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- Ahlbeck, Bengt, 1934-
(author)
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Musikdirektör Anders Sidner : Musikundervisning och musikliv i skolstaden Härnösand 1840-1870
- 1998
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The present study, together with my licentiate's dissertation, Music education and examination at the Royal Academy of Music during "the Pehr Frigel Era", 1796-1842, constitutes my doctoral dissertation. In the chapter Preludes, the relation between the two studies is accounted for.The study deals with Anders Sidner's work and career, and his influence on the teaching of music and music life in Härnösand. In my licentiate's dissertation I examined the music education and examination at the Royal Academy of Music during the first half of the nineteenth century. I pointed out, from a cultural-theoretical perspective, that the work of the Academy probably promoted cultural solidarity in a socially developing manner. Anders Sidner was one of around eighty graduates who were examined during this period. The aim of this study is to map out and critically examine Sidner's work and career in Härnösand, as well as to observe what effects his work has had.The structure of the study is mainly chronological. The understanding of Sidner's work, ideas and actions is based to a great extent on the knowledge of his personal situation and living conditions.Sidner's music studies, which were pursued parallel with his academic studies at Uppsala, are characterised by self-tuition, learning from friends and active participation in choirs and orchestras.After his academic studies at Uppsala and the graduation from the Royal Academy of Music, Sidner worked in Härnösand for twenty-eight years as a music teacher at grammar school and teacher training college. In both types of education, choir singing was an important part of the teaching. Sidner took the initiative in founding a musical society, and was its leader for a number of years. In the 1860s he initiated a collaboration between the musical society and a great number of the town's young male and female musicians. Sidner also engaged young female instrumentalists in the student orchestra. Both these initiatives can be considered unique.In relation to the town population, a remarkably great number of people attended the wide variety of musical events. The fact that the school's spacious music hall was used as a concert hall and that the music teacher as well as a number of other teachers were active in the local music life probably contributed to the active participation of many young people.The examination of Anders Sidner's teaching methods and his ideas on musical-aesthetic issues shows that his work was in line with the widely spread values of his time.My study indicates that Sidner's contribution to the teaching of music and music life in Härnösand promoted an increasing cultural solidarity. It is evident that his work also was to form part of a continuous process of secularisation. The music life in school was integrated with non-ecclesiastical activities to an ever increasing extent.
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- Ahlbäck, Sven, 1960-
(author)
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Den nordiska vallåtens tonspråk
- 2019. - 1
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In: Fäbodlandskap och vallmusik. - Falun : Dalarnas Fornminnes och Hembygdsförbund. - 9789187719264 ; , s. 115-119
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Book chapter (pop. science, debate, etc.)abstract
- Artikeln presenterar musikaliska egenskaper i traditionell fäbodmusikens i Sverige, med fokus på vallmusikens tonalitét, melodik och form. Artikeln sammanfattar ny forskning i fäbodmusikens tonspråk på ett enkelt sätt och nya rön baserade på unika korpusstudier med metoder hämtade från modern kognitiv musikforskning ställs i relation till tidiga musikvetenskapliga studier av ämnet.
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- Ahlbäck, Sven, 1960-
(author)
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Melody Beyond Notes : A Study of Melody Cognition
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Abstract Melody beyond notes - a study of melody cognition Keywords: Melody, Cognition, Melodic segmentation, Melodic Parallelism, Pitch Structure,Meter, Rhythm, Grouping, Swedish Folk Music, Music Theory, Computer-aided analysis This thesis is a music theoretical approach to cognition of surface structure in monophonic melodies. It can briefly be described as a study into what extent we may acquire a common experience of melodic structure, such as phrase structure, only from listening to a melody. More precisely, this work concerns the question as to whether a cognitively based method of analysis can provide analyses of melodic surface structures in different styles thatwill concur with listeners’ conceptions better than chance. In order to investigate this question a general model of melody cognition wasdeveloped, relying primarily on a few general cognitive principles. The model was designed to be general in the sense that it should apply to any style for which the concept of melody is relevant. This model provided the framework for a computer-aided method of analysis, which performs analysis of different aspects of melodic surface structure based on information of relative pitch and temporal information only. These aspects involve: Categorical perception of pitch and duration at basic levels, such as context-sensitive quantization and melodic pitch categorization; Analysis of metrical and non-metrical temporal structures, e,g. heterometric structures; phrase and section structure, including analysis of structural implications of melodic similarity, structural hierarchy and symmetry. This development has required new theoretical concepts and methods to be created, e.g. regarding the relationship between rhythm and meter, some of which are presented for the first time is this thesis.In order to evaluate the performance of the model a series of listener tests were performed, which together with corpuses of musical notations from different styles, constituted the reference material of the study. This material has included Scandinavian folk music styles and Western classical music, but also examples of Eastern European folk music, Middle East and Indian Classical music, Jazz and Western popular song.The results of these tests indicated that melody can be conceived differently by people even within a limited cultural sphere. But the results also suggested that this variability is possible to model by a rule-based method of analysis, since the predictions given by the model generally were well above chance level. It is herein suggested that variability in grouping conception to a considerable degree can be accounted for in terms of start- and end-oriented grouping preference. Moreover, the results also indicate that important aspects of even culturally foreign music can be conveyed, also in limited melodic stimuli.Generally, the results support the assumption of a general cognitive framework for melodic surface structure. This might be interpreted as to indicate that, metaphorically speaking; melody may indeed be a universal ‘language’, but one which we all understand in our own way.
