Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses

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    Navigating Kol Isha: Women's Voices in The Australian Jewish Community
    Golan Burnett, Hannah ( 2020)
    Kol Isha is a religious law that states men should not hear women’s singing voices. This law is most often referred to in synagogue, where women do not take on any ritual roles and sit separately from men. Over the past fifty years, new styles of prayer have emerged that attempt to maintain tradition, whilst allowing women to sing and actively take part in ritual. This dissertation examines how Orthodox Jewish women maintain authenticity as Orthodox Jews and feminists whilst negotiating Kol Isha. It interviews seven self-identifying Orthodox Female Jewish Women, who have attended such congregations about how they negotiate secular and sacred values during prayer. Preliminary findings suggest that women negotiate their authenticity by taking part in current ideological conflicts within their communities. Their standpoints are made public through where and how they use their voices within sacred settings.
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    Delta Goodrem’s musical expression before, during, and after traumatic illness: an interdisciplinary analysis
    Sharp, Christine Audrey ( 2020)
    While scholars of Western art music have begun analysing trauma directly, scholars of popular music have largely focused on what I call ‘indirect analyses’ of trauma through issues of consumerism and identity. Because trauma is at the heart of mainstream media narratives, I contend that scholars should directly research it in popular music. In this dissertation, I examine how popular music can be used to express a personal transformative experience resulting from trauma. I analyse Australian popstar/singer-songwriter Delta Goodrem’s transformative experience as a result of traumatic illness, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, in her first three albums Innocent Eyes (2003), Mistaken Identity (2004), and Delta (2007). I employ an interdisciplinary approach using positive psychology’s Post-Traumatic Growth Theory (PTG) as an analytical lens to demonstrate how Goodrem’s transformation reveals issues of resilience, gender, and maturation. I argue that Goodrem’s musical expression in the albums reflects the three main areas of growth found in PTG: self-identity, relationships, and life philosophy. Until this research, no scholar has attempted to use PTG as an analytical framework for analysing trauma in music. This dissertation thus introduces PTG as a new theoretical concept to music studies and contributes to our understanding of how artists employ music to make sense of personal trauma.
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    Hyper-visibility and under-representation: inclusivity, diversity, and the alternative music scene in Melbourne
    D'Cruz Barnes, Isobel Irene ( 2020)
    This ethnographic study documents the lived experience of People of Colour (PoC) making alternative and punk music in Melbourne, Australia. Exploring local discourse on cultural diversity, inclusivity and racial difference, I offer previously undocumented Australian perspectives on race and popular music. The study traces issues of whiteness, anti-racism and punk in Australia down to three key components: subculture, genre and capital. Through formal, semi-structured interviews, the study asks how notions of cultural diversity impact alternative music scenes. I argue that PoC in these scenes experience race-based exclusion, both a result of the longstanding erasure of PoC from written histories of Western punk, combined with Australia’s specific position as a white multicultural, settler-colonial nation. In challenging the notion of punk as a white musical tradition, and recognising the specific conditions that foster racism in Australian music scenes, my informants and I discuss how anti-racist values may be meaningfully embodied in local music contexts.
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    A systematic review of motion tracking technology and violins: applications to injury reduction
    Deans, Jake Ryan ( 2020)
    Violin is one of the most widely taught string instruments in the world. Despite the performance technique variations, there is the universal possibility of attaining a performance-related injury. Physical cause of such injuries is still relatively unknown. The purpose of this study was to identify literature on performance-related injury and technological application to harm reduction. Using a systematic review, three literature databases were searched through October 15 to 17, 2019. The search consisted of three combined groups of keywords: violin (e.g., violinist, violin performer) AND musculoskeletal (e.g., musculoskeletal, upper arm injury, overuse injury) AND motion tracking (e.g., motion tracking, kinesiology). The initial literature search strategy resulted in 192 potentially relevant articles. Finally, 26 articles were included in this review. The publication content suggested that motion tracking has a prominent position in violin performance injury reduction and pedagogy if a cross-disciplinary approach is taken. This research’s systematic review found an emerging field that heavily employed a quantitative research method, 3D motion capture; EMG; and Ultrasound technology, and was written primarily for a scientific community. Further research in this field would benefit greatly from the integration of both 3D motion capture and electromyography technologies.
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    Maximum volume yields maximum results: loudness as a compositional device in extreme contemporary music
    Smith, Louis Virgil ( 2020)
    This paper seeks to explore the ways in which loudness is used as a compositional device throughout three different performances by artists Sunn O))), Merzbow and Cat Hope. Section one discusses the concept of loudness as both an acoustic phenomenon, that enhances affective experiences, and as a cultural signifier, in which affirms scene identities that base their music on the use of loudness. This section also examines the literature on the use of loudness in extreme contemporary music in particular. Section two consists of case studies which analyse recordings of recent live performances from Sunn O))), Merzbow and Cat Hope. These analyses via spectrographs discuss the compositional framework of the performances, the performance techniques used, and the technical production of the sound, in relation to the use of extreme volume.
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    Blobs, Buzz and Rapid Patterning: Intra-Active Tools for Composition, Improvisation and Analysis
    Franklin, Joseph Phillip ( 2020)
    The world-renowned tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain once said a musician should “allow the instrument to speak” and “discover what the instrument wants to do.” After hearing this I was intrigued, inspired, and deeply unsettled. What do these statements mean? Are they meant literally or figuratively? Is it possible for an instrument to have agency? And what would it mean for an instrument to be an agent? More specifically, what would that mean for musical praxis? In this thesis, I examine conventional dichotomies and dualisms between human/non-human, theory/praxis and composer/improviser. I propose a language and framework for thinking about composing and improvising that draws on new materialist and object-oriented ontology philosophies. By considering human-instrument-concept intra-actions, this framework critiques the notions of the genius and virtuoso while providing a language to conceptualise my own creative work and that of other contemporary musicians. Central to my thinking are the concepts of blobs, buzz and rapid patterning, which are explored in diverse sonic, visual, social, environmental, biological, zoological and paradigmatic examples.