writing music research paper

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Researching Music & Musicians

• Getting Started

Understand Your Assignment

Create some research questions to guide your inquiry, brainstorm search terms.

• Know Your Sources
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• Citing Basics

The content of your paper is dictated by your professor's assignment prompt. Read it carefully, as following the guidelines laid out by your professor is crucial to your success. If the assignment prompt confuses you, consider attending your professor's office hour or emailing them for clarification.  MJC research librarians are happy to help you understand the guidelines laid out in your assignment.

Check out these useful links providing guidance and tips for students tasked with writing about music. These links are meant to serve as a supplement to your professor's assignment prompt and the material in this guide.

• Writing About Music From the Hunter College in New York

Research questions will keep you focused and on task. Sometimes your professor will include specific questions they want addressed within the prompt.  A research librarian can also help you develop questions based on the parameters of the assignment. Below are some generic questions that can help you get started.

• What biographical/historical  information is important to understanding your composer?
• What or who were the musical influences for your composer?
• What education & training did your composer receive?
• What are your composer’s  major works ?
• What is the most significant contribution of  your composer? Why?
• Did  your composer’s music change over time? How? Why?
• What specific musical elements does  composer incorporate into their work? To what effect?
• What styles/themes does  your composer explore?
• What other musicians have been influenced by  your composer

Below are some basic search terms that work well in our databases. A research librarian can also help you identify additional terms supporting your specific assignment.

Music -- History and criticism

Classical music

Music appreciation

Music theory

World music 

Composers and Women Composers

music - Combine this subject term with names of specific artistic movements, geographic regions, time periods, etc. (for example: Rap Music  or Music, Africa)

names of specific composers/musicians 

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• Last Updated: Apr 25, 2024 1:28 PM
• URL: https://libguides.mjc.edu/Music

Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC BY-NC 4.0 Licenses .

• Introductory Reading

Writing about Music

• Finding Books
• Finding Articles
• Finding Scores and Recordings
• Zotero Citation Manager

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• Last Updated: Apr 22, 2024 2:06 PM
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Libraries | Research Guides

* music research.

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NU Writing Resources

Citation tools, music research and writing guides, style manuals & citation guides.

• EndNote Support by Jason Kruse Last Updated Apr 5, 2024 1831 views this year
• Mendeley Support by Steven Adams Last Updated Aug 8, 2022 20899 views this year
• Zotero Support by Geoff Morse Last Updated Apr 5, 2024 19220 views this year
• Music Reference and Research Materials by Vincent H. Duckles; Michael A. Keller Call Number: ML113 .D83 1994 ISBN: 0028708229 Publication Date: 1994-02-01

• Chicago Manual of Style Online, 17th ed.

• Purdue OWL Developed at Purdue University, this site shows examples for MLA citations, footnotes/end notes, and works lists

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• Last Updated: Jan 8, 2024 9:49 AM
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Doing Research in Music: Home

• 1. Getting Started
• 2. Preliminary Search
• 3. Determining Research Questions
• 4. Gathering Sources
• 5. Writing & Citing

A step by step guide for writing a research paper in music. 

Use the tabs to the left to get started! 

For the general Music Library Guide, click here: Music Subject Guide

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• Last Updated: Apr 5, 2024 10:14 AM
• URL: https://libguides.lib.umanitoba.ca/musicresearch

Music Research Guide

• Google Scholar
• Naxos Music Library
• Music history
• Music and culture
• Music Education
• Women in Music
• Studying Diversity in Music
• Open Access Resources
• Ebooks about Music
• Music scores
• Sound effects
• The Music Business
• Program notes (composers, selections, context)

Citation style guides for Music

Zotero citation manager, zoterobib: the quickest way to build an accurate bib, writing about music, annotated bibliographies, writing center.

The most often used citation styles for Music are the  Chicago Manual of Style  and MLA Handbook for Writers , both of which are located at the library service desk. For more assistance, please consult a librarian or your professor.

You may also want to look at How to write about music : the RILM manual of style (James R. Cowdery, editor), call number: 808.06678 H741wr.

Music Research: a handbook  includes detailed instructions on how to cite music sources in Chicago and MLA style

Chicago style

• Chicago Manual of Style from Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL)
• Chicago Manual of Style Online

Cite a score as you would a book in Chicago style:

Composer last name, first name. Title of score . Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication (or n.d. if there is no date).

For example:

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. The piano sonatas and fantasies . New York: E. Kalmus, 1968.

(From  The Chicago Manual of Style )

Cite a music recording in Chicago style:

Composer last name, first name. Title of musical recording. Essential performer(s) first name, last name. Record label CD identifying number. Year. Format.

--Essential performers can include soloists, conductor, or ensemble

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Piano sonatas. Christoph Eschenbach. Deutsche Grammophon 463 137-2, 1999. CD.

• MLA Formatting and Style Guide at Purdue's Online Writing Lab
• How to cite sound recordings in MLA - Purdue OWL Scroll down the page to the "A Song or Album" section

Cite a score as you would a book in MLA style:

Composer last name, first name. Title as it appears on title page (italicized and capitalize the abbreviations No. and Op.). Date of composition (or N.d. if there is no date). Place of publication: Publisher, Date of publication. Print (or Online). If the score is part of a series, include the series name.

Donizetti, Gaetano. Don Pasquale: An Opera in Three Acts with Italian-English Text . 1842. New York: Belwin, 1959. Print. Kalmus Vocal Scores.

(From  MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing )

The z otero Citation Manager is a free, easy to use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.

Follow these steps to start building your own Zotero Library:

• Download Zotero Download both 1) the Zotero program (left side of the page) and 2) the connector/extension for your browser you are using
• Register for a free Zotero account Registering a user account lets you sync your library so you can access it on different computers You can also collaborate and share Zotero libraries with others
• Add items to your Zotero Library Save articles, books, websites, and more with just one click
• Zotero video training Step-by-step instruction videos on how to set up Zotero
• For more detailed information, check out our Zotero Research Guide

Zotero now has a quick and accurate tool to create a bibliography entry!

• go to  https://zbib.org/
• enter a URL (website), ISBN (book), DOI (online article), PMID (PubMed), arXiv ID (author), or title
• click on the Cite button
• select a Bibliography style
• copy to clipboard to paste into your document
• formatted citations are stored in your browser until you delete them
• Annotated Bibliographies (Purdue OWL) What is and how to prepare an annotated bibliography

The Writing Center offers online, real-time appointments. Students can make appointments as usual via  http://elon.mywconline.com  and meet with a consultant via video and text chat. Appointments will be available during the usual hours and all appointments will be scheduled for eastern standard time. For more information:  https://www.elon.edu/u/academics/writing-excellence/the-writing-center/ .

Elon's Writing Center will help you understand an assignment, as well as brainstorm, draft, revise, edit & document sources.

• Schedule an appointment at the Writing Center You can pick the day, time, duration and the WC consultant
• Writing Center website Visit the WC website for current hours and locations
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University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Dissertation and Thesis Research and Writing Guide for Music Students

Getting started.

• Conducting Your Research
• Writing Your Thesis or Dissertation
• Citation Resources
• Copyright Permissions
• Depositing Your Thesis or Dissertation

Music & Performing Arts Library

This is a guide to library resources for graduate students in the School of Music working on a thesis or dissertation.

Use the tabs to the left to navigate the guide and see what resources we have available.

If you have questions about the Library or accessing resources related to your thesis or dissertation work that we didn't cover in this guide, please let us know! You can contact the librarians at [email protected] or by clicking the "Email Me" button on the left.

***Please note: the information included in this guide regarding graduation and dissertation requirements is intended as a guideline only. Always check with the School of Music or the Graduate College Thesis Office if you have questions about these requirements as they will be best able to provide up to date information.

Getting Help

Need research help.

If you need help with your research or are having trouble tracking down the sources you need, you can make an appointment with a librarian to discuss your research one-on-one. Don't hesitate to reach out or schedule an appointment if you need help! You are also always welcome to ask for assistance at the service desk at MPAL.

Questions About Graduate Requirements?

If you have questions about graduate requirements, you can reach out to the School of Music Graduate Academic Affairs for clarification. They can be reached via email at [email protected]

We are also including links to the Graduate College Handbook and the Thesis Office below in case you want to consult policies or requirements yourself.

• Graduate College Handbook of Policy and Requirements
• Thesis Office
• School of Music's Student Resources

Guides to Researching & Writing About Music

• Research Guides
• Writing Guides

As you conduct your research, you may find it helpful to consult some of the handbooks below to help guide you through the research process. For help with writing about music - including selecting the right terminology as well as general style tips - be sure to check out the next tab of this box!

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• Last Updated: Jan 26, 2024 11:39 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.illinois.edu/musicdissthesis

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• A Research Guide
• Research Paper Topics

120 Music Research Paper Topics

How to choose a topic for music research paper:.

Music Theory Research Paper Topics:

• The influence of harmonic progression on emotional response in music
• Analyzing the use of chromaticism in the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach
• The role of rhythm and meter in creating musical tension and release
• Examining the development of tonality in Western classical music
• Exploring the impact of cultural and historical context on musical form and structure
• Investigating the use of polyphony in Renaissance choral music
• Analyzing the compositional techniques of minimalist music
• The relationship between melody and harmony in popular music
• Examining the influence of jazz improvisation on contemporary music
• The role of counterpoint in the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven
• Investigating the use of microtonality in experimental music
• Analyzing the impact of technology on music composition and production
• The influence of musical modes on the development of different musical genres
• Exploring the use of musical symbolism in film scoring
• Investigating the role of music theory in the analysis and interpretation of non-Western music

Music Industry Research Paper Topics:

• The impact of streaming services on music consumption patterns
• The role of social media in promoting and marketing music
• The effects of piracy on the music industry
• The influence of technology on music production and distribution
• The relationship between music and mental health
• The evolution of music genres and their impact on the industry
• The economics of live music events and festivals
• The role of record labels in shaping the music industry
• The impact of globalization on the music industry
• The representation and portrayal of gender in the music industry
• The effects of music streaming platforms on artist revenue
• The role of music education in fostering talent and creativity
• The influence of music videos on audience perception and engagement
• The impact of music streaming on physical album sales
• The role of music in advertising and brand marketing

Music Therapy Research Paper Topics:

• The effectiveness of music therapy in reducing anxiety in cancer patients
• The impact of music therapy on improving cognitive function in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease
• Exploring the use of music therapy in managing chronic pain
• The role of music therapy in promoting emotional well-being in children with autism spectrum disorder
• Music therapy as a complementary treatment for depression: A systematic review
• The effects of music therapy on stress reduction in pregnant women
• Examining the benefits of music therapy in improving communication skills in individuals with developmental disabilities
• The use of music therapy in enhancing motor skills rehabilitation after stroke
• Music therapy interventions for improving sleep quality in patients with insomnia
• Exploring the impact of music therapy on reducing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• The role of music therapy in improving social interaction and engagement in individuals with schizophrenia
• Music therapy as a non-pharmacological intervention for managing symptoms of dementia
• The effects of music therapy on pain perception and opioid use in hospitalized patients
• Exploring the use of music therapy in promoting relaxation and reducing anxiety during surgical procedures
• The impact of music therapy on improving quality of life in individuals with Parkinson’s disease

