Implementation of “salience” in music analysis assignments
In music production educational programmes, there is usually a music analysis shaped hole in the repertoire of teaching material. This is in contrast to the great supply of teaching material on the music industry, social practices, music technology, studio practices and the like. This is partly explicable by the challenges music recordings pose on music analysis. Music recordings, or works of phonography, are dominated by musical properties that fall outside of the score, where music analysis traditionally operates.
There are many events happening simultaneously in all music. The question of which of these events (are intended) to draw our attention the most is a question of musical foreground and background. The mechanisms that affects what in music is perceived to be in the foreground vs. background is complex and relates both to musical structure, musical cognition, and more importantly how these two meet.
The above-mentioned foreground/background relation is a question of salience. My PhD work-in-progress studies salience in works of phonography to discuss which musical properties or events are the most 24functional, or account for the coherence, in these works. Studying salience in these works is put forward as a possible method to tackle the aforementioned challenge of analyzing works of phonography.
As a part my study on salience in works of phonography, I conduct an assignment in a music production educational programme, where students write about what they hear in the “foreground” in works of phonography. This is an implementation of salience as an analysis tool. In this conference, I will present the preliminary results of this part of my PhD-thesis in progress.
Kontakt: bsi@du.se
2023.
Musikforskning idag 2023 June 13-15, 2023 The Royal College of Music, Stockholm, Sweden