ORCID Profile
0000-0003-0561-4784
Current Organisations
Cherrybrook Music Studio
,
Sydney Conservatorium of Music
,
Teaching Mathematics With Music and Music With Mathematics – Schools Pilot (on-going)
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Publications
Interdisplinary Physical Music: A Blind Spot in Education on Acoustics
Publisher: Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Date: 10-2020
DOI: 10.1121/1.5147470
Abstract: In attaining a degree in music, education on musical acoustics is multidisciplinary. Musical acoustics contains specialized knowledge, history, methodology, and practices, yet music itself is interdisciplinary. Ideally, acousticians recognize and validate that music is scientific and so, turn a blind eye or pay little attention to interdisciplinary physical music (i.e., migrating from music to musical acoustics). This paper examines the critical fault line erupting beneath the structural foundations of music through musical acoustics to navigate questions seldomly asked. These questions include–who should teach interdisciplinary physical music, e.g., music and mathematics, musical acoustics, psychoacoustics, what are the sets of curriculum standards and evaluation procedures suitable for the inter-multidisciplinary physical music. Finally, the paper proposes the reason why these paths are seldom crossed and provides a solution: a psychoacoustic approach to mathematical music theory as conduit to the intersection of fields with concepts traversing many disciplines.
Ogene Bunch music analyzed through the visualization and sonification of beat-class theory with ski-hill and cyclic graphs
Publisher: Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Date: 10-2020
DOI: 10.1121/1.5147469
Abstract: Traditional Ogene music (metal gong) is a music genre originating in the eastern communities of Nigeria which retains an intrinsic communicative function and music style of Igboland characterized by call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Through applying a psychoacoustic approach using visualizations and sonifications of beat-class theory with ski-hill and cyclic graphs, a listener is enabled to represent their experience of both music and mathematics embodied acoustics. This paper demonstrates the evolution of Western music theory to have the capacity to represent rhythm, meter, and pitch by visualizing beat-class theory through ski-hill and cyclic graphs (mathematical music theory). This new approach is suitable for understanding Igbo music which, like the majority of the world's music, is transmitted aurally and not notated. Applying a psychoacoustic approach, this paper illustrates how Igbo music can be accurately preserved for future generations and included in the scholarly discussion. The paper also reveals structural details of the music which may not be accounted for previously through the use of traditional Western music theory.
Teaching Mathematics with Music: A Pilot Study
Publisher: IEEE
Date: 12-2019
Mathematical music theory and the representation of Igbo music
Publisher: Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Date: 10-2019
DOI: 10.1121/1.5137090
Abstract: The purpose of our paper is to introduce African mathematical music theory: to analyze and represent African (Nigerian) music through visualizations and sonifications of beat-class theory. Many of the current analytical methods to study African (Nigerian) music lack the qualities necessary to recognize the intricate imbibements from music. Western music theory has evolved largely as a result of non-Western influences and beat-class theory provides a viable solution for the lapses in analytical work which have led to the superimposition of Western ideas of Nigerian music. Musical set theory uses the universal language of mathematics to explore the complexity, beauty and cultural significance of Nigerian music. In our paper, we will provide a discussion of meter in Ikpirikpi Ogu, the Ohafia War Dance of Igboland of Nigeria, to explore how Igbo music from Nigeria can be analyzed through the narrative of mathematical music theory using visualizations and sonifications of beat-class theory in circular cyclic graphs and ski-hill graphs to represent and acknowledge the listener’s psychoacoustic experience of music.