Music Psychology Research Paper Topics:

• The effects of music on mood and emotions
• The role of music in enhancing cognitive abilities
• The impact of music therapy on mental health disorders
• The relationship between music and memory recall
• The influence of music on stress reduction and relaxation
• The psychological effects of different genres of music
• The role of music in promoting social bonding and cohesion
• The effects of music on creativity and problem-solving abilities
• The psychological benefits of playing a musical instrument
• The impact of music on motivation and productivity
• The psychological effects of music on physical exercise performance
• The role of music in enhancing learning and academic performance
• The influence of music on sleep quality and patterns
• The psychological effects of music on individuals with autism spectrum disorder
• The relationship between music and personality traits

Music Education Research Paper Topics:

• The impact of music education on cognitive development in children
• The effectiveness of incorporating technology in music education
• The role of music education in promoting social and emotional development
• The benefits of music education for students with special needs
• The influence of music education on academic achievement
• The importance of music education in fostering creativity and innovation
• The relationship between music education and language development
• The impact of music education on self-esteem and self-confidence
• The role of music education in promoting cultural diversity and inclusivity
• The effects of music education on students’ overall well-being and mental health
• The significance of music education in developing critical thinking skills
• The role of music education in enhancing students’ teamwork and collaboration abilities
• The impact of music education on students’ motivation and engagement in school
• The effectiveness of different teaching methods in music education
• The relationship between music education and career opportunities in the music industry

Music History Research Paper Topics:

• The influence of African music on the development of jazz in the United States
• The role of women composers in classical music during the 18th century
• The impact of the Beatles on the evolution of popular music in the 1960s
• The cultural significance of hip-hop music in urban communities
• The development of opera in Italy during the Renaissance
• The influence of folk music on the protest movements of the 1960s
• The role of music in religious rituals and ceremonies throughout history
• The evolution of electronic music and its impact on contemporary music production
• The contribution of Latin American musicians to the development of salsa music
• The influence of classical music on film scores in the 20th century
• The role of music in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States
• The development of reggae music in Jamaica and its global impact
• The influence of Mozart’s compositions on the classical music era
• The role of music in the French Revolution and its impact on society
• The evolution of punk rock music and its influence on alternative music genres

Music Sociology Research Paper Topics:

• The impact of music streaming platforms on the music industry
• The role of music in shaping cultural identity
• Gender representation in popular music: A sociological analysis
• The influence of social media on music consumption patterns
• Music festivals as spaces for social interaction and community building
• The relationship between music and political activism
• The effects of globalization on local music scenes
• The role of music in constructing and challenging social norms
• The impact of technology on music production and distribution
• Music and social movements: A comparative study
• The role of music in promoting social change and social justice
• The influence of socioeconomic factors on music taste and preferences
• The role of music in constructing and reinforcing gender stereotypes
• The impact of music education on social and cognitive development
• The relationship between music and mental health: A sociological perspective

Classical Music Research Paper Topics:

• The influence of Ludwig van Beethoven on the development of classical music
• The role of women composers in classical music history
• The impact of Johann Sebastian Bach’s compositions on future generations
• The evolution of opera in the classical period
• The significance of Mozart’s symphonies in the classical era
• The influence of nationalism on classical music during the Romantic period
• The portrayal of emotions in classical music compositions
• The use of musical forms and structures in the works of Franz Joseph Haydn
• The impact of the Industrial Revolution on the production and dissemination of classical music
• The relationship between classical music and dance in the Baroque era
• The role of patronage in the development of classical music
• The influence of folk music on classical composers
• The representation of nature in classical music compositions
• The impact of technological advancements on classical music performance and recording
• The exploration of polyphony in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach

• Writing a Research Paper
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Feature: How to Write a Music Research Paper

Without a doubt, music has a powerful healing effect. However, its effect might fade away a bit when you need to write an academic paper about music. This process requires attention, dedication, and strong analytical skills. No wonder many students struggle to cope with this assignment on time and without stress. Nonetheless, you can write an outstanding paper if you know all the details of the process algorithm. This article will give you many useful recommendations for organizing the writing process effectively.

When you choose musical topics for research paper , ensure you write about something you are passionate about. Otherwise, this assignment will seem exhausting and tedious to you. You can rely on your interests and check the relevance of the topics you want to discuss. Do they match the context your teacher presents during classes? Choosing a subject that inspires you is beneficial, as it will make your paper more convincing and appealing. Here are some more recommendations for writing a comprehensive music research paper.

Step 1: Preparation and Planning

Before you get to the writing process itself, there are several steps you need to take. The more prepared you are, the better your paper will be.

Narrow your focus

Don’t attempt to cover every single aspect of the chosen topic. Define your area of research for a deeper and more insightful paper. You aim to present all the crucial ideas relevant to one specific aspect of music history, famous composer, etc.

Develop a research question

Frame your investigation with a clear, specific question your paper will answer. Once you have that, you can craft a concise thesis statement outlining your central argument. For instance, it may sound like this: “The augmented fourth interval, when employed in major key contexts, consistently evokes feelings of tension and anticipation due to its dissonance and harmonic instability.”

Think about your paper’s structure

Create a detailed outline to organize your research, arguments, and evidence into a logical flow. It will help you stay on the specific aspects of music you’ve chosen to discuss.

Step 2: Research and Analysis

Once you know what you want to write about, it’s time to gather all the necessary information to make your music paper engaging.

Explore multiple sources

Rely on various academic and musical resources, including scholarly articles, music theory books, historical documents, interviews, and recordings. Your research study should look rounded and convincing. Remember that you can also be your source of information. Listen to and analyze relevant musical examples to support your points and arguments.

Ensure to evaluate your sources critically. Question their validity, bias, and relevance to your research question.

Take detailed notes

Take notes while looking for relevant facts and figures to support your ideas. Include source citations and important musical excerpts to simplify the writing process for yourself.

Include different perspectives

Acknowledge and engage with alternative interpretations of your topic to demonstrate a deep understanding of the subject.

Step 3: Writing and Style

Now, it’s finally time to start writing. If listening to music does not distract you while you write, turn it on to create an additional source of inspiration.

Integrate musical examples effectively

Include musical citations directly in your text, or use figures and diagrams to support your analysis. Remember to make a reference list to avoid plagiarism issues. Follow strict academic referencing guidelines to credit your sources properly.

Is there a smooth flow?

Just like music, writing requires it as well. Use transition words and topic sentences to create a logical flow of your ideas. Otherwise, you might end up having a list of interesting musical facts that do not correlate.

Proofread and edit carefully

Ensure you have enough time left for these two crucial steps. Your paper should not have any grammatical errors, typos, or formatting inconsistencies. If you don’t have time to proofread your paper, you can hire a qualified writer to do so. Many companies allow students to order editing and proofreading services. If you are unsure how to choose essay writing service for these purposes, start with reading the reviews of other clients.

After you’ve finished working on your project, you can look for feedback from someone whose expertise you trust. You aim to get constructive feedback and revise your paper before final submission. Even though writing and music are subjective art forms, some specific characteristics help us differentiate masterpieces from average creations. Therefore, follow the standard requirements of writing assignments. However, ensure to add a pitch of creativity in them to make your paper stand out.

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The Top 10 Most Interesting Music Research Topics

Music is a vast and ever-growing field. Because of this, it can be challenging to find excellent music research topics for your essay or thesis. Although there are many examples of music research topics online, not all are appropriate.

This article covers all you need to know about choosing suitable music research paper topics. It also provides a clear distinction between music research questions and topics to help you get started.

Find your bootcamp match

What makes a strong music research topic.

A strong music research topic must be short, straightforward, and easy to grasp. The primary aim of music research is to apply various research methods to provide valuable insights into a particular subject area. Therefore, your topic must also address issues that are relevant to present-day readers.

Also, for your research topic to be compelling, it should not be overly generic. Try to avoid topics that seem to be too broad. A strong research topic is always narrow enough to draw out a comprehensive and relevant research question.

Tips for Choosing a Music Research Topic

• Check with your supervisor. In some cases, your school or supervisor may have specific requirements for your research. For example, some music programs may favor a comparative instead of a descriptive or correlational study. Knowing what your institution demands is essential in choosing an appropriate research topic.
• Explore scientific papers. Journal articles are a great way to find the critical areas of interest in your field of study. You can choose from a wide range of journals such as The Journal of Musicology and The Journal of the Royal Musical Association . These resources can help determine the direction of your research.
• Determine your areas of interest. Choosing a topic you have a personal interest in will help you stay motivated. Researching music-related subjects is a painstakingly thorough process. A lack of motivation would make it difficult to follow through with your research and achieve optimal results.
• Confirm availability of data sources. Not all music topics are researchable. Before selecting a topic, you must be sure that there are enough primary and secondary data sources for your research. You also need to be sure that you can carry out your research with tested and proven research methods.
• Ask your colleagues: Asking questions is one of the many research skills you need to cultivate. A short discussion or brainstorming session with your colleagues or other music professionals could help you identify a suitable topic for your research paper.

What’s the Difference Between a Research Topic and a Research Question?

A research topic is a particular subject area in a much wider field that a researcher chooses to place his emphasis on. Most subjects are extensive. So, before conducting research, a researcher must first determine a suitable area of interest that will act as the foundation for their investigation.

Research questions are drawn from research topics. However, research questions are usually more streamlined. While research topics can take a more generic viewpoint, research questions further narrow the focus down to specific case studies or seek to draw a correlation between two or more datasets.

How to Create Strong Music Research Questions

Strong music research questions must be relevant and specific. Music is a broad field with many genres and possible research areas. However, your research question must focus on a single subject matter and provide valuable insights. Also, your research question should be based on parameters that can be quantified and studied using available research methods.

Top 10 Music Research Paper Topics

1. understanding changes in music consumption patterns.

Although several known factors affect how people consume music, there is still a significant knowledge gap regarding how these factors influence listening choices. Your music research paper could outline some of these factors that affect music consumer behavior and highlight their mechanism of action.

2. Hip-hop Culture and Its Effect on Teenage Behavior

In 2020, hip-hop and RnB had the highest streaming numbers , according to Statista. Without a doubt, hip-hop music has had a significant influence on the behavior of young adults. There is still the need to conduct extensive research on this subject to determine if there is a correlation between hip-hop music and specific behavioral patterns, especially among teenagers.

3. The Application of Music as a Therapeutic Tool

For a long time, music has been used to manage stress and mental health disorders like anxiety, PTSD, and others. However, the role of music in clinical treatment still remains a controversial topic. Further research is required to separate fact from fiction and provide insight into the potential of music therapy.

4. Contemporary Rock Music and Its Association With Harmful Social Practices

Rock music has had a great influence on American culture since the 1950s. Since its rise to prominence, it has famously been associated with vices such as illicit sex and abuse of recreational drugs. An excellent research idea could be to evaluate if there is a robust causal relationship between contemporary rock music and adverse social behaviors.

