Musik Akademie Basel

Background and aimProfessional musicians face unique psychological demands leading to elevated rates of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, and performance anxiety, as well as stress-related disorders. These difficulties are associated with perfectionism, adverse experiences, and maladaptive coping strategies. While schema modes—recurring emotion, cognitive, and behavioral patterns triggered by early maladaptive schemas—are well-studied in clinical populations, their role in musicians remains unexplored. This study explores schema-mode presence in music students to evaluate their utility for understanding psychological vulnerability and coping.MethodsIn total, 46 music students from Zurich University of the Arts and Basel Music Academy completed an online survey assessing schema modes (short Schema Mode Inventory), musician-specific coping (HIL scale), and self-talk and complaints related to music-making via open-ended questions. Analysis included comparisons of effect sizes with normative summary data from healthy controls and clinical patients, inter-correlations between schema-modes and coping, cluster analysis identifying psychological profiles, and qualitative content analysis.ResultsMusic students scored significantly higher on maladaptive schema-modes vs. non-clinical controls, indicating greater emotional coping difficulties and reduced adaptive resources. Coping capacity correlated negatively with maladaptive modes and positively with the Healthy Adult mode. Scores overlapped with those of Axis I patients but differed from Axis II patients, suggesting intermediate clinical characteristics. Cluster analysis revealed three distinct profiles: “Balanced Musicians” (resilient cluster with high Healthy Adult and Happy Child modes and effective coping), “Vulnerable Musicians” (high-risk cluster with intense emotional child modes and frequent maladaptive parent/coping modes), and “Compensating Musicians” (at-risk cluster with intermediate scores and overcompensating strategies combining functional and maladaptive modes).ConclusionSchema modes appear central to musicians' mental health and coping, highlighting psychological profile heterogeneity among music students. Schema-focused interventions targeting maladaptive modes may enhance resilience and mental health in this population. This approach offers a promising clinical framework for supporting musicians' wellbeing.

Este artículo es una reflexión en torno a la percepción que contrapone la infancia a la adultez, haciendo una comparación entre cualidades que hacen salvaje a la niñez y al proceso de domesticación que ejercen los adultos formadores sobre ellos, invitando a especular sobre el rol del docente y a cuestionar las prácticas estipuladas en este nivel de formación. Este artículo propone la figura de educador-mediador para que la asignatura de Artes no se reduzca al desarrollo de habilidades motoras, sino que se exploren y expandan las posibilidades para la infancia de ser un espacio que permita la imaginación, el desarrollo de la creatividad y el pensamiento crítico de la cultura visual. Se aborda la relevancia de la clase de artes visuales en un nivel de educación preescolar para discutir sobre el papel de esta asignatura en un sistema jerarquizado por disciplinas consideradas prioritarias cuestionando criterios que establecen las expectativas y evaluaciones en un campo indeterminado y subjetivo, como es el del arte. El texto vincula narraciones que se entretejen y dan apertura a cuatro reflexiones que exponen consideraciones alrededor de la priorización de los espacios de control y cuidado sobre el aprendizaje, la reivindicación de la creatividad como una capacidad aliada a la transdisciplinariedad, el redescubrimiento de la infancia y la consciencia del rol adulto en la labor docente y la necesidad de que las artes sean un espacio disruptivo con la curiosidad voraz y la capacidad de asombro inherentes a la niñez.

How can a virtual sound laboratory allow for new and exciting ways of sonic interaction in the context of the arts? Our project addresses this question by developing the virtual sound lab ‘OpenSoundLab’ (as an open-source fork of ‘SoundStage VR’ by Logan Olson) that introduces to the artistic and musical production of sonic media with the help of the VR goggles ‘Meta Quest 2’. The aim is to combine the physical experience of working on spatial experimental systems, which is often perceived as positive and productive, with the advantages of digital tools and thus to enable independent learning and experimentation. The virtual lab allows to become familiar with the basics of creative sound generation and processing. Specially produced video tutorials play a central role here, which can be viewed at any time within the virtual environment and thus make it possible to study in individual lab environments independently of time and place. Furthermore, ‘OpenSoundLab’ may serve as an open-source tool for the professional and academic community of musicians, performers, and artists alike. In our reflection, we develop the notion of ‘cooking’ sound while ‘flowing’ in a mixed environment and apply this to experimental work in a virtual sound laboratory.

