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Unmixer: Loop Extraction with Repetition, with Dr. Jordan Smith and Tim de Reuse
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Music technology PhD Candidate Tim de Reuse recommends “Unmixer: An Interface for Extracting and Remixing Loops” by Jordan Smith,Yuta Kawasaki, and Masataka Goto, published in the proceedings of ISMIR 2019. Tim and Finn interview Jordan about the origins of this project, the algorithm behind the loop extraction, the importance of repetition in music, and the creative and playful applications of Unmixer.
Note: This conversation was recorded in December 2019. Techically issues with some tracks contributed to delays. Apologies for the choppy audio quality.
Time Stamps
- [0:01:40] Project Summary
- [0:05:05] Demonstration of Unmixer
- [0:14:27] Origins of the UnMixer project
- [0:19:44] Factorisation algorithm
- [0:28:37] Computational and musical objectives for factorisation
- [0:36:15] The Unmixer web interface
- [0:41:30] 2nd Demonstration, parameters and track selection
- [0:49:13] What Unmixer tells us about music
Show notes
- Recommended article:
- Smith, J, Kawasaki, Y, & Goto, M. (2019) Unmixer: An Interface for Extracting and Remixing Loops. Proceedings of 20th ISMIR meeting, Delft Netherlands.
- UnMixer website: https://unmixer.ongaaccel.jp/
- Project webpage
- Interviewee: Dr. Jordan BL Smith, Research Scientist at Tik Tok.Website, twitter
- Co-host: PhD Candidate Tim de Reuse, website, twitter
- Papers cited in the discussion:
- Smith, J. B., & Goto, M. (2018, April). Nonnegative tensor factorization for source separation of loops in audio. In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) (pp. 171-175). IEEE.
- Schmidhuber, J. (2009). Simple algorithmic theory of subjective beauty, novelty, surprise, interestingness, attention, curiosity, creativity, art, science, music, jokes. Journal of SICE, 48(1).
- Rafii, Z., & Pardo, B. (2012). Repeating pattern extraction technique (REPET): A simple method for music/voice separation. IEEE transactions on audio, speech, and language processing, 21(1), 73-84.
- Music sampled:
- Daft Punk, Random Access Memories (2013): Doing it Right (ft. Panda Bear)
- Martin Solveig & Dragonette, Smash (2011): Hello – Single Edit
- Mura Masa, Soundtrack To a Death (2014): I’ve Never Felt So Good
- Other references:
- Madeon’s Adventure Machine
- Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2020. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.
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Scale Degree Qualia in Context with Prof. Claire Arthur and Dr. David Baker
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In western classical music, theorists have long argued (and mostly agreed) that individual notes of the major and minor scale have sensations associated, feelings often described in terms of tension, motion, sadness, and stability. Dr Baker recommends Prof. Clair Arthur’s paper “A perceptual study of scale-degree qualia in context” from Music Perception (2018) which describes testing these associations through the subjective reports of musicians and non-musicians when presented scale degrees in different harmonic contexts. Together we discuss the challenges of the probe tone paradigm, interactions of musicianship training and perception of tonality, and ambiguity in note qualia perception.
Time Stamps
- [0:00:10] Introductions
- [0:02:40] Summary of Paper
- [0:09:50] Origins and Experiment 1 – free association
- [0:16:57] Experiment 2 – probe tone ratings
- [0:23:25] Results and surprises
- [0:28:59] Inconsistency in qualia reports
- [0:34:20] Stimulus examples and experiment limitations
- [0:41:21] Implications of findings
- [0:50:43] Using Musically trained participants
- [0:53:51] Closing summary
Show notes
- Recommended article:
- Arthur, C. (2018). A perceptual study of scale-degree qualia in context. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 35(3), 295-314
- Interviewee: Prof. Claire Arthur of Georgia Tech University
- Co-host: Dr. David Baker, Lead Instructor of Data Science at the Flatiron School
- David Huron’s Sweet Anticipation, 2006 from MIT Press
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2020. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.
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ISMIR 2019 Conference sampler
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This episode brings recommendations from the 2019 ISMIR conference at TUDelft in the Netherlands. A number of contributors, old and new, highlighted papers that had caught their attention.
Note: At ISMIR, all accepted papers were presented via a short 4 minute talk and a poster. This arrangement made it possible to keep all presentations in a single track. All papers and permited talks are posted on the ISMIR site.
