Monthly discussion of music cognition research
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Read 3 days ago and current, but nothing has been published for 4 years.
The article we will be reading on the 11th of October is a methods paper that proposes a framework for investigating cross-cultural generalizability and what that means from the point of view of a modeling. We will frame the discussion around issues of generalizability in music cognition research. Below are two supplemental articles that are … Continue reading A Causal Framework for Cross-Cultural…
In this extra meeting, jointly organized with the Cognition, Language and Computation Lab, we discuss language models in music. More precisely, we discuss the paper by Castellon, Donahue and Liang published at ISMIR last year. The authors find that representations of OpenAI’s music generation system Jukebox can be used as input for several downstream tasks: … Continue reading Musical language…
Music information retrieval heavily relies on concepts borrowed from Western musics (from equal temperament and isochronous beats to measures and the major-minor distinction), which may not always be appropriate for ‘other’ traditions. This years ISMIR conference hosted a special call for musical diversity in MIR and in this reading group we will briefly discuss three … Continue reading Cultural…
After an extended summer break we resume the reading group with a PNAS paper by Pelofi and Farbood investigating whether assymetry in musical scales makes it easier to learn new musical structures. In three experiments, the authors study the acquisition of tonal hierarchy and melodic regularity using melodies generated using finite-state or Markov chain grammars, … Continue reading Assymetry in…
In this reading group, Anya Farennikova will present some of her recent work on silence in music. Abstract. Silence takes many forms in music and is said to be indispensable to music. Recent research shows that the auditory cortex remains active during musical silence. Drawing on research on auditory predictions and auditory imagery, I present … Continue reading Silence as music →
Most people like music: listening to music is rewarding. But not for everyone. In this reading group we look at musical anhedonia: the lack of pleasure from listening to music. We disucss a review of recent research by Belfi and Loui, who also propose a model of hedonic responses to music. Readings Belfi, A. M., … Continue reading Unrewarding predictions: Musical anhedonia →
Long, long ago, we used to get together for this reading group. In the same room. Well over a year later, we have found ways to live through a pandemic. What role has music played in that? And how have we made music? What music have we listened to? This reading group is all about … Continue reading Music during lockdown →
In this reading group we discuss a recent Trends in Cognitive Sciences paper by Cannon & Patel: How Beat Perception Co-opts Motor Neurophysiology (abstract below). Fleur Bouwer will open the discussion. Abstract “Beat perception offers cognitive scientists an exciting opportunity to explore how cognition and action are intertwined in the brain even in the absence … Continue reading Beat perception…
Western (classical) music is commonly said to use two modes: major and minor. These two modes historically emerged from traditions using many more modes, from eight modes of Gregorian chant to around four modes in Renaissance polyphony—the exact number can be debated. A recent corpus study by Harasim and colleagues tries to infer how many … Continue reading Modes from Renaissance to Romantic music…
Do listeners from different cultures listen for different things when they perceive a meter? Classical theories suggest onsets and accents on strong beats are the main cues. But could different idioms provide other idiom-specific cues, that enculturated listeners pick up? In the study we read today, Bastiaan van der Weij investigated whether such cues—statistical affordances—could … Continue…
