Mark Spicer’s “soul dominant” (2004, 2017) poses challenges to harmonic theories of popular music, as evidenced by the diverse array of chord symbols applied to the chord. Throughout the McGill Billboard Corpus transcriptions (Burgoyne 2011), various transpositions of five chord symbols identify—arguably—the same chord: “Fmaj/9,” “Gsus4(b7,9),” “G11,” “Dmin7/11,” and “Fmaj6/9.” Subtler differences arise in theoretical explanations of the chord. Tagg (2014) describes the chord as a “quartal harmony” and appends “11” to both Roman numerals and letter names of the chord’s bass. De Clercq (2019) classifies the chord as a “hybrid chord” (e.g., F/G) and appends “9sus4” to the Roman numeral of the chord’s bass. Temperley (2018) asserts that “V11 nearly always moves to I,” although data from a corpus study show that only a slight majority (54%) of V11 chords move to a chord with scale-degree 1 in the bass.

This paper tests and compares some prediction models designed to improve categorical outcome measures regarding whether a chord of the “soul dominant” quality will resolve to “tonic” (if only locally). I created a dataset (n = 2033) of eleventh chords across 153 songs in the McGill Billboard Corpus transcriptions, classifying the chords by their bass scale degree within the tonal context given by the transcription. For each chord, I recorded the root and bass of the previous and following chords, and, where possible, the beat-class (Cohn 1992) of the chord’s onset and offset within four-measure units of quadruple meter. This paper finds that eleventh chords approached by bass motion of a perfect fourth or perfect fifth are more than twice as likely to be followed by bass motion of a descending perfect fifth than eleventh chords approached by bass motion of any other interval (including perfect unisons). This paper also finds that eleventh chords with scale-degree 5 in the bass and a chord offset not on a weak beat are more than five times as likely to be followed by bass motion of a descending perfect fifth than eleventh chords that do not meet both of those criteria.

This study uses statistical analysis of chord data from the Sacred Harp 1991 Edition tunebook to confirm the historical narrative that scholars use to explain the book's stylistic differences. This stylistic journey can be distilled to an interplay between two distinct harmonic languages: functional tonality and dispersed harmony. Using metrics of chord completion, prevalence of IV chords versus ii chords, and voice distribution, a single-factor ANOVA with a Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test generated pairwise comparisons among nine Sacred Harp subgenres. The results suggest trends that match the historical narrative (p ≤ 0.005). Songs from Lowell Mason's "Better Music Movement" have a far greater proportion of complete I and V chords than any other subgenre. All other subgenres to varying degrees display features of dispersed harmony. The 18th-century British tradition from which the First New England School developed already shows elements of dispersed harmony, especially in the use of tonic triads with no third. The First New England School in America, however, clearly made a more intentional break with tradition by amplifying these harmonic differences. The early-19th-century frontier tunebooks simplified the compositional style, emphasizing the homophonic psalm-tune and folk-hymn styles and preferring pentatonic melodies. With the rise of Gospel Music within the shape-note singing tradition around the turn of the 20th century, even the Sacred Harp moved in the direction of conventional tonality, adding alto parts to its three-part songs, and preferring a more diatonic harmonic language. The Gospel sound had the largest imprint on the 1936 and 1960 Sacred Harp revisions, with composers contributing songs to the Sacred Harp containing clear Gospel-Music elements like secondary dominants and traditional I-IV-V-I cadence patterns. The 1991 revision represents a partial turning away from the more modern sounds of the earlier-20th-century Sacred Harp revisions.

Analyses which examine larger collections primarily emphasize pitch content. For example, Temperley (2011) analyzes scalar shifts through the circle of fifths. Recent analyses have, similarly, studied macroharmony, or the “total collection of notes heard over moderate spans of musical time” (Tymoczko 2010). Chiu (2021) and Harding (2021) use the discrete Fourier transform to analyze macroharmonic qualities, and Harrison (2018) suggests that particular macroharmonies convey tonal functions. Rather than focusing on the structural content of large collections, this paper proposes a method for analyzing them based purely on context and probability, drawing from natural language processing (NLP)—the intersection between linguistics and computer science. This paper 1) introduces its methodology for creating macroharmonic embeddings, 2) shows that embeddings capture stylistic nuance, and 3) uses embeddings to analyze Lili Boulanger’s “Parfois, je suis triste.”