Time Stamps
- [0:01:51] Matan’s rec
- [0:07:27] Rachel’s rec
- [0:10:51] Andrew’s rec
- [0:15:20] Ashley and Felicia’s rec
- [0:19:59] Néstor’s rec
- [0:26:55] Tejaswinee’s rec
- [0:31:13] Brian’s rec
- [0:36:06] Finn’s recs
Show notes
- Matan Gover recommends [A13] Conditioned-U-Net: Introducing a Control Mechanism in the U-Net for Multiple Source Separations by Gabriel Meseguer Brocal and Geoffroy Peeters (paper, presentation)
- Andrew Demetriou recommends [F10] Tunes Together: Perception and Experience of Collaborative Playlists by So Yeon Park; Audrey Laplante; Jin Ha Lee; Blair Kaneshiro (paper, presentation)
- Tejaswinee Kelkar recommends [B03] Estimating Unobserved Audio Features for Target-Based Orchestration by Jon Gillick; Carmine-Emanuele Cella; David Bamman (paper, presentation)
- Ashley Burgoyne and Felicia Villalobos recommend [E13] SAMBASET: A Dataset of Historical Samba de Enredo Recordings for Computational Music Analysis by Lucas Maia; Magdalena Fuentes; Luiz Biscainho; Martín Rocamora; Slim Essid (paper, presentation)
- Néstor Nápoles López recommends the anniversary paper [E-00] 20 Years of Automatic Chord Recognition from Audio by Johan Pauwels; Ken O’Hanlon; Emilia Gomez; Mark B. Sandler (paper, presentation)
- Rachel Bittner recommends [A06] Cover Detection with Dominant Melody Embeddings by Guillaume Doras; Geoffroy Peeters (paper, presentation)
- Brian McFee recommends [E-06] FMP Notebooks: Educational Material for Teaching and Learning Fundamentals of Music Processing by Meinard Müller; Frank Zalkow (paper, presentation, webpage)
- And Finn’s rec:
- [D-12] AIST Dance Video Database: Multi-Genre, Multi-Dancer, and Multi-Camera Database for Dance Information Processing By Shuhei Tsuchida; Satoru Fukayama; Masahiro Hamasaki; Masataka Goto. (Paper, presentation)
- Keynotes: Henkjan Honing’s What makes us musical animals and Georgina Born’s MIR redux: Knowledge and realworld challenges, and new interdisciplinary futures
- [F-14] The ISMIR Explorer – A Visual Interface for Exploring 20 Years of ISMIR Publications by Thomas Low; Christian Hentschel; Sayantan Polley; Anustup Das; Harald Sack; Andreas Nurnberger; Sebastian Stober (paper, presentation, website)
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2019. Algorithmic music samples from the blog post Music Transformer: Generating Music with Long-Term Structure, and included under the principles of fair dealing. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.
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Music Transformer and Machine Learning for Composition with Dr. Anna Huang
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Finn interviews Composer and Machine Learning specialist Dr. Cheng-Zhi Anna Huang about the Music Transformer project at Google’s Magenta Labs. They discuss representations of music for machine learning, algorithmic music generation as a compositional aid, the JS Bach Google Doodle, how self-reference defines structure in music, and compare the musicality of different systems with example outputs.
Time Stamps
- [0:01:05] Introducing Dr. Anna Huang
- [0:03:43] JS Bach Google Doodle
- [0:12:52] Representations of musical information for machine learning
- [0:16:26] Music Transformer project
- [0:25:15] RNN algorithm music sample
- [0:25:45] ABA structure challenge for generative systems
- [0:30:30] Vanilla Transformer algorithm music sample
- [0:32:07] Music Transformer algorithm music sample
- [0:36:30] Self Reference Visualisation (see blog post)
- [0:43:27] Everyday music implications
- [0:48:10] What this work says about music
- [0:50:01] Music Transformer trained on Jazz Piano
Show notes
- Recommended project:
- Blog post: Huang, C.Z.A., Simon, I., & Dinculescu, M. (2018, Dec 12). Music Transformer: Generating Music with Long-Term Structure [Blog Post]
- Paper: Huang, C.Z.A., Vaswani, A., Uszkoreit, J., Shazeer, N., Simon, I., Hawthorne, C., Dai, A.M., Hoffman, M.D., Dinculescu, M., & Eck, D. (2018) MUSIC TRANSFORMER: GENERATING MUSIC WITH LONG-TERM STRUCTURE on arXiv.org
- Interviewee: Dr. Cheng-Zhi Huang at Google AI, on twitter @huangcza
- Google Doodle Celebrating JS Bach with AI harmonising melodies
- Related papers:
- Huang, C.Z.A., Cooijmans, T., Roberts, A., Courville, A., Eck, D. (2017). Coconet: Counterpoint by Convolution. ISMIR.
