Nicola Dibben
Biographic Data
| ID | 1010691 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicola Dibben |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicola |
| FAMILY NAME | Dibben |
| SIGNATURE | DIBBEN N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9250-5035 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Cultivating meaning and self-transcendence to increase positive emotions and decrease anxiety in music performance
This article presents the findings of an intervention aimed at promoting positive emotions in music performance, as positive emotions are intrinsically valuable and can have associated benefits. The intervention sought to help participants conceive performance in more meaningful, self-transcendent terms. This study investigated whether the intervention helped performers to change their approach to performance; whether an increase in meaningfulnes…
A cognitive intervention to correct a maladaptive technique in organists due to prior music learning: A randomized controlled trial
Organists who start as skilled pianists may later maladapt their keyboard technique to play the organ. This randomized controlled study investigated the feasibility of using an audio cognitive intervention to correct organists’ playing technique. Forty participants played a music excerpt with two dynamics (soft/loud) on two musical instruments (organ/piano) at baseline, while their corresponding forearm muscle activities were measured by surface …
Promoting prosociality in Colombia: Is music more effective than other cultural interventions
This article reports a two-part study into the prosocial impacts of third sector cultural activities with children and adolescents in impoverished and violence-stricken urban neighbourhoods in Cali, Colombia. First, a year-long field study set out to compare a pre-existing music-training programme with a dance-training programme and a football-training programme with 9–14 year olds, to determine the extent to which each affords the development of…
Biophilia: 10 Years Later
Prof. Nicola Dibben (University of Sheffield) has published the first academic book on Björk (Björk, London, Equinox Publishing, 2009) and was deeply involved in the making of the multi-media app album Biophilia (2011), which was also designed as a pilot educational project. This conversation takes place ten years after the release of Biophilia and focuses on its impact after 2011. Martin Guerpin and Prof. Dibben tackle the impact of Biophilia in…
Singing and Emotion
In this chapter the authors discuss the emotional power of the singing voice. The chapter begins by providing an overview of the process of externalization of emotions by the human voice. Then, the authors discuss some fundamental determinants of emotional expression in singing, namely the ‘emotional script’, the artistic interpretation, and the singer’s affective state. Next, they describe the manner in which expressed emotions are encoded in th…
Music and the construction of space in office-based work settings
Subjectivity and theConstruction ofEmotion in theMusic ofBjörk
A commonly held reception theory for popular song is that it constitutes an expression of emotional experience belonging either to the performer(s), to the listener, or to a virtual third person. Drawing on the belief that music is capable of affording subject positions on behalf of its listeners, the present article argues that organised sound is not only capable of representing or embodying a pre-existent affective experience, but that it contr…
Key-Mood Association: A Self Perpetuating Myth
The association of certain keys with specific moods continues to be widespread despite technical evidence that all equally tempered keys are identical. This paper provides experimental results which shed light on this phenomenon. First, approximately three-quarters of participants questioned claimed to have key-mood associations. Second, the key-mood associations held by participants showed a very strong correlation to late eighteenth century ass…
V. Constructions of Femininity in 1990s Girl-Group Music
Constructivism in Nicholas Cook's introduction to music: Tips for a “new'’ psychology of music
What Do We Hear, When We Hear Music: Music Perception and Musical Material
Theories of auditory event perception have highlighted a distinction between “everyday” and “musical” listening. This paper challenges this account of listening in two ways: first, it extends the notion of source specification to the specification of cultural and compositional categories, and second, it argues that listening to music involves listening to what sounds specify just as much as it involves listening to the acoustic characteristics of…
Pulp, Pornography and Spectatorship: Subject Matter and Subject Position in Pulp's This is Hardcore
Sheffield pop band Pulp's album This is Hardcore (1998) problematizes media constructions of fame, masculinity, youth and sexuality as self-aggrandizing fantasies. Pornography and glamour function in the album as cyphers for the disparity between fantasy and reality - a disparity fuelled by the media and their highly alienated cultural forms. The album's critique of these fantasies is made both in its subject matter and through the alienated subj…
Sex, Pulp and critique
In an article entitled 'Sexist Pulp ads attacked', the Independent on Sunday (IoS) reported public reaction to the posters advertising Pulp's new album This is Hardcore (posters had been defaced with the words 'this is sexist'), and described the advertisements as part of a turn away from political correctness towards a new 'anything goes' realism (Kelly and Clay 1998). The poster shows the naked upper torso of a woman face down on a red leather …
Representations of femininity in popular music
Every text and every reading has a social and therefore political dimension, which is to be found partly in the structure of the text itself and partly in the social relations of the reader and the way they are brought to bear upon the text. (Fiske 1989b, pp. 97–8) The position outlined in the quotation above suggests that meanings are the result of convergence between material properties of a text, and the particular social allegiances of the re…
Representations of femininity in popular music
Every text and every reading has a social and therefore political dimension, which is to be found partly in the structure of the text itself and partly in the social relations of the reader and the way they are brought to bear upon the text. (Fiske 1989b, pp. 97–8) The position outlined in the quotation above suggests that meanings are the result of convergence between material properties of a text, and the particular social allegiances of the re…
Subjectivity and theConstruction ofEmotion in theMusic ofBjörk
A commonly held reception theory for popular song is that it constitutes an expression of emotional experience belonging either to the performer(s), to the listener, or to a virtual third person. Drawing on the belief that music is capable of affording subject positions on behalf of its listeners, the present article argues that organised sound is not only capable of representing or embodying a pre-existent affective experience, but that it contr…