5. The Impact of Streaming Apps on Global Music Consumption

Technology has dramatically affected the music industry by modifying individual music consumption habits. Presently, over 487 million people subscribe to a digital streaming service, according to Statista. Your research paper could examine how much of an influence popular music streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music have had on how we listen to music.

6. Effective American Music Education Practices

Teaching practices have always had a considerable impact on students’ academic success. However, not all strategies have an equal effect in enhancing learning experiences for students. You can conduct comparative research on two or more American music education practices and evaluate their impact on learning outcomes.

7. The Evolution of Music Production in the Technology-driven Era

One of the aspects of music that is experiencing a massive change is sound production. More than ever before, skilled, tech-savvy music producers are in high demand. At the moment, music producers earn about $70,326 annually, according to ZipRecruiter. So, your research could focus on the changes in music production techniques since the turn of the 21st century.

8. Jazz Music and Its Influence on Western Music Genres

The rich history of jazz music has established it as one of the most influential genres of music since the 19th century. Over the years, several famous composers and leading voices across many other western music genres have been shaped by jazz music’s sound and culture. You could carry out research on the influence of this genre of music on modern types of music.

9. The Effect of Wars on Music

Wars have always brought about radical changes in several aspects of culture, including music styles. Throughout history, we have witnessed wars result in the death of famous musicians. If you are interested in learning about music history in relation to global events, a study on the impact of wars on music will make an excellent music research paper.

10. African Tribal Percussion

African music is well recognized for its unique application of percussion. Historically, several tribes and cultures had their own percussion instruments and original methods of expression. Unfortunately, this musical style has mainly gone undocumented. An in-depth study into ancient African tribal percussion would make a strong music research paper.

Other Examples of Music Research Topics & Questions

Music research topics.

• Popular musical styles of the 20th century
• The role of musical pieces in political movements
• Biographies of influential musicians during the baroque period
• The influence of classical music on modern-day culture
• The relationship between music and fashion

Music Research Questions

• What is the relationship between country music and conservationist ideologies among middle-aged American voters?
• What is the effect of listening to Chinese folk music on the critical thinking skills of high school students?
• How have electronic music production technologies influenced the sound quality of contemporary music?
• What is the correlation between punk music and substance abuse among Black-American males?
• How does background music affect learning and information retention in children?

Choosing the Right Music Research Topic

Your research topic is the foundation on which every other aspect of your study is built. So, you must select a music research topic that gives you room to adequately explore intriguing hypotheses and, if possible, proffer practically applicable solutions.

Also, if you seek to obtain a Bachelor’s Degree in Music , you must be prepared to conduct research during your study. Choosing the right music research topic is the first step in guaranteeing good grades and delivering relevant, high-quality contributions in this constantly expanding field.

Music Research Topics FAQ

A good music research topic should be between 10 to 12 words long. Long, wordy music essay topics are usually confusing. They can make it difficult for readers to understand the goal of your research. Avoid using lengthy phrases or vague terms that could confuse the reader.

Journal articles are the best place to find helpful resources for your music research. You can explore reputable, high-impact journal articles to see if any research has been done related to your chosen topic. Journal articles also help to provide data for comparison while carrying out your research.

Primary sources carry out their own research and cite their own data. In contrast, secondary sources report data obtained from a primary source. Although primary sources are regarded as more credible, you can include a good mixture of primary and secondary sources in your research.

The most common research methods for music research are qualitative, quantitative, descriptive, and analytical. Your research strategy is arguably the most crucial part of your study. You must learn different research methods to determine which one would be the perfect fit for your particular research question.

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25 Most Popular Music Research Paper Topics for Writing

Research papers aren't just for history class or the social sciences. Research papers can be assigned in any course, and that includes music class. The world's musical traditions are fertile ground for research, but because we have been conditioned from childhood to think of music as entertainment rather than a subject for academic research, it is often difficult to come up with interesting and effective topics for a music research paper. Fortunately, music research papers are often more fun to write than other types of research paper because they have such a wide range of interesting topics to explore. 

Choose from these stellar popular music research paper topics

Are you stuck looking for a music research topic? Well, you're in luck. We have twenty-five music research paper topics that will spark your creativity and get you started with your next paper. You can pick up one from this list, you can combine several of them, or maybe you will get inspired by this list and come with several topics on your own. In any case, make sure that the popular music topic for your research paper is interesting to you personally, and doesn't just sound potentially easy to write about. 

1. How is music marketed by demographic? Explore the different ways music companies target various demographic groups such as age and gender. 2. How does the categorization of music affect consumer purchasing decisions? Examine how the emphasis on genre either enhances sales or limits consumer interest. 3. Does the album have a future in the streaming era? Consider whether the album can survive in an era when singles are streamed in customized playlists. 4. How has music changed over the past half century? Explore some of the major themes and developments that have shaped popular music since the dawn of the rock-n-roll era. 5. Research the most influential musicians of a specific era. By comparing and contrasting the careers of key figures from a particular era, you can pain a picture of a moment in time. 6. What makes music "classical"? How we define "classical" music says a lot about power and privilege. Explore who decides and what criteria get used. 7. Does music have an impact on our bodies? Research medical evidence whether music can impact human health. 8. Does music have an impact on our mental health? Examine research on the use of music for mental health and therapeutic purposes. 9. Music and children: Is the Mozart effect real? How can music education impact children's academic and social development? 10. Can music education aid in memory training and memory development? Consider the current academic research and evaluate the validity of claims for music as a memory aid. 11. How does music impact dance? Music and dance are inextricably linked. Look at some of the ways that music impacts the development of dance. 12. How does a musician become successful? Examine key routes to success and what a music student can do to set themselves up for a career. 13. What other careers does a music degree prepare a student for? Research how music degrees can set the stage for careers beyond the music industry. 14. How does music impact fashion? Look at how rock-n-roll and hip hop have shaped fashion trends. 15. How is music used in advertising? Look into the reasons that artists are licensing hit singles to sell products and how that impacts consumers' views of music. 16. Classical music vs. rock-n-roll: Which has been more influential? Examine the arguments for both sides and take a position. 17. Look into the sociology of tribute bands and consider the reasons that people would dedicate their lives to imitating other musicians. 18. It is often said that "music soothes the savage beast," and farmers often use music to calm livestock. Is there truth to the notion that music has a positive impact on animals?  Explore the research and draw conclusions.

19. Music has been an important part of war throughout history, both martial music meant to rally the troops and anti-war songs. Examine the role of music in supporting and opposing war. 20. Music vs. poetry: Can song lyrics be considered a form of poetry? Why or why not? 21. How does hip-hop support African American culture and heritage? 22. Is there a problem with the close association of country music with political conservatism? 23. Select your favorite piece of music and research the influences that played a role in its creation and development. 24. Research the processes that archaeologists have used to reconstruct the sound of ancient music. 25. How do covers transform songs? Explore how covers are created now meaning.

After choosing the topic you like the most, save this list or this page to bookmarks for further references. It is good to have a library of resources at your fingertips.

Let experts rock when you are stuck

If these topics aren't enough to get you started, there is another trick to help you succeed. You can always find someone to help you with your research paper. You can contact a paper writing service online like WriteMyPaperHub and ask a professional essay writer, "Can I pay you to write my paper like an expert?" Once you do, a writer will determine what you need for your project and will begin writing a high-quality music research paper that will address your essay topic quickly, effectively, and with exceptional research and writing. You should feel free to take advantage of services like this whenever you get stuck so you can be successful with each and every music research paper.

Learning from the best and the brightest is more than beneficial. You have an opportunity to see how professional writers elaborate on a particular topic, which references they use, how they structure the whole thing. One ordered paper can be an example for your further works for months. Also, it is proven that students these days are overwhelmed with the number of assignments, and due to continuous lockdowns and limitations have less access to libraries and other necessary resources. If you feel like the pressure is too high, don't hesitate to delegate this assignment.

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Music Research Paper

This sample music research paper features: 6800 words (approx. 22 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 49 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Introduction

The meaning of music and dance, performance, sacred performance, chant and recitation, instruments, critical musicology, globalization, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, nationalism, medical ethnomusicology, applied ethnomusicology.

• Bibliography

Ethnographic approaches to music and dance in the 21st century explore how modes of expression and performance practices are involved in the making of lifeworlds. Cultural production is situated in specific contexts that generate meaning as particular sonic and kinesthetic phenomena relate to discursive processes and social structures. Scholars of music and dance engage with cultural flow through dialogic encounters and interpretative analyses. These studies help illustrate how performance practices produce meanings, mediate socialities, and configure political relations.

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Ethnomusicology, which generally encompasses anthropology, dance ethnology, folklore, musicology, and sociology, situates specific theoretical issues in comparative social and historical contexts. Up to the late 1960s, the discipline explored and indexed the musical phenomena of non-Western cultures in ways that resonated with concurrent anthropological trends in area studies. Critical analysis of these approaches led to a rethinking of music in which music became not the object of culture, but rather the product and expression of human experience. In his writings on the relations between music and society, anthropologist John Blacking (1995) proposed:

We need to know what sounds and what kinds of behavior different societies have chosen to call “musical;” and until we know more about this we cannot begin to answer the question, “How musical is man?” As “humanly organized sound,” music is a bearer of meanings insofar as it exhibits and necessarily demonstrates a set of values that the society that generates it would otherwise lack. (p. 5) Relations between music, dance, and society are thus viewed as complex networks of interdependence through which a given act embodies temporal and emplaced experiences that structure social processes. Contemporary ethnomusicology pursues a rigorous analysis of how cultural production generates social significance by positioning the individual as the agent of social change through historical encounter. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Theoretical Approaches to Music and Dance

Musical and social structures mutually constitute each other through human interaction. This cultural-studies approach derives from the seminal work of Raymond Williams, who claimed that culture is not fixed as a bounded work or elite mode of production, but is instead embedded in everyday experience and activity. As a cultural materialist who challenged orthodox Marxist accounts of historical epochs or phases, Williams framed cultural practices as sites of political contestation through which groups reproduce and resist modes of domination, particularly those that critique industrial capitalism (Williams, 1977). Critical to his work are structures of feeling that configure the ways in which particular generations and social classes experience difference among social relations. These feelings beget a lived experience of a particular moment in society and history that brings meaning into the lives of individuals and the lifeworlds that they constitute. The production of cultural meaning is a fluid and dynamic process that emerges as a necessary process in which “new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships, and kinds of relationship are continually being created” (Williams, 1977, pp. 122–23).

Musical meaning is not itself generated through aesthetic critique, nor by reference to something extramusical, such as an emotion, landscape, or harmonic figure. Rather, musical elements and structures discursively relate to lived experience by an act of representation that fixes musical experiences to metaphoric and metonymic structures, forms, and works. These bounded entities are placed in a network of complex relations that can be explained through systems of representation in which musical ontologies serve as interpretive frameworks for diverse musical systems, whether Western symphonic music, Hindustani classical music, or Japanese gagaku court theater, or for categorization of musical cultures as classical, folk, popular, and traditional. Categories, however, do not necessarily correlate to an intrinsic value, but more productively relate to “how they are used and embodied in community relations to become structuring forces in musical life” (Holt, 2007, p. 29).