- Huang, C.Z.A., Cooijmans, T., Dinculescu, M., Roberts, A., & Hawthorne, C. (2019, Mar 20). Coconet: the ML model behind today’s Bach Doodle.
- Huang, C.Z.A., Hawthorne, C., Roberts, A., Dinculescu, M., Wexler, J., Hong, L., Howcroft, J. (2019). The Bach Doodle: Approachable music composition with machine learning at scale. ISMIR.
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018. Algorithmic music samples from the blog post Music Transformer: Generating Music with Long-Term Structure, and included under the principles of fair dealing. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.
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Systemic Racism and Whiteness in Music Education, with Dr. Juliet Hess and co-host Ethan Hein
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:08 — 49.3MB)
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Music Education doctoral candidate Ethan Hein recommends “Equity and Music Education: Euphemisms, Terminal Naivety, and Whiteness” by Juliet Hess, published in Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education, 2017. Ethan and Finn interview Dr. Juliet Hess about this study and whiteness in music education, and addressing systemic racism from within our areas of academia.
Time Stamps
- [0:00:10] Intro with Ethan Hein
- [0:08:29] Interview: Dr. Juliet Hess, Background and Case Studies
- [0:18:50] Interview: Multiculturalism and Music
- [0:29:31] Interview: Whiteness in the Conservatory
- [0:36:19] Interview: Context and Implications
- [0:44:06] Interview: Future work
- [0:51:50] Closing with Ethan Hein
Show notes
- Recommended article:
- Interviewee: Dr. Juliet Hess, Assistant Professor of Music Education at Michigan State University
- Co-host: Ethan Hein, Doctoral Candidate in Music Education at New York University (website, twitter)
- Sources cited in the discussion:
- Kendrick Lamar’s Alright (youtube)
- Chris Thile’s performance on Prairie Home companion is no longer available
- Emma Stevens – Blackbird by The Beatles sung in Mi’kmaq (youtube)
- Correction: this performance is from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, not Newfoundland where there has been controversy around seal hunting. Both provinces are within the ancestral territory of Mi’kmaq People.
- Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2006. Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. 2nd edition. Toronto, ON: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (Publisher page)
- Juliet Hess (2018) Interrupting the symphony: unpacking the importance placed on classical concert experiences, Music Education Research, 20:1, 11-21, DOI: 10.1080/14613808.2016.1202224 (HTML)
- Juliet Hess’ new book:
- Hess, Juliet. (2019) Music Education for Social Change: Constructing an Activist Music Education, Routledge (Publisher page)
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2019. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.
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Capturing the alignment between the movements of musicians and listeners with Dr. Alexander Demos
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Host Finn Upham recommends “How Music Moves Us: Entraining to Musicians’ Movements” by Alexander Demos and Roger Chaffin, published in Music Perception, 2017. They interview Dr Demos about this study and adjacent issues.
Note: This interview goes fairly deep into the challenges of time series data analysis. Feel free to use the time stamps listed in the show notes to skip ahead if this is not your cup of tea.
Time Stamps
- [0:00:10] Intro to article and Alex
- [0:03:20] Design of Air Conducting experiment
- [0:11:15] Capturing movements of performers and listeners
- [0:15:40] Assessing alignment between motion time series
- [0:25:26] Non-linearity in these time series
- [0:31:18] False negatives and intermittent alignment
- [0:38:32] Theories of Music and Ancillary motion
- [0:45:04] Closing Summary and Implications
Show notes
- Recommended article:
- Interviewee: Dr. Alexander Demos, Clinical assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (website)
- Some publications cited in the discussion:
- Schreiber, T., & Schmitz, A. (1996). Improved surrogate data for nonlinearity tests. Physical Review Letters, 77(4), 635–638.
- Cook, N. (2013). Beyond the score: Music as performance. Oxford University Press.
- Theiler, J., Eubank, S., Longtin, A., Galdrikian, B. & Farmer, J. D. (1992). Testing for nonlinearity in time series: The method of surrogate data. Physica D, 58, 77–94.
- Dean, R. T., Bailes, F., & Dunsmuir, W. T. (2014). Time series analysis of real-time music perception: Approaches to the assessment of individual and expertise differences in perception of expressed affect. Journal of Mathematics and Music, 8(3), 183-205.
- Wanderley, M. M., Vines, B. W., Middleton, N., Mckay, C., & Hatch, W. (2005). The musical significance of clarinetists’ ancillary gestures: An exploration of the field. Journal of New Music Research, 34(1), 97–113. DOI: 10.1080/092982105 00124208
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2019. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.