Teaching Music with Mathematics: A Pilot Study
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2019
Decolonizing African music with visualizations and sonifications using beat-class theory
Publisher: Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Date: 10-2019
DOI: 10.1121/1.5137091
Abstract: In a recent paper, we introduced mathematical music theory as a suitable new approach to analyze the music of Nigeria (Igbo) (Calilhanna et al., 2019). This paper revisits those materials and extends the ideas to further discuss why Nigerian music can be studied more suitably using mathematical music theory. We address a key issue facing music curriculum development: the perpetuation of traditional Western music theory to analyze and understand all music around the world. Our paper aims to demonstrate how Western music theory is inadequate for analyzing Nigerian music and we present some ways Western music theory has evolved. We explain how new music theory combines understandings of both music and mathematics and with a focus on musical meter we present a student-centred approach to learning. We achieve this through visualizations and sonifications of beat-class theory, using ski-hill graphs and circular cyclic graphs. This approach enables the listener to accurately articulate their subjective embodied psychoacoustic experience of music, meter and mathematics and incorporates research in neuroscience, music education, music psychology and music acoustics, which consistently indicates the importance of music for the well-being of the in idual, school, workplace, and community.
Mathematical music theory of embodied acoustics of Ikoro music using beat-class theory
Publisher: Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Date: 10-2019
DOI: 10.1121/1.5137386
Abstract: Through mathematical representation (beat-class theory) of embodied acoustics (psychoacoustics) the predominance of the musical tradition of the Ikoro drum with the Igbo’s can be traced from the past, into the present and forecasted into the future. The Ikoro music tradition has been viewed as an integral and indispensable part of Igbo culture at large (Onwubiko and Neilsen, 2019). The major musical instruments that accompany most Igbo music are percussional, such as, ichaka (beaded-gourd rattle), okpokolo (wooden claves), and igba (membrane drum) and are characterized by successions of rhythmic interchange unlimited to interesting pitch, timbre, rhythm and meter by employing shifted accents, non-accented rhythms and syncopations. In order to understand Ikoro music located in the listener’s experience (embodied psychoacoustics), we demonstrate how mathematical music theory (beat-class theory) provides the means to articulate the “mind and body” response to the stimulus of sound. By examining the aural tradition of Ikoro music of the Igbo’s through visualizations and sonifications of beat-class theory using ski-hill graphs and circular cyclic graphs, “hidden” musical structures are revealed which possess significant cultural significance.
Mathematical music theory of embodied acoustics of Ikoro music using beat-class theory
Publisher: ASA
Date: 2019
DOI: 10.1121/2.0001276
Teaching musical meter to school-age students through the ski-hill graph
Publisher: ASA
Date: 2019
DOI: 10.1121/2.0001234
Visualizing and Sonifying Mathematical Music Theory with Software Applications: Implications of Computer-Based Models for Practice and Education
Publisher: WORLD SCIENTIFIC
Date: 30-10-2018
Decolonizing African music with visualizations and sonifications using beat-class theory
Publisher: ASA
Date: 2019
DOI: 10.1121/2.0001134
Teaching musical meter to school-age students through the Ski-Hill graph
Publisher: Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Date: 10-2019
DOI: 10.1121/1.5137534
Abstract: This thesis, Teaching Musical Meter to School-Age Students Through the Ski-Hill Graph, aims to demonstrate the “pedagogability” of modern meter theory, that is, that new scholarship on meter can translate into a coherent and practically implementable instructional curriculum, with various advantages for school-age students. The curriculum model developed in the thesis is derived from Richard Cohn’s work on and approaches to meter theory, the first comprehensive theory and approach to teaching and learning meter which focuses on the embodied psychoacoustic experience of sound and graphic representations of meter through mathematical music theory rather than notation-based understandings. The materials set out in the thesis demonstrate ways students might be taught to articulate their experience of meter. A unified approach, it incorporates Cohn’s ski-hill graph and other instruments of mathematical music theory such as the SkiHill app (Milne, 2018) and XronoBeat app (Milne, 2019) numbering for counting meter, cyclic graphs, and beat-class theory. The thesis demonstrates how traditional Western music theory has evolved due largely to non-Western influences to now possess the capacity for analyzing music from around the world. In addition, the outcomes it anticipates is a deeper engagement with music in classroom settings.
Mathematical music theory and the representation of Igbo music
Publisher: ASA
Date: 2019
DOI: 10.1121/2.0001136
Related Organisations
Teaching Mathematics With Music And Music With Mathematics – Schools Pilot (on-going)
Location: Australia
Related Funding Activities
No related grants have been discovered for Andrea Calilhanna.