Practical piano treatises (C.P.E. Bach, 1753/1762; Clementi, 1802; Czerny, 1851) from the 18^th and 19^th centuries typically illustrate just one version of the minor scale: melodic. And yet, popular programs such as ABRSM require students to perform both harmonic and melodic minor in the 650,000+ exams administered in 93+ countries each year. Practicing harmonic minor is at odds with the music-theoretical notion that it is a collection that comprises minor-mode Roman numerals, and is not something that happens often melodically within the repertoire (Piston, 1959, p.11). For example, Clendinning and Marvin (2021, p.98) write that in minor, “rising lines are usually associated with the raised forms of ^6 and ^7."

This project illustrates the ways that minor scales were described in practical manuals and composition treatises of the past 300+ years, and ultimately posits that Hanon’s piano manual (1873) was the first to include harmonic minor alongside melodic for daily practice. We then question whether the elevation of harmonic minor to scale practice by Hanon is substantiated in the repertoire. To date, no empirical study has investigated the prevalence of minor scales in Western Classical music, despite claims surrounding their frequency by influential music theory texts. In response, we leveraged the Yale-Classical-Archives-Corpus (White & Quinn, 2016) to extract the following scale-degree patterns occurring contiguously in the highest voice within minor-mode excerpts: ↓6-↓7-1, ↓6-↑7-1, ↑6-↑7-1, and ↑6-↓7-1, and these patterns in reverse. A total of 18,939 approaches to/from ^1 were identified. We quantified the frequency of minor-scale excerpts in the literature and determined whether this distribution differs across musical eras and/or composers, finding that when in a minor key and approaching ^1 stepwise from below, composers use melodic minor 58% of the time, followed by natural, dorian, then harmonic. We observed a significant decrease in the use of melodic minor across the 300 years of compositions within the corpus; and yet it is natural minor, not harmonic, that increases in usage. This research provides the first systematic study of minor-mode scale frequency in Western Classical repertoire and combines data-driven and musicological approaches to understanding scale pedagogy across centuries.

This poster presentation showcases the results of two semesters of a modified music theory curriculum that uses a modular course organization and applies a standards-based grading system adapted from (Johnson, 2015). Following several models, the updated music theory curriculum utilizes a one- or two-semester foundation sequence (depending on results of a placement exam) before allowing students to choose among style-specific analysis courses. This poster summarizes tools, strategies, and challenges across three courses, offered during either the Fall 2023 or Spring 2024 semesters: “Analysis of Baroque and Classical Music,” “Analysis of Romantic Era Music,” and “Analysis of Music after 1900.”

Rather than traditional textbooks, the curriculum relies on inexpensive and open-source materials. These courses also actively work to include diverse examples from their respective eras. This poster details a variety of teaching tools, including videos, open-source textbooks, and music notation software used in the courses. I also list various materials that were considered but not incorporated into the curriculum.

Strategies employed in this curriculum revision include an elimination of graded homework, in-class time devoted to skill building, and a focus on growth throughout the semester. Instead of high-stakes exams, these courses use proficiencies targeted at specific skills. Students were allowed to attempt each proficiency up to three times, with the highest grade counting toward the course average. Learning objectives for each course are grouped into three categories: ear training, analysis, and composition.

Challenges highlighted on this poster include time constraints, as all courses incorporated both analysis and ear training, lack of external incentives (i.e. no graded homework), and prerequisite knowledge gaps due to the modular approach. As this curriculum update is a working model, prospective changes for the 2024-2025 academic year are included, and feedback from viewers is encouraged.

This poster presents two lesson plans for written theory that engage students in guided active listening without reference to musical notation. In the first lesson, “What do you hear?” (WDYH), students listen to a variety of pieces and identify musical components of interest that they hear. Inspired by a sentence in Roig-Francolí 2020, WDYH draws on students’ pre-existing (albeit likely unarticulated) knowledge and helps them start to develop a music-theoretical vocabulary. Importantly, all the compositions in the WDYH lesson lack any harmonic progression, forcing students to attend to elements that often suffer neglect in theory curricula, including rhythm, melodic construction, timbre, instrumentation, dynamics, and register. The examples are carefully chosen to represent a diversity of musical creators and styles. For homework, students post a paragraph to a class blog, choosing two of the compositions and comparing the use of one musical element. This focused but low-stakes writing (Rogers 2018) for a quasi-public audience gives students a chance to express their thoughts in prose; even students weak in fundamentals can display excellent insights into the music.

