How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to Play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart a genealogy of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book's diverse objects of inquiry—from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles—enter into analogical relations. Remapping the keyboard's topography by way of Mozart and Super Mario, who head an expansive cast of historical and virtual actors, Keys to Play invites readers to unlock ludic dimensions of music that are at once old and new.
Citation: Sweet, Bertha Florence. History of music. Senior thesis, Kansas State Agricultural College, 1907. ; Morse Department of Special Collections ; Introduction: Rome has almost all the credit for the early development of music, but according to actual history it seems that the Romans were a people of observance of and appreciation for arts, but the artists were all from foreign countries, who came to Rome to receive the praise of the hosts, and then made their homes there, practicing and teaching. The most ancient treatise on music is written in the Grecian language, and there had been no original work on the subject by the Romans till the time of Boethius. Another cause for Rome becoming the center of music is that of the spread of the Christian religion. The persecution of the Christians in their own countries caused many to flee from their mother land, and seek the lad of Rome, where they could worship in secrecy. With them they brought the memory of the songs of their native land, and by an intermingling of the various melodies of the different countries, a new type of music was created, but even this deteriorated, as there was no written music, and the so-called melodies were either changed or forgotten.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact that Baroque society had in the development of the early keyboard. While the main timeframe is Baroque, a few references are made to the late Medieval Period in determining the reason for the keyboard to more prominently emerge in the musical scene. As Baroque society develops and new genres are formed, different keyboard instruments serve vital roles unique to their construction. These new roles also affect the way music was written for the keyboard as well. Advantages and disadvantages of each instrument are discussed, providing an analysis of what would have been either accepted or rejected by Baroque culture. While music is the main focus, other fine arts are mentioned, including architecture, poetry, politics, and others. My research includes primary and secondary resources retrieved from databases provided by Cedarville University. By demonstrating the relationship between Baroque society and early keyboard development, roles and music, this will be a helpful source in furthering the pianist's understanding of the instrument he or she plays. It also serves pedagogical purposes in its analysis of context in helping a student interpret a piece written during this time period with these early keyboard instruments.
This dissertation examines modernist twentieth-century applications of the pipe organ and the carillon in the United States and in the Netherlands. These keyboard instruments, historically owned by religious or governmental entities, served an exceptionally diverse variety of political, technological, social, and urban planning functions. Their powerful simultaneous associations with historicism and innovation enabled those who built and played them to anchor the instruments' novel uses in the perceived authority of tradition, church, and state. This usage became particularly evident after World War II, when Philips Electronics and the engineers and musicians whose careers were shaped by the military-industrial complex and the Cold War used the organ and carillon to present alternative visions and performances of their research, knowledge, and services.The organ served as a vehicle for innovation for early electronic music and sound synthesis pioneers in three ways. First, it provided a model for an efficient user interface for new synthesizer technologies that found both musical and military communications applications. Second, the pipe organ became the first instrument to be electronically simulated on a commercially viable basis. As a result, the first federal legal proceedings to define the successful simulation of musical sound centered on the electronic organ. Electronic organs also helped shape a historicist "neo-baroque" movement that was, in part, both a reaction to and an outgrowth of their commercial success. Third, inventors in the field of electronics, particularly military electronics, turned to organ building to satisfy a desire to connect with historicist ideas about craft and tradition. They became leaders of the Organ Reform Movement after World War II, dedicated to reviving aspects of Baroque organ building. I build on Richard Taruskin's critique of "historically informed performance" as itself a form of modernism in order to elucidate previously overlooked relationships between Reform organ building, organ recording artists, the military-industrial complex, and cold war politics.The carillon served as a vehicle for international exchange after World War II, facilitating the sharing of soundscape and landscape design ideas between America and the Netherlands. In the 1950s, the people of the Netherlands donated a carillon to the United States as a sounding symbol of political harmony between the two allies. However, the resulting political squabbles and the disharmony and decay of its bells tolled the ineffectiveness of this instrument of diplomacy. In the following decade, Philips Electronics took inspiration from suburban American corporate research parks to construct a techno-cultural complex in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. This International Style park used the Dutch carillon's sonic and visual symbolism to re-center the perceived core of Eindhoven and of civic authority onto Philips' campus.An important part of the broader history of postwar expansion and the military-industrial complex are the science-fiction, mystery, and filmic spinoffs and sonic imaginaries associated with these reinvented carillons and organs, and the way such narratives cross the boundaries between high art and popular culture. The institutions and donors that built carillons often justified them with utopian rhetoric about creating community, public music, and elevating general musical taste. However, a vein of dystopian fiction about bells in literature, opera, film, and television counterbalanced that discourse. The realm of fiction ties together this dissertation's overarching themes of historical revival, technological innovation, modernism, and military electronics research.
