Ubiquitous Musics offers a multidisciplinary approach to the pervasive presence of music in everyday life. The essays address a variety of situations in which music is present alongside other activities and does not demand focused attention from (sometimes involuntary) listeners. The contributors present different theoretical perspectives on the increasing ubiquity of music and its implications for the experience of listening. The collection consists of nine essays divided into three sections: Histories, Technologies, and Spaces. The first section addresses the historical origins of functional music and the debates on how reproduced music, including a wide range of styles and genres, spread so quickly across so many environments. The second section focuses on more contemporary sound technologies, including mobile phones in India, the role of visible playback technology in film, and listening to portable digital players. The final section reflects on settings such as malls, stores, gyms, offices and cars in which ubiquitous musics are often present, but rarely thought about. This last section - and ultimately the whole collection - seeks to foster a wider understanding of listening practices by lending a fresh, critical ear.

Ubiquitous music is an interdisciplinary area of research that lies at the intersection of music and computer science. Initially evolving from the related concept of ubiquitous computing, today ubiquitous music offers a paradigm for understanding how the everyday presence of computers has led to highly diverse music practices. As we move from desktop computers to mobile and internet-based multi-platform systems, new ways to participate in creative musical activities have radically changed the cultural and social landscape of music composition and performance. This volume explores how these new systems interact and how they may transform our musical experiences. Emerging out of the work of the Ubiquitous Music Group, an international research network established in 2007, this volume provides a snapshot of the ecologically grounded perspectives on ubiquitous music that share the concept of ecosystem as a central theme. Covering theory, software and hardware design, and applications in educational and artistic settings, each chapter features in-depth descriptions of exploratory and cutting-edge creative practices that expand our understanding of music making by means of digital and analogue technologies.

This is the first monograph dedicated to this interdisciplinary research area, combining the views of music, computer science, education, creativity studies, psychology, and engineering. The contributions include introductions to ubiquitous music research, featuring theory, applications, and technological development, and descriptions of permanent community initiatives such as virtual forums, multi-institutional research projects, and collaborative publications. The book will be of value to researchers and educators in all domains engaged with creativity, computing, music, and digital arts.

Ubiquitous Musics offers a multidisciplinary approach to the pervasive presence of music in everyday life. The essays address a variety of situations in which music is present alongside other activities and does not demand focused attention from (sometimes involuntary) listeners. The contributors present different theoretical perspectives on the increasing ubiquity of music and its implications for the experience of listening. The collection consists of nine essays divided into three sections: Histories, Technologies, and Spaces. The first section addresses the historical origins of functional music and the debates on how reproduced music, including a wide range of styles and genres, spread so quickly across so many environments. The second section focuses on more contemporary sound technologies, including mobile phones in India, the role of visible playback technology in film, and listening to portable digital players. The final section reflects on settings such as malls, stores, gyms, offices and cars in which ubiquitous musics are often present, but rarely thought about. This last section - and ultimately the whole collection - seeks to foster a wider understanding of listening practices by lending a fresh, critical ear.

How does the constant presence of music in modern life—on iPods, in shops and elevators, on television—affect the way we listen? With so much of this sound, whether imposed or chosen, only partially present to us, is the act of listening degraded by such passive listening? In Ubiquitous Listening, Anahid Kassabian investigates the many sounds that surround us and argues that this ubiquity has led to different kinds of listening. Kassabian argues for a new examination of the music we do not normally hear (and by implication, that we do), one that examines the way it is used as a marketing tool and a mood modulator, and exploring the ways we engage with this music.

Whether regarded as a perplexing object, a morally captivating force, an ineffable entity beyond language, or an inescapably embodied human practice, music has captured philosophically inclined minds since time immemorial. In turn, musicians of all stripes have called on philosophy as a source of inspiration and encouragement, and scholars of music through the ages have turned to philosophy for insight into music and into the worlds that sustain it. In this Handbook, contributors build on this legacy to conceptualize the rich interactions of Western music and philosophy as a series of meeting points between two vital spheres of human activity. They draw together key debates at the intersection of music studies and philosophy, offering a field-defining overview while also forging new paths. Chapters cover a wide range of musics and philosophies, including concert, popular, jazz, and electronic musics, and both analytic and continental philosophy.

This handbook examines how electrical technologies and their corresponding economies of scale have rendered music and sound increasingly mobile-portable, fungible, and ubiquitous. Highly interdisciplinary, the two volumes of the Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies consider the devices, markets, and theories of mobile music, and its aesthetics and forms of performance.

How does the constant presence of music in modern life—on iPods, in shops and elevators, on television—affect the way we listen? With so much of this sound, whether imposed or chosen, only partially present to us, is the act of listening degraded by such passive listening? In Ubiquitous Listening, Anahid Kassabian investigates the many sounds that surround us and argues that this ubiquity has led to different kinds of listening. Kassabian argues for a new examination of the music we do not normally hear (and by implication, that we do), one that examines the way it is used as a marketing tool and a mood modulator, and exploring the ways we engage with this music.

From the creators of the Caldecott Honor Book Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems comes a celebration of ubiquitous life forms among us. Newbery Honor-winning poet Joyce Sidman presents another unusual blend of fine poetry and fascinating science illustrated in exquisite hand-colored linocuts by Caldecott Honor artist Beckie Prange. Ubiquitous (yoo-bik-wi-tuhs): Something that is (or seems to be) everywhere at the same time. Why is the beetle, born 265 million years ago, still with us today? (Because its wings mutated and hardened). How did the gecko survive 160 million years? (By becoming nocturnal and developing sticky toe pads.) How did the shark and the crow and the tiny ant survive millions and millions of years? When 99 percent of all life forms on earth have become extinct, why do some survive? And survive not just in one place, but in many places: in deserts, in ice, in lakes and puddles, inside houses and forest and farmland? Just how do they become ubiquitous?

The intense and continuing popularity of the long-running television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) has long been matched by the range and depth of the academic critical response. This volume, the first devoted to the show's imaginative and widely varied use of music, sound and silence, helps to develop an increasingly important and inadequately covered area of research - the many roles of music in contemporary television. Chapters focus on scoring and source music, the title theme, the music production process, the critically acclaimed musical episode (voted number 13 in Channel Four's One Hundred Greatest Musicals), the symbolic and dramatic use of silence, and the popular reception of the show by its international fan base. In keeping with contemporary trends in the study of popular musics, a variety of critical approaches are taken from musicology, cultural studies, and media and communication studies, specifically employing critique, musical analysis, industry studies and hermeneutics.