Musicians have been reported to show significant inter-Individual differences in elementary hearing functions, sound perception mode, musical instrument preference, performance style, as well as more complex musical abilities like absolute- and relative pitch perception, and auditory imagery. However, it remains unexplored how individual elementary hearing functions and corresponding musical abilities are inter-connected and to what extend they reflect individual differences in the musical behavior of musicians. Using a combination of five listening tests and assessing resulting psychoacoustic parameters, we were able to determine individual auditory fingerprints on the single subject- and group level. 93 musicians (49 professionals and 44 amateurs) were individually tested for: frequency discrimination threshold, holistic and spectral sound perception, absolute pitch perception, relative pitch perception (musical interval recognition), and musical imagery (AMMA). On the individual level, our results show that auditory fingerprints differ remarkably between subjects. On the group level, using PCA and cluster analysis, we found four main components represented significantly different in the three characteristic clusters of subjects. Taken together, our findings suggest that inter-individual differences in the auditory fingerprint reflect the high variability of individual sound perception and may have crucial impact on specific musical preference, style and performance of musicians.

During the Second World War, composers in neutral Switzerland were not faced with the same difficult choices as their colleagues in occupied Europe, but most nevertheless refused to do anything to antagonise the neighboring fascist regimes. The Swiss composer Richard Flury (1896-1967) was an exception: he worked with numerous anti-fascists and Jewish emigrés and even offered a job to his friend, the conductor Gottfried Kassowitz, in an (unsuccessful) effort to get him out of Nazi-occupied Vienna.

Comparaison de deux clarinettes separees par deux cent ans d'´ evolution : Tentative d'hybridation amusante et instructive entre facture instrumentale, mod eles physiques et synth ese sonore 1777 Cette etude amusante et instructive se propose de verifier par hybridation d'ou proviennent les principales differences de sonorite entre une clarinette Sib Bohm moderne (Buffet Crampon modele Prestige) et une clarinette historique (copie realisee par R. Tutz d'apres H. Grenser, Dresde, vers 1800). On compare l'impedance d'entree mesuree pour differents doigtes a l'aide d'un pont d'impedance ainsi que la fonction de transfert permettant de lier le signal de pression mesure par un bec instrumente et celui mesure par un microphone dispose devant l'instrumentiste. De ces mesures, on tire un modele numerique permettant d'approximer le resonateur et le rayonnement. Les simulations permettent de predire assez precisement certaines caracteristiques, comme la frequence de jeu. En comparant les sons externes obtenus en intervertissant les modeles de rayonnement, on constate une difference de sonorite audible mais relativement modeste entre le rayonnement de l'instrument moderne et celui de l'instrument historique. En intervertissant physiquement les excitateurs des 2 instruments, a l'aide d'un baril d'adaptation, on constate une difference de sonorite importante, que les modeles numeriques d'excitateurs usuels ne sont pas en mesure de reproduire a l'identique, bien qu'on constate lors des simulations une grande sensiblite pour de subtiles modifications du modele d'excitateur. Ces experiences montrent que l'excitateur est certainement l'element dont la modelisation acoustique laisse le plus a desirer.

The understanding of the relationship between excitation parameters and oscillation regimes is a classical topic concerning bowed string instruments. The paper aims to study the case of reed woodwinds and attempts to find consequences on the ease of playing. In the minimum model of clarinet-like instruments, three parameters are considered: i) the mouth pressure, ii) the reed opening at rest, iii) the length of the resonator assumed to be cylindrical. Recently a supplementary parameter was added: the loss parameter of the resonator (using the \textquotedblleft Raman model\textquotedblright , that considers resonator losses to be independent of frequency). This allowed explaining the extinction of sound when the mouth pressure becomes very large. The present paper presents an extension of the paper by Dalmont et al (JASA, 2005), searching for a diagram of oscillation regimes with respect to the reed opening and the loss parameter. An alternative method is used, which allows easier generalization and simplifies the calculation. The emphasis is done on the emergence bifurcation: for very strong losses, it can be inverse, similarly to the extinction one for weak losses. The main part of the calculations are analytical, giving clear dependence of the parameters. An attempt to deduce musical consequences for the player is given.

We investigated the relationship between movement and conveying emotion with moving images. We developed a software system for generating moving images in which movement is specified with moving effects consisting of a few elements. We prepared eight movements from the Vertex Noise moving effect, which consists of the three elements of speed, density, and strength, by giving each element different values and combined them with still images and sound data to generate moving images that would convey emotions. Subjects looked at moving images without sound and determined whether they felt certain emotions. The results showed the the higher density value affects the conveyance of any emotions with moving images, and strength distinguishes the conveyance of anger from fear and sadness. Anger is the most recognizable emotion, and fear and sadness are difficult to distinguish from movements.