Sex, Pulp and critique
In an article entitled 'Sexist Pulp ads attacked', the Independent on Sunday (IoS) reported public reaction to the posters advertising Pulp's new album This is Hardcore (posters had been defaced with the words 'this is sexist'), and described the advertisements as part of a turn away from political correctness towards a new 'anything goes' realism (Kelly and Clay 1998). The poster shows the naked upper torso of a woman face down on a red leather …
Singing and Emotion
In this chapter the authors discuss the emotional power of the singing voice. The chapter begins by providing an overview of the process of externalization of emotions by the human voice. Then, the authors discuss some fundamental determinants of emotional expression in singing, namely the ‘emotional script’, the artistic interpretation, and the singer’s affective state. Next, they describe the manner in which expressed emotions are encoded in th…
V. Constructions of Femininity in 1990s Girl-Group Music
Representations of femininity in popular music
Every text and every reading has a social and therefore political dimension, which is to be found partly in the structure of the text itself and partly in the social relations of the reader and the way they are brought to bear upon the text. (Fiske 1989b, pp. 97–8) The position outlined in the quotation above suggests that meanings are the result of convergence between material properties of a text, and the particular social allegiances of the re…
Sex, Pulp and critique
In an article entitled 'Sexist Pulp ads attacked', the Independent on Sunday (IoS) reported public reaction to the posters advertising Pulp's new album This is Hardcore (posters had been defaced with the words 'this is sexist'), and described the advertisements as part of a turn away from political correctness towards a new 'anything goes' realism (Kelly and Clay 1998). The poster shows the naked upper torso of a woman face down on a red leather …
Constructivism in Nicholas Cook's introduction to music: Tips for a “new'’ psychology of music
What Do We Hear, When We Hear Music: Music Perception and Musical Material
Theories of auditory event perception have highlighted a distinction between “everyday” and “musical” listening. This paper challenges this account of listening in two ways: first, it extends the notion of source specification to the specification of cultural and compositional categories, and second, it argues that listening to music involves listening to what sounds specify just as much as it involves listening to the acoustic characteristics of…
Pulp, Pornography and Spectatorship: Subject Matter and Subject Position in Pulp's This is Hardcore
Sheffield pop band Pulp's album This is Hardcore (1998) problematizes media constructions of fame, masculinity, youth and sexuality as self-aggrandizing fantasies. Pornography and glamour function in the album as cyphers for the disparity between fantasy and reality - a disparity fuelled by the media and their highly alienated cultural forms. The album's critique of these fantasies is made both in its subject matter and through the alienated subj…
V. Constructions of Femininity in 1990s Girl-Group Music
Key-Mood Association: A Self Perpetuating Myth
The association of certain keys with specific moods continues to be widespread despite technical evidence that all equally tempered keys are identical. This paper provides experimental results which shed light on this phenomenon. First, approximately three-quarters of participants questioned claimed to have key-mood associations. Second, the key-mood associations held by participants showed a very strong correlation to late eighteenth century ass…
Subjectivity and theConstruction ofEmotion in theMusic ofBjörk
A commonly held reception theory for popular song is that it constitutes an expression of emotional experience belonging either to the performer(s), to the listener, or to a virtual third person. Drawing on the belief that music is capable of affording subject positions on behalf of its listeners, the present article argues that organised sound is not only capable of representing or embodying a pre-existent affective experience, but that it contr…
Music and the construction of space in office-based work settings
Singing and Emotion
In this chapter the authors discuss the emotional power of the singing voice. The chapter begins by providing an overview of the process of externalization of emotions by the human voice. Then, the authors discuss some fundamental determinants of emotional expression in singing, namely the ‘emotional script’, the artistic interpretation, and the singer’s affective state. Next, they describe the manner in which expressed emotions are encoded in th…
Promoting prosociality in Colombia: Is music more effective than other cultural interventions
This article reports a two-part study into the prosocial impacts of third sector cultural activities with children and adolescents in impoverished and violence-stricken urban neighbourhoods in Cali, Colombia. First, a year-long field study set out to compare a pre-existing music-training programme with a dance-training programme and a football-training programme with 9–14 year olds, to determine the extent to which each affords the development of…
Biophilia: 10 Years Later
Prof. Nicola Dibben (University of Sheffield) has published the first academic book on Björk (Björk, London, Equinox Publishing, 2009) and was deeply involved in the making of the multi-media app album Biophilia (2011), which was also designed as a pilot educational project. This conversation takes place ten years after the release of Biophilia and focuses on its impact after 2011. Martin Guerpin and Prof. Dibben tackle the impact of Biophilia in…
A cognitive intervention to correct a maladaptive technique in organists due to prior music learning: A randomized controlled trial
Organists who start as skilled pianists may later maladapt their keyboard technique to play the organ. This randomized controlled study investigated the feasibility of using an audio cognitive intervention to correct organists’ playing technique. Forty participants played a music excerpt with two dynamics (soft/loud) on two musical instruments (organ/piano) at baseline, while their corresponding forearm muscle activities were measured by surface …
Cultivating meaning and self-transcendence to increase positive emotions and decrease anxiety in music performance
This article presents the findings of an intervention aimed at promoting positive emotions in music performance, as positive emotions are intrinsically valuable and can have associated benefits. The intervention sought to help participants conceive performance in more meaningful, self-transcendent terms. This study investigated whether the intervention helped performers to change their approach to performance; whether an increase in meaningfulnes…
Art (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Visual arts (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Diverse Music Education Insights (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Music History and Culture (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works)