Making Music and Making Sense Through Music - Reinhard Kopiez

It would be hard to imagine a world without the existence of music as a form of communication, a means of conveying meaning, or an implicit or explicit mode of expression. Bolton & Newmn’s ‘Tic-toc effect’ provides simple evidence that even the non-musical mans desires to find meaning in music. However, our search for meaning in music is still incomplete.

This chapter considers the musical message from the performers perspective i.e. how they develop their plan for the performance of a piece. Performance research has delved into imaginary narration, holistic and serial practice approaches, timing and note duration (Palmer, 1989, parameter theory). Investigating musical expression is taken from either an emotional or structural expression perspective. The strong relationship between compositional structure and musical expression is supported by Langer (1953) with the assumption of isomorphism. The performers interpretive intent is distinguished by elements of timing in this context. Irrational components of expressive perfromance such as movement and emotion are yet to be investigated.

The rule-based systems of musical expression have been used to analyse the implementation of expression marks. However, even these are subject to the debate of uniformity and individualism in music and are all subject to the listener’s expectancies. Variations of accoustical and expressive cues are commonly used in expressivity and should be nurtured from a young age. Their associations with basic moods have also been researched e.g. ‘happy’ and ‘angry’ associated with faster tempo which directly influence the character of the piece (individuality of the piece and expressiveness of the performance).

Cross cultural studies of emotional response have attempted to shed light on the concept of music as a universal language, to no/little avail. Elements such us synchronicity, expectancies, psychoenergetic experiences all play an undeniable role in music, from any culture. Meyer makes an interesting statement “Music in a style with which we are totally unfamiliar is meaningles”.

Composition and Improvisation

I have stepped outside of the text for this summary….

In commenting on creativity, Bennett Reimer says ‘the difference is not in kind, only in degree’ (2003). Contrasted with Gardner’s distinction (persons perfecting a domain – e.g. Mozart, those that create new domains e.g. Freud, those that influence others e.g. Ghandi, those who reflect e.g. Virgina Woolf), this makes for a thought-provoking contrast. In terms of education in music, improvisation and composition have dominated the creative process of learning music. The early 1960’s saw a plethora of creative approaches to music education to encourage and enhance creativity in young children. These included the ‘Young Composers Project’ and ‘Manhatannville Music Curriculum Project’. Many of these approaches extended to the public schools and significantly influenced the 1994 ‘National Standards for Music Education’ that includes composing and arranging.

Creativity/generative process for improvisation and compositions are very similar i.e. specific stages that are refined. Research has distinguished specific stages of imitation and composition in young learners and generally, the consensus is that 10-years are required to gain the knowledge and skills to acquire high levels of performance. (not overlooking the entrepreneurial perspective of learning by modeling, experimenting, and feedback)

Model for compositions (Wallas, 1926)

Preparation

Incubation

Intimation

Illumination

Verification

(include sketching/trial-and-error process, Sloboda)

Musical Literacy

This chapter is a good review of literature on musical literacy. The chapter focuses on staff notation, as the authors claim that the other variables related to musical literacy are covered elsewhere.

In various permutations, the authors argue that too early of an exposure to staff notation in one’s music education can be harmful by distracting one from attending to other areas such as listening to the sounds one produces. The authors argue in favor of an ‘eye-audiation-play’ process instead of a ‘eye-play’ process, meaning that one needs to be able to hear in his or her head the music before they press the keys of their instrument. Developing aural memory is emphasized in such a method, and creativity is not stifled. Allowing learners to produce their own notation before introducing staff notation can be helpful for allowing the learner to understand why staff notation is used. The authors consider it best if early pieces emphasize reading staff notation of pieces that the learn already knows by rote, giving them the ability to focus on eye-hand coordination while retaining the inner hearing of the already familiar music.

Different ways in which people read staff notation are discussed, including reading note-by-note or reading by phrase, etc.

