April 2015 - News!

Conferences, Symposiums, Workshops     view all upcoming

• 2nd International Digital Libraries for Musicology workshop (DLfM 2015), 25th July 2015 (full day), Knoxville, TN, USA. Co-hosted with the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2015.  LINK
  

AIRS News  

• AIRS 6th Annual Meeting.  The AIRS 6th Annual Meeting (2015) will  take place in Nashville, Tennessee  (Music City, USA ☺) July 30-31, prior to the biennial meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC) co-convened by Reyna Gordon and Elisabeth Dykens).  Abstracts for the AIRS Symposium will be requested by May 15.  The forms below are provided for research abstracts, performing at the AIRS concert (July 31), and student travel competition  (links early April 23 were not active... will be checked out later today, sorry).
  

  • Abstract Submission - AIRS 6th Annual Meeting, Nashville 2015
  • Performers and Collaborative Musicians - AIRS 6th Annual Meeting, Nashville, 2015
  • Student Travel Request - AIRS 6th Annual Meeting, Nashville 2015

  For some additional information click here

• WORLD VOICE DAY,  organized by Johan Sundberg (KTH Sweden),  took place with over 500 activities world wide, including  that of Frank Russo's  (Ryerson, Toronto) Smartlab (50 +) Singers who made their debut that day. (Russo's study is exploring the benefits of singing practice on speech-in-noise tasks). 
  

• AIRS Co-Investigators  Prof. Darryl Edwards and Prof. Susan O'Neill joined by  Prof. Yaroslav Senyshyn are introducing a one-week intensive  Music Reseach Workshop and Symposium  at the Centre for Opera Studies in Italy (COSI, Artistic Director, Darryl Edwards), July  15-19, 2015 (with preparatory readings and follow-up research paper), in collaboration with AIRS. Stay tuned.  Opportunities for  university course credit may be arranged. 
  

​Recent Publications

• Countryman, June,  Gabriel, Martha., and Thompson, Kate. (2015).   Children’s spontaneous vocalizations during play:  aesthetic dimensions.  Music Education Research, DOI:10.1080/14613808.2015.1019440
  

  This paper explores the phenomenon of spontaneous vocalisations in the self-chosen, unstructured outdoor play of children aged 3–12. Spontaneous vocalisations encompass the whole range of children’s unprompted, natural, expressive vocal soundings beyond spoken language. Non-participant observations at childcare centres and on elementary school playgrounds anchor this investigation into the nature and extent of children’s spontaneous vocalising, grounded in scholarship that establishes these musical expressions as socially embedded and culturally contingent. Previous research has usually considered these ubiquitous playground soundings from a functional standpoint. Our project examines the potential of applying Dissanayake’s artification hypothesis, specifically her five affective aesthetic devices, to examples of children’s vocalisations to make tangible the artistry inherent in these spontaneous soundings. Pedagogical implications are considered. Link. 

  Just published  by Mary Gick and Jennifer Nicol, co-investigators in sub-theme 3.3:   

• Gick, M. L.  & Nicol, J. J. (2015).  Singing for respiratory health: theory, evidence and challenges.  Health Promotion International, 1-10. doi: 10.1093/heapro/dav013
  

  The premise that singing is a health promoting activity for people with respiratory conditions of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma is a growing area of interest being investigated by researchers from various disciplines. The preliminary evidence, a theoretical framework and identification of methodological challenges are discussed in this perspective article with an eye to recommendations for further research to advance knowledge. After a brief summary of main research findings on singing in healthy people to provide background context, research is reviewed on singing in people with COPD and asthma. Studies include published research and as yet unpublished work by the authors. Methodological challenges arising from the reviewed studies are identified such as attrition from singing or control groups based on weak and strong, respectively, beliefs about singing’s effectiveness. Potential solutions for these problems are considered with further recommendations made for other singing research.   LINK

• Weiss MW, Schellenberg EG, Trehub SE (AIRS Co-investigator), Dawber EJ (2015).  Enhanced processing of vocal melodies in childhood, Developmental Psychology,  51, 370-377.
  

  Music cognition is typically studied with instrumental stimuli. Adults remember melodies better, however, when they are presented in a biologically significant timbre (i.e., the human voice) than in various instrumental timbres (Weiss, Trehub, & Schellenberg, 2012). We examined the impact of vocal timbre on children's processing of melodies. In Study 1, 9- to 11-year-olds listened to 16 unfamiliar folk melodies (4 each of voice, piano, banjo, or marimba). They subsequently listened to the same melodies and 16 timbre-matched foils, and judged whether each melody was old or new.  Vocal melodies were recognized better than instrumental melodies, which did not differ from one another, and the vocal advantage was consistent across age. In Study 2, 5- to 6-year-olds and 7- to 8-year-olds were tested with a simplified design that included only vocal and piano melodies.  Both age groups successfully differentiated old from new melodies, but memory was more accurate for the older group. The older children recognized vocal melodies better than piano melodies, whereas the younger children tended to label vocal melodies as old whether they were old or new. The results provide the first evidence of differential processing of vocal and instrumental melodies in childhood.   LINK