This paper deals with the German legal term 'Gesamteindruck', the German equivalent to 'overall impressions'. lt shows, in which way this term is a key component of German copyright law in plagiarism cases, and also that this term obtained is central position while being under-determined. No theoretical debate exists, dealing with its meaning and preconditions. lt is used like being self-explanatory, but the paper shows why and how it is not, and argues that this leads to consequences with regard to the predictability and consistency of legal decisions. From this starting point, the paper makes suggestions how the psychology of music is in a position to help improving the situation - from angles not accessible to purely legal methods. In doing so, this paper advocates to increase interdisciplinary dialog regarding judgments in plagiarism cases.

In the musical score, most information about the melody of a piece of music is given explicitly. The melody, which is often notated in a separate staff, is specified by a sequence of note symbols that encode the notes' pitches, onset times, and durations. A recording of the same piece of music constitutes a much more complex representation. The waveform of even a single note played on an instrument already consists of different frequency components, among them a fundamental frequency as well as a number of overtones. Furthermore, musicians make their performance more expressive by changing tempo and dynamics, by adding vibrato to played notes, or by smoothly connecting subsequent notes with glissandi. In a polyphonic music recording, all these effects and nuances superimpose to a complex sound mixture, in which the information about the melody is given only implicitly. As a result, the estimation of the sequence of fundamental frequency values, which represent the melody, is a challenging task. In this contribution, we discuss computational approaches for automatically estimating the fundamental frequency track of the dominant melodic voice in a polyphonic music recording. Furthermore, we show how the estimation result can be improved by integrating additional knowledge about the piece of music and by means of user interaction. Finally, we present a prototype of a user interface that integrates the presented techniques and functionalities for interactive fundamental frequency estimation.

Few studies have yet investigated the effect of music in video games on players. In studies found, likely moderating variables such as music and game preferences were often not considered. The following article discusses the findings of a recent study on the influence of music and game preferences on the following dimensions perceived effects, disturbance of concentration and the personal music preference. These scales were constructed via an explorative factor analysis of a questionnaire consisting of 146 items. The results show that the preference of the game-dimension Action/Shooter and Skill Games influences the intensity of the perceived effects and concentration, music preferences have no effect on either dimension.

This article is about the so called phenomenon „Loudness War" which is a name for the trend of using enhanced dynamic compression in post productions of popular music and its effects on the recipients. The pivotal study of this article is an experimental 2 x 2 between-subjects-design that examines the perception and appraisal of different popular music songs. 56 students (M=22.8 years, 69.6 % female) listened in two groups to the same three songs, while the second or third song were produced with enhanced dynamic compression. For the measurement a modified questionnaire about acoustic color following the approach of Maempel (2001) was used as well as the SAM and PANAS-d-state. Only the "louder" respectively compromised rock song on the third position was rated significantly worse on several parameters and caused more negative feelings.

To further develop digital music recommendation systems, empirical knowledge about central dimensions and predictors of personal music preferences would be very helpful. However, gradually differing views exist in applied music research: Sociological authors stress the significance of milieux of origin for the development of musical taste affinities which are said to base on extra-musical, socio-cultural genre connotations. Psychological authors conversely emphasize the influence of biologic-genetically predisposed personality traits and early education experiences as possible explanations for musical genre preferences, which are in turn said to be driven by intrinsic music attributes. The study tries to combine both approaches to estimate their relative explanatory potential. It furthermore puts a special focus on the potential impact of media-related music socialization on individual preference genesis. The empirical results largely confirm the existing state of research, but also show new methodological solutions and finally demonstrate the potential of complementing sociological and psychological approaches when optimizing music recommendation systems.

This study presents an exploratory investigation of movements by DJs during a live performance in the club context. Further, we are interested in potential changes in the behavior of DJs depending on their degree of professionalization. To investigate these aspects, video recordings of performances by six semiprofessional and eight professional techno/house-DJs were analyzed. Here, their operations on the equipment and their visible actions through dance and gestures are of interest. It was found that professional DJs use their equipment faster and more diverse than semi-professional DJs. This finding is subsequently discussed in the context of theories of musical learning and expertise. Furthermore, professional DJs use their body more intensively than semi-professionals and show leadership in the club.

