Y6 | Student Presentations

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Y6 | Student Presentations

Congratulations to the student members selected to present at the plenary session (July 15) of the Y6 ACTOR Workshop:

 
 

Abstracts

Annie Liu

Shanghai Nights: The Cultural Politics of Vocal Timbre in Chinese Popular Music, 1930–49

A hybrid genre produced in colonial Shanghai beginning in the 1920s, shidaiqu combined Chinese operatic and folk traditions, jazz, and Tin Pan Alley song. Musical elements of shidaiqu reflected pre-WWII Shanghai cosmopolitanism, as shown by scholars Andrew Jones (2001) and Szu-Wei Chen (2007). Chinese leftists labeled shidaiqu “yellow music,” a pornographic and decadent sonic signifier of Western influence, subsequently banned in 1949 by the Communist Party. Here, timbre remains unexplored as a locus of aesthetic and political change and embodied expression of hybridization. To explicate the relationship between the Chinese political landscape and popular culture, I analyze the vocal timbres of shidaiqu performers.

Using spectrographic case studies, I show how Chinese singers moved away from markedly “Chinese” inflections toward a timbral cosmopolitanism characterized by open-throated, breathy phonation. In Zhou Xuan’s 1936 “Express Train,” her vocal timbre exemplifies the “untrained” voice characterized by nasality, portamento motion between notes, and irregular vibrato. Xuan’s timbre in “Shanghai Nights” (1946) indicates an orientation towards a cosmopolitan audience, her previously bright timbre softened into a darker bel canto style. I extend this analysis to other famous shidaiqu performers, including Yao Li, Bai Hong, Gong Qiuxia, and Wu Yingyin. I use spectrograms to visualize the trajectory of shidaiqu vocal timbre over the course of their careers, spanning the 1930s and ‘40s, and identify key moments that stimulated these performers to make strategic alterations. Lastly, I discuss the reception of shidaiqu vocal timbre as markedly “yellow,” illustrating the intersections between the voice, culture, and politics.

 
 

Francesco Maccarini

An experimental framework for computer assisted orchestration

In this talk, I'm presenting a framework for computer-assisted orchestration that combines music theory and computer science to facilitate the collaboration between artists and computational algorithms to orchestrate existing musical pieces. The process has been developed and tested for classical and romantic style orchestration. This structured approach unfolds across three pivotal steps, accommodating both human and algorithmic contributions in distinct roles.

The creative process starts with an in-depth analysis of the composition to orchestrate. Particularly pertinent in this phase is the identification of the different voices and of the section boundaries between the evolving textures in the piece. The result of this phase is an abstract score, called layer score, which contains all the separated voices (layers) present in the original piece, analyzed for their role in the composition. The orchestrator is also free to add other layers to this score if doing so is careful in respecting the style of the author.

The second phase of the process consists in the creation of an orchestration plan, outlining the instrumentation of each layer across distinct sections of the piece. The artist can iteratively review and select the plan outputted by a highly customizable probabilistic Markov model.

Finally, the orchestral score is constructed, by writing the notes contained in the layer score for the instruments indicated by the plan, taking care of the instruments ranges and playing techniques. This phase can be performed by hand or with the help of a Large Language Model, currently in development.

 
 

Chidi Obijiaku

Intersections of Timbre and Structure in Nigerian Music: A Case Study of Akwu-eche-enyi

Many instruments used in traditional Nigerian Igbo music do not produce specific pitches. As such, their functionality in orchestral contexts is often understood as rhythmic. With such an understanding, the organisation of instrumental timbres that characterises this music risks being overlooked, or misinterpreted as primarily rhythmic in nature. While rhythm is, no doubt, critical to Igbo music, timbre is the primary focus of the instrumentalists who perform it. In this presentation, I argue that the basic function of the instrumental parts in mixed Igbo music (i.e., instruments and vocals) is not rhythmic, but timbral, in their extension of this music’s vocal lines. I present transcriptions and analyses of two pieces of Akwu-eche-enyi Igbo music, complemented by interviews with its practitioners based in Anambra State, Nigeria. This material enables exploration into how the pitch collection of vocal lines structures instrumental orchestration in Igbo music. Specifically, the collection and ordering of vocal pitches determine the organisation of timbres and phrasing within the instrumental part. Hence, in a mixed ensemble performing Akwu-eche-enyi, the instrumental part functions neither as accompaniment nor as a collection of rhythmic motifs. Instead, the rhythmic surface arises from the timbral relationships between instruments, and how they blend with voices to create a holistic musical work. By tracing the interconnectedness between voices and instruments in Akwu-eche-enyi, I shift conventional scholarly focus on Igbo music from rhythm to timbre, more effectively connecting the creative processes of its musicians with listeners’ perceptions of orchestration.

 
 

Yifan Huang

Affective Qualities of Sustained Instrumental Blend

Emotional impacts are one of the greatest motivating factors for people to engage in music. Previous studies have highlighted the significance of individual instrument timbre in conveying emotions. However, as a result of orchestration, individual sounds can be combined into a perceptual blend with new timbral features. How these features relate to perceived affect requires further study. An interdisciplinary research approach—a music perception study involving music, psychology, and acoustics—was adopted. Two experiments were conducted. The stimuli were 10 individual instrumental sounds and 45 instrumental blended dyads created from them. In the first experiment, 42 participants provided affect ratings on valence, tension arousal, and energy arousal for both individual and blended sounds. The second experiment, involving 40 participants, assessed how well the 45 dyad sounds blended. Statistical tests, acoustic analyses, and a novel geometric analysis were employed for data interpretation. We found that blends with different combinations of instruments are useful to express diverse affects, where blends with higher spectral centroid and spectral spread tend to have higher arousal. Notably, the affect of blends can be different from those of their constituent sounds. We also found that when two instruments blend, they have different contributions to the perceived emotion, and good blenders are always dominated by other instruments with higher spectral centroid. Additionally, we demonstrate that people with different levels of musical sophistications perceive emotions in a similar manner. In conclusion, this study attests to the importance of timbral and orchestration features in effectively conveying emotions.

 
 

Kjel Sidloski

Revisiting the original synthesizer: A composer-performer perspective on pipe organ augmentation

This presentation gives a brief insight into my master's thesis research-creation project. I examine the unique problem space of pipe-organ augmentation, focusing on the issue of spectral analysis and synthesis. As part of this project, I have developed a synthesis server in python, called OrganLab, which serves to emulate and mutate pipe-organ based sounds, which is then be placed in dialogue with the acoustic instrument. The pipe organ is often considered the original synthesizer, and I extend this rich tradition with additive, subtractive, and FM synthesis, allowing me to access effects not possible with the original instrument, like interpolation between stops, glissandi, and inharmonic sounds. Since each partial is independently controlled, the harmonic spectrum can be exploded, contracted, and distorted, creating a rich palette of new timbral possibilities. These innovations are put into practice with the piece Élégies, written for my hyper-organ interface at l’église Saint-Édouard, where I've been organist since July of 2022. Based on the 10 Duino Élégies of Maria-Rainer Rilke, the piece incorporates the aural iconography of the space, making use of the sounds of bells, the fire alarm of the church, and the sounds of footsteps through its many corridors. This symbolic and spatial exploration mimics the aural exploration that seeks to navigate the continuum of acoustic and simulated--the sacred and the profane.

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