Understandings and discourses about age have tended to be instrumental to popular music in terms of production, promotion and consumption, and many studies of popular music have taken younger people, and especially ‘youth’ cultures, as their subject matter. Where older people have been considered, the focus has mostly been retrospective, that is on their experiences when young and their attitud...

Popular music (characterized by improvised instrumental parts, beat and measure-level organization, and steady tempo) poses challenges for human-computer music performance (HCMP). Pieces of music are typically rearrangeable on-the-fly and involve a high degree of variation from ensemble to ensemble, and even between rehearsal and performance. Computer systems aiming to participate in such ensem...

In this paper, I examine the liminal states of Taiwanese guitarist/composer Huang Wan-ting, particularly as these states articulate with similar liminal states of “indie music” and the island of Taiwan. I use the term ‘liminal’ in a non-ritual sense to refer to a structural position on the interstices of recognized roles and identities. In addition, I propose a second type of liminality: a posi...

Computer accompaniment is now a well-established field of study, but nearly all work in this area assumes a Western classical music tradition in which timing is considered a flexible framework that performers manipulate for expression. This has important implications for the music, accompaniment, and performance style, and therefore the fundamental design of automatic accompaniment systems. Pop...

The advent of the gramophone transformed the cultural conditions of contemporary music, including the way it was taught. For a considerable period of time, musicians and music educators disparaged the gramophone. The members of the musical appreciation movement were more sympathetic and helped transform the gramophone’s educational image during the 1920s and 1930s. They argued that the gramopho...

The results of a national poll of listeners to a popular British music station in 2004 suggested that, the best way to ameliorate one's depressive symptoms musically is to listen to ‘I Know It's Over’ by Smiths [1]. This is hardly surprising. We are all aware of the healing power of music. Music therapy groups are popular among staff and the users of psychiatric services, and are often funded b...

Music sometimes improves performance in sustained attention tasks. But the type of music employed in previous investigations has varied considerably, which can account for equivocal results. Progress has been hampered by lack of a systematic database of music varying in key characteristics like tempo and valence. The aims of this study were to establish a database of popular music varying along...

For over a half century, the evolution of rock music has been marked by controversy over its social influence. Arguments by the proand anti-regulation/censorship camps echo those encountered in debates over the effects of media violence and pornography generally [1]. The present study reviews empirical work on the content and effects of violence in rock music and music videos. In evaluating whe...