Abstract
We present an interdisciplinary case study combining traditional and computational methodologies to study Trinidad steelband music in a collection of recordings of the annual Panorama competition spanning over 50 years. In particular, the ethnomusicology literature identifies a number of trends and hypotheses about this practice of music involving tempo, tuning, and dynamic range. Some of these are difficult to address with traditional, manual methodologies. We investigate these through the computational lens of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) methods. We find that the tempo range measured on our corpus is consistent with values reported in ethnomusicological literature, and add further details about how tempo has changed for the best judged performances at Panorama. With respect to the use of dynamics, we find limited usefulness of a standardised measures of loudness on these recordings. When it comes to judging the tuning frequency of the acoustic recordings, we find what looks to be a narrowing of the range, but these might be unreliable given the diversity of recording media over the past decades.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Calypso is a style of caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago. For a more detailed description of Calypso, see for example [6].
- 2.
In the dictionary of the English/creole of Trinidad and Tobago edited by Lise Winer soca is defined as “a type of calypso-based music, with a fast dance beat, and party lyrics”.
- 3.
For more details on the competition rules see http://www.panonthenet.com/tnt/2018/rules.htm.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
References
Aho, W.: Steelband music in Trinidad and Tobago: the creation of a people’s music. Lat. Am. Music. Rev./Revista de Msica Latinoamericana 8(1), 26–58 (1987)
Böck, S., Korzeniowski, F., Schlüter, J., Krebs, F., Widmer, G.: Madmom: a new Python audio and music signal processing library. In: Proceedings of the 24th ACM International Conference on Multimedia (2016)
Böck, S., Krebs, F., Widmer, G.: Accurate tempo estimation based on recurrent neural networks and resonating comb filters. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR) (2015)
Bogdanov, D., et al.: ESSENTIA: an audio analysis library for music information retrieval. In: International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (2013)
Bozkurt, B., Ayangil, R., Holzapfel, A.: Computational analysis of Turkish Makam music: review of state-of-the-art and challenges. J. New Music Res. 43(1), 3–23 (2014)
Cowley, J.: Carnival, Canboulay, and Calypso: Traditions in the Making. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1996)
Dudley, S.: The steelband “own tune”: nationalism, festivity, and musical strategies in Trinidad’s panorama competition. Black Music Res. J. 22, 13–36 (2002)
Dudley, S.: Music From behind the Bridge: Steelband Spirit and Politics in Trinidad and Tobago. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2008)
Fillon, T., Pellerin, G., Brossier, P., Simonnot, J.: An open web audio platform for ethnomusicological sound, pp. 1–8. ACM (2014)
Gomez, E., Herrera, P., Gomez-Martin, F.: Computational ethnomusicology: perspectives and challenges. J. New Music Res. 42(2), 111–112 (2013)
Guilbault, J.: Governing Sound: The Cultural Politics of Trinidad’s Carnival Musics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2007)
Hamlos, I., Koszegi, G., Madler, G.: Computational ethnomusicology in Hungary in 1978. In: Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (1978)
Helmlinger, A.: Pan jumbie: memoire sociale et musicale dans les steelbands de Trinidad et Tobago, Societe d’ethnologie (2012)
Holzapfel, A., Stylianou, Y.: Similarity methods for computational ethnomusicology. IEEE Trans. Audio Speech Lang. Process. (2010)
Huron, D.: The melodic arch in Western folksongs. Comput. Musicol. 10, 3–23 (1996)
ITU Recommendation BS.1770. https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en
Kroher, N., et al.: Computational ethnomusicology: a study of Flamenco and Arab-Andalusian vocal music. In: Bader, R. (ed.) Springer Handbook of Systematic Musicology. SH, pp. 885–897. Springer, Heidelberg (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55004-5_43
Mauch, M., Dixon, S.: Approximate note transcription for the improved identification of difficult chords. In: Proceedings of the 11th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (2010)
Panteli, M., Benetos, E., Dixon, S.: Automatic detection of outliers in world music. In: Proceedings of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (2016)
Plomp, R., Levelt, W.J.M.: Tonal consonance and critical bandwidth. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 38(4), 548–560 (1965)
Savage, P.E., Brown, S.: Mapping music: cluster analysis of song-type frequencies within and between cultures. In: Ethnomusicology 58(1), 133–155 (2014)
Shalit, U., Weinshall, D., Chechik, G.: Modeling musical influence with topic models. In: Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Machine Learning (2013)
Shanahan, D., Neubarth, K., Conklin, D.: Mining musical traits of social functions in Native American music. In: Proceedings of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (2016)
Stuempfle, S.: The Steelband Movement: The Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1996)
Tzanetakis, G., Kapur, A., Schloss, W.A., Wright, M.: Computational ethnomusicology. J. Interdiscip. Music. Stud. 1, 1–24 (2007)
Voisin, F.: Musical scales in Central Africa and Java: modeling by synthesis. Leonardo Music J. 4, 85–90 (1994)
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by AHRC Grant No. AH/N504531/1, and the French Labex Pasts in Present http://passes-present.eu/en.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Quinton, E., Spielmann, F., Sturm, B.L. (2018). Exploring Trends in Trinidad Steelband Music Through Computational Ethnomusicology. In: Aramaki, M., Davies , M., Kronland-Martinet, R., Ystad, S. (eds) Music Technology with Swing. CMMR 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11265. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01692-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01692-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-01691-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01692-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)