CMS Seminars

Musical notation in South Asia has historically been associated with pedagogy and music theory. The earliest surviving example is a 7th-century rock inscription at Kuḍumiyāmalai, in South India, recording seven extended melodies in seven different modes. With a total of some 2,400 musical notes, this source is considerably...

This presentation discusses the potential use of an incidental learning procedure for acquiring music information. The research investigates humans’ ability to capture the relationship between two events in the environment, aiming to investigate whether or not this human ability can be applied to skills normally considered...

To what extent and in what ways do participants who just made music together understand what they were doing in the same way? In this talk, I’ll explore this question drawing on case studies in a range of music making contexts: improvisation on a jazz standard, free improvisation, and a classical duo. In these case studies...

Multiple approaches have been used to investigate how musical cues are used to shape different emotions in music. The most prominent approach is a systematic manipulation approach (Eerola, Friberg, & Bresin, 2013; Scherer & Oshinsky, 1977), where similar musical excerpts are created by slightly varying cue levels...

Wing et al (2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2013.1125 ) proposed that phase correction underlies ensemble timing in classic quartet playing. Each player corrects the timing of their next note in proportion to the summed weighted asynchronies of their previous note onset with the note onsets of the other three players...

What is it about rhythm in music that makes people want to move? And why does moving to the beat feel so good? In this talk, I will review a selection of my research studies focusing on musical groove – defined in psychology as the pleasurable desire to move to a musical beat. Using online surveys, motion-capture and fMRI...

Indian classical music, including Hindustani music, is based on the concept of rāga. A rāga, while based on or derived from a scale, is not the same thing. It is an aesthetic and grammatical entity somewhat similar to Arabian maqām, Turkish makam and Persian maqām or māye. In Hindustānī music, two or more rāgas can have an...

Despite over a century of research into absolute pitch (AP), musicians and scientists alike still cannot agree on what it is or how it develops. Some researchers hold that it is entirely innate, although there is little compelling evidence for this. Many studies suggest it can be fostered through early musical training...