The Structural Harmony Listening Worksheet (SHLW) pivots to harmony. The SHLW introduces the centrality of tonic and dominant in common-practice and related styles through a variant of harmonic singing (Gonzales 2020). Students listen to a piece while following a lyric chart and physically singing the tonic or dominant triad as directed. (An alternative is offered for students unable to sing the chords.) The first example deliberately includes some chromaticism, thereby demonstrating to students their own ability to hear the structural tonic and dominant even in a more complicated context. By actively examining the interaction of tonic and dominant with lyrics, melody, and hypermeter, students discover that these harmonies occupy the most important positions in each phrase. To follow up, instructors can use the same music to preview conclusive and inconclusive cadences and the T-P-D-T phrase model.

In 2023, Florida Senate Bill 266 curtailed programs that include the teaching of “critical race theory, gender studies, or intersectionality or any derivative major of these belief systems, that is, any major that engenders beliefs in those concepts...” (Florida SB266, lines 98-101.) The same bill also demanded that all state universities in Florida include “post-tenure review,” a Sword of Damocles that hangs over tenured faculty members’ heads should they dare to broach censored topics. (Untenured faculty are already under threat.) The situation in K–12 public schools is even worse. House Bill 4, the so-called “don’t say gay” bill limits not only programs but even raising queerness as a topic in class.

These bills limit academic freedom, but they do so in ways that are vague, difficult to interpret, and (thankfully) difficult to litigate. The power of these laws lies in their ability to frighten teachers into censoring themselves in an effort limit their own culpability and protect their jobs. Students, however, are the ones who will suffer an impoverished education if their teachers cannot or will not foster discussions of a wide range of classroom topics.

Interestingly, while these new laws apparently limit the actions of and the curricula designed by teachers, faculty, and administrators, no one has tried to limit our students’ constitutionally protected rights to free speech. So how can we get students to take the lead?

This poster presents a variety of music—both vocal and purely instrumental—that raises historical political issues, including labor struggles, queer rights, antisemitism, racism, suffrage, and childbirth. In addition to a variety of analytical prompts related to these works, I include a simple short essay question: “what is the current relevance of this composition?” This question does not stake an agenda; it invites comparison of music that portrays historical moments to our present time. And it fosters student discussions of topics that teachers themselves might not be permitted to raise directly. I hope to help teachers cultivate open exchanges of ideas without imperiling their jobs.

In his pioneering work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paolo Freire distinguishes between “anti-dialogical” and “dialogical” pedagogy. In dialogical pedagogy, students and teachers work cooperatively to form new knowledge. Anti-dialogical pedagogies view students as empty vessels to be filled with information. Many of the traditional venues of public music theory (such as program notes, pre-concert lectures, etc.)—even if well intentioned—are potentially anti-dialogical because they do not provide an opportunity for the audience to ask questions.

One approach to dialogical, community-engaged public music theory is songwriting. This poster focuses on a songwriting class I taught at a senior citizen center. In week one, the students learned about the role repetition plays in musical forms, specifically, the twelve-bar blues. In week two, I introduced the concept of SRDC (statement-restatement-departure-conclusion) and we began writing our own song, through improvisation and collaboration. In week 3, we learned more about the close relationship between rhythm, meter, and text. In week 4, we performed and recorded our song. One of the seniors purchased everyone a kazoo, so we added a verse where we all played our kazoos.

This poster will be valuable to SMT members who are interested in community-engaged public music theory in their own communities. It will give local educators ideas about songwriting units in their own courses. And it will show other community members an example of what public music theory can be.

Music theorists have devoted significant attention to curricular reform in recent years, focusing on comprehensive issues such as creativity (Campbell 2014), accessibility (Johnson 2020), and diversity (Ewell 2020), as well as more practical ones, including new technological tools (McCandless and McIntyre 2017), student agency (Peebles 2019), and recruitment and retention (Lavengood 2019). Despite the burgeoning and important work in this area, data-driven approaches remain limited.

To understand which music theoretical skills are most valuable to musicians, we surveyed professionals in a variety of fields. Participants self-identified their professional areas and were branched into two tracks: professional musicians (defined broadly) or teachers of music theory. Participants rated how often they use specific skills and tools that are regularly taught in American undergraduate music curricula using a Likert scale. Instructors were further asked to indicate whether that skill was used primarily when teaching. Participants also listed skills they use regularly that were not covered in their formal music education. Our goal was to identify which music theory skills are most important for music professionals and whether they learned them in their undergraduate music theory sequence.

