Trevor De Clercq
Biographic Data
| ID | 1602676 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Trevor De Clercq |
| GIVEN NAMES | Trevor |
| FAMILY NAME | De Clercq |
| SIGNATURE | DE CLERCQ T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Middle Tennessee State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0718-9526 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 42 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
What Does a Corpus of Music Represent? Commentary on “Diversity in Music Corpus Studies”
In Volume 30 (1) of this journal, Shea et al. (2024) introduce a novel sampling method called the "Anti-Discriminatory Alignment System" (or ADAS), which is designed to adjust the demographic distribution of artists in a corpus of music.In this commentary, I consider what a corpus created using the ADAS represents.I begin with a general discussion of corpus work in the context of foundational statistical principles.I then posit two different type…
Representation in Corpus Studies of Music
This commentary responds to the article by Nicholas Shea in Vol. 17(1) of this journal, which offers a method to encode the demographic information of the artists in a corpus of popular music and then describes a resampling procedure to create a new corpus based on specific demographic targets. I argue that attempts to diversify the demographic distribution of popular music corpora should occur not at the sampling stage but instead at a prior sta…
Some Proposed Enhancements to the Operationalization of Prominence
This article offers an alternate methodology for quantifying the parameter of prominence introduced by Duguay (2022) to describe the relative level of the voice in the mix. I begin with a discussion of RMS amplitude, focused on the difference between average and true RMS values. I then propose that overall RMS amplitude ratios be logarithmically transformed to more closely represent the perception of relative level differences, with the relative …
Blurred Lines in Allegations of Musical Intertextuality
This commentary responds to Orosz’s recent EMR article, which presents research on the accuracy of user-generated information on the whosampled.com website. In general, we find Orosz’s main conclusions—that the accuracy of an entry tends to relate to the type of sample (direct or interpolated), how distinct the sample is, and the style of music—are convincing and well-supported by examples. That said, we believe Orosz’s ultimate appraisal of the …
Tempo versus average rates of harmonic rhythm in popular music
This article reports a pair of studies that test two opposing hypotheses derived from music theory scholarship with regard to chord durations in popular music. The first hypothesis is that, regardless of tempo, chords will tend to last on average an ideal span of relative time, such as a bar. The second hypothesis is that, regardless of tempo, chords will tend to last on average an ideal span of absolute time, such as 2 s. Given the subjectivity …
The Logic of Six-Based Minor for Harmonic Analyses of Popular Music
Harmonic analyses of popular music typically take the minor tonic to be Roman numeral "one." By nature, this "one-based" approach requires a new numbering scheme when songs shift between relative key centers. Recent scholarship has argued, however, that popular music often involves ambiguity between relative tonalities, as exemplified in the "Axis" progression, if not sometimes a tonal fusion of two relative keys. I thus argue for the utility of …
Meludia
Popular music analysis too often neglects the analysis of popular music
For more than two decades, a trend in popular music scholarship has been the publication every few years of an edited collection of analytical essays (e.g., Covach and Boone 1997; Moore 2003; Everett 2008). These multi-author volumes sometimes have a specific analytical concern, such as intertextuality (Burns and Lacasse 2018), but more typically they simply bring together a variety of essays written by a variety of authors using a variety of met…
Chart
Embracing Ambiguity in the Analysis of Form in Pop/Rock Music, 1982-1991
A central concern for theories of form in pop/rock music is the division of a song into sections and, consequently, the categorization of these sections according to a standard set of section labels. Psychological research on categorization shows that it is inherently a perceptual process, one that involves graded membership and fuzzy boundaries. Thus in contrast to prior theorists, who often attempt to minimize ambiguity in the analysis of form …
Measuring a Measure
The prevailing approach to bar lengths in pop/rock music uses the standard rock drum beat as a model, whereby the kick is assigned to beats 1 and 3 and the snare to beats 2 and 4 in a bar of ".fn_meter(4,4).". In this paper, I show that a song's drum pattern is not a reliable indicator of measure lengths, especially if we consider bar lengths to be an important benchmark for theories of form. I argue that our determinations of bar lengths and met…