Adrienne Fried Block’s (1998, 154–156) brief analysis of Amy Beach’s song “When Soul is Joined to Soul” (1905) argues that Beach uses distant harmonies to highlight the third line of each stanza, mapping the physical distance requested by lines such as “now leave a little space” onto tonal distance. This paper uses transformational theory to explore these separations in terms of voice-leading parsimony, locating parsimonious proximity within the diatonic distances identified by Block. Hearing the song’s distancing gestures as simultaneously expressing another kind of proximity allows for a rich new interpretation of the text: Beach’s song describes not separation, but rather a choreographed emotional dance of lovers circling around one another: The singer’s protestations are met by a musical “tether,” in the form of the common tone Gb/F#, representing the lover’s continued support. This interpretation of the first two verses is finally reinforced in the third, when the singer weaves earlier images together into affirmation and acceptance against the backdrop of an even more detailed tapestry of common tones. Viewed from this perspective, “When Soul is Joined to Soul” is not a simple case of text painting, but rather a sequence of pursuits and deferrals, as two different kinds of musical proximity exchange with one another. Learning to hear Beach’s art songs from diatonic and pantriadic perspectives simultaneously sheds new light upon this large and still under-studied repertoire, demonstrating how Beach’s chromaticism is both expressive and rigorously ordered.

Recent scholarship in mathematical representations of music has been moving away from the restrictions of transformations to work towards a universal definition of chordal and collection-based relationships. This work has led to the creation of generalized voice-leading spaces (Callender, Quinn, and Tymoczko 2008) and geometric representations (Tymoczko 2011) of chords. Several mathematical approaches to the measurement of generalized voice-leading spaces have been explored, with the most important to this paper being distance functions (Tymoczko 2009; Hook 2023). Furthermore, work into the application of transformational ideas onto abstract structures (Rings 2011) has led to the amalgamation of these two ideas. I propose to expand this field. By calculating distances between groups of chords to form models of distance, and then using those distances to generate an abstract mapping of any music, we can model function onto distances in voice-leading spaces. For all the analysis in this paper, calculations are performed on metrically equal voice leading space. This voice-leading space conserves octave equivalence and permutational equivalence to simplify the orchestral writing into identifiable chords. The advantage of using a voice-leading space is the ability to model all chords, not only major/minor triads as seen before with Neo-Riemannian operations. Euclidian distance is used for analysis which calculates the distance between two chords in the space the sum of the displacement between all voices. Aurally, larger distances between chords equate to higher chordal difference. By applying this abstraction onto pieces of music, we make a connection between musical function and chordal distance on metrically equal voice-leading spaces.

Functional orchestration typically refers to the role of a voice within the texture of an ensemble (e.g., foreground vs. background, melody vs. harmony, creating a figuration or surface texture, etc.). However, it can be easily extended into the harmonic and contrapuntal realms. As Daniel Harrison explains in Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music (1994), we may understand harmonic function to be primarily expressed by specific voice leading motions between functional scale degrees associated with the tonic, subdominant, and dominant triads (e.g., 7 – 1 is characteristic dominant-to-tonic functional motion). In orchestral contexts, voices are often doubled in octaves or at the unison. It follows, then, that certain functional voice leading progressions may be emphasized over others by orchestrational techniques. This paper formalizes the relationship between functional voice leading and timbre by presenting a new approach to harmonic functional analysis that is informed by orchestration. Focusing primarily on orchestral works by Sibelius and Prokofiev, I combine Harrison’s (1994) theory of harmonic function and Kevin Swinden’s (2005) extension of it with both modern and historical approaches to orchestration and its analysis to show how the function(s) of complex harmonies are elucidated and/or nuanced by their orchestration.