Week 9: Experimental Aesthetics

I. ‘The field of experimental aesthetics attempts to produce laws governing responses to all art forms.’ (Influenced by zeitgeist of hehaviorism)
II. Gustav Fechner’s Vorschule der Aesthetik is arguably the 2nd oldest topic in experimental psychology
III. Fechner, Plato, and Aristotle all agreed on the idea of an ‘aesthetic mean,’ meaning that beauty is found in non-extremes
IV. Theses ideas matured with work of Daniel Berlyne, who adopted a psychobiological approach in ‘the new experimental aesthetics’ (Berlyne, 1971, 1972, 1974).
V. Berlyne ‘characterized research within this approach as possessing one or more of the following features:
a. It concentrates on collative properties of stimulus patterns. (Collative properties are ‘structural’ or ‘formal’ properties, such as variations along familiar-novel, simple-complex, etc.)
b. It concentrates on motivational questions.
c. It studies nonverbal behavior as well as verbally expressed judgements.
d. It strives to establish links between aesthetic phenomena and other psychological phenomena. (Seeks to also shed light on human psychology in general)
VI. Berlyne’s approach is based on ‘arousal potential,’ that is, the amount of activity that artistic stimuli produce in the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS)
VII. There is an inverted U relationship between preference and stimulus arousal potential.
VIII. Berlyne stated that the variable that mediate arousal potential fall into three categories:
a. Psychophysical variables, such as tempo or volume
b. Ecological variables, which signal value or ‘meaningfulness’ of a piece of music
c. ‘Collative variables’ – the most significant of the three – concerns the ‘informational variables of the music such as its level of complexity’
IX. Explanation of the psychobiological approach
a. ‘On its way to the cortex, the higher brain responsible for conscious thought, the auditory nerve passes through the ARAS, which is responsible for the degree of physiological arousal we experience.’
b. ‘In practical terms, this means that music with low degrees of arousal potential causes activity in pleasure centres but no activity in displeasure centres. Music of moderate degrees of arousal potential causes maximal activity in pleasure centres but also begins to aactivate displeasure centres’ and so forth
X. Though the psychobiological approach, particularly concerning the ARAS, is somewhat debatable, it is valuable because it is an effort toward understanding the neurological bases of aesthetic judgments, adaptive grounds of music preferences, the correspondence of the theory to Plato and Aristotle, and the U-shaped relationship asserted does seem to hold.
XI. Much research suggests that Berlyne’s theory holds true, though there is some conflicting research

Week 8: Grouping Mechanisms in Music - Deutsch

Helmholtz first introduced perception as “unconscious inference”.
Various mechanisms form linkages between objects (dimensions of frequency, amplitude, temporal, spatial & principles of Gestalt psychology) to group in conformity and enable us to interpret our environment visually and aurally.
1.First order elements – grouped together e.g. elements close together likely to belong to same object, similar sounds likely to originate from common source,
2.High order abstractions – perceptual synthesis

Perceptual grouping of single tones by:
1) Harmonicity e.g. musical instrument tones.
Perceptual separation or fusion
2) Onset synchronicity i.e. temporal factors
Also affects timbre. Two complex tones played together are perceptually more distinct when asynchronous than when played at the same time e.g. Bach used in polyphonic music
3) Auditory continuity e.g. “picket fence effect” alternated tone with a noise burst that was perceived as a continuous sounding tone.
Sudden amplitude drops between signals may destroy continuity effects
4) Frequency modulation enhances a vowel’s perceptual salience
5) Amplitude modulation
6) Ear of input

Perceptual grouping of sequences of tones:
Pitch proximity- links between tones close in pitch but separate tones that are far apart
Temporal proximity-pauses between notes are used as markers for grouping tones
Sound quality- different instruments playing together are linked by tones of similar timbre

Grouping multiple tone sequences in space (veridical or illusionary conjunction):
1) Scale illusions (Deutsch)
– perceptual reorganization (right-handers tend to hear higher tones on their right and lower tones on their left regardless of the direction they come - opposite of audience’s view of orchestral seating)
- Spatial reorganization e.g. Tchaikowsky Pathetique (Perception of musical passages is influenced by spatial arrangements of instruments)
Timbre differences aid in listener’s grouping into instrument type
Simultaneous sequences create grouping by pitch proximity when both ears receive simultaneous input.
Spatial grouping occurred when temporal disparities were presented by both ears
Glissando illusion
2) Octave illusions (Deutsch)
Hypothesized that octave illusions are result of a combination of pitch determining mechanism and spatial mechanism.