Statistical Analysis of Harmony and Melody in Rock Music
Statistical Analysis of Harmony and Melody in Rock Music
We present a corpus of harmonic analyses and melodic transcriptions of rock songs. After explaining the creation and notation of the corpus, we present results of some explorations of the corpus data. We begin by considering the overall distribution of scale-degrees in rock. We then address the issue of key-finding: how the key of a rock song can be identified from harmonic and melodic information. Considering both the distribution of melodic sca…
A corpus analysis of rock harmony
In this study, we report a corpus analysis of rock harmony. As a corpus, we usedRolling Stonemagazine's list of the '500 Greatest Songs of All Time'; we took the 20 top-ranked songs from each decade (the 1950s through the 1990s), creating a set of 100 songs. Both authors analysed all 100 songs by hand, using conventional Roman numeral symbols. Agreement between the two sets of analyses was over 90 per cent. The analyses were encoded using a recur…
A corpus analysis of rock harmony
In this study, we report a corpus analysis of rock harmony. As a corpus, we usedRolling Stonemagazine's list of the '500 Greatest Songs of All Time'; we took the 20 top-ranked songs from each decade (the 1950s through the 1990s), creating a set of 100 songs. Both authors analysed all 100 songs by hand, using conventional Roman numeral symbols. Agreement between the two sets of analyses was over 90 per cent. The analyses were encoded using a recur…
Statistical Analysis of Harmony and Melody in Rock Music
We present a corpus of harmonic analyses and melodic transcriptions of rock songs. After explaining the creation and notation of the corpus, we present results of some explorations of the corpus data. We begin by considering the overall distribution of scale-degrees in rock. We then address the issue of key-finding: how the key of a rock song can be identified from harmonic and melodic information. Considering both the distribution of melodic sca…
Measuring a Measure
The prevailing approach to bar lengths in pop/rock music uses the standard rock drum beat as a model, whereby the kick is assigned to beats 1 and 3 and the snare to beats 2 and 4 in a bar of ".fn_meter(4,4).". In this paper, I show that a song's drum pattern is not a reliable indicator of measure lengths, especially if we consider bar lengths to be an important benchmark for theories of form. I argue that our determinations of bar lengths and met…
Embracing Ambiguity in the Analysis of Form in Pop/Rock Music, 1982-1991
A central concern for theories of form in pop/rock music is the division of a song into sections and, consequently, the categorization of these sections according to a standard set of section labels. Psychological research on categorization shows that it is inherently a perceptual process, one that involves graded membership and fuzzy boundaries. Thus in contrast to prior theorists, who often attempt to minimize ambiguity in the analysis of form …
The Logic of Six-Based Minor for Harmonic Analyses of Popular Music
Harmonic analyses of popular music typically take the minor tonic to be Roman numeral "one." By nature, this "one-based" approach requires a new numbering scheme when songs shift between relative key centers. Recent scholarship has argued, however, that popular music often involves ambiguity between relative tonalities, as exemplified in the "Axis" progression, if not sometimes a tonal fusion of two relative keys. I thus argue for the utility of …
Popular music analysis too often neglects the analysis of popular music
For more than two decades, a trend in popular music scholarship has been the publication every few years of an edited collection of analytical essays (e.g., Covach and Boone 1997; Moore 2003; Everett 2008). These multi-author volumes sometimes have a specific analytical concern, such as intertextuality (Burns and Lacasse 2018), but more typically they simply bring together a variety of essays written by a variety of authors using a variety of met…
A corpus analysis of rock harmony
In this study, we report a corpus analysis of rock harmony. As a corpus, we usedRolling Stonemagazine's list of the '500 Greatest Songs of All Time'; we took the 20 top-ranked songs from each decade (the 1950s through the 1990s), creating a set of 100 songs. Both authors analysed all 100 songs by hand, using conventional Roman numeral symbols. Agreement between the two sets of analyses was over 90 per cent. The analyses were encoded using a recur…
Statistical Analysis of Harmony and Melody in Rock Music
We present a corpus of harmonic analyses and melodic transcriptions of rock songs. After explaining the creation and notation of the corpus, we present results of some explorations of the corpus data. We begin by considering the overall distribution of scale-degrees in rock. We then address the issue of key-finding: how the key of a rock song can be identified from harmonic and melodic information. Considering both the distribution of melodic sca…