Ethnomusicologists today explore the discursive production of musical meaning as a contemporary response to what comparative musicologist Charles Seeger (1977) problematized as the “musicological juncture” (p. 16), or the gap of representation that occurs when communicating about one system of human communication (music) through another (speech). To redress claims that music is “untranslatable and irreducible to the verbal mode” (Feld, 1982, p. 91), ethnomusicology suggests that musical practice is less a latent mode of (artistic) representation but rather a (socially) active and engaged mode of producing reality. If speech is the communication of “worldview as the intellection of reality,” then music is the communication of “worldview as the feeling of reality” (Seeger, 1977, p. 7). What we perceive as “feelingful” occurs through the “generality and multiplicity of possible messages and interpretations . . . that unite the material and mental dimensions of musical experience as fully embodied” (Seeger, 1977, p. 91). As suggested by interpretive approaches to cultural anthropology, ethnographers study not experience, per se, but the feelingful and discursive structures through which experience occurs.

Musical experience is constituted as meaningful when social structures conjoin with individual consciousness through structures of feeling. Whereas structures suggest fixed relationships that are rigid and determined, feeling inflects the intense and personal experience of what is “believed, felt, and acted upon” (Frith, 1996, p. 252). This becomes important with regard to the construction of cultural forms, whether musical genres and styles or social categories and spaces. How people behave with regard to sound relates to what they perceive and think about such behavior. Anthropologist Alan Merriam (1964) proposed a model of musical anthropology that triangulates these axes of sound, concept, and behavior. This tripartite structure has been redressed by an interpretive analysis of dialectical processes that consist of historical construction, social maintenance, and individual adaptation and experience; in other words, an agency-centered inquiry into how people create, experience, and use music (Rice, 1987).

Feelingful experiences occur through culturally specific processes that produce and perceive sound. Recent directions in the phenomenology of acoustic phenomena argue that sound is not the property of a musical object separated from its origin, but rather, sonic significance lies in the encounter of sound as musical. Sensory dimensions of experience suggest that sonorities may be heard as affective, feelingful, and emotional when perceived as musical patterns in specific cultural contexts. Phenomenological studies suggest the ways in which people relate to each other through senses of hearing. A hearing culture may make it “possible to conceptualize new ways of knowing a culture and of gaining a deepened understanding of how the members of a society know each other” (Erlmann, 2004, p. 3). In turn, individual and social processes perceive musical encounter “not through layers of cognitive categories and symbolic associations, but with a trained and responsive body, through habits copied from others and strictly reinforced, by means of musical skills” (Downey, 2002, p. 490). Listeners’ acquired habits of assimilating sensory experience to musical systems affect them viscerally, and lived bodies are fashioned by patterns of acting in relation to music at the same time that they are responsive to sonic textures.

Performance emerges through the interaction of corporeal gestures, discursive tropes, and performative utterances in social settings that situate these actions as musical or extramusical, verbal or nonverbal, cognitive or affective, sacred or secular. These actions are held together by aesthetic principles that are represented in the social and material world, just as the social and material world is imbued with extraordinary value. Performance and listening are intersubjectively and physiologically experienced in a trained and socialized set of artistic bodily movements that reflect values and ideas (Meintjes, 2003, p. 176).

Embodied realms of experience situate cultural practices in the physiological and expressive body and the social forces that operate through those bodies. Performativity asserts the materiality of nonverbal communication and expression and the presence of the body as it is mediated by the production of sound. Whether sound is produced by a singer, a musician, or mediated by technology, the presence of the medium leaves a material trace that regulates its origin (Barthes, 1978). For example, analyses of timbre consider the grain of the voice in recording—in addition to elements of texture, attack, delay, and pitch—and interpret studio techniques as signifying practices that are deeply connected to the discursive production of style and genre (Théberge, 1997).

Embodied performance by a socialized musician or dancer suggests how bodies may be regulated or may resist forces of power (Comaroff, 1991). The discourse of bodies in motion at Greek weddings, for instance, produces the dialectical relationships and mutual dependencies that are also regulated and constrained by their repetitive power as a body politic, or collective unit. By introducing nonGreek Roma musicians at wedding parties as daulia, or drums (Cowan, 1990, p. 102), Greek townspeople exert power over the materiality of both resonant and outside bodies. As sites of reception and agency, bodies bear narratives of time and place that coalesce into corporeal memories. The ways individuals perform these narratives construct identity and differences that endow sound and movement with the capacity to represent lived experience.

As forms of social action and as meaningful activity, music and dance create and give expression to human and social experience. Epistemological concerns have critically responded to the ways in which a kinetic body and a sound dialogically compose form through performance events, structured practices, and representational strategies. Rather than treat music and dance as objects of discourse that possess meaning in and of themselves, or frame body movement techniques and sonic phenomena as abstract properties that may be reconfigured according to context, ethnographers seek to localize the very terms by which understanding and knowledge of these performative dynamics are produced.

Music Research Topics and Issues

Music plays a significant role in preserving and transmitting the world’s religions in terms of history, culture, and practice. The study of music in religious practices considers the ways in which music transforms experience into sacred meanings, narrates religious myths, and structures religious ritual and communities. The performative conditions associated with religious practice consider sacred sound not as the taxonomy of a particular belief system, but rather as a sensory spectacle through which experiences become enchanted. The sacred nature mediates by sonic utterances that may induce a phantasmagoric state of being, encode sacred language, or embody affective experience. Sound indexes religious experience through the presence of sacred instruments and the act of listening to liturgical chant. Sound also marks sacred spaces through pilgrimages and festival rituals, among other religious practices (Beck, 2006; Berliner, 1993).

The efficacy of music in sacred spaces suggests the ways in which sound may be sacred and how this sacred nature may be mediated through sonic practices. How sound conveys sacred meaning and experience in specific contexts raises ontological distinctions in that what is often perceived as musical in European and North American contexts may be considered nonmusical and sacred in other sacred spaces.

Contexts may determine how sound is received and interpreted and in what ways sound may be ontologically separate from music. Interpretation of sound also structures power relations, in which religious authority is maintained by ideological boundaries of sound seeking to differentiate between sacred practices and secular forms of expression (Baily, 2003).

Ethnographies of sacred performance practices have tended to focus on the capacity of music, dance, and ritual drama to organize religious activity through modes of social interaction that produce webs of associative meaning (Reily, 2002). Performance has been conceptualized as a medium through which participants demonstrate religious conviction and commitment; as a means to structure time, narrative, and symbolic systems; and as a mode of interaction that codifies organizational patterns and the conditions of participation in religious activity. For example, the sacred voice is a medium that binds individuals communally in religious activity. How these experiences shape and are shaped by musical practice is determined by the theological ways in which individuals engage with music and music making. More recently, ethnographers have considered ways in which religious-ritual activity depends on the act of performance in order to be perceived as sacred and, in particular, how sound and movements are mediums that frame a ritual act as sacred. As individuals negotiate moral boundaries between the sacred and the profane in contemporary contexts, the act of producing sound and movement becomes a contested arena where religious authorities judge the ethics of cultural production. Performance through music and dance may allow departure from the profane and entrance into the sacred, mark the aesthetic boundaries of secular space, or itself articulate the boundaries between the sacred and the profane by which religious practices acquired enchanted and sacred meaning.

Several bodies of scholarship have addressed musical change, religious renewal, soteriological potential, musicoreligious orthodoxy, and other related issues. These different forms of religious practice, or syncretism, may be marked through distinct genres and styles that expose moments of encounter and uneven relations of power. In colonial spaces, religious repertory may occupy cultural spaces in ways that reproduce a hegemonic religious order and erase subaltern religious practices (Comaroff, 1991). Folkloric ensembles typically relate to historical or contemporary religious practices through complex processes of aestheticization that problematically blur distinctions between sacred worship, cultural traditions, and popular culture. These distinctions are in part based on a collective memory of the sacred that is translated through aesthetic ideals. The embodiment of these ideals demonstrates how religious ideologies are manifested through bodily practices that themselves produce sacred sound, movement, and performance.

The power of sound embodied in speech patterns, or chant, may preserve and transmit knowledge and religious authority as well as mark historical change. For example, the Rigvedic texts of the Harappan in Pakistan and northwestern India are considered sacred when correctly rendered through transmission and pronunciation of Vedic hymns. Recitation of these hymns occurs through three types of spoken accent with a melodic contour dependent on the succession of accent in the sung syllables, as well as the duration of each relative pitch. The consideration of Vedic chant as the foundation of contemporary Hindustani music in South Asia is, in part, attributed to its preservation through Brahman recitation. Codification of early performance practices, such as Gregorian chant in southern Europe, began when clergy notated plainchant in order to correlate its liturgical function with the medieval Roman liturgical calendar. Compositional practices that developed from these notations are widely considered to be the conceptual and historical basis for Renaissance and late European courtly arts (Bergeron, 1998).

Some religious cultures regard practices of recitation, or the sounding of religious text, as the divine act that makes speech patterns sacred by mediating the transmission of sacred texts through the vocal performance. The significance of such performances is governed not only by the syntactic conditions such as pitch and duration, but also by audition, or the appropriate response, performed by the ethical listener (Hirschkind, 2006).

Instruments embody religious experience when endowed with the capacity to produce sacred sound. In some ritual practices, performance on a particular instrument, such as batá percussion ensembles in Cuban Santería, realizes the divine potential of the ritual event and produces religious transformation. Instrumentalperformance practice marks the shift from secular to sacred contexts; produces the appropriate performance conditions for trance, ecstasy, possession, and other states of heightened sacrality; symbolizes tropes of religious narrative and function; and transfers knowledge and participation among believers (Hagedorn, 2001; Rouget, 1985; Wong, 2001).

Sacred musical practices are often narrative—telling stories and relating myths to generate a sense of historical and religious meaning. Narrative may be considered musical through, for example, the ways in which music marks the passage of time in ritual performance and in the narrative sequence of events, or through the juxtaposition of different musical genres that layer and texture religious stories. Instruments often play a significant role in narrating epic myths with sacred content, such as within bardic traditions or Sufi mysticism. One way in which narrative components of sacred music may shape a religious community is by mediating a sense of place. The act of recalling an original event, such as an act of martyrdom or a miracle, links the event to a specific site. When enacted through song and other musico-poetic genres, the act of recall layers subsequent events to that site in ways that parse history as locally meaningful in religious communities.

During the early 1990s, musicologists readjusted paradigms in which musical performance expresses a natural mode of human existence or formalizes a universal set of aesthetic ideals (Solie, 1993). The critical inquiry espoused by “new musicology” advocated for the deconstruction of ideologies into iconicities of style that are reproduced and transformed by acts of performance. Performance practices now produce social relations that are represented in different categories of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, generation, class and nation, and other forms of identity. Cultural meaning is discursively constructed by specific practices of signification, and links between signifier and signified are not fixed but arbitrary. These practices may construct meaningful experience in ways that depend on conventions of taste and class that are situated in a particular time and place.

