wipe the slate clean in order to start from scratch largely failed. Attempts at semantic interpretations of music are rejected. Such interpretations belong to the private sphere and cannot be scholarly supported. No hermeneutic interpretation, however elaborate, can claim higher truth value than another.

Analyzing Recorded Music: Collected Perspectives on Popular Music Tracks is a collection of essays dedicated to the study of recorded popular music, with the aim of exploring "how the record shapes the song" (Moylan, Recording Analysis, 2020) from a variety of perspectives. Introduced with a Foreword by Paul Théberge, the distinguished editorial team has brought together a group of reputable international contributors to write about a rich collection of recordings. Examining a diverse set of songs from a range of genres and points in history (spanning the years 1936–2020), the authors herein illuminate unique attributes of the selected tracks and reveal how the recording develops the expressive content of song performance. Analyzing Recorded Music will interest all those who study popular music, cultural studies, and the musicology of record production, as well as popular music listeners.

What role does contemporary choral activity play in the construction of social and musical meaning? How can historical knowledge and analysis shed light on contemporary choral problems and possibilities? And how can choral research promote the development and expansion of new music today? Questions like these are addressed in this anthology from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. The book comprises a selection of papers presented at the International Conference on the Concepts and Practices of Choral Singing in Lund, Sweden, in October 2012. The aim of the conference was to highlight the contemporary dynamic developments in choral research, and to explore interdisciplinary investigations and interaction between practice-based and historical approaches. The conference was also the fourth meeting of the network “Choir in Focus”, which was initiated in 2009 at Southern Choral Centre (Körcentrum Syd), a joint venture between Malmö Academy of Music, the Department of Musicology, Odeum (all at Lund University), Malmö Symphony Orchestra and Music South (Musik i Syd), Sweden. The continuous ambition of the network has been to provide a forum for co-operation across national and disciplinary borders and to encourage debates around the musical and social function of choirs in modern society as mirroring collective and individual needs for meaning, music-making and well-being. In the introductory chapter, the editors describe choral practice as a field of simultaneous (re)presentation, (re)production and (re)creation, and suggest that these three aspects may be seen as umbrella themes for the fifteen chapters of the anthology. The authors come from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Germany, United Kingdom, Portugal and Belgium, and explore choral practice from differing theoretical and methodological starting points. Together, they contribute to a transdisciplinary discussion about the origins, functions and meanings of choral singing.

Express yourself in a visual journal! With the ideas in this book, you will learn to create mixed media pages that express your soul and create a path to healing, internal freedom, and the sparking of passion. “Visual Journey Journaling” is an innovative artistic method taught by Rakefet Hadar and made up of seven elements: Intention, Magical Coincidence, Background, Images, Lines, Color, and Text. Visual Journey Journaling invites you to a fascinating world where you connect with your hidden inner artist to create "soul pages" using simple techniques and subtle guidelines to take a look inside yourself. Rakefet has taught these methods for many years, guiding even inexperienced artists to find and express the stories within themselves. In the first chapter of the book you will learn how to master the seven elements in your journal. There are many fun exercises and a step-by-step tutorial of how to start a simple journal. Next you will learn how to make a soul page with the seven elements. You will explore a variety of materials and how to work with them to find and create your pages. You will learn to build your journal and how to bind it into a finished book. Throughout the book and in the final section, you'll see and find the meanings in Rakefet's stunning private art journal pages and read her stories behind them.

Innovation in Music: Technology and Creativity is a groundbreaking collection bringing together contributions from instructors, researchers, and professionals. Split into two sections, covering composition and performance, and technology and innovation, this volume offers truly international perspectives on ever-evolving practices. Including chapters on audience interaction, dynamic music methods, AI, and live electronic performances, this is recommended reading for professionals, students, and researchers looking for global insights into the fields of music production, music business, and music technology.

The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Brain is a groundbreaking compendium of current research on music in the human brain. It brings together an international roster of 54 authors from 13 countries providing an essential guide to this rapidly growing field.

Examines the tension between intuitive and analytical ways of making sense of the world by exploring musical knowledge and experience.