Interested in a Summer School on Musicality?

Preliminary announcement: The Music Cognition Group (MCG) at the University of Amsterdam is currently preparing a two-week international online (and potentially hybrid) ABC Summer School on musicality from 21-24 June 2021. 

 

Lectures will include Isabelle Peretz, Sandra Trehub, Elizabeth Hellmuth-Margulis, Miriam Mosing, Patrick Savage, Julia Kursell, Carel ten Cate, members of MCG, and others. 

 

In the next few weeks more information will be made available online at summerschool.uva.nl.

Ben jij de nieuwe webprogrammeur van het spraak- en muzieklab?

Hou je van het ontwerpen en implementeren van interactieve websites voor verschillende platforms (desktop, smartphone, tablet)? Zou je graag in een spannende academische omgeving willen werken? Ben je iemand die goed overzicht kan houden en goed kan samenwerken? De Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen van de Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) heeft per 1 februari een vacature voor een webprogrammeur voor het spraak- en muzieklab. Deadline voor sollicitaties: 15 december 2020.

Voor uitgebreide informatie zie: 20-694-webprogrammeur-spraak-en-muzieklab

How different are these hypotheses?

An overview comparison of the Action Simulation for Auditory Prediction Hypothesis (ASAP) and the Gradual Audiomotor Evolution Hypothesis (GAE). 

 

This week a mini review paper appeared in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Proksch et al, 2020), comparing two complementary hypotheses for the neural underpinnings of rhythm perception: The Action Simulation for Auditory Prediction hypothesis (ASAP; Patel and Iversen, 2014) and the Gradual Audiomotor Evolution hypothesis (GAE: Merchant and Honing, 2014), In addition to interpreting work under both hypotheses as converging evidence for the predictive role of the motor system in the perception of rhythm, the paper reviews recent experimental progress supporting each of these hypotheses. 

Honing, H., & Merchant, H. (2014). Differences in auditory timing between human and non-human primates. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(6), 557–558. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X13004056

Proksch, S., Comstock, D. C., Médé, B., Pabst, A., & Balasubramaniam, R. (2020). Motor and Predictive Processes in Auditory Beat and Rhythm Perception. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.578546

Interested in BA and MA/MSc level courses on Music Cognition?

For an overview of the 2020/21 courses on computational and cognitive musicology / music cognition at University of Amsterdam, see http://www.mcg.uva.nl/courses.html

Doet muziek ertoe? [Dutch]

KNAW Tweegesprek: stemmen van Afrika in Nederland from SPUI25 on Vimeo.

Een tweegesprek o.l.v. Wim Brands (1959-2016).

Interested in becoming an SA at MCG?

www.mcg.uva.nl

The Music Cognition Group (MCG) searches for an enthusiastic and well-organized student assistant / P.A. acting as a first point of contact with people from both inside and outside MCG, starting 1 September 2020 (0.2 fte). Deadline for applications is 15 July 2020.

N.B. You have to be registered as a bachelor or master student at the University of Amsterdam (UvA).

For more information, and detailed instructions on how to apply, see here.

Interested in doing a postdoc in Amsterdam?

Interested in doing a postdoc at the Music Cognition Group in Amsterdam? See [1] for a European (and a Dutch, outgoing) grant opportunity for promising researchers of any nationality.

 [1] http://www.mcg.uva.nl/jobs.html

Musical IQ?

Several people send me a link to this video in the last week. In it Adam Neely addresses some real issues and, in fact, shows how difficult it is to design an unbiased test that probes musicality - our capacity for music (see [1] for some cross-cultural concerns).

Although I’m not too fond of the title of the test (I'm doubting whether IQ or g research is a good role model for this kind of enterprise)*, it is an important attempt to probe our capacity for music. And despite all the foreseen and unforeseen criticism, I continue to believe this is a project worth working on ánd thinking about.

Recently, an international consortium started to work on relatively unbiased and scalable tests that can reveal individual differences within and across societies. However, this research program is still in its early stages [2,3].

Samuel Mehr, Daniel Müllensiefen and colleagues –who made the test [4])– are also members of the consortium and currently running web-based tests on a large scale. The first progress will be reported at two symposia at the NMVII in Aarhus, DK coming June.

And lastly, this is a research project that, I suspect, will take quite a few years to come to a result: slow science!

[1] https://mp.ucpress.edu/content/37/3/185
[2] https://mcg.uva.nl/musicality2019/
[3] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/origins-musicality
[4] https://www.themusiclab.org/quizzes/miq

*See, e.g., Maas et al. for a potential way out.

Is our capacity for music special?

In this conversation, Christopher Sutton of Musical U talks about: The crucial research study with newborn infants that changed Henkjan Honing's thinking about musicality research; Two surprising facts about absolute pitch (or perfect pitch) that might completely change how you think about this seemingly-magical skill; And what the state-of-the-art scientific research tells us about how much musicality is an innate part of us versus a purely-learned skill.

More information at the website of Musical U. Check it out!

What is musicality?

Are we the only musical species? What do you need to know in order to be musical? Is our musical predisposition unique, like our linguistic ability?

Below a video registration of a lively evening at Paradiso in Amsterdam on Monday 27 January 2020, organised by Science & Cocktails Amsterdam: in search of what makes us musical !

Honing, H. (2019). The evolving animal orchestra. In search of what makes us musical. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.