Aesthetics, Music, and Meaning-Making

Understanding Music Improvisations: A Comparison of Methods of Meaning-Making

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the value of different methods of making meaning in music therapy improvisations. Six research participants met with the researcher and created solo and duo improvisations. Each improvisation was subjected to four methods of meaning-making: participant journals, researcher journals, dialogues, and musical analysis using the Improvisation Asse...

Music, syntax, and the meaning of “meaning”

I discuss the issue of meaning, and the definition of “meaning” in music. I propose that it is a mistake to import the linguistic notion of semantics into a musical context on the grounds that musical communication serves a different function and is of a different nature from linguistic communication, and that there is no evidence to support the suggestion that the two should function in a stro...

Zipf's Law, Music Classification, and Aesthetics

The connection between aesthetics and numbers dates back to pre-Socratic times. Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle worked on quantitative expressions of proportion and beauty such as the golden ratio. Pythagoreans, for instance, quantified " harmonious " musical intervals in terms of proportions (ratios) of the first few whole numbers: a unison is 1:1, octave is 2:1, perfect fifth is 3:2, perfect...

Aesthetics and Design for Group Music Improvisation

Performing music as a group—improvised or from sheet music—is an intensive and immersive interaction activity that bears its own aesthetics. Players in such a setting are usually skilled in playing an instrument up to the level where they do not need to focus on the “operation” of the instrument, but can instead focus on higher-level feedback loops, e.g., between players in their section or the...

The Aesthetics of Interactive Computer Music