MIEL Weekly Quizzes

The history of ideas about what music is demonstrates that

people have understood what music is differently in different times and places.

In the article "What is Music?" Patrick Burke argues that

music is universal in the sense that taking is; people in all cultures do it, but they don't automatically understand one another.

What is the recitation of the Qur'an an example of?

a religious practice with song-like features that is not considered music by practitioners

Christopher Small argues that "music is not a thing" because

it's not a thing, it's an activity.

In the song "Sir Duke," Stevie Wonder conveys all the following ideas about music except:

you're not supposed to understand it

All are true of Alicia Keys's song "Troubles" except

It is about American society's troubles during the 1960s civil rights movement and the Vietnam War

The part of a song that repeats with different words is the verse, while the part of a song that typically repeats with the same words and is the most memorable part of the song is called the

chorus.

Tupac Shakur is a major influence for Kendrick Lamar. Which best characterizes the beginning of Tupac's musical journey?

His first passions were ballet, theater, and poetry

Infant brains have been shown to respond strongly to 'parentese', which is

infant-directed speech that uses strong rhythmic emphasis, pitch contour, and wide changes in loudness.

Neuroscientist Psyche Loui's study of listeners exposed to music composed using the Bohlen-Pierce scale showed all of the following except

Mere listening was not enough to learn a new musical grammar - it required performing the music as well

According to Liz Pelly, the prevalence of "chill" playlists on Spotify is indicative of all of the following, except that

Spotify encourages exploring lots of different music.

According to Pauline Oliveros, deep listening involves a balance of what?

focal attention and global attention

Ola Stockfelt uses the term "adequate listening" to refer to which of the following?

the mode of listening that goes with a musical genre's social conditions and listening situations

All are true of Tuvan throat-singing, except:

its "adequate mode of listening" is best described as pitch-centric.

This musical example illustrates how music that might seem boring from a melody, or pitch-centric perspective can become interesting with a different way of listening, called timbral listening.

True

"Adequate listening" for Muzak would be

background listening, not really paying attention

All of the following statements about hearing are true except:

A cochlear implant is a device that connects a microphone directly to the brain's auditory cortex, bypassing the inner ear.

In the early Middle Ages there was no system for writing down music, but then a system was developed for the initial purpose of writing down

reminders to how chant melodies go

The staff was invented to make it easier to learn chants, by more precisely indicating

pitch

The "score for listening" for Ligeti's electronic piece "Artikulation" is an example of a descriptive visual representation of music, while a score like the below is an example of a _______________ visual representation

prescriptive

What is the name of the oldest surviving complete notated melody?

Seikilos Epitaph

The way pop songs (especially hip hop and R&B songs) are typically made today

begins with a composer notating the melody.

Though we commonly talk about songs, copyright law draws a clear distinction between - and treats very differently - which two aspects of a song?

composition and performance

"Blurred Lines" was found to infringe Marvin Gaye's copyright on "Got to Give It Up" because

Marvin Gaye's side was able to persuasively demonstrate a "constellation of similarities," using visual representations to do so

The speech-to-song effect was discovered when

psychologist Diana Deutsch looped her speaking voice

In the study discussed by Psyche Loui in her talk in Module 2, people's liking for musical examples was found to increase with repeated hearings. This would be an example of what phenomenon discussed by Elizabeth Margulis?

the mere exposure effect

Margulis suggests that to listen to something musically is to "participate imaginatively." What this means is illustrated by

how your mind projects what sounds come next when listening musically

Even if you find 'jingles' (repetitive tunes from ads and commercials) annoying, they're so effective because

they provide a predictable pattern that evokes a physiological reward response (ex. dopamine)

What a character in the Netflix series The Get Down refers to as "the get down part" of a song is the part a hip hop DJ would loop, and is also known as

the break

Which is true of the Amen break?

It was put on an album of breakbeats by Breakbeat Lou, and became integral to the genre of jungle

Psychologists used to believe that humans were the only animals that could spontaneously detect and move to a complex beat pattern, but researchers have recently studied an animal that defies this. The animal's name is

Snowball, the dancing cockatoo

David Huron proposed the ITPRA model to explain how music evokes emotions by offering predictive models, which evoke physiological rewards. Which of the two stages of ITPRA occur within 150 milliseconds of the onset of an event?

Prediction, Reaction

A defining feature of field recordings is that

they are made outside recording studios

Brian Eno noticed that listening to his environment through a microphone had the effect of

bringing sounds together such that he perceived them as music

Ambient music and Muzak are both designed to work as background music that enhances the atmosphere, but differ in that

ambient music is also intended to be interesting to listen to

The soundwalk and soundscape work by artists such as Westerkamp and Oliveros exemplifies worries about

urban sounds displacing sounds of nature

This audio exemplifies

recording the same song in different spaces

The third song in this audio clip exemplifies the technique of

playing a sound backwards.

