Music Psychology

Although music psychology as a research topic can be traced back to at least the 1880s, it was not until the 1980s that it became an academic discipline with its own identity. The autobiographies in this issue describe the transformation of music psychology from a topic pursued by isolated individuals in many different disciplines, into a more unified field. The turning point for the field came in the 1980s and 1990s when there was a rapid growth of specialized venues for interdisciplinary research in music: journals, national and international conferences, national and international societies, institutes and centers for research, and educational programs. Research was disseminated as never before, connecting researchers all over the world and forming a community of music psychology practitioners who share a common set of methods and theories. This has resulted in the bringing together of formerly separate lines of research, for example, research on music and the brain has now become an important part of music psychology; the formation of educational programs where students can earn degrees in music psychology; the building of a historiography for the field; and an expansion of research topics to cover all major aspects of music

A Study of Music: Music Psychology, Music Therapy, and Worship Music

There are three specific fields related to music: the psychology of Music and how it affects human brain and functions, the methodology of Music Therapy and how it affects individuals undergoing treatment, and the psychological effects of Worship Music and how it can be used in music therapy. Music therapy is a growing field in which the therapeutic outcomes greatly benefit the patients. The overall purpose is to create a greater understanding of music and music therapy in order to a provide a system for introducing group worship services into music therapy to ultimately bring spiritual healing to individuals

Music and communication in music psychology

There is a general consensus that music is both universal and communicative, and musical dialogue is a key element in much music-therapeutic practice. However, the idea that music is a communicative medium has, to date, received little attention within the cognitive sciences, and the limited amount of research that addresses how and what music communicates has resulted in findings that appear to be of limited relevance to music therapy. This article will draw on ethnomusicological evidence and an understanding of communication derived from the study of speech to sketch a framework within which to situate and understand music as communicative practice. It will outline some key features of music as an interactive participatory medium – including entrainment and floating intentionality – that can help underpin an understanding of music as communicative, and that may help guide experimental approaches in the cognitive science of music to shed light on the processes involved in musical communication and on the consequences of engagement in communication through music for interacting individuals. It will suggest that the development of such approaches may enable the cognitive sciences to provide a more comprehensive, predictive understanding of music in interaction that could be of direct benefit to music therapy. This is the accepted manuscript version. The final version is available at http://pom.sagepub.com/content/42/6/809.full.pdf+htm

Music education and music psychology: What?s the connection?

Music psychology is a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary study of the phenomenon of music. The multidisciplinary nature of the field is found in explorations of the anthropology of music, the sociology of music, the biology of music, the physics of music, the philosophy of music, and the psychology of music. Interdisciplinary aspects are found in such combinatorial studies as psychoacoustics (e.g., music perception), psychobiology (e.g., the effects of music on the immune system), or social psychology (e.g., the role of music in social relationships). The purpose of this article is to explore connections between music psychology and music education

MUSIC LISTENING IN INTERDISCIPLINARY VIEW

Very few researches focus on music as an activity and most often it is linked to music perception, therefore – music psychology. Similarly the theories on this question are developed. Interrelations between music therapy and music psychology, as well as the role of listening and music listening in music pedagogy, psychology and music therapy are little researched. The goal of this article is to intentionally draw attention to the significance of this very common thing in our everyday lives – listening – in communication, development of cognitive and phenomenological skills and abilities (perception, recognition, describing, explaining). These skills and abilities are necessary in the work of pedagogue and psychologist, and especially music therapist.

Musical Creativity: Insights from Music Education Research

How do we develop musical creativity? How is musical creativity nurtured in collaborative improvisation? How is it used as a communicative tool in music therapy? This volume offers new research o these questions by an international team of experts from the fields of music education, music psychology and music therapy. The book celebrates the rich diversity of ways in which learners of all ages develop and use musical creativity. Contributions focus broadly on the composition/improvisation process, considering its conceptualization and practices in a number of contexts. The authors examine how musical creativity can be fostered in formal settings, drawing examples from primary and secondary schools, studios, conservatoire and university settings, as well as specialist music schools and music therapy sessions. These essays will inspire readers to think deeply about musical creativity and its development. The book will be of crucial interest to music educators, policy makers, researchers and students, as it draws on applied research from across the globe, promoting coherent and symbiotic links between education, music and psychology research

MUSIC PSYCHOLOGY AND ME

This has given me a chance to reflect on the 40 years or so during which I have been working in these fields. Many changes have taken place over that time - nearly all for the better. I hope it will be of interest to readers to hear my personal story, in which I will chart - in a completely rambling and intuitive but loosely chronological fashion - some of the twists and turns in my career. Some of these have been influenced by changes in music psychology itself; some by career moves; and some because I ran into significant others at different points on the journey.Grupo de Investigación HUM-672 AREA (Análisis de la Realidad EducativA) de la Universidad de Granad

Perception of Rhythmic Similarity in Flamenco Music: Comparing Musicians and Non-Musicians.

Background in Music Psychology. Previous research on rhythmic perception has highlighted differences between novice listeners and musicians in their ability to label perceived differences as well as strategies for representing musical structures. Novice listeners tend to focus on “surface” features while musicians tend to focus on the underlying rhythmic structure and develop a specific vocabulary. Furthermore, there is evidence that changes in tempo affect novices’ perception of rhythm

Automatic estimation of harmonic tension by distributed representation of chords

The buildup and release of a sense of tension is one of the most essential aspects of the process of listening to music. A veridical computational model of perceived musical tension would be an important ingredient for many music informatics applications. The present paper presents a new approach to modelling harmonic tension based on a distributed representation of chords. The starting hypothesis is that harmonic tension as perceived by human listeners is related, among other things, to the expectedness of harmonic units (chords) in their local harmonic context. We train a word2vec-type neural network to learn a vector space that captures contextual similarity and expectedness, and define a quantitative measure of harmonic tension on top of this. To assess the veridicality of the model, we compare its outputs on a number of well-defined chord classes and cadential contexts to results from pertinent empirical studies in music psychology. Statistical analysis shows that the model's predictions conform very well with empirical evidence obtained from human listeners.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. To appear in Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR), Porto, Portuga