In addition to filling the gap in research that addresses the intersections between harmonic function and orchestration, this new approach has two primary outcomes. The first is analytical: as Swinden (2005: 253) points out, assigning a single function to a complex sonority may lead to an over-generalized reading of the harmony in context. Consequently, analyzing the orchestration of complex sonorities highlights the multifaceted functional nature of such harmonies. The second outcome is pedagogical: this approach provides a new and accessible way to incorporate timbre and orchestration into the classroom—as a direct extension of chord voicing—and requires students to scrutinize the role of each scale degree in a harmonic progression. This presentation will thus demonstrate the analytical and pedagogical advantages of considering orchestration as an elucidating element of harmonic function.

The descending tetrachord pattern can be found in multiple musical repertoires, yet its tonal function may differ depending on the stylistic context through which it is understood. Both the lament bass of Classical practice (Shea 2019, Caplin 2014) and walking schema of pop-rock (Doll 2017) suggest diatonic orientation in its stepwise descent from a minor tonic to a major dominant chord (i.e., i-bVII-bVI-V), but this approach conflicts with practitioner-centered theories of flamenco music (Hurtado Torres 2009, Granados 2004). The Andalusian cadence uses the same pattern but set within a flamenco-Phrygian modality that presents the final harmony as the unambiguous tonic (i.e., iv-bIII-bII-I). Other Ibero-American musics deploy similar descents where the progression’s first and last chords are equally weighted (Manuel 2002), paralleling recent research on tonal ambiguity and double-tonic complexes in popular music (Nobile 2020, Richards 2017). These different orientations create a fascinating dilemma for progressive flamenco artists, whose modernization efforts have brought the vernacular art form into dialogue with other global genres (Barrera Ramiréz 2018, Gerhardt 2002)—namely, how should the Andalusian cadence be understood when deployed in more international-reaching contexts? This question is perhaps most relevant to the Spanish flamenco-pop singer Rosalía, whose music freely crosses boundaries of genre (Manuel 2021, Alvarez-Cueva 2021).

In this paper, I present the Andalusian cadence as a schema prototype (Zambrano and Bauer 2023, Byros 2012, Gjerdingen 2007) and examine its use in flamenco-fusion music. Focusing on exemplars from Rosalía’s discography, I argue that her identity as an adaptable, genre-fluid artist enables her to deploy this flamenco progression through multiple tonal orientations. I theorize five categories of strategic types that map onto double-tonic or flamenco-Phrygian modes of listening. These types account for more than just a bass line and harmonic support—they incorporate melodic voice-leading, hypermetric stress, textural change, and various collostructions into an understanding of the schema’s function. Furthermore, I claim that the deployment of these strategies is never purely structural, which necessitates an understanding of each exemplar’s expressive motivations.

Jazz guitarist, pharmacist, and “super theoretician” Ted Dunbar (1937–1998) wrote four method books between 1975–1979. The first installment, A System of Tonal Convergence for Improvisors, Composers, and Arrangers (1975), was written as an extension of George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (1953). In this presentation, I provide a general overview of Dunbar’s treatise and discuss how Dunbar expanded Russell’s theory in two ways.

The first involves his deployment of Russell’s chordmode substitutions within cadences, or what Dunbar calls “convergent zones.” Important to convergent zones is the resolution of the “mysterious tritone interval” in each of his scales. In addition to analyzing these scales, I will show that Dunbar’s focus on the tritone stems from his close reading of Paul Hindemith’s Craft of Musical Composition (1937 [1945]), which uses the tritone as its primary organizing principle in his theory of harmonic fluctuations. Dunbar’s convergent scales are summarized in his “circle of gravities” that contains twenty-four tritone-containing scales in motion toward the tonic. As a result, Dunbar’s treatise is a theoretical prototype of the “tritone substitution,” a term not yet labeled nor codified at the time of its publication.

