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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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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.