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Differences in metrical entrainment and replication research with Sylvie Nozaradan and cohost Sarah Sauvé
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:29 — 54.2MB)
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Postdoctoral fellow Sarah Sauvé recommends “Individual differences in rhythmic cortical entrainment correlate with predictive behavior in sensorimotor synchronization” by Sylvie Nozaradan, Isabelle Peret, and Peter E. Keller, published in Nature Scientific Reports in 2016. Sarah and Finn interview Dr. Nozaradan about the measures of metrical perception and rhythm production, entrainment to difficult stimuli, and what these results imply for a replication study conducted with older participants.
Time Stamps
- [0:00:10] Intro with Sarah
- [0:09:41] Interview: Where this study comes from
- [0:14:25] Interview: Challenging stimuli
- [0:22:09] Interview: Older listeners replication
- [0:26:43] Interview: Task 3, metrical prediction
- [0:38:25] Interview: Implications for everyday musical experiences
- [0:44:43] Closing debrief
Show notes
- Recommended article:
- Nozaradan, S., Peretz, I., & Keller, P. E. (2016). Individual differences in rhythmic cortical entrainment correlate with predictive behavior in sensorimotor synchronization. Scientific reports, 6, 20612.
- Interviewee: Dr. Sylvie Nozaradan, Institute of neuroscience at UC Louvain, in Belgium (Google Scholar Profile)
- Co-host: Dr. Sarah Sauvé, Postdoctoral fellow at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Website, twitter)
Contact
Questions, comments, and article recommendations are always welcome! Get in touch here, through the contact page, or on twitter, or email the producer directly: finn at sostrangely.com
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2019. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.
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Episode 7: Society for Neuroscience 2018 Music Science Review
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Four Music Science attendees of the 2018 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience join Finn to discuss their experience of the conference, their own projects, and other interesting research presented. PhD Candidates Avital Sternin, Andrew Chang, Dr. Keith Doelling, and Prof. Amy Belfi get into the neural processing of song, emotion and alzheimer’s, leadership in small ensembles, onset prediction in the auditory cortex and more. Get an inside view of how Music Science fits into the biggest Neuroscience conference according to the young scientists on the ground.
Time Stamps
- [0:01:06] Introduction of panelists
- [0:03:12] Introduction of Society for Neuroscience Conference
- [0:07:11] Music Science at SfN and in Neuroscience
- [0:10:48] Avital’s project (introduced by Amy)
- [0:21:50] Andrew’s project (introduced by Keith)
- [0:33:18] Amy’s project (introduced by Avital)
- [0:44:04] Keith’s project (introduced by Andrew)
Show notes
- SfN18 website and program
- Avital Sternin, PhD Candidate at The Brain and Mind Institute of The University of Western Ontario
- Andrew Chang, Ph.D. Candidate in Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University
- Abstract, Poster for Neural oscillatory mechanisms for interpersonal entrainment in music ensembles by A. Chang, P. Chrapka, D. Bosnyak, L. J. Trainor.
- Associated paper: A. Chang, S.R. Livingstone, D. Bosnyak, and L. J. Trainor. Body sway reflects leadership in joint music performance. PNAS May 23, 2017 114 (21) E4134-E4141
- Prof. Amy Belfi, Department of Psychological Science at Missouri University of Science and Technology
- Dr. Keith Doelling, Dept. of Psychology, Centre for Neural Science, New York University
- Abstract, Poster for Assessing evoked and oscillatory components in cortical synchronization to music using computational models by K. Doelling, M.F. Assaneo, J. Rowland, D. Bevilacqua, B. Pesaran, D. Poeppel.
- Associated paper: K. B. Doelling and D. Poeppel. Cortical entrainment to music and its modulation by expertise. PNAS November 10, 2015 112 (45) E6233-E6242
- Other SfN 2018 posters mentioned
- Beat perception ability and familiarity with music alter gait in older adults during auditory cueing E. A. READY, J. D. HOLMES, J. S. GRAHN (and poster)
- Finding the beat: A neuro-mechanistic model for rhythmic beat generation Á. BYRNE, A. BOSE, J. M. RINZEL
- Predictability and uncertainty in the pleasure of music B. P. GOLD, M. T. PEARCE, E. MAS-HERRERO, A. DAGHER, R. ZATORRE
- Distinct neural selectivities for music, speech, and song in human auditory cortex S. V. NORMAN-HAIGNERE, J. J. FEATHER, P. BRUNNER, A. RITACCIO, J. H. MCDERMOTT, G. SCHALK, N. G. KANWISHER (and associated paper, pdf)
- Spontaneous speech synchronization predicts neurophysiology, brain anatomy and language learning M. F. ASSANEO, P. RIPOLLES, J. ORPELLA, R. DE DIEGO-BALAGUER, D. POEPPEL
- Video of Dialogues Between Neuroscience and Society: Music and the Brain, with Pat Metheny
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.