The Performance Simulator at the Royal College of Music is a new training facility that enables musicians to practice their performing and auditioning skills. In the present article, we discuss different types of simulations before describing the Performance Simulator and its development in greater detail. The first validation study, which provides evidence that the experience of a musical performance in the Performance Simulator is generally close to reality, is discussed critically. In the following section, we introduce already implemented improvements and give an overview of further developments. The application for basic research is highlighted and examples of research projects investigating psychological and physiological processes of performance are provided. lt is concluded that the Performance Simulator has the potential to evolve into an essential part of professional musicians' training.

Since the beginning of the 1970s, internal clock models combined with motor programs prevailed in psychomotor music research over the notion that musicians and non-musicians were making use of an auditory feedback loop in order to maintain a constant tempo while playing an instrument or tapping a beat. More recent neurological research postulates that the (musical) sense of short-time intervals is based on varying series of neuronal discharges (neural networks) without a central internal clock. These can vary in the short-term on the basis of new stimuli, similar to auditory feedback. If an internal clock would be independent from auditory feedback (Open-Loop-Model) while playing an instrument in single performance (piano), unexpected delayed auditory feedback (DAF) then should not affect the soloists tempo performance. If otherwise pianists in this case tend to delay the former inner beat of motor performance, it would be an indication for the adjustability of an internal clock or varying neural networks. Would pianists react depending on the amount of DAF, it provides another argument against open-loop-models. Moreover, if handedness is affecting the motor performance depending on the placement of DAF in the piano-soprano or otherwise in the piano-bass, much is to be said against a singular internal clock. This experiment provides some arguments in this regard. The settings were designed to have a non-lab-situation for the subjects. For example: Pianists were prevented from continuation-synchronization paradigms, caused by metronome beats which are often presented at the start of tapping-experiments. In fact, new statistical methods in this study made time series comparable between subjects without a preset for a mean tempo. The most outstanding findings of this study were: Pianists motor performance was seriously affected by unpredictable muted auditory feedback at a point of the experiment, when subjects already had adapted (learning effect) to delayed auditory feedback (DAF). Surprisingly, this happens by anticipatory motor adjustment (AMA). From this it follows, that the debate starting in the 70s about mutually contradictory models of an auditory feedback loop on the one hand and internal clocks on the other hand is leading to a dead end. It is rather clear, that our sense of hearing in the presence takes part in the (a priori) planning of the future musical motor performance. It maybe of interest for future studies, that pianists with prior knowledge on random DAF showed significantly less tempo deviations after auditory disturbances. Furthermore, DAF affects the proprioception of following motor actions of the opposite hemisphere: Only when DAF occurred, participants strake wrong keys in a significant way. And what is more, they significantly made their pitchmistakes with that hand which did not strike the manipulated key before.

This article gives an overview of research into the subject learning with YouTube. The paltry existing theoretical insights and previous empirical findings are summarized. Existing research in this field is mostly based in the domain of extramusical learning- and teaching-science. Often the subject of such research is the question of compatibility between traditional formal learning and informal learning with online available tutorials. Beyond the theoretical findings, this article gives insight into an explorative study which investigates scholar abilities of rating concerning the quality of online musical learning-content. Therefore 84 subjects including scholars from three different music schools and university students as well as university associates (10 to 53 years old, Ø 23.5, 43 female, 41 male) were asked to rate two YouTube tutorials of different quality but same learning-content in different aspects like quality of video and sound quality, aspects of instrumental performance and sympathy with the teacher. The participants had to rate 20 items on these aspects in a new standardised questionnaire. In advance the tutorials were selected by experts. Significant results could be determined about age as well as the amount of musical instruction and grading. Furthermore in some aspects women gave better grades. Between teachers and scholars there were significant findings about different grading for the good tutorials.

The article illustrates the development of an instrument for the measurement of music specific language and competences. It focuses on students of the seventh grade in Germany. C-tests were constructed by selection and use of authentic schoolbook texts. The reliability of all sub scales is good to very good. Scales were scaled by use of the Rasch-model. A three-dimensional model is able to represent the correlations and coherences between general literacy, and special musical literacy, or music specific language competence. The use of regression analysis proved this special language to exist. Analysis of variance showed the effects of the test person's mother language and the type of school they attended. The instrument is able to augment knowledge on musical competences, and provides an economic way to collect data on this. Furthermore it can be correlated to other constructs and testing tools. The authors argue that implementing knowledge on the structure and use of music specific language could result in the construction of better surveys, or educational material.