How the mind works

This paper explores the possibility of learning through listening; it is about the way space is made through sound as well as sight. I begin by suggesting that music—precariously positioned between the myth of silence and the threat of noise—offers one means of accessing the soundworld. Then, in order to develop an approach to music that prioritises its sonic qualities, I turn to ideas about performance. This also draws attention away from musical texts and towards the physicality involved in making and listening to music. With reference to some exploratory case studies, I try to appreciate how music—through its embodiment in performance—works as a powerful way of knowing and being. Most of the paper is therefore devoted to a discussion of the intersecting political, economic, and emotional spaces which are made through musical performance (and listening) practices. Like the performances they draw from, the conclusions are incomplete. But they do confirm the importance of imagining—of creating, of engagin...

Performing the (Sound)World

Recent qualitative research has highlighted differences in people’s music-listening behaviour according to their level of involvement with and interest in music, yet these findings are mainly based...

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Exploring engagement with music in everyday life using experience sampling methodology

What would contemporary music scholarship look like if it was no longer imprinted with the disciplinary assumptions, boundaries and divisions inherited from the last century? This article proposes that a generative model for future music studies would take the form of a relational musicology. The model is drawn from the author's work; but signs of an incipient relational musicology are found scattered across recent research in musicology, ethnomusicology, and jazz and popular music studies. In support of such a development, the article calls for a reconfiguration of the boundaries between the subdisciplines of music study – notably musicology, ethnomusicology, music sociology and popular music studies – so as to render problematic the music/social opposition and achieve a new interdisciplinary settlement, one that launches the study of music onto new epistemological and ontological terrain. In proposing this direction, the article points to the limits of the vision of interdisciplinarity in music research...

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For a Relational Musicology: Music and Interdisciplinarity, Beyond the Practice Turn

Numerous studies have investigated whether music can reliably convey emotions to listeners, and - if so - what musical parameters might carry this information. Far less attention has been devoted to the actual contents of the communicative process. The goal of this article is thus to consider what types of emotional content are possible to convey in music. I will argue that the content is mainly constrained by the type of coding involved, and that distinct types of content are related to different types of coding. Based on these premises, I suggest a conceptualization in terms of ‘multiple layers’ of musical expression of emotions. The ‘core’ layer is constituted by iconically-coded basic emotions. I attempt to clarify the meaning of this concept, dispel the myths that surround it, and provide examples of how it can be heuristic in explaining findings in this domain. However, I also propose that this ‘core’ layer may be extended, qualified, and even modified by additional layers of expression that involve intrinsic and associative coding. These layers enable listeners to perceive more complex emotions - though the expressions are less cross-culturally invariant and more dependent on the social context and/or the individual listener. This multiple-layer conceptualization of expression in music can help to explain both similarities and differences between vocal and musical expression of emotions.

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What does music express? Basic emotions and beyond

Proceedings of 12th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC) / 8th Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM)

Introduction Eric Clarke, Nicholas Cook, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and John Rink Personal takes: learning to live with recording Susan Tomes A short take in praise of long takes Peter Hill 1. Performing for (and against) the microphone Donald Greig Personal takes: producing a credible voice Mike Howlett 'It could have happened': the evolution of music construction Steve Savage 2. Recording practices and the role of the producer Andrew Blake Personal takes: still small voices Jonathan Freeman-Attwood Broadening horizons: 'performance' in the studio Michael Haas 3. Getting sounds: the art of sound engineering Albin Zak Personal takes: limitations and creativity in recording and performance Martyn Ware Records and recordings in post-punk England, 1978-80 Richard Witts 4. The politics of the recording studio Louise Meintjes Personal take: from Lanza to Lassus Tully Potter 5. From wind-up to iPod: techno-cultures of listening Arild Bergh and Tia DeNora Personal take: a matter of circumstance: on experiencing recordings Martin Elste 6. Selling sounds: recordings and the music business David Patmore Personal take: revisiting concert life in mid-century: the survival of acetate discs Lewis Foreman 7. The development of recording technologies George Brock-Nannestad Personal takes: raiders of the lost archive Roger Beardsley The original cast recording of West Side Story Nigel Simeone 8. The recorded document: interpretation and discography Simon Trezise Personal takes: one man's approach to remastering Ted Kendall Technology, the studio, music Nick Mason Reminder: a recording is not a performance Roger Heaton 9. Methods for analysing recordings Nicholas Cook 10. Recordings and histories of performance style Daniel Leech-Wilkinson Personal take: recreating history: a clarinettist's perspective Colin Lawson 11. Going critical. Writing about recordings Simon Frith Personal take: something in the air Chris Watson 12. Afterword: from reproduction to representation to remediation Georgina Born Global bibliography Global discography.

The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music

Portamento was a significant expressive device among performers for at least two hundred years; yet, for the past sixty it has made musicians uncomfortable. More than a change of fashion, this suggests responses formed at a relatively deep psychological level. Drawing on work in developmental psychology, and reading in the light of it performances of art music lullabies, it is suggested that portamento draws on innate emotional responses to human sound, as well as on our earliest memories of secure, loving communication, in order to bring to performances a sense of comfort, sincerity, and deep emotion. The decline of portamento after the First World War and its sudden disappearance after the Second is traced to a new emphasis—influenced by psychoanalysis and reflected in writings on music—on darker meanings in music, which can be understood in the light of the reinterpretation of human motives and behavior forced on a wider public by the Second War. Portamento, because of its association (however unconsci...

Portamento and Musical Meaning

Cross-modal mappings of auditory stimuli reveal valuable insights into how humans make sense of sound and music. Whereas researchers have investigated cross-modal mappings of sound features varied in isolation within paradigms such as speeded classification and forced-choice matching tasks, investigations of representations of concurrently varied sound features (e.g., pitch, loudness and tempo) with overt gestures—accounting for the intrinsic link between movement and sound—are scant. To explore the role of bodily gestures in cross-modal mappings of auditory stimuli we asked sixty-four musically trained and untrained participants to represent pure tones—continually sounding and concurrently varied in pitch, loudness and tempo—with gestures while the sound stimuli were played. We hypothesised musical training to lead to more consistent mappings between pitch and height, loudness and distance/height, and tempo and speed of hand movement and muscular energy. Our results corroborate previously reported pitch vs. height (higher pitch leading to higher elevation in space) and tempo vs. speed (increasing tempo leading to increasing speed of hand movement) associations, but also reveal novel findings pertaining to musical training which influenced consistency of pitch mappings, annulling a commonly observed bias for convex (i.e. rising-falling) pitch contours. Moreover, we reveal effects of interactions between musical parameters on cross-modal mappings (e.g., pitch and loudness on speed of hand movement), highlighting the importance of studying auditory stimuli concurrently varied in different musical parameters. Results are discussed in light of cross-modal cognition, with particular emphasis on studies within (embodied) music cognition. Implications for theoretical refinements and potential clinical applications are provided.

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Musicians are more consistent: Gestural cross-modal mappings of pitch, loudness and tempo in real-time.

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The invention of the voices-and-instruments hypothesis 2. The re-invention of the a cappella hypothesis 3. Hearing medieval harmonies 4. Evidence, interpretation, power and persuasion Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.

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Daniel Leech-Wilkinson

Papers

Proceedings of 12th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC) / 8th Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM)

The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music

Portamento and Musical Meaning

Musicians are more consistent: Gestural cross-modal mappings of pitch, loudness and tempo in real-time.

The Modern Invention of Medieval Music: Scholarship, Ideology, Performance