Citation: Biddison, Clare. The history of music. Senior thesis, Kansas State Agricultural College, 1907. ; Morse Department of Special Collections ; Introduction: Fortunately history has something to record beside bloodshed and wrong. It is well that the song of the morning stars and the heavenly chant of "Peace on earth and good will to men", have been preserved as well as the stories of assassination, adultery, and massacre, and if there is reason why we should burrow into the past to learn the lessons of government, which is the method by which "One man ruleth over another unto his own hurt," so is there reason why we should delve into the past and consider the origin and progress of that divine art which has soothed the savage breast and has inspired man to noble deeds, comforted humanity in the depths of sorrow, lightened the laborer's toil and drawn man most powerfully heavenward. The origin of music is older than the "Art preservative". Whether ape-like men imitated with the voice the song of the birds, the roar of the thunder, the dripping of the waters, the breaxing of the waves and the whistling of the winds through the forest,or whether a God-born Adam waking with the dawn broke forth in irresistable praise of the Creator is perhaps debatable, but as far back as go any of the ancient writings, whether on parchment or on the rocks, there are evidences that man found beauty in sound as well as in sight and that the most ancient peoples voiced the glories of their histories, that the most ancient lovers sang of their loved ones, and that even savage mothers crooned the folk-lore.to their babes.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact that Baroque society had in the development of the early keyboard. While the main timeframe is Baroque, a few references are made to the late Medieval Period in determining the reason for the keyboard to more prominently emerge in the musical scene. As Baroque society develops and new genres are formed, different keyboard instruments serve vital roles unique to their construction. These new roles also affect the way music was written for the keyboard as well. Advantages and disadvantages of each instrument are discussed, providing an analysis of what would have been either accepted or rejected by Baroque culture. While music is the main focus, other fine arts are mentioned, including architecture, poetry, politics, and others. My research includes primary and secondary resources retrieved from databases provided by Cedarville University. By demonstrating the relationship between Baroque society and early keyboard development, roles and music, this will be a helpful source in furthering the pianist's understanding of the instrument he or she plays. It also serves pedagogical purposes in its analysis of context in helping a student interpret a piece written during this time period with these early keyboard instruments.
The standard typewriter keyboard serves as a model for keyboards of teletypewriters, desk calculators, consoles, computer keysets, cash registers, etc. This man-machine interface should be designed to allow high-frequency, error-free operation with the least possible strain on the operator. This paper discusses several feasible biomechanical improvements of the keyboard. Some experimental findings are described which support the following design concepts: (1) the keys should be arranged in a "hand-configured" grouping to simplify the motion patterns of the fingers; (2) the keyboard sections allotted to each hand should be physically separated to facilitate the positioning of the fingers; and (3) the keyboard sections allotted to each hand should be declined laterally to reduce postural muscular strain of the operator.
Describes a simple way to familiarize blind students with the layout of a typewriter keyboard: Brailled letters of the alphabet were Thermoformed and glued to ¾ "-square ceramic tiles that had a Velcro backing. The tiles could be in turn positioned along strips of Velcro to simulate the position of typewriter keys. Once students had gained familiarity with this layout, their knowledge was tested by having them detect which tiles were missing or incorrectly positioned.
This study examines the relationship between forearm EMGs and keyboard reaction forces in 10 people during keyboard tasks performed at a comfortable speed. A linear fit of EMG force data for each person and finger was calculated during static fingertip loading. An average r2 of .71 was observed for forces below 50% of the maximal voluntary contraction (MVC). These regressions were used to characterize EMG data in force units during the typing task. Averaged peak reaction forces measured during typing ranged from 3.33 N (thumb) to 1.84 N (little finger), with an overall average of 2.54 N, which represents about 10% MVC and 5.4 times the key switch make force (0.47 N). Individual peak or mean finger forces obtained from EMG were greater (1.2 to 3.2 times) than force measurements; hence the range of r2 for EMG force was .10 to .46. A closer correspondence between EMG and peak force was obtained using EMG averaged across all fingers. For 5 of the participants the force computed from EMG was within ±20% of the reaction force. For the other 5 participants forces were overestimated. For 9 participants the difference between EMG estimated force and the reaction force was less than 13% MVC. It is suggested that the difference between EMG and finger force partly results from the amount of muscle load not captured by the measured applied force.