Studies of place tend to be located in everyday life and explore the tactics by which people interact and engage with their environment. Gatherings, such as rehearsals among English rock musicians, are not only mediated by these practices, but also produce affective relationships to the settings in which social activities take place. Yet, as conditions of modernity separate space from place in lived experience, the physical settings of social activities are “thoroughly penetrated by and shaped in terms of social influences quite distant from them” (Giddens, as cited in Stokes, 1994, p. 1). Therefore, approaches to place, music, and dance seek to relocate cultural geographies within specific social, economic, and political spaces by addressing how individuals produce sound and movement in order “to reestablish their presence, situate events in a fixed place and time, and reembed actions within social structures” (Stokes, 1994, p. 3). Place becomes meaningful through affective processes that recognize and enable different experiences, mediate emotional relations to an environment, or produce nostalgia through acts of memory that bestow music and dance “with an intensity, power and simplicity unmatched by any other social activity” (Stokes, 1994, p. 3).

As individuals perceive what takes shape around them, they participate in the construction of a soundscape, or an environment structured by the perception and reception of sound. Soundscapes are differentiated not only by dynamics of power, class, and difference, but also by sentimentality, or the emotional and affective relationships that constitute a sense of place (Feld & Basso, 1996). An acoustemology of sound analyzes the sentimental relations to place that are embodied by sound production and reception among, for instance, Kaluli people in Papua New Guinea. Through interlocking, overlapping, and alternating singing that mimics bird calls in the rainforests, Kaluli voices index the natural environment; mediate places as sites of memory; and express an ecological sense of self, place, and time (Feld, 1982). Acoustic environments have also been critical to the historical progression of musical form in bourgeoisie European society and the displacement of instrumentalists to the role of musical interpreters. Early performance practices were comprised of extramusical, literary, or narrative material that was, in part, marked by a musician’s individualized embellishment of musical material.

In the 19th century, the concert room emerged as a performance setting that aestheticized the impression of immediate contact with the music as a listening ideal. Musical practices shifted to uphold universalist aesthetic ideals not only through listening appreciation, but also in celebration of a composer’s genius. Dramatic structures were communicated by composers such as Beethoven through “the abstract logic of pure form” and the formal properties of the music itself in ways that privileged structural-listening practices in European art music. Thus, the commodification of musical knowledge and musical emplacement fetishized sonata form in the historical development of instrumental Western art music (Leyshon, Matless, & Revill, 1998).

The commodification of musical place in a globalized world has induced a certain anxiety among critical musicologists over the ways that disembedding music and dance practices stimulates desires for authenticity by late-capital consumers in a hegemonic economic order. While the capacity for music to travel has augmented an appreciation for place and dismantled cultural borders, the poetics and politics of this have problematically differentiated relations between self and other. World music, and related configurations of art music, ritual, folk and ethnic genres, and world beat and roots music (Aubert, 2007), are authenticated by conditions of place. By privileging the geographically local as authentic, the particular can be naturalized in ways that fetishize locality through terms of belonging. The act of splitting sound from its source and reproducing it depends on uneven processes of representation that contest cultural rights and negotiate various modes of ownership (Feld & Basso, 1996). Styles associated with world music then demarcate community by linking dispersed places and allegiances that, through subjective identity, allow the strategies by which individuals register difference (Erlmann, 1999).

The globalization of world music has also been critiqued as a pastiche, or a process of reconfiguring time and space that detemporalizes the encounter between self and ethnographic others into an event beyond history, or perhaps at the horizon of a certain historical moment. For instance, the production and consumption of alternative folk rock links different historical moments into one bounded cultural space, while world-dance music may layer disparate local styles into a repetitive, temporal sequence (Erlmann, 1999). Cultural interchange and interaction in popular music thus depends upon a concept of culture that binds territory to groups in ways that demand the political engagement of cultural critique. Whereas narratives of cultural interchange such as hybridity, creolism, and syncretism tend to privilege myths of origin, postcolonial analyses encourage new approaches that no longer engender forms of being by binaries of self (self and ethnographic other), place (here and there), and time (then and now), but rather by a third space that is constituted by these boundaries.The circulatory relations of cultural flow have furthered understandings of how historical consciousness may undermine essentializing cultural strategies. Studies of the black Atlantic (Gilroy, 1993) address how black popular music and dance styles shape and are shaped by particular African retentions and situate the Atlantic as a site of crossings, mediations, and exchanges that continually reconsider the cultural flow of African and African American expressive forms.

In response to large-scale processes of migration, globalization, and transnationalism that destabilize structures of belonging, critical approaches to place have also emphasized the production of locality through cultural practices. Tropes of place may uneasily mark displacement from an imagined structure of belonging, for instance when tropes of the crowd and the machine in the South African vocal genre of isicathamiya signify a sense of nostalgia for rural agricultural economies among populations who migrated to cities in search of labor opportunities. Another example can be found in how the mapping of memory fragments onto musical events, instruments, and kinship narratives of a retired Jewish community in Liverpool, England, shapes collective relations that in turn construct an immigrant neighborhood whose identity is nurtured by newly mediated and localized imaginaries of home and community. Locality may also be produced by sound-engineering practices that index a particular place and authenticate a musical style through the technological reproduction of sound in specific performance conditions such as “live” Austin country music (Greene & Porcello, 2005).

Gender and sexuality analyses situate performers and their texts within specific musical worlds and examine how these worlds produce gendered ideologies through performance practice, singing style, repertory, performance events and occasions, lyrics and elaborations, and instrumental practice. Thus, gender and sexuality are mutually constitutive of cultural experiences, and also mutually construct processes of subjectivity and alterity in ways that have been binarily opposed to biological explanations of lived experience. As a method of cultural critique, gender and sexuality studies analyze the ways in which ideology is maintained and transformed through the performance of a gendered self. These studies also examine the ways that musical practices mediate social relations as variously gendered—masculine, feminine, and perhaps hyperreal. Because gender theorists have understood sexuality as constitutive of gendered norms, distinctions between gender and sexuality have been largely premised on identity construction as theorized in psychoanalytic discourse. Lacanian theory argues that linguistic signs triangulate the enlightened self from its other in ways that destabilize a sense of identity by the desire for an object that might represent such identity. By reading social and cultural texts for hidden and repressed desires, critical theorists reveal conditions of heteronormativity that shape and are shaped by cultural practices. Ultimately, gender and sexuality studies suggest how social distinctions may be magnified rather than ameliorated by the performative act of music making and structured movement.

A substantial body of literature has been devoted to highlighting and documenting women’s contribution and women’s roles in musical performance. As professional entertainers, as dramatic personalities, and as audiences, women convey social values and transmit cultural meanings in ways that may be different from those performed by men. The expression of sentimentality by women through forms and repertoires, such as sung poetry among Bedouin women in upper Egypt, resist, maneuver, and maintain patriarchal norms of modesty, honor, and shame that have been typified in Mediterranean studies (Abu-Lughod, 1986), whereas songs sung by Berber women in northern Morocco strategically empower potentialities of marital life (Magrini, 2003). Performance events and contexts have been analyzed with discourses surrounding these practices through elements of lyrics, style, technology, and appropriate behavior. These suggest how identity may be encoded and performed as masculine, feminine, or ambiguously gendered. Postmodernist approaches to the paradigmatic relations between musical and social structures have produced seminal readings of the gendered hierarchies in composition, such as immanent relations between the masculine and the feminine in sonata form (McClary, 1991), formulations of the Western music canon, constructions of ontological difference through gender (Solie, 1993), and the potential of music itself—as a performance rather than as text, to disrupt the masculine musicological narratives within which it is often contained (Abbate, 1991).

The broad compass of vocal performance in different registers constructs gendered and sexualized identities by embracing some, and refusing other, conventions of style and genre. Voice may characterize a range of erotic and emotional relationships among women who sing and women who listen in ways that “resonate in sonic space as lesbian difference and desire” (Brett, Wood, & Thomas, 1994, p. 28). This sapphonicvoice is found in operatic practices by female singers who assume “pants” roles, or castrato male roles sung by women, as well as other singers and singing personalities (Brett et al., 1994). Koestenbaum (1994) argued that the brea between registers is a gendered split that emplaces a voice between male and female. The ways in which the brea is negotiated may be “fatal to the act of natural voice production” (p. 220) when gender and sexuality are transferred beyond normativity, such as the sapphonicvoice’s synthesis of register; this replaces its splitting, or the falsetto register’s failure to disguise this break. The combination of different registers may refuse vocal categories and polarities of natural and unnatural, and may establish interpretations of female desire, male desire, and the relations of class, age, sexual status, and identity through vocal performance (Koestenbaum, 1994).

The performance of gender engages with the kinds of subjects that musical and dance performances engender, both onstage and among audiences, and the ways that such performance relates to everyday life as lived, embodied, and theorized. For instance, a feminized atmosphere at a wedding in Morocco is not dependent on the presence of female dancers, but rather on the performance of femininity among communal relations that may differentiate between gender, sexuality, and class. Perceptions and representations of Asian American femininity have shifted due to North American taiko performance that represents social space through gesture, movement, and the presence of women in drumming practices. In post-Apartheid South Africa, Zulu ngoma song and dance is critical to the performance of masculinity and the anxieties of retaining the presence of individualized expression and stylized body movement in the midst of unemployment, an AIDS epidemic, and a history of violence in KwaZulu-Natal (Meintjes, 2003).

Critical race studies examine how constructions of difference on the basis of body type and color are perpetuated by the representation of essentialized metaphysical conditions. Concepts of race are linked to the emergence of modern scientific inquiry into the natural world and are largely considered a product of Enlightenment thought and observation. The late 18th century produced a world “observed, processed and remapped on the imagination of Europe” (Radano & Bohlman, 2000, p. 13) in which race and music constituted logics of difference that categorized the natural world and sought to make it understandable. Moreover, racial discourse contributed to the formation of musical difference as human difference was mapped onto musical difference, that is, to the object of music itself. The epistemic model that measured harmonic relations on a mathematically proportionate scale and unified differences in pitch influenced Enlightenment thought on the structure and substance of not only resonating, but also racialized bodies. How music participates in the construction of race and racial imaginaries ultimately raises ontological questions of whether music itself represents these qualities, or whether our understandings of music are shaped by and through racial relations.

Racial constructs are connected to music through structures of understandability, that is, the capacity of sound to signify and communicate meaning, and through materiality, or the technologies, objects, and bodies that represent music and musical histories through particular ideologies (Brown, 2007). For example, the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner claimed that the language of European opera and vocal music was degraded through the inability of European Jewish composers to fully control the language of music, which Wagner instantiated in terms of 19th-century German universalism that was first and foremost predicated on language and an assumption that music instantiates comparative linguistic properties. Elsewhere, race interacts with other systemic hierarchies, such as the historic provision of wedding and court entertainment by Jewish musicians in predominantly Muslim worlds situated along the Silk Road, from Bukharan weddings in central Asia to the Abbasid and Omayad caliphates of the 11th century. Categories in which instruments function as a racial mapping of power relations may be critiqued by participants themselves, such as Karnatak and Hindustani musicians who negotiate caste systems in South Asia that distinguish between the permissibility of Brahmin performance on the Karnatic vinalute and the delegation of instrumental performance on untouchable leather-skinned drums to less privileged castes. Conditions of difference, shaped by cultural practices, help to better understand relations of power in systems based on class, caste, kinship, religion, and other forms of belonging and ownership.