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- Ahlbäck, Sven, 1960-
(author)
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MITIS - Musical Information Technology in Schools : How can interactive music technology be used to support learning of music literacy?
- 2021
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- MITIS – Musical Informational Technology in SchoolThe aim of the MITIS - project is to explore possibilities to create interactive teaching materials where new technology is used to distribute knowledge about musical structure (i.e. notation) as well as content in an interactive and creative way. This is carried out as a collaborative project between a group of music teachers, the company DoReMir, and researchers and staff from the Institution for Folk Music and the Institution for Music, Pedagogics and Society at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.The core foundation of the project is literacy in music – for example reading and writing notation (Asmus, 2004). Notation is for most musicians an important tool to use both for taking part of, interpreting, documenting and pass music on (Hultberg, 2000). In connection with the digitalization of society and digital tools to do things such as interpreting, documenting and pass music on made available to a broader public, traditional notation has got a more hidden place in music education in schools. In the Swedish curricula for the compulsory School, notation is explicitly mentioned in 1969. In the later Curricula’s, different kind of notation is mentioned, but not as explicitly as in earlier years (Skolöverstyrelsen, 1969; Skolverket, 2019). This also aligns with the development of society as a whole, and with the strategy for digitalization that was established by the Swedish government in 2017 (Regeringen, 2017) and can be seen as a development towards a wider view on different forms of notation. However, in the aesthetic program for the upper secondary school, reading traditional notation on a basic level, is required in the Curricula (Skolverket, 2020). Furthermore, to get access to higher music education in Sweden, the skill of reading traditional notation, is required. We argue therefore, that to increase music literacy, also in regard to reading notation, can be seen as an democratic issue. To make learning notation available and possible in an easy and digitalized way, with devices available to pupils in school, may be an important step to advance possibilities for every child to access higher music education.An important part of the project is to develop and support learning and interpretation of notation in different creative ways. One of the starting points for this project is the technique for digital music interpretation that has been developed by DoReMir Music Research AB. This technique has been used in an app called Notysing, for learning to read and sing traditional notation with a digital device such as a reading tablet or mobile phone. The project has been running since 2018. The first year the focus was to develop the app, test it within a small group of music teachers, and ensure good technical quality as well as pedagogical foundations for the design. In 2019 testing started in compulsory as well as in upper secondary School in Sweden, with focus on gathering qualitative data through a digital survey in the app. During autumn 2020 a qualitive study has been conducted, and in-depth interviews are in progress. Pupils in San Diego has been included in 2020, also as a part of finding new teaching strategies for distance education during the Covid19 pandemic. It has been developed and tested with over 200 pupils and music teachers.Preliminary results suggest that pupils and music teachers are positive to learn notation through an app that uses gamification to enhance and motivate learning, and that issues that arise are mostly technical, and that the equipment of the schools, and technical skills ana knowledge of the music teacher are crucial for success. Furthermore, the results indicate that regards must be taken todifferent systems for managing IT in different schools and municipalities. Last but not least, there are great school-cultural differences in how schools work with notation in San Diego and in Sweden, which once again raises questions about how to work with it in our context, and also, why we work with it the way we currently do.ReferencesAsmus, E. P. (2004). Music Teaching and Music Literacy. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 13(2), 6–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/10570837040130020102Hultberg, C. (2000). The Printed Score As a Mediator of Musical Meaning – Approaches to Musical notation on Western Tonal Tradition. [Doctoral thesis, Malmö Academy of Music].Regeringen. (2017). Nationell digitaliseringsstrategi för skolväsendet. Utbildningsdepartementet: Bilaga till regeringsbeslut I:1, 2017-10-19.Skolöverstyrelsen. (1969). Läroplan för grundskolan 1 Allmän del. UtbildningsförlagetSkolverket (2019). Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet 2011. Reviderad 2019. Skolverket. Skolverket.( 2020). https://www.skolverket.se/undervisning/gymnasieskolan/laroplan-program-och-amnen-i-gymnasieskolan/gymnasieprogrammen/amne?url=1530314731%2Fsyllabuscw%2Fjsp%2Fsubject.htm%3FsubjectCode%3DMUS%26courseCode%3DMUSINS01S%26tos%3Dgy&sv.url=12.5dfee44715d35a5cdfa92a3#anchor_MUSINS01
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| 7. |