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Episode 6: Relevance of vocals to music listener preferences, with Brian McFee and guest Andrew Demetriou
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:48 — 70.9MB)
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Music tech and data science professor Brian McFee recommends Vocals in Music Matter: The Relevance of Vocals in the Minds of Listeners by Andrew Demetriou, Andreas Jansson, Aparna Kumar, and Rachel M. Bittner, published in the 2018 ISMIR proceedings. Brian and Finn interview Andrew Demetriou about this research combining descriptions of music on Spotify and survey responses on what users pay attention to, like, and dislike in music generally and vocals specifically.
Time Stamps
- [0:00:00] Introduction with Brian
- [0:10:05] Interview: Introduction: Origins of paper and Survey 1 analysis
- [0:20:15] Interview: Results of survey 1 and ethical research practices at Spotify
- [0:27:03] Interview: Second Survey construction, analysis, and results
- [0:34:37] Interview: Problems of terminology and labeling
- [0:43:27] Interview: Overall results and absence of vocals terms in music descriptions
- [0:53:30] Interview: Implications for everyday music listening
- [0:58:40] Closing with Brian (12/10 for efficient summary)
Show notes
- Recommended article:
- Demetriou, A., Jansson, A., Kumar, A., & Bittner, R. M. Vocals in Music Matter: The Relevance of Vocals in the Minds of Listeners. Proceedings of ISMIR 2018 (pp. 514-520).
- Slide deck from the corresponding ISMIR talk that caught Brian’s attention
- Interviewee: Andrew Demetriou
- Co-host: Prof. Brian McFee
And here is the action shot of the research team card sorting participants’ text responses to Survey 1.
Spotify researchers (left to right) Rachel Bittner, Andreas Jansson, Andrew Demetriou, and Aparna Kumar working through the text responses to Survey 1. Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.
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Episode 5: Cross-culture variation in preferences for consonance, with Dan Shanahan and guest Josh McDermott
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:33 — 57.0MB)
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Music Theorist Daniel Shanahan recommends “Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception” by Josh H. McDermott, Alan F. Schultz, Eduardo A. Undurraga, and Ricardo A. Godoy, published in Nature Letters in 2016. Dan and Finn interview Josh about the musical culture of the Tsimane people, adapting music cognition experiments for cross-cultural studies, and what the absence of preference for consonant intervals (over dissonant intervals) in the people of one culture means for theories of music cognition more broadly.
Time Stamps
- [0:00:00] Introduction with Dan
- [0:13:16] Interview with Josh and introduction to the Tsimane and their music culture
- [0:22:41] Experiment Design on Preference for Consonance and Dissonance
- [0:28:04] Experiment results and the distinction between melodic and harmonic intervals
- [0:32:53] Cross-culture study methodologies and follow up studies
- [0:38:39] Implications of results on experiences of western music listeners
- [0:42:04] Relationship of these results to other studies of preference for consonance
- [0:48:16] Closing with Dan
Show notes
- Recommended article:
- McDermott, J. H., Schultz, A. F., Undurraga, E. A., & Godoy, R. A. (2016). Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception. Nature, 535(7613), 547.
- Interviewee: Prof. Josh McDermott, Associate Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Co-host: Prof. Dan Shanahan, Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Cognition at Ohio State University
- Works cited in the discussion:
- Trainor, L. J., Tsang, C. D., & Cheung, V. H. (2002). Preference for sensory consonance in 2-and 4-month-old infants. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 20(2), 187-194.
- Chiandetti, C., & Vallortigara, G. (2011). Chicks like consonant music. Psychological science, 22(10), 1270-1273.
- McDermott, J., & Hauser, M. (2004). Are consonant intervals music to their ears? Spontaneous acoustic preferences in a nonhuman primate. Cognition, 94(2), B11-B21.
- Polak, R., London, J., & Jacoby, N. (2016). Both isochronous and non-isochronous metrical subdivision afford precise and stable ensemble entrainment: a corpus study of malian jembe drumming. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 10, 285.
- Jacoby, N., & McDermott, J. H. (2017). Integer ratio priors on musical rhythm revealed cross-culturally by iterated reproduction. Current Biology, 27(3), 359-370.
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018.
Audio samples of Tsimane singing and experiment stimuli are taken form the Supplementary materials (samples 3, 4, 8, and 1) to the recommended article. Included with permission from Prof. McDermott.
The closing music includes a sample of Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion Sound Demo 1.