Racial conventions of blackness, whiteness, and other morphologies play a critical role in ideological distinctions of music as rational and intellectual, or as orally transmitted, communal, and embodied. The naturalization of certain structures as African retentions, such as improvised movement, antiphonal oppositions, and repeated cycles of interlocking rhythmic patterns, reinforces the putative inseparability of music and dance in the African diaspora (Meintjes, 2003). This becomes problematic when what is musical and universal is defined against conceptions of blackness as physical and embodied.Yet, performance practice and histories may join as lived experience in ways that affirm how blues practices in African American working-class communities in the southern United States influenced the emergence of jazz, gospel, soul, R&B, rock, hip-hop, and other black vernacular music. The problem of race translates into a cultural critique in which creative strategies destabilize the tropes through which they emerge by means of intertextuality, subversion, and other signifying techniques (Radano & Bohlman, 2000).

Ethnicity, like other forms of difference that participate in processes of exclusion and inclusion, is constructed on the basis of shared beliefs in a “common ancestry, memories of a shared historical past, and elements in common, such as kinship patterns, physical continuity, religious affiliation, language, or some combination of these” (Shelemay, 2001, p. 249). Musical and dance practices instantiate ethnic relations by performing social boundaries that reproduce and subvert ideologies; these relations simultaneously also produce meanings, that is, “a patterned context in which other things happen” (Waterman, 1990, p. 214). Ethnic identity is often discussed in terms of minority relations and population movements that are themselves predicated on political difference. Often, ethnic boundaries “define and maintain social identities which can only exist in context of oppositions and relativities”; thus, ethnography can engage with how “actors use music in specific local situations to erect boundaries, maintain distinctions between us and them, and use terms such as ‘authentic’ to justify these boundaries” (Stokes, 1994, p. 6).

Cultural nationalism is a complex process by which institutions and actors integrate diverse populations into structures of national belonging. Ethnography investigates the ways in which music and dance practices—and the discursive spaces that are dialogically created and inhabited by such practices—generate national imaginaries in local contexts. Early forms of nationalism celebrated the universal claim to a single shared language and a set of particular customs and traditions situated in an ethnonational framework. Scholars have since criticized collective national identity as a product of state apparatuses that seek to reify lived experience into internationally recognized forms. Thus, the invention of tradition has been linked with nation-building projects in which state power emerges through the performance of national imaginaries and the efficacy of imagined communities (Askew, 2002). The extent to which symbolic production produces and sustains state hegemony through particular genres suggests whether these processes might be “multivalent, multivocal, and polyphonic” (Askew, 2002, p. 273) and how agents and institutions are involved in negotiating, defining, and contesting that which constitutes the nation. Musical ethnographies reveal the strategic shifts that characterize nationalist projects, ask whether events coincide with or interrupt official ideologies, illustrate why specific forms are chosen to represent the nation, and address how issues of authenticity and preservation are managed in these endeavors. Though global capital flow, access to electronic media, and transnational migration of people have decentered and deterritorialized processes of nationalism, the mediating structure of the nation continues to relate how people cross lines of difference through local transactions and cultural production.

Representation of the nation through music depends on a belief in the representational potential of music, that is, music’s capacity to embody a cultural whole that exists prior to its mediation. The production of national symbols, therefore, depends upon a modern discourse that is represented by cultural mediation. This discourse emerged from Johann Gottfried Herder’s claim that based national identity on the common narratives and histories of a given people and, in particular, on the capacity of language and folksong to represent such shared experiences. Herder’s proto-nationalist theory is comprised of a geographic model where music marks a place, such as the landscape of the nation, an acoustic model whereby sound distinguishes the nation as a whole, and a narrative model in which music encodes stories that represent the history of the nation (see Bohlman, 2004). The quintessential image of the nation, or a “preexisting entity that is more indefinite than definite,” is reflected by national music, “for whom it becomes the task to bring out as much of the definition as possible” (Bohlman, 2004, p. 83).

Conversely, nationalistic music does not harbor relations among a nationalized people, but rather services competition between nation-states. Nationalistic music secures the geographic identity of the nation-state by marking borders and producing alterity through the production of national difference. Alterity may be differentiated on the basis of class, race, ethnicity, and gender dynamics that exclude those whose presence prescribes the need to regulate desires and who trigger ambivalence as a condition of modernity. The marking of borders is instantiated by a presentation of the nation that embeds power in performance, or through a means of communicative interaction in which the act itself is privileged over that which it mediates. Thus, nonverbal performance may communicate messages whose meaning is located in elements of sound and movement and in dialogic interaction between performers and audiences, or between modes of modernity—contingent on the specifics of the temporal and spatial moment.

Early studies of population movement addressed patterns of assimilation and acculturation through theories of culturecontact that failed to engage with political disparities and the contradictions of multiculturalism in modern societies. More recent approaches redressed these patterns as a postmodern condition that negotiates instantiations of nationalism, transnationalism, and displacement through the appropriation of expressive culture and the making of political alliances among transnational populations (Garofalo, 1992). However, the rigidities and essentialisms of diasporic identity created by multiculturalism may articulate or contradict the politics of national, postcolonial, and minority identities even as they stress emergent forms of culture, uneven relations of cultural hybridity, and ambivalent relations to national homelands (Ramnarine, 2007). Contemporary diaspora studies thus emphasize the “newness” of the diasporic experience, and address political belongings and further substitutions as historically specific and shaped by a historical consciousness. Fragments of this consciousness are inscribed within an in-between space by which immigrants may register a sense of loss, exile, and rupture through cultural production. Diasporic music making may thus be a practice of everyday life in local communities by individuals making strategic choices through music festivals, individual biographies, song texts, musical instruments, and intellectual movements. Politically articulated readings of these social relations and creative processes reveal economies of desire in colonial encounters, performances that mourn and remember ancestors, intercultural borrowings in African-Peruvian theater, or state interventions in the creation of broader diasporic groups (Ramnarine, 2007).

Studies of popular culture and music have helped to differentiate between experiences of voluntary and forced migration. The actions and behavior of refugees affect how groups produce and give meaning to their music as they negotiate loss and trauma, and pursue a state of stability that is represented by resettlement. For instance, Vietnamese refugee communities in the United States tend to display a preference for love songs and Western-oriented popular music that convey anticommunist nostalgia for a pre-1975 period of French, U.S., and Japanese colonial influence in Vietnam (Reyes, 1999). Other histories of dispossession and violence have prompted ethnographers to consider the social construction of place, self, and other through aesthetic experience as a means for understanding the performative capacities of particular histories and repertories of violence and “the ensuing meanings violent performances carry for victims, perpetrators, and witnesses alike” (McDonald, 2009, p. 59).

Future Directions

Medical ethnomusicology seeks to integrate disciplines of music; health sciences; integrative, complementary and alternative medicine (ICAM); the physical and social sciences; medical humanities; and the healing arts through integrative research and applied practice. Research in music, medicine, and culture recognizes the dynamic and diverse practices by which specialized music and sound phenomena function as therapeutic strategies and as a means to cure illness and disease. Ethnomusicological discourse has demonstrated the extent to which specialized music emerges from a spiritual or religious ontology and is practiced in ritual or ceremonial events. When music combines with or functions as prayer or meditation, it may constitute preventive and/or curative practices that can be situated among a set of local medical practices. Medical ethnomusicology focuses on the performance of healing and the culture of health in order to better understand disease and illness, health and healing, as well as the performative nature of diagnosis, treatment, and healing. Recent studies and interventions include locating sites of ritual healing in ngoma practice among disparate communities; correlating beliefs about spirit possession to the intricacies of indigenous health care systems in Tumbuka communities; advocating and critiquing how the decline of HIV infection rates in Uganda correspond to the use of local musical traditions that support medical initiatives; engaging with science and religion through a focus on music, prayer, meditation, and healing; and the ways that these processes intimately link with transformational cognitive states in Tajikistan (Koen, 2008).

Applied ethnomusicology refers to work in the public sector that encourages the advocacy, curation, documentation, education, and performance of music and dance. These efforts apply the perspectives, principles, theories, and methods of ethnomusicology to encourage public awareness and participation in broadly defined fields of cultural practice. Advocacy engages with public-policy issues, such as arts access and participation, artists’ rights, censorship, intellectual property, and cultural heritage through institutional and noninstitutional efforts. The Society for Ethnomusicology debates and assumes positions on the ethics of music and fair use, music and torture, and the rights of human subjects in scholarly research. Cultural initiatives facilitate opportunities for performers and performance practices through festival and concert organization, recording and documentary film production, and museum exhibitions.

Efforts to document and archive materials are encouraged through the acquisition and digitalization of archives, collaboration between institutions, improved access, and the support of scholarship, publications, and public programs. Public education and outreach develop curriculum at the primary and secondary levels; establish performance ensembles and programs to nurture skills; and foster audiences and public awareness through the promotion and distribution of related events, productions, and publications. Performance of music and dance by specialists is encouraged not only as a research method in observing participants, but also as a means to preserve, transmit, and produce communities based on knowledge production and creative expression.

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Stanford researchers show that mealworms can safely consume toxic additive-containing plastic

Mealworms are not only able to eat various forms of plastic, as previous research has shown, they can also consume potentially toxic plastic additives in polystyrene with no ill effects. The worms can then be used as a safe, protein-rich feed supplement.

Since this study published, it has inspired students across the world to learn about and experiment with mealworms and plastic waste. Stanford researchers involved with this and related studies have been inundated with requests for more information and guidance from people inspired by the potential solution.

Grants tackle the plastics problem

Stanford Woods Institute has awarded more than $23 million in funding to research projects that seek to identify solutions to pressing environment and sustainability challenges, including new approaches to plastic waste management. 

Converting polyethylene into palm oil

This project is developing a new technology to convert polyethylene — by far the most discarded plastic — into palm oil. The approach could add value to the plastic waste management chain while sourcing palm oil through a less destructive route.

Improving plastic waste management

This project aims to radically change the way plastic waste is processed via a new biotechnology paradigm: engineering highly active enzymes and microbes capable of breaking down polyesters in a decentralized network of “living” waste receptacles. 

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Plastic ingestion by fish a growing problem

Stanford infectious disease expert Desiree LaBeaud talks trash, literally, on Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything podcast. 

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In the brain, bursts of beta rhythms implement cognitive control

Bursts of brain rhythms with “beta” frequencies control where and when neurons in the cortex process sensory information and plan responses. Studying these bursts would improve understanding of cognition and clinical disorders, researchers argue in a new review.

The brain processes information on many scales. Individual cells electrochemically transmit signals in circuits but at the large scale required to produce cognition, millions of cells act in concert, driven by rhythmic signals at varying frequencies. Studying one frequency range in particular, beta rhythms between about 14-30 Hz, holds the key to understanding how the brain controls cognitive processes—or loses control in some disorders—a team of neuroscientists argues in a new review article.

