Journal of Undergraduate Research

Max Olivier and Luke Howard, School of Music A few years ago, I happened upon a little-known recording of the cello concerto of 20th-century Turkish composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun (1907-1991), and I immediately knew that I had discovered a gem. From the opening bars, Saygun drew me into his unique soundworld and captured my attention. […]

Shane Myers and Aaron Merrill, School of Music This project is a collection of four pieces of original music that will be used for professional demo purposes. It represents some of my best compositional and songwriting work and shows that I have the capacity to compose music in a broad variety of genres suitable for […]

Peter Fullmer and Dr. Matthew Coleman, Music Introduction The purpose of this project was to disseminate to a wide audience of percussionists the process of building an orchestral snare drum in order to equip them with the knowledge needed to make one themselves. This included highlighting in video the materials, tools, and skills required for […]

Clark Evans and Steven Ricks, School of Music The primary goal of this project was to better the quality of knowledge and education of a handful of composition students. By working one on one with each of them over an extended time, I would lend them my experience as a string player in order to […]

Samuel Craven, Steve Call, BYU School of Music The crowning achievement of my ORCA mentorship project was to have it submitted to the BYU School of Music library, where it is now both physically and digitally accessible for anyone to use. This project has been valuable to me in many ways, and I especially appreciate the […]

Madison K. Moline and Faculty Mentor: Dr. Samuel Tsugawa, School of Music Introduction My ORCA project was to study, practice, and teach string instrument maintenance and repair. The repairs that I learned were: closing and opening seams;; closing cracks in various parts of the instrument;; bridge and sound post alignment and placement;; neck and fingerboard […]

Clarissa Cashmore and David Day, HBLL Music Special Collections Introduction My ORCA project was a study of the French virtuoso harpist, composer, and pedagogue Henriette Renié. Renié’s archive collection is housed at BYU. There are over 9,000 items in her collection, including but not limited to spiritual diaries, letters from family and colleagues, concert programs, […]

Caleb Cuzner Faculty Mentors: Steve ricks, school of Music; Neal Bangerter, Electrical and Computer Engineering Introduction In order to study the relationship between music and color in areas of brain activity, I proposed to have participants’ brains scanned by an MRI machine while seeing different colors and listening to contrasting music samples. After learning that […]

Emily Brown and Faculty Mentor: Ray Smith, School of Music Over the past year I was given the opportunity to heavily research the repair of woodwind instruments and it was funded by an Orca grant. For 6 weeks I learned from woodwind repair experts at Summerhay’s music store in Murray, Utah. We would work together […]