The second expansion involves Dunbar’s faithful application of Russian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff’s teachings, known as The Fourth Way, into his own System. Russell’s connection to Gurdjieff’s methods has been well documented by the likes of Hannaford (2021), Bivins (2015), Monson (2007), and others. However, Dunbar draws on some different aspects of Gurdjieff’s philosophy—specifically the “Law of Octaves” which is depicted similarly to a neo-Platonic diatonic scale on a monochord. Like other occult representations of the monochord, each pitch (given solfege labels in Gurdjieff’s system) represents both a Pythagorean ratio, and a stage in the process of spiritual awakening. Traversing from the lowest vibration to highest is equal to physical matter becoming spiritual. Gurdjieff’s esoteric teachings aim to awaken the soul for the purposes of inner development.

Dunbar believed that the jazz soloist could unlock the full potential of their own individual voice through music’s sympathetic resonances. The chromatic freedom allotted by the tritone substitution opened the pathway to this spiritual system.

Beethoven’s late style, as noted by Adorno, is characterized by dissociation and fragmentation. This view is overly simplistic in its one-dimensional approach (Swinkin 2013), while lyricism is often neglected despite its frequent presence in Beethoven’s late works (Kerman et al., 1983).

While Cooper (2014) and Fontanelli (2019) have examined the genesis of the theme and multi-movement planning of Op. 127/II, this study fills a gap by adopting a multi-parametrical approach to lyricism, continuity, and contrast. It examines Beethoven's compositional approaches to hypermeter, rhythm, texture, register and part-writing strategy. A chronological analysis of score sketches, including the lesser-known A 51 sketches, illuminates the rich and multifaceted qualities of Beethoven’s late style.

In this case study, I argue that hypermeter serves as a stable current running through the inherent contrasts in meter, rhythm, tonality, and tempo. The hypermetrical structure, combined with imitative part-writing strategy, shifting textural density, rhythmic manipulation, and registral displacement, reveals Beethoven's aim to achieve lyricism, continuity, and contrast across the variations.

This movement encompasses a theme, four variations, a transition, the concluding variation, and a coda. The A 51 sketches (17r-18v) illustrate the intriguing details of variations 1 and 4 together. This preliminary sketch highlights:

• The meticulous part-writing strategy shaping hypermeter through the imitation between outer voices.
• The sophisticated transformation of the theme in later sketches of var. 1, and richness in texture and register.
• Evolving lyricism through rhythmic, registral and part-writing transformations.

The second variation is particularly exciting. The hypermetrical framework showcases alternating leadership between upper voices, enhancing lyricism and continuity through lively rhythmic and melodic exchanges. The creative process reveals Beethoven's aesthetic: initially, the second violin leads, but leadership gradually becomes shared, creating a balanced interplay, as seen in the sketches. Intricate texture and rhythmic richness amplify the sense of lyricism, culminating in a more expressive conclusion.

Ultimately, this study demonstrates how diverse parameters, such as hypermeter, texture, register and rhythm, embody distinct yet interconnected features within Beethoven's late style, including lyricism, continuity, and contrast. Adopting a multi-parametrical approach deepens our understanding of the multifaceted nature of Beethoven's late style, enriching a burgeoning field of Beethoven scholarship.

Despite jazz’s unique ability to engage with and assimilate diverse influences from across the world, it has largely resisted adopting aspects of atonal or twelve-tone music, especially in an improvised context. However, in recent years, some jazz improvisers have begun to develop a post-tonal approach to improvisation using Tone-Clock Theory (TCT), a harmonic system and chromatic “map” that is free of the restrictions typically associated with serial or twelve-tone music. Codified in 1982 by Dutch composer Peter Schat and later vastly expanded by New Zealand composer Jenny McLeod, TCT identifies twelve “chromatic tonalities” derived from the twelve possible atonal triads (Allen Forte’s trichordal set classes), which are labelled as “Hours” and organized around a circular clock face. Using a transpositional operation called ‘steering,’ these triadic sets can then be expanded to assemble a non-repeating twelve-tone harmonic field based on its interval-class, each with its own distinct ‘harmonic flavour.’

