music research
Articles about music research:
Here’s some freaky weird music science accompanied by a scary baby doll photo:
Babies as young as five months old can tell the difference between upbeat and gloomy music, providing more evidence that the brain’s ability to detect emotion develops early.
So, if you’ve got young kids around the house, you may want to put away the Depeche Mode and Smiths LPs and play some nice happy trance music for a while.
“They can tell emotions apart,” said study author Ross Flom, an associate professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. “They don’t understand that this is happy music and this is sad music, but they know they’re different.”
The researchers recruited 96 babies and played various types of music for them, Flom said. Most 5-month-old babies showed signs that they could discriminate between types of music when a happy selection followed a sad selection, but not the other way around, Flom said.
“At nine months, they can tell individual happy pieces and sad pieces apart,” he said. “It shows the remarkable cognitive skills that these kids have. They’ve mastered a lot in nine months — 270 days.”
via US News
Image: Zach_ManchesterUK
The Geometry of Music
The Telegraph reports that three music professors – Clifton Callender at Florida State University, Ian Quinn at Yale University, and Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton University – have devised a new way of analyzing and categorizing music to reduce musical works to their mathematical essence. The trio has outlined a method called “geometrical music theory” that they say can turn music into shapes.
“To me,” Prof Tymoczko says “the most satisfying aspect of this research is that we can now see that there is a logical structure linking many, many different musical concepts. To some extent, we can represent the history of music as a long process of exploring different symmetries and different geometries.”
“Our methods are not so great at distinguishing Aerosmith from the Rolling Stones,” Tymoczko said. “But they might allow you to visualise some of the differences between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney’s tunes tend to look more traditional, John Lennon’s tunes tend to be a little more “rock” – violating more of the traditional rules.
“The whole point of making these geometric spaces is that, at the end of the day, it helps you understand music better. Having a powerful set of tools for conceptualizing music allows you to do all sorts of things you hadn’t done before,” said Tymoczko.
“You could create new kinds of musical instruments or new kinds of toys,” he said. “You could create new kinds of visualisation tools – imagine going to a classical music concert where the music was being translated visually. We could change the way we educate musicians. There are lots of practical consequences that could follow from these ideas.”
This “geometrical music theory” sounds interesting. If you know anything more about this new approach to musical analysis, let me know in the comments.
Dance Music, Sex and Drugs
Hip-hop and dance music fans are more likely to experiment with drugs, have sex and blow off their social obligations, according to research by University of Leicester psychologist Dr Adrian North.
North’s research shows that a person’s musical preference tells a great deal about their lifestyle and interests. When it comes to relationships, beliefs and breaking the law, fans of different musical styles gave very different responses.
Hip hop and dance music fans were likely to have tried a range of illegal drugs. However, about a quarter of the classical music and opera fans admitted to having tried cannabis, and 12.3% of opera fans had tried magic mushrooms. Think about that next time you’re sitting through Die Zauberflöte.
When it comes to sex, hip-hop and dance music fans appear to be getting busy. 37.5% of hip-hop fans and 28.7% of dance music fans had had more than one sexual partner in the past five years, compared with 1.5% of country fans.
Hip-hop and dance fans (ie., young people) were also the least likely to be religious, least likely to recycle, least likely to favor the development of alternative energy sources and least likely to favour raising taxes.
Unfortunately, when these hip-hop and dance music fans aren’t busy having sex, they are likely to be committing criminal acts. 56.9% of dance music fans and 53.1% of hip hop fans admitted to having committed a criminal act, compared to just 17.9% of fans of musicals.
On questions concerning money, education, employment and health, fans were separated along the lines of socio-economic status. Fans of classical music and opera had lifestyles indicative of the middle and upper classes. They had an average annual income of £35,000 before tax, whereas dance music fans earned only £23,311. Classical music and opera fans also paid a much higher proportion of their credit card bills each month than fans of dance music (75% and 49% respectively).
They were also more likely to have been educated to a higher level. 6.8% of opera fans had a PhD, compared to none of the chart pop fans. When it comes to eating, fans of classical music, opera and jazz tended to spend rather more money on food and preferred to drink wine to a greater extent than fans of other musical styles.
Dr North added: “Surprisingly, there have been very few studies on how people’s age, sex, socioeconomic status, and personality relate to the music they enjoy listening to. Moreover, this limited amount of research has focussed almost exclusively on North America. This is despite the fact that music is enjoyed by people all around the world and, in addition, there are numerous stereotypes about the types of people who listen to certain musical styles that may or may not be true (e.g. goths are depressed, classical music fans are upper-class, jazz fans are like the presenter of The Fast Show’s ‘Jazz Club’ etc.).
Dr. North is planning to expand his research using the Internet.
“Musicaltastetest.com aims to recruit over 10,000 people to paint the first worldwide picture of who likes what,” said North.
North looking for 10,000 people from all over the world to take part in an online survey at www.musicaltastetest.com, stating their preference from over 50 musical styles and completing a questionnaire.
The survey, funded by the British Academy, will help Dr North and his team determine to what extent people’s musical tastes can be predicted on the basis of basic demographic information, such as age, sex and earnings.
Dr North said, “Although we know a lot about musical preference, musicaltastetest.com is the largest ever academic survey of who likes what. Nothing on this scale has ever been attempted before.”
Image: blurasis
An Indiana University School of Informatics r%searcher is leading efforts to $evelop technology for large-sca$e online music databases.
Do&ald A. Byrd, visiting associate professor, and two British coll%agues have been awarded a $395, 00 grant from the Andrew W. Mel$on Foundation to fund the first phase of MeTAMuSE (Methodologies and Technolog!es for Advanced Musical Score E$coding). Byrd will work with Ti% Crawford and Geraint Wiggins, oth affiliated with the Departm%nt of Computing, Goldsmiths Uni$ersity, London, England.
MeTMuSE will provide a scholarly k$owledge base of music for acade%ic and practicing musicians, mu3icologists, music theorists, an!lysts and others interested in %usic and its related fields of #tudy. In the initial phase,