- Ahlbäck, Sven, 1960-
(author)
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MSTRE-Net: Multistreaming Acoustic Modeling for Automatic Lyrics Transcription
- 2021
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper makes several contributions to automatic lyrics transcription (ALT) research. Our main contribution is a novel variant of the Multistreaming Time-Delay Neural Network (MTDNN) architecture, called MSTRE-Net, which processes the temporal information using multiple streams in parallel with varying resolutions keeping the network more compact, and thus with a faster inference and an improved recognition rate than having identical TDNN streams. In addition, two novel preprocessing steps prior to training the acoustic model are proposed. First, we suggest using recordings from both monophonic and polyphonic domains during training the acoustic model. Second, we tag monophonic and polyphonic recordings with distinct labels for discriminating non-vocal silence and music instances during alignment. Moreover, we present a new test set with a considerably larger size and a higher musical variability compared to the existing datasets used in ALT literature, while maintaining the gender balance of the singers. Our best performing model sets the state-of-the-art in lyrics transcription by a large margin. For reproducibility, we publicly share the identifiers to retrieve the data used in this paper.
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| 9. |
- Ahlbäck, Sven, 1960-
(author)
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Pitch-Informed Instrument Assignment using a Deep Convolutional Network with Multiple Kernel Shapes
- 2021
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper proposes a deep convolutional neural network for performing note-level instrument assignment. Given a polyphonic multi-instrumental music signal along with its ground truth or predicted notes, the objective is to assign an instrumental source for each note. This problem is addressed as a pitch-informed classification task where each note is analysed individually. We also propose to utilise several kernel shapes in the convolutional layers in order to facilitate learning of timbre-discriminative feature maps. Experiments on the MusicNet dataset using 7 instrument classes show that our approach is able to achieve an average F-score of 0.904 when the original multi-pitch annotations are used as the pitch information for the system, and that it also excels if the note information is provided using third-party multi-pitch estimation algorithms. We also include ablation studies investigating the effects of the use of multiple kernel shapes and comparing different input representations for the audio and the note-related information.
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| 10. |
- Ahlbäck, Sven, 1960-
(author)
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Stylistic Feature Mapping for Music Performance
- 2021
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Stylistic Feature Mapping for Music Performance In the late 1970s, the Royal College of Music in Stockholm (KMH) started professional performance programs for musicians outside the domain of Western Classical Music, including e.g. Jazz and Swedish Folk music. In the beginning, it was regarded an opportunity for informally trained musicians in these genres to receive proper music education. However, it soon became clear that these students, in order to develop their artistic practice within their own genres within the domain of academic music performance training, needed terminology, concepts and methods for to describe the values, aesthetics, expressions, musical structures, instrumental techniques etc. of importance in their musical practice. In the clash between musical styles developed outside of the music academies and the art music with its rich history of prescriptive descriptive concepts, there was a need for communication of expressional qualities between different musical styles – and this need for revealing the tacit knowledge of non- academic performers were in particular prominent in Folk Music. An artistic research project was initiated, conducted between 1983 and 1987 (Ahlbäck 1987), with the aim to study, document and describe performance style and techniques in Swedish fiddle music from a performance perspective, however making style comparisons possible. One outcome of the project was a system for description and mapping of performance style qualities, and this ‘style mapping model’ originally developed for fiddle music emerged into a more general model for describing performance style qualities that has been used in artistic reflective training and in thesis work at KMH for more than 30 years, as a tool for developing, describing, documenting and communicating artistic directions and concepts. This paper discusses the features of this model in relation to musicological and music psychological approaches to music expression and style and presents empirical results from the application of the system within performance training for over 30 years including over 250 students, as well as examples of influences on contemporary musical practice. How has this approach been used for development of musical concepts in different artistic reflective works? What can be learned from applying this mapping system in the meeting between musicians with different musical values?
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