The inherent freedom of TCT has since attracted the attention of jazz improvisers, most notably American saxophonist John O’Gallagher, who has been instrumental in developing this approach and disseminating it through his book Twelve Tone Improvisations: A Method for Using Tone Rows in Jazz (Advance Music, 2013). O’Gallagher has also identified a similar trichord-based approach in the late work of John and Alice Coltrane on the recording Stellar Regions (1967), providing a direct link to jazz history. In my poster session, I will give a brief explanation of the foundational principles of TCT and, drawing from both O’Gallagher’s work and my own experience as a Tone-Clock improviser and composer, I will demonstrate some basic methods for practicing Tone-Clock techniques and applying them creatively to both improvisation and composition, showing how twelve-tone and atonal concepts can be used freely and musically in contemporary jazz.

Although vocal timbre has received significant analytical attention in recent years, including the development of systematic approaches to analysis by Heidemann (2016) and Malawey (2020) and hermeneutic interpretations of vocal timbre by Wallmark (2014) and Blake (2012), the interaction between vocal timbre and style has not been explored in the current literature. In this paper, I will demonstrate how vocal timbre can be used to understand an artist’s style, as well as track and anticipate future developments in style and changes in genre using an analytical methodology based primarily on Heidemann’s system of embodied analysis, supplemented by Malawey’s descriptive methodology. Two songs from Fall Out Boy’s first four studio albums and three songs from Patrick Stump’s solo album will be selected and separated into two categories, representative and characteristic, the former being songs that represent the overall sound of an album, the latter being songs with unique stylistic and timbral elements. Through the analysis of these selected songs, I will show Stump’s vocal transition from a stereotypical pop-punk singer to a soul-style vocalist. Finally, I will discuss the racial dynamic of Stump, a white man, adopting the musical and vocal styles of soul and funk, which are primarily black genres.

The relationship between the visual components of a film and the film score has often been described as one of music being subservient to picture, for example Gorbman’s concept of “inaudibility” (Gorbman 1987 and Buhler 2019). But what about situations in which music is primary, such as listening to a film’s or series’ soundtrack album after having watched the film or series? My paper will consider how remembering the image in the Netflix TV series Squid Game after having watched the film shapes the way one hears the soundtrack. In this paper, I argue that remembering the film can function as a visual sign (together with music) to invoke meanings in soundtracks.

I identify topics in both the quoted music and the original soundtracks by applying Raymond Monelle’s concepts of indexical and iconic topics (2006). Through these concepts, I demonstrate that topics in Squid Game evoke not only certain emotions but also make use of specific cultural aspects. The topics underlying the quoted music are interpreted differently from their original eighteenth-century conventions, as the musical meanings communicated through the clips in Squid Game have to do with specific elements of Korean culture. For example, the Haydn Trumpet Concerto played through a loudspeaker calls on the knowledge of a specific Korean game show, Jang-hak Quiz, to associate the music with the topic of competition. In similar ways, topics of childhood, identity, and threat are communicated through the soundtrack and memory of images. Through my investigation, I hope to more clearly describe the process of a listener comprehending a film’s soundtrack after having seen the film. This study will add a previously unexplored perspective to the discourse on the relationship between sound and image in film.

What would happen if students could consciously and strategically select in advance which assignments they want to complete and know with confidence the resultant final grade they will earn? According to in-the-trenches research, course designs that place power and responsibility in the hands of students contribute to more equitable approaches to education (Inoue 2019), result in higher levels of engagement (Mittell 2016), permit better feedback on assessments (Danielewicz and Elbow 2009), and decrease stress over grades and learning (Nilson 2016). The class design in this presentation features a first-year theory case study which provides students with opportunity for deeper learning, greater agency, and better intrinsic motivation via a “choose your own adventure” course design.

