Music and Sound Research

Music Cognition Lab

Music cognition is an interdisciplinary field concerned with applying the methods of cognitive science—experimental, computational, and neurological—to musical issues and problems. The Eastman School of Music and the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at the University of Rochester offer an active and supportive environment for music cognition study and research.

In August 2005, the University of Rochester recognized music cognition as an "Interdisciplinary Cluster", providing additional funding for music cognition events and activities.

• Learn more about:
• The Eastman/UR/Cornell Music Cognition Symposium
• Recent Publications and Conference Presentations
• Recent Dissertations

The Eastman/UR/Cornell Music Cognition Symposium

The Eastman/UR/Cornell Music Cognition Symposium meets four times a year (twice in the fall and twice in the spring) on Saturday afternoons.

• The symposium is organized by:
• Elizabeth West Marvin and David Temperley at Eastman,
• Elissa Newport, Dick Aslin, and Joyce McDonough at the UR College of Arts, Sciences and Engineering,
• Carol Krumhansl at Cornell University, and
• Peter Pfordresher at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Often, the symposium features invited guests; guests in recent years have included:

Music Cognition Symposia Fall 2009

October 24, 2009

Dynamical Systems and Music with guest Edward W. Large
Ciminelli Lounge, Eastman School of Music, 2:00–5:00 p.m.

Peter Pfordresher (University of Buffalo)
"Dynamical Systems and Music Cognition"

Edward W. Large (Florida Atlantic University)
"A Dynamic Field Theory of Tonality"
Read more about Dr. Edward Large »»

November 14, 2009

Music and Memory with guests Andrea R. Halpern and Roger Chaffin

Andrea R. Halpern (Bucknell Univeristy)
"You Must Remember This: Factors Affecting Musical Memory (or Not)"
Read more about Andrea R. Halpern »»

Roger Chaffin (University of Connecticut)
"Memory for Music Performance"
Read more about Roger Chaffin »»

Symposia may also feature presentations of ongoing work by students and faculty at Eastman, UR, and Cornell, and discussions of readings and topics in music cognition. Recent topics have included performance expression, probabilistic modeling, melodic expectation, and music-language connections.

To be added to the symposium's e-mail mailing list, contact Elizabeth West Marvin (bmarvin@esm.rochester.edu).

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Some Recent Publications and Conference Presentations

The following list is a sampling of recent publications and conference presentations in music cognition by people at the University of Rochester and Eastman.

• Elizabeth West Marvin and Elissa Newport. 2008. "Statistical Learning in Language and Music: Absolute Pitch without Labeling." International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC10), Sapporo, Japan.
• David Temperley and Elizabeth West Marvin. 2008. "Pitch-class Distribution and the Identification of Key." Music Perception 25, 193-212
• David Temperley (2008). A Probabilistic Model of Melody Perception. Cognitive Science 32, 418-444.
• Elizabeth West Marvin (2007). Absolute Pitch Perception and the Pedagogy of Relative Pitch. Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy 21, 1-34.
• David Temperley (2007). Music and Probability. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Christopher Bartlette, Dave Headlam, Mark Bocko and Gordana Velickic (2006). Effect of network latency on interactive musical performance. Music Perception, 24, 49-59.
• Diana Deutsch, Trevor Henthorn, Elizabeth Marvin, and HongShuai Xu (2006). Absolute pitch among American and Chinese Conservatory Students: Prevalence Differences and Evidence for a Speech-Related Critical Period. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 719-722.
• Sarah Creel, Elissa Newport, & Richard Aslin (2004). Distant melodies: Statistical learning of non-adjacent dependencies in tone sequences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 1119-1130.
• Panayotis Mavromatis (2004). A Hidden Markov Model of melody in Greek Church Chant. 8th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Evanston, IL.
• Panayotis Mavromatis & Matthew Brown (2004). Parsing context-free grammars for music: A computational model of Schenkerian Analysis. 8th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Evanston, IL.
• Victoria Saah & Elizabeth West Marvin. (2004). Absolute memory of learned melodies in childen trained by the Suzuki Violin Method. 8th International Society for Music Perception and Cognition , Evanston, IL.
• David Temperley (2004). Bayesian models of musical structure and cognition. Musicae Scientiae 8, 175-205.
• Dave Headlam, Christopher Bartlette, & Mark Bocko (2003). Latency, musicality, and network performance. Society for Music Perception and Cognition Annual Meeting, Las Vegas.
• Yuet-Hon Samuel Ng (2003). Temporal expectancy at the level of musical phrases: A study of expectancy length. Society for Music Perception and Cognition Annual Meeting, Las Vegas.
• David Temperley & Christopher Bartlette (2002). Parallelism as a factor in metrical analysis. Music Perception, 20, 117-149.
• David Temperley (2001). The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Elizabeth West Marvin & Aleck Brinkman (2000). The effect of key color and timbre on absolute-pitch recognition in musical contexts. Music Perception 18/2, 111-137.
• Elizabeth West Marvin & Aleck Brinkman (1999). The effect of modulation and formal manipulation on perception of tonic closure by expert listeners. Music Perception 16/4 (1999): 389-408.
• Panayotis Mavromatis & Virginia Williamson (1999). Towards a perceptual model for categorizing atonal sonorities. Annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory, Atlanta.
• Jenny Saffran, Elizabeth Johnson, Richard Aslin, & Elissa Newport (1999). Statistical learning of tonal sequences by human infants and adults. Cognition, 70, 27-52.

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Recent Dissertations in Music Cognition

• Kelly Francis. In progress. "Attention and Multi-Part Music." (Advisor: David Temperley)
• Christopher Bartlette. 2007. "A Study of Harmonic Distance and Its Role in Musical Performance." (Advisor: David Temperley)
• Panayotis Mavromatis. 2005. "The Echoi of Modern Greek Church Chant in Written annd Oral Transmission: A Computational Model and its Cognitive Implications." (Advisor: Matthew Brown)
• Gavin P. Chuck. 2004. "Toward a Cognitive Theory of Musical Meaning." (Advisor: Robert Wason)
• Scott Spiegelberg. 2002. "The Psychoacoustics of Musical Articulation." 2002. (Advisors: Dave Headlam and Elizabeth Marvin)
• Nancy Rogers. 2000. "The Role of Verbal Encoding in Musical Memory." (Advisor: Elizabeth Marvin)

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