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Episode 4: Development and Teleomusicality with Mariusz Kozak and guest Andrea Schiavio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:37 — 56.1MB)
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Music Theorist Mariusz Kozak recommends “When the Sound Becomes the Goal. 4E Cognition and Teleomusicality in Early Infancy” by Andrea Schiavio, Dylan van der Schyff, Silke Kruse-Weber and Renee Timmers, published in Frontiers in Psychology. Marius and Finn interview Andrea about this framing of early musical development and implications of an embodied, embedded, extended and enactive approach to cognitive science.
Time Stamps
- [0:00:10] Intro with Mariusz
- [0:11:16] Interview: Origins and the 4 Es
- [0:21:40] Interview: Attention, Intention, and Mirror Neurons
- [0:32:59] Interview: Sound Goals and Musical Actions
- [0:40:28] Interview: Reception of Theory
- [0:53:03] Closing with Mariusz
Show notes
- Recommended article:
- Schiavio, A., van der Schyff, D., Kruse-Weber, S., & Timmers, R. (2017). When the Sound Becomes the Goal. 4E Cognition and Teleomusicality in Early Infancy. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 1585.
- Interviewee: Dr. Andrea Schiavio, Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Graz
- Co-host: Prof. Mariusz Kozak, Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia University
- Works cited in the discussion:
- Chemero, A. (2011). Radical embodied cognitive science. MIT press.
- Craighero, L., Leo, I., Umilta, C., and Simion, F. (2011). Newborns’ preference for goal-directed actions. Cognition, 20, 26–32. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2011 02.011
- D’Ausilio, A. (2007). The role of the mirror system in mapping complex sounds into actions. The Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 5847–5848. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0979-07.2007
- D’Ausilio, A. (2009). Mirror-like mechanisms and music. The Scientific World Journal, 9, 1415–1422. doi:10.1100/tsw.2009.160
- Gerson, S. A., Bekkering, H., and Hunnius, S. (2015a). Short-term motor training, but not observational training, alters neurocognitive mechanisms of action processing in infancy. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27, 1207–1214. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00774
- Haslinger, B., Erhard, P., Altenmüller, E., Schroeder, U., Boecker, H., & Ceballos-Baumann, A. O. (2005). Transmodal sensorimotor networks during action observation in professional pianists. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 282–293. doi:10.1162/0898929053124893
- Haueisen, J., & Knösche, T. R. (2001). Involuntary motor activity in pianists evoked by music perception. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13, 786–792. doi:10.1162/08989290152541449
- Hickok-Gallese debate at NYU (2103) Do Mirror Neurons Explain Anything?
- Kohler, E., Keysers, C., Umiltà, M. A., Fogassi, L., Gallese, V., and Rizzolatti, G. (2002). Hearing sounds, understanding actions: action representation in mirror neurons. Science, 297, 846–848. doi: 10.1126/science.1070311
- Menary, R. (2010). Introduction to the special issue on 4E cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9, 459–463.
- Mukamel R., Ekstrom A.D., Kaplan J., Iacoboni M., Fried I., Single-Neuron Responses in Humans during Execution and Observation of Actions. Current Biology, vol. 20, nº 8.
- Novembre, G., Ticini, L. F., Schütz-Bosbach, S., & Keller, P. E. (2014). Motor simulation and the coordination of joint actions in real time. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9, 1062–1068. doi: 10.1093/scan/nst086
- Overy, K., and Molnar-Szakacs, I. (2009). Being together in time: musical experience and the mirror neuron system. Music Perception, 26, 489–504. doi: 10.1525/mp.2009.26.5.489
- Perone, S., Madole, K. L., Ross-Sheehy, S., Carey, M., and Oakes, L. M. (2009). The relation between infants’ activity with objects and attention to object appearance. Developmental Psycholology, 44, 1242–1248. doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.44.5.1242
- Proffitt, D. R., Stefanucci, J., Banton, T., & Epstein, W. (2003). The role of effort in perceiving distance. Psychological Science, 14(2), 106-112.
- Schiavio, A. & Timmers, R. (2016). Motor and audiovisual learning consolidate auditory memory of tonally ambiguous melodies. Music Perception, 34(1), 21-32
- Schiavio, A. & van der Schyff, D. (2016). Beyond musical qualia. Reflecting on the concept of experience. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, & Brain, 26(4), 366-378
- Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
- Wilson, A. D., & Golonka, S. (2013). Embodied cognition is not what you think it is. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 58.
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018.
The closing music includes a sample of Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion Sound Demo 1.
