SMT-V: The Society for Music Theory Videocast Journal
SMT-V is the open-access, peer-reviewed video journal of the Society for Music Theory. Founded in 2014, SMT-V publishes video essays that showcase research in music theory in a dynamic, audiovisual format, presented so as to have the potential to engage both specialists within the field as well as interested viewers outside the music theory community. The journal features a supportive and collaborative production process, and publishes several videos each year. Read more about SMT-V here.
Latest Issue: 11.1 (January 2025)
“Music as Movement in Signed Song: Analyzing Rosa Lee Timm’s ‘River Song’”
Anabel Maler (University of British Columbia)
Music created and performed primarily in a visual-kinesthetic or tactile modality, such as signed music, presents important challenges for our existing methodologies and paradigms in the field of music theory. The existence of music that does not necessarily involve sounds prompts us to reconceptualize music in terms of organized movement, and to consider how musical parameters such as vocal quality, melody, and rhythm can emerge in a visual-kinesthetic musical medium. This video considers these parameters through a detailed analysis of the original signed song “River Song,” composed and performed by Rosa Lee Timm. The video uses music analysis and video interviews with Timm to reveal the meaning of a purely signed piece of music.
Keywords: Deafness; Sign language; ASL; Movement; music analysis, musical meaning, performance and analysis), music perception and cognition