Juha Ojala
Biographic Data
| ID | 6708797 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Juha Ojala |
| GIVEN NAMES | Juha |
| FAMILY NAME | Ojala |
| SIGNATURE | OJALA J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Arts Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1232-1218 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Understanding learners’ relationships with music
Relationships with music are at the core of music education. However, they are rarely studied from learners viewpoints—especially those of exceptionally motivated, advanced students—as they are incorporated into the theoretical underpinning or methodological stance of research in instrumental education. In this research project we follow the musical lives of ten advanced, mastery-oriented adolescent instrumentalists. The focus of this first repor…
Effect of Timbre on Goodness-of-Fit Ratings of Short Chord Sequences
Previous research has found that instrument-like timbres (hereafter, timbres) can affect the Goodness-of-Fit (GoF) evaluations of cadences (Vuvan & Hughes, 2019). Here, we expand these findings by testing more timbres and chord sequences and analyzing a wide array of chordal and timbral variables. One hundred and thirty-five participants with varying levels of music training provided GoF ratings for 15 C-C-X chord sequences constructed with piano…
The effect of chord duration on the relative salience of chord-type and voicing changes
This study investigates the effect of chord duration on the relative salience of chord-type and voicing changes. Participants ( N = 111) with varying levels of musical training were presented with sequences of five block chords on the piano and asked to indicate which chord sounded most different. Each sequence consisted of three identical chords and two oddballs, one with a voicing change and one with a chord-type change. All possible chord-type…
On Subjectivity and Objectivity in the Semiotic Inquiry of Music
This article juxtaposes the subjective and the objective in the study of musical signification. It makes an attempt at a vicious core problem of notions that are general in their essence and prevalence. The interest is driven by general trends challenging the position of research in music, semiotics, and humanities. The problem persists, for instance, in Western art music (WAM), where the performer has the task of assessing the composer’s objecti…
Veridical and Schematic Memory for Harmony in Melody-and-Accompaniment Textures
We studied memory for harmony using a melody-and-accompaniment texture and 10 commercially successful songs of Western popular music. The harmony was presented as a timbrally matching block-chord accompaniment to digitally isolated vocals. We used three test chord variants: the target was harmonically identical to the original chord, the lure was schematically plausible but different from the original, and the clash conflicted with both the tonal…
Relative salience of chord-type and chord-voicing changes
Our research project investigated the effect of background and stimuli factors on the relative salience of chord-type and chord-voicing changes. Earlier studies have shown that surface features tend to be easier to perceive than deeper features and that musical training attenuates this general tendency. For further studying how deeper-level and surface-level musical features are perceived, we used a two-oddball paradigm. Each item consisted of a …
Developing agency through music and movement
This ethnographic study examines the development of agency in students with special needs during an experiment of classroom music teaching in a special school. The experiment took place from August 2015 to March 2016 and was based on Emile Jaques-Dalcroze’s ideas of music and movement as a means of developing competencies, skills and understanding in music and life in general. The lessons included activities, such as quick reaction and follow exe…
Music as a non-arbitrary avenue for exploration of the social
The article examines how music affords exploration of social aspects of semiosis: how music signifies the social, beyond the fact that music is an inherently participatory social process. Pentti Määttänen extends Peirce’s notion of ‘hard fact’ to ‘soft facts’ to which we accommodate our behaviour in order to get along in society. As mutual beliefs, soft facts are continuously tested and updated in inquiry. Representation of oneself is also contin…
Musical Expertise Facilitates Dissonance Detection On Behavioral, Not On Early Sensory Level
Consonance and dissonance are basic phenomena in the perception of chords that can be discriminated very early in sensory processing. Musical expertise has been shown to facilitate neural processing of various musical stimuli, but it is unclear whether this applies to detecting consonance and dissonance. Our study aimed to determine if sensitivity to increasing levels of dissonance differs between musicians and nonmusicians, using a combination o…