Throughout the semester students have several common baseline assignments to help ensure that minimal requirements are met, and they will select their remaining assignments from a library of options according to their needs and interests. All assignments are graded as satisfactory/unsatisfactory (with opportunity for revision and resubmission), which allows students a safe space to fail, learn, and try again. High-quality work is required to complete any assignment in the course, thus placing value on quality over quantity; students who choose to work towards a lower grade will simply complete fewer assignments. This flexible course design is also paired with a content focus on large-scale musical design concepts which are then applied to a diverse range of musics, thereby increasing relevance and engagement.

Students have responded positively to these class structures, stating in anonymous evaluations that the “course structure … was intricate, wonderfully fair, and gave us the space to forge our own paths” and that it was “actually focused on learning rather than getting assignments in.” From an instructor standpoint, quality of student work and levels of student engagement improved dramatically compared to traditional course structures, without creating unmanageable instructor workload. Most importantly, based on the level of work in students’ final projects and the extra effort visible in assignments throughout the semester, this approach created a course that gives students deeper motivation for their work through increased autonomy and power over their own learning.

Current analyses of hip-hop vocals tend to focus on elements other than pitch and phrase. According to Adams 2020, “it is not possible for hip-hop music to create phrases in the way that tonal (or even post-tonal) music does.” However, the increasingly popular genre of melodic rap complicates this observation. Since melodic rappers engage distinct pitches in their verses, descriptions of phrase should engage pitch. Komaniecki 2021 suggests “pitch plays an important role in the structure and delivery of rap flows.” It refers to sung verses as those performed “on a pitch or set of pitches in accordance with the tonic from the track’s backing beat.” Duinker 2021 presents five segmentation rules for defining phrase in flow. This paper introduces a sixth segmentation rule—pitch patterns—built on Komaniecki’s analysis to show how the use of distinctly pitched motives contribute to an idiomatic sense of phrase in melodic rap verses. This new rule allows for examination of grouping and displacement non-alignments of flow and beat layer based on pitch.

Universities and colleges aspire to equip students for leadership in their professions, and music students need leadership skills to navigate increasingly entrepreneurial careers. However, heavy curricular demands may prevent music students from undertaking formal leadership training. I argue that music theory and aural skills courses can provide scaffolded leadership opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, and I outline several categories of activities to build students’ leadership skills. These activities harness the motivational power of self-determination theory as students embrace autonomy, pursue competence, and build a sense of belonging through peer learning and classroom leadership.

In this poster, I consider two questions: Which leadership competencies do music students need? And how can instructors help students acquire these competencies in the context of music theory and aural skills? I examine competencies addressed by the NASM Handbook and adopt Seemiller’s (2021) student leadership competencies, which provide faculty in disparate fields with a shared vocabulary for planning and assessment.

The active-learning approach I present here features brief class activities led by enrolled students of every achievement level. These activities serve the dual purpose of engaging students in disciplinary thinking and equipping them with transferable skills. Activity categories include explaining answers to homework exercises, teaching from provided resources, leading class activities, composing and performing new musical examples, participating in panel discussions, giving class presentations with related audience-engagement activities, and planning conference-style events and presenting scholarly work to audiences beyond the class. To illustrate, I share sample activities that I have designed and used successfully at several institutions.

Participating in leadership opportunities tailored to their levels of experience can increase students’ confidence in their ability to teach, lead ensembles, and communicate with classmates and future colleagues. Students often exhibit heightened focus and energy during leadership activities, and they describe leadership activities as “fun” and “empowering” in their verbal comments and course evaluations. Propelled by constructive peer pressure, students take responsibility for their learning as they hone their leadership skills in a supportive environment.

Many students today are highly engaged with styles of music that do not exist in notated form, creating a challenge for educators who want to help them see how this music is organized. Online resources such as Genius.com (which allows users to annotate song lyrics) and Hooktheory.com (which provides sophisticated tools for the analysis of harmony) have made it easier to study and interact with popular music. Another useful tool in the analysis of recorded music is Audio Timeliner, a free audio annotation program that can be used to create bubble diagrams representing musical form. Audio timelines can help students to visualize the formal organization of popular music (as well as other styles) without needing to understand musical notation.

