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JMM 4, Winter 2007, section 1 Welcome to JMM4! Here at JMM, we are both grateful and honored that we have such a loyal contributor and readership base. In spite of the fact that JMM has been in a state of relative dormancy since the summer of 2005 – JMM3 made its net debut on June 20, 2005 – the journal has continued to experience growth with regard to readership in several respects. We are pleased to report that we have had 93,952 visits between June 20, 2005 and April 22, 2007, an average of 139 per day. (A visit represents a website-entrance during which a user views one or more pages.) The average for 2006 alone was 148 visits per day, and for the first four months of 2007 the number has risen to 177 visits per day. By comparison, the average of 2005 was 88 visits per day. If we look at the number of pages being viewed, this was amounted to 736,010 pages between June 20, 2005 and April 22, 2007, an average of 1090 pages per day. This is no small achievement, considering that even a very lengthy JMM-article only equals one page. The number of hits – that is, a total of viewed or downloaded images and texts – during the same period was 1,005,855, an average of 1490 hits per day. JMM has readers all around the world. The mix of viewers’ national locations changes every month – the statistics below reflect the geographical distribution of our readers in March, 2007:
Statistics for other months report readers from Russia, South America and many other parts of the world. In other words, JMM has become a place to be seen (and heard; for a gentle reminder about our multimedia functionality, please see the concluding paragraph of this editorial). The appearance of JMM4 marks the first major passing of a torch within JMM's history: We say farewell to Kasper Eskelund as Managing Editor and bid welcome to Søren R. Frimodt-Møller as our new Managing Editor. JMM wishes to thank Kasper for truly dedicated and excellent work in connection with the production of JMM1 - JMM3, as well as a good portion of the preparatory work for JMM4. Kasper's vision and energetic commitment were instrumental in getting JMM established and off to a successful start. Søren R. Frimodt-Møller has plunged into his new duties and has mastered all of the requisite tools of the trade while putting the finishing touches on JMM4 and getting JMM5 into the pipeline. We hope to make up for lost time here at JMM by getting at least two more numbers out this year, and then to settle into a rhythm of semiannual production. In order to make the production of further issues more effective, we have tightened up our guidelines for submission. Please read through the revised guidelines under “Submission” to see the requirements which submitted texts are expected to fulfill. We are pleased to welcome two new members to our Editorial Board: Senior Researcher, Dr.rer.nat Stephan Baumann, German Research Center for AI, Computational Culture Lab, Germany Associate Professor Kristoffer Jensen, Department of Medialogy, Aalborg University Esbjerg, Denmark. We emerge from our hiatus here at JMM with an issue which reflects the quality and diversity of the contributions which are submitted to us. There are peer-reviewed papers from Lasse Thoresen - “Form-building Transformations: an Approach to the Aural Analysis of Emergent Musical Forms” and Ole Kühl - ”A Semiotic Approach to Jazz Improvisation”. Both of these papers showcase JMM's technical facilities for the promotion of scholarship in which the availability of accompanying sonic and multimedia material is of relevance to the presentation of research. In the current issue’s department which features invited, non peer-reviewed work, JMM welcomes back Siglind Bruhn (see JMM3) with an invited article ”Jesus and Satan in Moscow: Three Late-20th-century Operas on Bulgakov’s Novel” which combines musicological expertise with hermeneutic insights. Please recall that JMM is also dedicated to providing a forum for researchers who wish to present work-in-progress which is of interest to our readership for which the peer-review process would be somewhat premature. Therefore, articles which have passed the muster of the editorial staff alone appear in the department we have entitled "Research Reports." We are pleased to welcome contributors Luiz Fernando Nascimento de Lima and Panayotis Kokoras who have submitted research reports. DeLima's is entitled ”From Body Resonances to Cultural Values: Insights on Music, Analysis and Mediations” and Kokoras has sent us "Towards a Holophonic Musical Texture”. A regular feature of JMM is our "Recent Publications" department, managed by Jens Hjortkjær. Here readers have access to websites regarding publications dealing with a wide variety of research related to the area of music-and-meaning studies. This feature is updated in each number of JMM and is an excellent resource for anyone doing research in the field. We would also like to direct the attention of our readers to the possibilities for submitting material under "Essays" (see, for example, JMM2), a department in which material which cannot be classed as research – and is therefore not amenable to standard peer review procedures – but which nevertheless contains material which we feel is of importance to the discussion of topics regarding music and meaning. Material appearing in JMM’s “Essays” department is presented upon approval by the Editorial Staff. It is only incidental that the department “Reviews and Commentaries” which appeared in JMM1, JMM2 and JMM3 is lacking in JMM4. It is our intention that this department be a regular feature in JMM. Last, but not least, it is the sincere hope of JMM that the word "readership" will continue to receive an ever-expanding connotation in which "listenership" and "viewership" are included: We have the facilities to present work which contains pictures, music and video and which is subjected to the most stringent processes of double-blind peer review by a panel of international experts. We continue to explore ways in which to improve JMM, and we will keep you informed in our coming issues. Please do not hesitate to send us research which will exploit our multimedia capacities! On behalf of the Editorial Staff of JMM, Cynthia M. Grund, Editor-in-Chief
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