This poster shares key findings from our survey, outlining significant discrepancies between the skills and content many curricula teach and those professional musicians use. Our work brings crucial information to conversations about curricular design. It offers insights into comparative skill-usage and identifies needs where musicians are relying on self-taught skills. It enables institutions to be strategic about updating their curricula, facilitating both an outcomes-oriented approach to design and strategic decisions about time-allocation. Informed alignment of curricula with target skills is crucial in notoriously credit-heavy music degrees. Our data may not represent any given institution perfectly and we acknowledge that career preparation alone should not determine curricular design. We feel strongly, however, that our data about the relative value of skills offers a perspective that has been lacking in pedagogy research and one that must be part of curricular reform discussions going forward.

For high school students learning music theory for the first time, the subject, with its idiosyncratic symbols, terminology, and ways of thinking, can feel intimidating. Moreover, while the aural skills classroom has a long history of embodied pedagogy, from the early 20^th century to the present day (Jaques-Dalcroze 1915; Urista 2016), written theory classes frequently overlook embodied experience. Though numerous theory pedagogues have attempted to break this cerebral mold, most such approaches either require a complete teaching overhaul (Bannan 2010; Gutierrez 2019) or focus on collegiate subject matter (Gingerich 1991; Ripley 2016). Such approaches can therefore be difficult to apply in secondary education settings, especially given music educator burnout (Scheib 2004; Varona 2018).

To address the unique needs of secondary educators, this poster presentation introduces hands-on theory teaching tools called movable tile boards. These tools share two essential components: (1) a physical or digital space, and (2) a set of tiles that can be manipulated within that space. The space might be a desktop, grid, or keyboard image, while the tiles could represent notes, solfège syllables, or other theoretical objects. These tools facilitate embodiment via touch (Hrach 2021), and in the spirit of Lang’s “small teaching” principles (2016), their application does not require complete reimagining of a course. The poster will illustrate multiple examples of movable tile boards and their potential uses in the high school theory classroom, including an adaptation of Wells’s (2022) “Piano Gameboard”; a keyboard-free chromatic tile board; and a South Indian rāga board suitable for demonstrating classical raga construction and characteristic embellishments (gamakas). These tools have broad potential applications in secondary music education settings, from elective music theory and world music classes to International Baccalaureate® (IB) Music and Advanced Placement® (AP) Music Theory courses. To assist educators wishing to incorporate movable tile boards into their own classes, the poster will include QR codes linking attendees to handouts, templates, and relevant tech tools.

What music do you like to listen to and why? When you listen to music, what do you usually pay attention to? Does your answer to these questions change? How might your personal listening habits be shaped by your community and surroundings?

Are the above questions even considered music theory or music analysis? If so, how might they fit into your classroom, and why might you include them?

Recently, there has been an important trend in music theory pedagogy discussions towards inclusive pedagogy, with attempts to expand the music we teach in the classroom to include more than the traditional Western Art Music canon (WAM). Even if one feels these are laudable goals, they can present challenges and uncertainties. Some educators attempt to check required Diversity and Inclusion boxes and expand the repertoire studied by choosing pieces to use in a regular music theory curriculum to teach WAM concepts (what Attas describes as the “plug-and-play model,” 2019).

Part of inclusive pedagogy can include expanding what we teach students music analysis is, which can better facilitate inclusion of broader repertoire. While it can be tied to reinforcing traditional musical analytical elements, analyzing one’s listening habits, attention strategies, musical preferences, and experiential journey through a given listening experience is a way towards more inclusive musical analysis.

This poster facilitates a discussion of the pedagogical strategy of analyzing listening habits as a form of music analysis, in which student-generated playlists form the repertoire. Courses are designed to give students the space to explore questions about their personal listening habits and preferences and to critically analyze their own listening and musical consumption, considering how their individual and societal backgrounds combine with various musical elements to create listening experiences. Elements from the strategy can be used in a college-level music theory course, or modified to fit a K-12 classroom.

Especially in the post-pandemic landscape, engaging students has become increasingly challenging. Encouraging students to discuss their personal music diversifies classroom repertoire and contributes to intrinsic motivation, lessening the incentive for students to turn to generative AI to complete their assignments.

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.