This audio is an example of

musique concrète

Billie Eilish's "bury a friend" incorporates the sound of

a dentist's tool

The role played by Grey in the making of "The Middle" was

producing the track, including adding the medieval ax sounds, before sending it to a more famous producer

Comparing the use of environmental sounds in "The Middle" and "bury a friend", we can say it's primarily ___________ in "The Middle" and primarily _________ in "bury a friend".

a rhythmic element; a timbral element

Humans have deeply valued presentational forms of music for at least 3,000 years, which is primarily evidenced by

mythological stories preserved through oral tradition

Due to the pandemic, according to Kornhaber,

participatory forms of music are newly important

The autobiographies of Alicia Keys and Kendrick Lamar show that

the music one grows up with has an impact on one's musical tastes and perception

Passive listening would be an "adequate" way to listen (in Stockfelt's sense) to which of the following?

Muzak

Traditionally melody, harmony, and rhythm have been seen as the most important 'musical elements'. But, they are not the only ones, and some genres prioritize different elements altogether. Which is a more complete list of additional musical elements?

timbre, form, dynamics, texture, repetition, space (reverb)

The speech-to-song effect demonstrates the importance of _______ to musical perception

repetition

Which best describes "sampling"?

It is a technique that practitioners see being used in different ways that are more or less creative

The amount of reverberation indicates that this audio would be from a space like

Hagia Sophia

Hip-hop can be seen as a modern outgrowth of far older African-American oral practices, some of which have been traced back as early as the 1850s.

True

This audio is an example of

participatory performance

A common feature of such music that can be heard in this example is

not prioritizing playing in tune

A central goal of New York DJs in the 1970s was to

keep the crowd energized and engaged

Audio example: Which TWO of the following people we've discussed would likely not consider this audio example to be "music".

Josquin, Mozart

Which ONE of the following people we've discussed would be most likely to consider this audio example to be "music".

Brian Eno

Which of the following was a pioneering artist in the above art form?

Pierre Schaeffer

Listen to this audio sample. What musical element takes center stage? (Refer to reading that featured this recording)

Timbre (i.e. overtones)

What region is this music from?

Rural Russia (Tuva)

This is an example of what kind of music writing?

Prescriptive music writing

Listen to Song A and Song B. Based on what we've looked at in class, the owner's of Song B might have what kind of legal case against Song A?

Copyright infringement

Name an early hip hop DJ we discussed in class who generously taught others how to use the turntable not just as a playback device, but as a musical instrument, defining turntable techniques such as scratching, phasing, and a headphone cue mix to synchronize beat patterns. (Write their DJ name, not born name, and check spelling).

Grandmaster Flash

The reverb we get from sound waves bouncing off of reflective surfaces is so important to our moment-by-moment orientation reflex, that many people claim to experience dizziness, nausea, and anxiety when they

sit silently in an anechoic chamber

For cognitive psychologist David Huron - whose ITPRA theory we looked at in class - pleasure from music is basically the result of

anticipation, which frames the physiological rewards (such as dopamine) of prediction, tension, reaction

At what point in life are we able to perceive sound properties that will eventually be foundational for music, such as pitch contour, timing of phonemes, change in loudness, and pitch level?

By 25 weeks in the womb

Participant-observation - which includes both observing and participating in an event - is an important part of

ethnographic research

Music in religious communities tends to be more participational than presentational.

True

Musical performance can form ______ communities like the Celtic music scene in Boston, as well as _______ communities like in the fight against coronavirus

local; global

An online format that has proven capable of creating the experience of being together at a musical performance is

video game concerts

An ethnographer at a musical performance would make it a priority to

notice all aspects of the event, as well as their personal reactions

In nonfiction films such as nature documentaries, we saw that music is

used much as it is in fiction films, guiding viewers' emotional reaction

The typical, traditional sound of Hollywood films is

a symphony orchestra

Wanda Bryant:

contributed to Avatar by providing music examples from other cultures that would sound unfamiliar to average American listeners

The voice, flute, and drums in this audio are examples of

timbral exoticism

This audio features

Baaba Maal singing, talking drums, and symphony orchestra

This audio features

talking drums and orchestral brass fanfare

Musicians who were important to making Black Panther include

Ludwig Görannson and Baaba Maal

Snowball the cockatoo showed that

entrainment is not a uniquely human capacity

Most everyone can tap their foot to a musical beat, which is an example of

implicit musical knowledge

The musical video to Daft Punk's "Around the World" makes visible

different levels of meter's hierarchical organization

Duple meter and triple meter are terms that identify

patterns of strong and weak beats

Playing a video game and playing a musical instrument

share aspects of rhythm, skilled performance, and immersive engagement

The song "Go Down, Moses" is an example of

an early American protest song

The interviews discussed in the reading by Tia DeNora show that

people commonly DJ for themselves, selecting the music they need to adapt themselves to the situation.

There is widespread evidence that listening to sad music

is pleasurable and can make you feel better.

When it comes to defining "emotion" there is no scientific consensus. In psychology, emotions are categorized along two axes:

arousal/valence

A musical feature that is good for focus music (such as music to study to), according to scientists at brain.fm, is

constant sounds.