Editor's Message

  1. New Staff Members

  2. Internet Statistics

  3. Virtual Poster Session: Multimedia Forum

  4. SMT Book Pages


[Contents of vol. 4.1]


1. New Staff Members

As announced in the last issue of MTO (3.5), a few staff members completed their terms, and new members have been appointed in their places. Ichiro Fujinaga will take over as MTO Manager. Fujinaga received his B.Sc. (honors) in Mathematics (1979) and B.Mus. in Percussion and Music Theory (1982) at University of Alberta, where he studied with Wesley Berg, Alfred Fisher, and Malcolm Forsyth. He received his M.A. in Music Theory (1989) and Ph.D. in Music Technology (1997) at McGill University, where he studied with Bo Alphonce, William Caplin, Brian Cherney, Mary Cyr, Bruce Pennycook, and Janet Schmalfeldt. He has been on the faculty of the Computer Music Department at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Johns Hopkins University, since 1993. He is also the Associate Director of Information Technology. His principal area of research is optical music recognition. Other interests include lazy learning (exemplar-based learning), digital signal processing, pattern recognition, and music perception.

Robert Gjerdingen will take over as MTO Reviews Editor. Gjerdingen has taught music theory and history at Carleton College, University of Michigan, Harvard, Stony Brook, and Northwestern. His research interests are in the psychology of music and in 18th-century musical style. He has served on the Executive Board of SMT, the Editorial Board of JAMS, and is an Associate Editor of Music Perception.

Jay Rahn has been appointed mto-talk Manager. Best known for his Theory for All Music (1983), Rahn has written extensively on history and philosophy of music theory, focusing on basic concepts underlying scales, tunings, meter, form, and texture in cross and trans-cultural perspective. Editor of the Canadian Journal for Traditional Music, he has published several analytic studies of French and English-language traditional song, and co-authored a recent book on the life and music of LaRena Clark (1994). He is Former Chair and continuing Music Coordinator of Atkinson College's Fine Arts Department, has contributed to York's Graduate Program in the musicology/ethnomusicology of contemporary cultures, and directs York's degree programs in Music Education. His current research concerns perception, pedagogy, and vernacular harmony.

Henry Klumpenhouwer joins Cathy Nolan and Justin London on the MTO Co-editorial Board. Klumpenhouwer is Associate Professor in the Music Department at the University of Alberta, where he also serves as the Secretary of the newly formed Institute for Popular Music. His work, which has appeared in the Journal of Music Theory, Music Theory Spectrum, Perspectives of New Music, Music Theory Online, Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie, and Music/Ideology, deals with the analysis of 20th century musics, history of theory, Marxist approaches to theory and analysis, as well as to general aspects of cultural studies.

I am delighted with our new staff members and look forward to working with them. Their talents and skills are most welcome as MTO moves into its sixth year.

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2. Internet Statistics

Periodically, I devote a short section of my message to the state of the Internet. Since we had no December issue on account of the late release of volume 3.5, I will mention a few recent Net statistics here. The days of the Internet being populated chiefly by the military, research scientists of various types, and academics is long gone. The increasing commercialization of the Net and the phenomenal growth since around 1994 of its multimedia dimension through the World-Wide Web have diversified and expanded the Net--as well as, alas, traffic on it--to a degree hardly imaginable only a few years ago. A recent survey by Nielsen Media Research, published in the Wall Street Journal (http://www.wsj.com), shows that there are now 58 million adults in the U.S. and Canada online (based on interviews with 9,000+ people). That represents an increase of 15% over the Nielsen estimate of 51 million just six months ago. Between 20-25% of those interviewed said they go online daily. International Data Corporation estimates that 40 million American households will be connected to the Net by the year 2001 (http://www.idcresearch. com/f/idcf.htm). The number of Internet users continues to grow worldwide as well. Alone AOL subscribers outside the U.S. have grown to one million, about 10% of AOL's ten million subscribers.

Estimating the worldwide Internet population is difficult and depends on various factors and interpretive decisions. Estimates vary widely. NUA, an Ireland-based Internet Consultancy and Developer (http://www.nua.ie/) which publishes a weekly electronic newsletter that includes various statistical reports (http://www.nua.ie/surveys/), puts the current number of Internet users worldwide at an astounding 90.4 million (http://www.nua.ie/how_many_online/index.html).

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3. Virtual Poster Session: Multimedia Forum

Former Co-editorial Board member Dave Headlam has been appointed Director of SMT's Virtual Poster Session (VPS). As his article in MTO 3.5 makes clear, Dave is highly skilled and experienced in multimedia authoring, in which he has been involved for the past several years. In addition to the VPS objective of providing a central resource leading to music-theoretical work in the form of poster sessions, one of Dave's goals with VPS is to provide practical information for those interested in learning about the tools and techniques of multimedia authoring. VPS will thus become a valuable reference for MTO authors who would like to take advantage of the multimedia potential offered by an electronic journal. I look forward to visiting the VPS page and watching its development under Headlam, and encourage MTO subscribers to do the same.

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4. SMT Book Pages

A few weeks after the SMT annual meeting in Phoenix, a message about two new online services was broadcast to the SMT general mailing list (smt-list): the Used Book Corner and Book Seekers pages. Private individuals (not commercial interests) who have music-theory related materials that they would like to sell (e.g. monographs, texts, scores) are invited to post information on those items in the Used Book Corner. Individuals seeking theory matierials (e.g. hard-to-find or out-of-print items) may post information on the Book Seekers page. SMT hopes that these two new services will assist scholars in locating research materials for purchase, and in selling materials they no longer need.

Those who use the services should be aware SMT neither warrants nor bears any responsibility for arrangements or terms of sale worked out between buyers and sellers.

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[Contents of vol. 4.1]

Lee A. Rothfarb, General Editor
Music Theory Online
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-6070
U.S.A.

mto-editor@societymusictheory.org
voice: (805) 893-7527 (with voice mail)
fax: (805) 893-7194

Updated 03 July 2013
Brent Yorgason

SMT