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Musical Expertise Facilitates Dissonance Detection On Behavioral, Not On Early Sensory Level
Consonance and dissonance are basic phenomena in the perception of chords that can be discriminated very early in sensory processing. Musical expertise has been shown to facilitate neural processing of various musical stimuli, but it is unclear whether this applies to detecting consonance and dissonance. Our study aimed to determine if sensitivity to increasing levels of dissonance differs between musicians and nonmusicians, using a combination o…
Developing agency through music and movement
This ethnographic study examines the development of agency in students with special needs during an experiment of classroom music teaching in a special school. The experiment took place from August 2015 to March 2016 and was based on Emile Jaques-Dalcroze’s ideas of music and movement as a means of developing competencies, skills and understanding in music and life in general. The lessons included activities, such as quick reaction and follow exe…
Music as a non-arbitrary avenue for exploration of the social
The article examines how music affords exploration of social aspects of semiosis: how music signifies the social, beyond the fact that music is an inherently participatory social process. Pentti Määttänen extends Peirce’s notion of ‘hard fact’ to ‘soft facts’ to which we accommodate our behaviour in order to get along in society. As mutual beliefs, soft facts are continuously tested and updated in inquiry. Representation of oneself is also contin…
Veridical and Schematic Memory for Harmony in Melody-and-Accompaniment Textures
We studied memory for harmony using a melody-and-accompaniment texture and 10 commercially successful songs of Western popular music. The harmony was presented as a timbrally matching block-chord accompaniment to digitally isolated vocals. We used three test chord variants: the target was harmonically identical to the original chord, the lure was schematically plausible but different from the original, and the clash conflicted with both the tonal…
Relative salience of chord-type and chord-voicing changes
Our research project investigated the effect of background and stimuli factors on the relative salience of chord-type and chord-voicing changes. Earlier studies have shown that surface features tend to be easier to perceive than deeper features and that musical training attenuates this general tendency. For further studying how deeper-level and surface-level musical features are perceived, we used a two-oddball paradigm. Each item consisted of a …
On Subjectivity and Objectivity in the Semiotic Inquiry of Music
This article juxtaposes the subjective and the objective in the study of musical signification. It makes an attempt at a vicious core problem of notions that are general in their essence and prevalence. The interest is driven by general trends challenging the position of research in music, semiotics, and humanities. The problem persists, for instance, in Western art music (WAM), where the performer has the task of assessing the composer’s objecti…
Understanding learners’ relationships with music
Relationships with music are at the core of music education. However, they are rarely studied from learners viewpoints—especially those of exceptionally motivated, advanced students—as they are incorporated into the theoretical underpinning or methodological stance of research in instrumental education. In this research project we follow the musical lives of ten advanced, mastery-oriented adolescent instrumentalists. The focus of this first repor…
Effect of Timbre on Goodness-of-Fit Ratings of Short Chord Sequences
Previous research has found that instrument-like timbres (hereafter, timbres) can affect the Goodness-of-Fit (GoF) evaluations of cadences (Vuvan & Hughes, 2019). Here, we expand these findings by testing more timbres and chord sequences and analyzing a wide array of chordal and timbral variables. One hundred and thirty-five participants with varying levels of music training provided GoF ratings for 15 C-C-X chord sequences constructed with piano…
The effect of chord duration on the relative salience of chord-type and voicing changes
This study investigates the effect of chord duration on the relative salience of chord-type and voicing changes. Participants ( N = 111) with varying levels of musical training were presented with sequences of five block chords on the piano and asked to indicate which chord sounded most different. Each sequence consisted of three identical chords and two oddballs, one with a voicing change and one with a chord-type change. All possible chord-type…
Psychology (8 works) · Art (6 works) · Neuroscience and Music Perception (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Speech recognition (5 works) · Visual arts (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Cognitive psychology (4 works) · Diverse Music Education Insights (4 works) · Musical (4 works)