This poster exhibit will outline some of the ways that Audio Timeliner may be used in the classroom for discussions, presentations, activities, and student projects. It will also demonstrate a new feature called Timeline Share, which is an online repository of audio timeline files that the larger community can draw on and contribute to. This resource will allow users to search for (and download) audio timelines in a variety of styles and genres. Two types of timelines are available: those featuring a completed analysis (for discussion and presentation), and partially-completed timeline templates to be filled in as a classroom activity or assigned as student projects. Students and teachers will also be able to upload their timelines to the repository to share with others.

Picture this: you are in an unfamiliar location, are presented with confusing notation, and are told you have a limited amount of time to understand what has been presented to you. You feel lost and don’t know where to start. Are you in an escape room or are you a young musician tasked with analyzing a piece of music? With over 3,000 locations in the United States, escape rooms are quickly becoming a popular way to spend a night out with friends. While they are certainly a fun experience (if you escape), they can also be an incredibly helpful and engaging teaching tool. The implementation of escape room activities in the classroom can improve teamwork, collaboration, communication, and problem-solving skills. Reflective of the world our students will enter, escape rooms allow teams to rely on each other, ask for help, and learn through trial and error. Traditional teachers and gamemasters in escape rooms have much in common: they oversee the design, the journey, and the possible results of their clients’ experiences. Just as teachers must structure their courses for optimal learning and reinforcement, gamemasters must create a room that sequences puzzles in a logical format and guides competitors to the various solutions. Music theory classrooms offer a unique scenario that allows for students and teachers to experience puzzles in multiple dimensions: physical and aural. Students not only are able to solve written music theory puzzles such as voice leading problems, harmonic analysis, error detection or phrase composition, but are able to use their ear training to dissect melodies and harmonies that they hear in the room. This poster not only provides data detailing the positive outcomes of implementing escape room games or puzzles in the classroom, but also acts as a resource for instructors. QR codes on the poster will guide instructors to links to download a complete escape room package, templates to insert their own course content, and guides on how to sequence their games for seamless experiences.

Juslin, et al. (2010) posit an affective entrainment hypothesis, linking entrainment processes and emotion induction via music. Other research extends this, observing the “empowering” effect (Leman, et al. 2017) and positive affect (Trost, et al. 2017) of isochronous entrainment. Non-isochronous and irregular meters have also inspired music theorists to develop potential psychological accounts of metric processing, sometimes with projected phenomenological effects (Horlacher 1995, 2001; London 2004; Mirka 2009; Sullivan 2023). Processual approaches to metric irregularity posit insightful explanations about how listeners might psychologically process such passages. But what are the affective or motional ramifications of such processing?

In the present project, I used Moustakas’s (1994) phenomenology methodology to investigate lived experience of metrically irregular moments in popular music, through 9 semi-structured interviews. Participants listened to 3 excerpts 4 times each, with guiding questions about affective responses, bodily engagement, and exploring additional ways to entrain. Excerpts included “The Ocean” by Led Zeppelin, “Go to Sleep” by Radiohead, and “Angel of Doubt” by The Punch Brothers.

Evidence extends, complicates, and refutes current theories. First, multiple participants invoked the metaphors of music as moving force and moving music (Johnson and Larson 2003), where their use of either metaphor correlated with their ability to entrain to the given passage. These findings suggest that entrainment may be a contributor to the types of metaphorical experiences listeners have. Second, some participants with similar metric interpretations reported inverse experiences of the metric irregularity. While it may be unsurprising that two listeners have unique experiences, such diversity is rarely accounted for in theoretical systems or their applications. Third, one participant, who heard multiple metric interpretations of “Go to Sleep” by Radiohead, preferred their “looser” experience of floating around the beats to their experience of isochronous entrainment, contradicting the “empowering effect of locking into the beat” (Leman, et al. 2017). Altogether, this study suggests that entrainment may affect felt metaphor, similar metric phenomena may produce diverse listening experiences, and entrainment may not necessarily be a positive experience. Findings from this study can inform music analysis, an epistemological shift from the inverse where music analysis postulates experiential implications.