Drawing on experimental data, mathematical modeling and theory, the scientists make the case that bursts of beta rhythms control cognition in the brain by regulating where and when higher gamma frequency waves can coordinate neurons to incorporate new information from the senses or formulate plans of action. Beta bursts, they argue, quickly establish flexible but controlled patterns of neural activity for implementing intentional thought.

“Cognition depends on organizing goal-directed thought, so if you want to understand cognition, you have to understand that organization,” said co-author Earl K. Miller , Picower Professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. “Beta is the range of frequencies that can control neurons at the right spatial scale to produce organized thought.”

Miller and colleagues Mikael Lundqvist, Jonatan Nordmark and Johan Liljefors at the Karolinska Institutet and Pawel Herman at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, write that studying bursts of beta rhythms to understand how they emerge and what they represent would not only help explain cognition, but also aid in diagnosing and treating cognitive disorders.

“Given the relevance of beta oscillations in cognition, we foresee a major change in the practice for biomarker identification, especially given the prominence of beta bursting in inhibitory control processes … and their importance in ADHD, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease,” they write in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences .

Experimental studies covering several species including humans, a variety of brain regions, and numerous cognitive tasks have revealed key characteristics of beta waves in the cortex, the authors write: Beta rhythms occur in quick but powerful bursts; they inhibit the power of higher frequency gamma rhythms; and though they originate in deeper brain regions, they travel within specific locations of cortex. Considering these properties together, the authors write that they are all consistent with precise and flexible regulation, in space and time, of the gamma rhythm activity that experiments show carry signals of sensory information and motor plans.

“Beta bursts thus offer new opportunities for studying how sensory inputs are selectively processed, reshaped by inhibitory cognitive operations and ultimately result in motor actions,” the authors write.

For one example, Miller and colleagues have shown in animals that in the prefrontal cortex in working memory tasks, beta bursts direct when gamma activity can store new sensory information, read out the information when it needs to be used, and then discard it when it’s no longer relevant. For another example, other researchers have shown that beta rises when human volunteers are asked to suppress a previously learned association between word pairs, or to forget a cue because it will no longer be used in a task.

In a paper last year, Lundqvist, Herman, Miller and others cited several lines of experimental evidence to hypothesize that beta bursts implement cognitive control spatially in the brain , essentially constraining patches of the cortex to represent the general rules of a task even as individual neurons within those patches represent the specific contents of information. For example, if the working memory task is to remember a pad lock combination, beta rhythms will implement patches of cortex for the general steps “turn left,” “turn right,” “turn left again,” allowing gamma to enable neurons within each patch to store and later recall the specific numbers of the combination. The two-fold value of such an organizing principle, they noted, is that the brain can rapidly apply task rules to many neurons at a time and do so without having to re-establish the overall structure of the task if the individual numbers change (i.e. you set a new combination).

Another important phenomenon of beta bursts, the authors write, is that they propagate across long distances in the brain, spanning multiple regions. Studying the direction of their spatial travels, as well as their timing, could shed further light on how cognitive control is implemented.

New ideas beget new questions

Beta rhythm bursts can differ not only in their frequency, but also their duration, amplitude, origin and other characteristics. This variety speaks to their versatility, the authors write, but also obliges neuroscientists to study and understand these many different forms of the phenomenon and what they represent to harness more information from these neural signals.

“It quickly becomes very complicated, but I think the most important aspect of beta bursts is the very simple and basic premise that they shed light on the transient nature of oscillations and neural processes associated with cognition,” Lundqvist said.“This changes our models of cognition and will impact everything we do. For a long time we implicitly or explicitly assumed oscillations are ongoing which has colored experiments and analyses. Now we see a first wave of studies based on this new thinking, with new hypothesis and ways to analyze data, and it should only pick up in years to come.” 

The authors acknowledge another major issue that must be resolved by further research—How do beta bursts emerge in the first place to perform their apparent role in cognitive control?

“It is unknown how beta bursts arise as a mediator of an executive command that cascades to other regions of the brain,” the authors write.

The authors don’t claim to have all the answers. Instead, they write, because beta rhythms appear to have an integral role in controlling cognition, the as yet unanswered questions are worth asking.

“We propose that beta bursts provide both experimental and computational studies with a window through which to explore the real-time organization and execution of cognitive functions,” they conclude. “To fully leverage this potential there is a need to address the outstanding questions with new experimental paradigms, analytical methods and modeling approaches.”

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Anesthesia technology precisely controls unconsciousness in animal tests

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Write down your thoughts and shred them to relieve anger, researchers say

Writing negative reactions on paper and shredding it or scrunching and throwing in the bin eliminates angry feelings, study finds

Since time immemorial humans have tried to devise anger management techniques.

In ancient Rome, the Stoic philosopher Seneca believed “my anger is likely to do me more harm than your wrong” and offered avoidance tips in his AD45 work De Ira (On Anger).

More modern methods include a workout on the gym punchbag or exercise bike. But the humble paper shredder may be a more effective – and accessible – way to decompress, according to research.

A study in Japan has found that writing down your reaction to a negative incident on a piece of paper and then shredding it, or scrunching it into a ball and throwing it in the bin, gets rid of anger.

“We expected that our method would suppress anger to some extent,” said Nobuyuki Kawai, lead researcher of the study at Nagoya University. “However, we were amazed that anger was eliminated almost entirely.”

The study, published in Scientific Reports on Nature , builds on research on the association between the written word and anger reduction as well as studies showing how interactions with physical objects can control a person’s mood. For instance, those wanting revenge on an ex-partner may burn letters or destroy gifts.

Researchers believe the shredder results may be related to the phenomenon of “backward magical contagion”, which is the belief that actions taken on an object associated with a person can affect the individuals themselves. In this case, getting rid of the negative physical entity, the piece of paper, causes the original emotion to also disappear.

This is a reversal of “magical contagion” or “celebrity contagion” – the belief that the “essence” of an individual can be transferred through their physical possessions.

Fifty student participants were asked to write brief opinions about an important social problem, such as whether smoking in public should be outlawed. Evaluators then deliberately scored the papers low on intelligence, interest, friendliness, logic, and rationality. For good measure, evaluators added insulting comments such as: “I cannot believe an educated person would think like this. I hope this person learns something while at the university.”

The wound-up participants then wrote down their angry thoughts on the negative feedback on a piece of paper. One group was told to either roll up the paper and throw it in a bin or keep it in a file on their desk. A second group was told to shred the paper, or put it in a plastic box.

Anger levels of the individuals who discarded their paper in the bin or shredded it returned to their initial state, while those who retained a hard copy of the paper experienced only a small decrease in their overall anger.

Researchers concluded that “the meaning (interpretation) of disposal plays a critical role” in reducing anger.

“This technique could be applied in the moment by writing down the source of anger as if taking a memo and then throwing it away,” said Kawai.

Along with its practical benefits, this discovery may shed light on the origins of the Japanese cultural tradition known as hakidashisara ( hakidashi sara refers to a dish or plate) at the Hiyoshi shrine in Kiyosu, just outside Nagoya. Hakidashisara is an annual festival where people smash small discs representing things that make them angry. The study’s findings may explain the feeling of relief that participants report after leaving the festival, the paper concluded.

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AI Index Report

Welcome to the seventh edition of the AI Index report. The 2024 Index is our most comprehensive to date and arrives at an important moment when AI’s influence on society has never been more pronounced. This year, we have broadened our scope to more extensively cover essential trends such as technical advancements in AI, public perceptions of the technology, and the geopolitical dynamics surrounding its development. Featuring more original data than ever before, this edition introduces new estimates on AI training costs, detailed analyses of the responsible AI landscape, and an entirely new chapter dedicated to AI’s impact on science and medicine.

Read the 2024 AI Index Report

The AI Index report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data related to artificial intelligence (AI). Our mission is to provide unbiased, rigorously vetted, broadly sourced data in order for policymakers, researchers, executives, journalists, and the general public to develop a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the complex field of AI.

The AI Index is recognized globally as one of the most credible and authoritative sources for data and insights on artificial intelligence. Previous editions have been cited in major newspapers, including the The New York Times, Bloomberg, and The Guardian, have amassed hundreds of academic citations, and been referenced by high-level policymakers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, among other places. This year’s edition surpasses all previous ones in size, scale, and scope, reflecting the growing significance that AI is coming to hold in all of our lives.

Steering Committee Co-Directors

Ray Perrault

Steering committee members.

Erik Brynjolfsson

John Etchemendy

Katrina Ligett

Terah Lyons

James Manyika

Juan Carlos Niebles

Vanessa Parli

Yoav Shoham

Russell Wald

Staff members.

Loredana Fattorini

Nestor Maslej

Letter from the co-directors.

A decade ago, the best AI systems in the world were unable to classify objects in images at a human level. AI struggled with language comprehension and could not solve math problems. Today, AI systems routinely exceed human performance on standard benchmarks.

Progress accelerated in 2023. New state-of-the-art systems like GPT-4, Gemini, and Claude 3 are impressively multimodal: They can generate fluent text in dozens of languages, process audio, and even explain memes. As AI has improved, it has increasingly forced its way into our lives. Companies are racing to build AI-based products, and AI is increasingly being used by the general public. But current AI technology still has significant problems. It cannot reliably deal with facts, perform complex reasoning, or explain its conclusions.

AI faces two interrelated futures. First, technology continues to improve and is increasingly used, having major consequences for productivity and employment. It can be put to both good and bad uses. In the second future, the adoption of AI is constrained by the limitations of the technology. Regardless of which future unfolds, governments are increasingly concerned. They are stepping in to encourage the upside, such as funding university R&D and incentivizing private investment. Governments are also aiming to manage the potential downsides, such as impacts on employment, privacy concerns, misinformation, and intellectual property rights.

As AI rapidly evolves, the AI Index aims to help the AI community, policymakers, business leaders, journalists, and the general public navigate this complex landscape. It provides ongoing, objective snapshots tracking several key areas: technical progress in AI capabilities, the community and investments driving AI development and deployment, public opinion on current and potential future impacts, and policy measures taken to stimulate AI innovation while managing its risks and challenges. By comprehensively monitoring the AI ecosystem, the Index serves as an important resource for understanding this transformative technological force.

On the technical front, this year’s AI Index reports that the number of new large language models released worldwide in 2023 doubled over the previous year. Two-thirds were open-source, but the highest-performing models came from industry players with closed systems. Gemini Ultra became the first LLM to reach human-level performance on the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark; performance on the benchmark has improved by 15 percentage points since last year. Additionally, GPT-4 achieved an impressive 0.97 mean win rate score on the comprehensive Holistic Evaluation of Language Models (HELM) benchmark, which includes MMLU among other evaluations.

Although global private investment in AI decreased for the second consecutive year, investment in generative AI skyrocketed. More Fortune 500 earnings calls mentioned AI than ever before, and new studies show that AI tangibly boosts worker productivity. On the policymaking front, global mentions of AI in legislative proceedings have never been higher. U.S. regulators passed more AI-related regulations in 2023 than ever before. Still, many expressed concerns about AI’s ability to generate deepfakes and impact elections. The public became more aware of AI, and studies suggest that they responded with nervousness.