Statistical Analysis of Harmony and Melody in Rock Music
Measuring a Measure
The prevailing approach to bar lengths in pop/rock music uses the standard rock drum beat as a model, whereby the kick is assigned to beats 1 and 3 and the snare to beats 2 and 4 in a bar of ".fn_meter(4,4).". In this paper, I show that a song's drum pattern is not a reliable indicator of measure lengths, especially if we consider bar lengths to be an important benchmark for theories of form. I argue that our determinations of bar lengths and met…
Embracing Ambiguity in the Analysis of Form in Pop/Rock Music, 1982-1991
A central concern for theories of form in pop/rock music is the division of a song into sections and, consequently, the categorization of these sections according to a standard set of section labels. Psychological research on categorization shows that it is inherently a perceptual process, one that involves graded membership and fuzzy boundaries. Thus in contrast to prior theorists, who often attempt to minimize ambiguity in the analysis of form …
Chart
Meludia
Popular music analysis too often neglects the analysis of popular music
For more than two decades, a trend in popular music scholarship has been the publication every few years of an edited collection of analytical essays (e.g., Covach and Boone 1997; Moore 2003; Everett 2008). These multi-author volumes sometimes have a specific analytical concern, such as intertextuality (Burns and Lacasse 2018), but more typically they simply bring together a variety of essays written by a variety of authors using a variety of met…
The Logic of Six-Based Minor for Harmonic Analyses of Popular Music
Harmonic analyses of popular music typically take the minor tonic to be Roman numeral "one." By nature, this "one-based" approach requires a new numbering scheme when songs shift between relative key centers. Recent scholarship has argued, however, that popular music often involves ambiguity between relative tonalities, as exemplified in the "Axis" progression, if not sometimes a tonal fusion of two relative keys. I thus argue for the utility of …
Blurred Lines in Allegations of Musical Intertextuality
This commentary responds to Orosz’s recent EMR article, which presents research on the accuracy of user-generated information on the whosampled.com website. In general, we find Orosz’s main conclusions—that the accuracy of an entry tends to relate to the type of sample (direct or interpolated), how distinct the sample is, and the style of music—are convincing and well-supported by examples. That said, we believe Orosz’s ultimate appraisal of the …
Tempo versus average rates of harmonic rhythm in popular music
This article reports a pair of studies that test two opposing hypotheses derived from music theory scholarship with regard to chord durations in popular music. The first hypothesis is that, regardless of tempo, chords will tend to last on average an ideal span of relative time, such as a bar. The second hypothesis is that, regardless of tempo, chords will tend to last on average an ideal span of absolute time, such as 2 s. Given the subjectivity …
Representation in Corpus Studies of Music
This commentary responds to the article by Nicholas Shea in Vol. 17(1) of this journal, which offers a method to encode the demographic information of the artists in a corpus of popular music and then describes a resampling procedure to create a new corpus based on specific demographic targets. I argue that attempts to diversify the demographic distribution of popular music corpora should occur not at the sampling stage but instead at a prior sta…
Some Proposed Enhancements to the Operationalization of Prominence
This article offers an alternate methodology for quantifying the parameter of prominence introduced by Duguay (2022) to describe the relative level of the voice in the mix. I begin with a discussion of RMS amplitude, focused on the difference between average and true RMS values. I then propose that overall RMS amplitude ratios be logarithmically transformed to more closely represent the perception of relative level differences, with the relative …
What Does a Corpus of Music Represent? Commentary on “Diversity in Music Corpus Studies”
In Volume 30 (1) of this journal, Shea et al. (2024) introduce a novel sampling method called the "Anti-Discriminatory Alignment System" (or ADAS), which is designed to adjust the demographic distribution of artists in a corpus of music.In this commentary, I consider what a corpus created using the ADAS represents.I begin with a general discussion of corpus work in the context of foundational statistical principles.I then posit two different type…
Computer Science (13 works) · Art (8 works) · Music and Audio Processing (8 works) · Music Technology and Sound Studies (6 works) · Musical (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Speech recognition (6 works) · Artificial Intelligence (5 works) · Mathematics (5 works) · Neuroscience and Music Perception (5 works)