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Episode 3: Interactions of Metrical and Tonal Hierarchies with Bryn Hughes and guest Chris White
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:49 — 60.0MB)
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Music Theorist Bryn Hughes recommends Chris White’s “Relationships Between Tonal Stability and Metrical Accent in Monophonic Contexts“, published in the Empirical Musicology Review (2017). Bryn and Finn interview Prof. White about his sequence of perceptual studies on how tonal stability may inform metrical hierarchy and vis versa, and together they discuss implications for music theory and some common issues in music cognition studies.
Show notes
- Recommended article:
- White, C. (2017). Relationships Between Tonal Stability and Metrical Accent in Monophonic Contexts. Empirical Musicology Review, 12(1-2), 19-37.
- Interviewee: Prof. Chris White, Department of Music and Dance at the University of Massachusetts Amherst twitter: @chriswmwhite
- Co-host: Prof. Bryn Hughes, in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lethbridge twitter: @brynmdhughes
- Papers cited in the discussion:
- Krumhansl, C. L., & Kessler, E. J. (1982). Tracing the dynamic changes in perceived tonal organization in a spatial representation of musical keys. Psychological Review, 89, 334–368. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033- 295X.89.4.334
- Lerdahl, F., & Jackendoff, R. (1983). A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Time Stamps
- [0:00:10] Intro with Prof. Bryn Hughes
- [0:11:48] Interview: Corpus studies inspiration and Study format
- [0:23:31] Interview: Effect Size and Gender as a factor
- [0:36:00] Interview: Experiment 4 and more design questions
- [0:43:34] Interview: Follow up and future work
- [0:53:33] Closing summary and surprises with Prof. Bryn Hughes
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018.
The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion Sound Demo 1.
- Recommended article:
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Episode 2: Aligned Hierarchies and Segmentation with Vincent Lostanlen and guest Katherine Kinnaird
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:13:48 — 70.0MB)
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Data Scientist Vincent Lostanlen recommends Katherine Kinnaird’s “Aligned Hierarchies: A Multi-Scale Structure-Based Representation for Music-Based Data Streams”, published in the proceedings of ISMIR (2016). Vincent and Finn interview Dr. Kinnaird about this method for abstracting structure in music through repetition, how it has been implemented for fingerprinting on Chopin’s Mazurkas, and how Aligned Hierarchies could be used for other tasks and on other musics.
Show notes
- Recommended article:
- Kinnaird, K. M. (2016). Aligned Hierarchies: A Multi-Scale Structure-Based Representation for Music-Based Data Streams. In ISMIR (pp. 337-343). http://m.mr-pc.org/ismir16/website/articles/020_Paper.pdf
- Interviewee: Dr. Katie Kinnaird, Data Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow, Affiliated to the Division of Applied Mathematics at Brown University twitter @kmkinnaird
- Co-host: Dr. Vincent Lostanlen, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Visiting scholar at MARL at NYU, twitter: @lostanlen
- Papers cited in the discussion:
- M. Casey, C. Rhodes, and M. Slaney. Analysis of minimum distances in high-dimensional musical spaces. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 16(5):1015 – 1028, 2008.
- J. Foote. Visualizing music and audio using self- similarity. Proc. ACM Multimedia 99, pages 77–80, 1999.
- M. Goto. A chorus-section detection method for musical audio signals and its application to a music listening station. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 14(5):1783–1794, 2006.
- P. Grosche, J. Serrà, M. Müller, and J.Ll. Arcos. Structure-based audio fingerprinting for music retrieval. 13th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, 2012.
Time Stamps
- [0:00:10] Intro with Vincent Lostanlen
- [0:17:22] Interview: Origins of the Aligned Hierarchies
- [0:30:22] Interview: Implementation & Fingerprinting on the Mazurkas
- [0:52:55] Interview: New applications and developments for Aligned Hierarchies
- [1:02:57] Closing with Vincent Lostanlen
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018.
The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion Sound Demo 1.
- Recommended article:
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Episode 1: Music Anhedonia and White Matter with Amy Belfi and guest Psyche Loui
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:05:46 — 60.5MB)
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Neuroscientist Amy Belfi recommends “White Matter Correlates of Musical Anhedonia: Implications for Evolution of Music” by Loui, Patterson, Sachs, Leung, Zeng, and Przysinda, published in Frontiers in Psychology (2017). Amy and Finn interview Prof. Psyche Loui about this study, its relevance to theories of the evolution of music, and music anhedonia more broadly.