Ray Perrault Co-director, AI Index

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Subscriber only, sponsored content | best essay writing services: review and comparison of top-rated websites.

Reputable service, one of the best sites on the market;

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Reasonable price, great value for money.

Even though all papers that PaperHelp delivers are plagiarism-free, a plagiarism report costs extra;

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BBQPapers is somewhat more expensive than most professional essay writing services on this list.

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In summary, while they might be pricier, the quality and service at BBQPapers are top-notch, and they’ve earned a loyal following for it.

3.  SpeedyPaper  — Best Research Paper Writing Service

Good quality, finding a professional essay writer is a matter of minutes, even if your subject is quite peculiar;

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I’ve had some experience with SpeedyPaper, a well-known online essay writing service. They’re pretty good at what they do, focusing on quick turnarounds and maintaining quality. Their services are broad, covering everything from essay writing and proofreading to solving complex problems and even crafting dissertations.

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SpeedyPaper also offers free essay samples on a variety of subjects like Law, Psychology, and Finance, which is a real lifesaver if you’re trying to write a paper on your own and have some time to spare.

The general consensus online seems to agree that SpeedyPaper is reliable and steady—qualities you want in a professional paper writing service that handles your academic needs. They don’t try to dazzle with flashy gimmicks, they just consistently deliver solid work.

From my interactions, the importance of clear communication is clear. When you place an order, you’ll work directly with a writer. It’s crucial to give them all the details up front to ensure the final product meets your expectations. This can really smooth out the whole process.

And while there are loads of glowing reviews on their main page, take it with a grain of salt—no essay writing service online can please everyone, and it’s normal for there to be a mix of opinions.

But if you need a reliable service without over-the-top pricing, SpeedyPaper might just do the trick. They seem to manage well by hiring competent and experienced writers in regions where the cost of living is lower, benefiting everyone involved.

4.  EssayPro  — Best College Paper Writing Service

Good quality, great value for money;

Unlike other sites on this list, EssayPro allows you to choose the best essay writer yourself by browsing through dozens of writers’ profiles;

Direct communication with the chosen professional;

Free essay originality report available.

Finding an online essay writer for your task can be a time-consuming process.

I recently used EssayPro, an essay writing service that really stands out because of its commitment to quality and originality in everything from college essays to academic research. It’s a great help for students who need support with writing, rewriting, editing, or proofreading their assignments.

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5.  ExpertWriting  — Best for Discounts and Bonuses

Reasonable price, good quality;

Great discounts for regular customers, good choice for resellers.

The company doesn’t clearly communicate the fact that some disciplines can cost more than others;

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I’ve used ExpertWriting for various academic assignments, and I’ve found it to be a reliable service. This platform offers a variety of academic writing services, including essay writing, research papers, term papers, and coursework, as well as editing and proofreading to improve your essays.

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Pricing on ExpertWriting is reasonable. For a less urgent two-week deadline, you’ll pay around $11 per page, which can increase depending on the urgency, academic level, and length of your paper. This is pretty standard across most professional writing services.

Lastly, they don’t just handle essays. You can get help with almost any type of academic writing, including research proposals, creative writing assignments, cover letters, and literature reviews. It’s a versatile platform that can meet various academic needs.

6.  ExtraEssay  — Best Customer Service

Affordable prices and good quality;

Free, unlimited revisions for 10 days after order delivery;

Exceptional customer service, the customer support team is always ready to help anytime.

Sometimes ExtraEssay fails to meet customers’ deadlines.

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Reputable company, solid and consistent quality;

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Finding a writer during crunch season might be time-consuming.

GradeMiners is more expensive than most essay writing sites in the industry.

I’ve been using GradeMiners for a while now, and I have to say, they offer a solid service at a fair price. A high school essay runs about $16 per page, and a college paper is $18 per page. They offer a wide array of professional academic writing services beyond just essays; you can get help with everything from presentations and book reviews to lab reports and dissertations.

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One of the standout features is their speedy delivery. If you’re pressed for time, you can get a college paper done within an hour—as long as it’s not too long. This frees you up to concentrate on other things that might need more of your attention or are more appealing to you.

8. EssayTerritory — Best New Essay Writing Company

Good quality, fair price;

Great loyalty program, good choice for students who are looking to use this site regularly;

Exceptional customer service.

No sample essays available;

Plagiarism report doesn’t come for free;

Expensive extras.

I recently tried out EssayTerritory, a new but promising college paper writing service. It was easy to find an essay writer that matched my specific needs, and the platform has a roster of over 800 active paper writers. They’ve already completed more than 1300 orders, which is impressive for a newcomer.

What stands out most about EssayTerritory is their 98% satisfaction rate. It seems they really know how to please their customers, as about 85% of users return for more academic papers. They offer a plagiarism-free guarantee like many top essay writing services, and they’ll give you a full refund if they miss your deadline or if your work contains plagiarism.

You can order various assignments from them—essays, research papers, case studies, term papers, dissertations, and even help with presentations or speeches if that’s what you need. They also provide proofreading and editing services.

Privacy and confidentiality are top priorities for them. They ensure that every “write my essay” request is kept anonymous and your personal details are secure. They have robust measures in place to prevent any data leaks. This level of security gave me a lot of confidence in using their essay writer service.

FAQs About Best Paper Writing Services

Should i trust essay writing service reviews.

Trusting essay writing service reviews can be tricky. Unfortunately, some companies that offer a custom essay writing service also operate fake review sites to maintain a positive online reputation. This means you need to be cautious about where you look for reviews.

For more reliable information, it’s better to use independent review platforms like SiteJabber and Reviews.io. These sites are generally more trustworthy because they’re not directly affiliated with any essay writing services.

However, even with these platforms, it’s wise to approach reviews with a critical eye. Some dedicated essay writing review sites might have biases or hidden motives, so take their recommendations with skepticism and always cross-reference multiple sources if possible.

How long does it take to have my essay written for me?

Essay writers generally focus on producing high-quality work, and the time it takes to write an essay largely depends on its length. For a standard 275-word essay, the average turnaround is about 3 hours. Most essay writing services strive to meet these deadlines consistently.

If you’re in a rush and your deadline is just a few hours away, you can opt for a premium service. This usually involves having several top-rated writers collaborate to deliver your essay in about half the standard time.

It’s worth noting that the best college paper writing services might experience delays during peak times when demand is high. Typically, they recommend giving writers at least six hours to complete an essay. If you’re willing to pay extra, your order can be prioritized to ensure a faster delivery.

For more complex assignments like thesis papers or extensive research projects, the process can take up to five days. Writers often submit a partial draft by the second day for client feedback, allowing any revisions to be included in the final submission by day five.

Will my essay be written by a professional essay writer?

Picking a reliable essay writing website is crucial for ensuring the safety, confidentiality, and quality of the service.

When hiring writers, most companies put them through a rigorous vetting process. They typically require that writers have native or near-native proficiency in the language they’ll be writing in, along with a relevant degree from an accredited university.

Once hired, these writers undergo further training on the platform to polish their linguistic and formatting skills. They only start working on actual assignments once their writing meets the company’s professional standards.

The best writing services take extra steps to maintain high-quality standards. For example, every piece of work is checked by a moderator before it goes to the client. Writers are also provided with ongoing opportunities to enhance their skills within the company’s supportive environment.

The person who is labeled as a premium paper writer often has more experience and higher qualifications, like a Ph.D., and at least two years of writing experience. While their services cost a bit more, the quality they deliver usually makes the investment worthwhile.

Is using a paper writing service confidential and safe?

The internet is a vast resource where people often share their knowledge, which is a huge help, especially for college students working on their homework. It’s also completely legal and secure to purchase essays and custom papers online if you need them. However, it’s crucial to choose a reputable provider to avoid issues like plagiarism or low-quality work, which could waste your time, money, and effort.

I’ve found that doing your homework on these services is essential. Make sure to look at the company’s refund policy in case you’re not satisfied with their work, and confirm that they’ll keep your school’s name confidential. It’s also a good idea to check reviews of their past work to see if it’s well-written and structurally sound.

From my experience, as long as you do this research beforehand, buying essays online can be a safe option that keeps your details private. Just be vigilant to avoid scams.

What if I’m not satisfied with my paper?

Most top-rated essay writing companies strive to deliver excellent quality, because they want their customers to come back. They have skilled writers who are well-versed in various academic tasks, including essays, lab reports, and research papers. They work hard to produce top-quality work.

If there are any issues with the finished product, these services usually offer free revisions until you’re satisfied with the quality. Client satisfaction is a high priority for these companies, driven by stiff market competition. The goal is to deliver a flawless paper that helps you achieve a high grade.

What are the main drawbacks of using essay writing services?

For many students, using essay writing services is considered a luxury, primarily because the reputable ones that offer great reviews, unlimited revisions, and maintain confidentiality tend to be more expensive. Opting for cheap essay writing services often means risking quality and reliability, especially when it comes to meeting deadlines.

Plagiarism is another serious issue. Both intentional and unintentional plagiarism can occur, particularly with services that don’t carefully vet their writers. Sometimes, clients don’t discover the plagiarism until it’s too late to rewrite the paper and meet their deadline.

Moreover, if an essay writing company lacks a quality control team, the work submitted by writers might be subpar, filled with typos and grammatical errors. Some writers might also resist feedback, making it hard to get the necessary revisions to ensure the essay meets your standards.

Who will write my work and what determines the price?

Your assignment will be handled by writers with diverse backgrounds. Some are full-time professionals dedicated solely to writing, while others are former academics who’ve embraced the flexibility of working from home. There are also those who write as a side job.

Regarding pricing, we’ve discussed the main factors in our article: the length of the assignment, its complexity, and the deadline. Another element influencing cost is the location of the company. Businesses based in regions like Eastern Europe, North Africa, and Central Asia often have lower rates because the cost of living is lower there, making the dollar stretch further.

Comparison of the Top Paper Writing Services

#1. paperhelp 🏅.

Academic papers written from scratch by writers with Ph.D. and Master’s degrees;

No need to provide any personal information;

Reasonable price, great quality, plagiarism-free papers.

#2. BBQPapers 🥈

Premium quality, best writers in the industry;

On-time delivery guarantee, even on rush orders;

Free revisions.

#3. EssayPro 🥉

Good quality at a reasonable price (ENL writers);

Free plagiarism report;

Good reputation.

Best Essay Services: Conclusion

Working with a professional essay writing service is important not only for the quality of the work you’ll receive but also for the security of your personal details. Many students turn to these services when they’re pressed for time and need to complete their academic tasks—there’s nothing wrong with this approach.

Today, numerous legitimate essay writing services uphold high standards of academic integrity and deliver plagiarism-free papers. These paper writing websites are generally affordable for most students, although there are some exceptions.

Before placing an order, it’s important to do your homework. Check the company’s reviews, find out if it offers a refund policy, and look into its track record on past projects. A reliable service will prioritize your confidentiality, which is a vital consideration.

The news and editorial staff of the Santa Cruz Sentinel had no role in this post’s preparation. This is a paid advertisement and does not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, its employees, or subsidiaries.

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