Show notes
- Recommended article:
- Loui P, Patterson S, Sachs ME, Leung Y, Zeng T and Przysinda E (2017) White Matter Correlates of Musical Anhedonia: Implications for Evolution of Music. Front. Psychol. 8:1664. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01664
- Interviewee: Prof. Psyche Loui, Department of Psychology, Program in Neuroscience and Behavior, Wesleyan University
- Co-host: Prof. Amy Belfi, Department of Psychological Science, Missouri University of Science and Technology
- Papers cited in the discussion:
- Altenmüller, E., Kopiez, R., and Grewe, O. (2013a). “A contribution to the evolutionary basis of music: lessons from the chill response,” in The Evolution of Emotional Communication: From Sounds in Nonhuman Mammals to Speech and Music in Man, eds E. Altenmüller, S. Schmidt, and E. Zimmermann (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 313–335.
- Belfi, A. M., Evans, E., Heskje, J., Bruss, J., and Tranel, D. (2017). Musical anhedonia after focal brain damage. Neuropsychologia 97, 29–37. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.01.030
- Brielmann, A. A., & Pelli, D. G. (2017). Beauty requires thought. Current Biology, 27(10), 1506-1513.
- Mas-Herrero, E., Marco-Pallares, J., Lorenzo-Seva, U., Zatorre, R. J., and Rodriguez-Fornells, A. (2013). Individual differences in Music Reward experiences. Music Percept. 31, 118–138. doi: 10.1525/mp.2013.31.2.118
- Sachs, M. E., Ellis, R. J., Schlaug, G., and Loui, P. (2016). Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music. Soc. Cogn. Aect. Neurosci. 11, 884–891. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsw009
Time Stamps
- [0:00:10] Intro with Amy Belfi
- [0:15:15] Interview: Where this study comes from
- [0:20:12] Interview: Components of research project
- [0:31:47] Interview: Results
- [0:44:55] Interview: Implications
- [0:59:05] Closing with Amy Belfi
Credits
The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018.
The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.
- Recommended article:
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Episode 0: Introducing The So Strangely Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:40 — 3.7MB)
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A short introduction to The So Strangely Podcast on recent research in Music Science.
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Follow the podcast on Twitter @sostrangelypod
Get in touch with the producer, finn @ sostrangely.com
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The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018.
Closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s speech-song illusion sound demo 1.
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Why So Strangely?
One of the most famous examples of music science research was the discovery of the Speech-Song Illusion by Diana Deutsch. Turns out that looping a short clip of someone talking, playing the same exact utterance over and over, changes how we processing the sound. What is initially perceived as a simple excerpt of speech becomes a rhythmic, melodic song.
Deutsch first demonstrated this with a clip of her own speech from the sentence:
“The sounds as they appear to you are not only different from those that are really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely as to seem quite impossible.”
She looped the phrase “sometimes behave so strangely” in several clever experiments.
In the years since, “Sometimes behave so strangely” has become a catch phrase in music cognition, and many people no longer need an audio reference to recall this curious and persistent effect.
And beside some famous words, this podcast is called “So Strangely” because music science research often behaves in unexpected ways.
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Welcome to the So Strangely Podcast
Hello and welcome to the So Strangely Podcast, a new podcast on recent research in Music Science.
What is music science? That is a good question. Its the array of empirically motivated work on the stuff of music, or so we are defining it.
- Neuroscience of embodied perception? Sure.
- Corpus studies of chord progressions? Yup.
- Listeners subjective experiences of concert performances? Of course.
- Music pedagogy? Yes!
- Automatic chord detection? I should hope so.
- Origins of music? Definitely.
I’m Finn, host and producer, but the programming of this podcast isn’t just up to me. So Strangely will be sharing work that other music academics recommend, recent publications they want their peers to hear about.
Every episode, I’ll have another music academic on as a co-host to interview the lead researcher on a recently published project. My co-host is here to talk inside baseball, get into the nitty-gritty of the research as an expert. I’ll be there to help translate for those of us in adjacent disciplines.
Because here is the thing: music science is so interdisciplinary, we often have trouble keeping track of what’s going on in other areas. It can even be a struggle to understand what this other group of academics are so excited about. With this two pronged approach, So Strangely will try to bridge those gaps and helps us within the broader music science research community follow and appreciate what’s new next door.
Here is the warning: this podcast is pitched for people into music and science, not for the general population. We won’t be explaining scales every episode, or breaking down the basics of the experimental method. You don’t need a PhD to follow (I mean, I don’t have a PhD… yet) but some prior contact with music science research will help.
And if there is a recent publication you want more people to know about and you are interested in being on the show, pitch it to us!
Full episodes are in the works, with recordings and scheduling and editing underway. For now, follow us on twitter, and check back soon so you don’t miss out how music science research sometimes behaves so strangely.