Melody perception from phase-shifted tones
Cause grouping by spatial location
Similar to octave illusions, melodic groupings are formed by the changing spatial positions of equal frequency tones.

Handedness correlates (both octave and scale illusions)
Octave illusions – right-handers hear high tone in right ear and low tone in left. This is maintained even when earphones positions is reversed
Left-handers vary in localization of where high and low tones sounds & what type of illusion

Treatise on music theory laws:
1. Stepwise progression
2. Crossing of voices in counterpart prohibited

In order for the listener to perceive sounds as intended by the composer, an understanding of basic perceptual phenomena is required. Perceptual effects occur when the laws are broken.

Week 8: A New Approach to the Cognitive Neuroscience of Melody - Patel

Melody
-tone sequence of individual tones processed in terms of structured
relationships.
- melody depends on perceptual system of converting sequence into meaning

Melody perception includes
1)Instrument identity - timbre relies on spectral and temporal shape of sound
2)Grouping – more than one note, phrases
3)Beat and meter – events and inferences due to pattern pitch durations
4)Scale structure – culture specific e.g Western tonal music. Immunity to structure = tune deafness (congenital amusia)
5)Contour – pitch contour+ temporal pattern defines melodic contour. Melodic contour sensitive in infancy and contributes to intonation in speech perception and melodic memory
6)Parallelism – motivic/thematic similarity in different parts of melody
7)Intervallic implications – Gestalt principles apply to expectations of interval and melodic contours.
8)Tension vs. resolution – tonal weight (degree of structural stability of each tone in a key)and duration (longer tone=less tension). Krumhansl
9)Ornamentation – tonal hierarchy influences perception of ornamentation vs. structural form
10)Implicit harmony – chordal vertical/horizontal organization of pitches=harmony. Explicit vs. implicit.
11)Expression – variations in timing and amplitude to convey emotional interpretation
12)Complexity -
13)Meta-relations – relation between grouping and meter, contour and beat. Beat is very important in forming meta-relations with melody

Relationship between speech melodies (get the job done) and musical melodies (can stay in memory)

Approaches to the study of the neuroscience of melody
1)Neuropsychological approach – melodic perception in brain damaged individuals (right hemisphere=melodic contour, left = pitch)
2)Event-related potential approach (ERP) – study of melodic processing using EEG.
3)Haemodynamic approach – PET and fMRI. Detects blood flow to regions of the brain (inferior frontal gyrus and right temporal gyrus maintain tonal memory)
4)Auditory steady-state response (aSSR) – NEW!!! Patel & Balaban
aSSr is a sinusoidal neural oscillation produced in primary auditory cortex in response to acoustic stimulus. Used with a constant amplitude modulation rate (AM). Used to measure expectancy of tone sequence perception i.e. can be used to measure how expectancy is structured.

'The Neurobiology of Music Cognition and Learning' (Bruhn & Rauscher)

I. Music Cognition and Learning
a. Behaviorism (including classical and operant conditioning; mind as an unobservable ‘black box’)
b. Cognitive psychology
i. Constructivism; Piaget
ii. MENTAL REPRESENTATION
c. Sociohistorical Theory
i. Vygotsky (zone of proximal development)
d. Connectionism
i. Focuses research on the microstructure of cognition
ii. Uses EEG, EMG, MRI, CT and PET technologies to view the assess the active brain
iii. ‘Learning describes the tracing of paths and connections in [a] neural network’
II. Neurobiological foundations of cognition and learning
a. ‘Cognition can be seen as the result of a pattern-matching process by which mental representation are activated though perceived stimuli. The term mental representation covers a broad array of meanings and is often used synonymously with mental modes… scripts… frames… schemas… or neural networks.’
b. ‘Neurons of a particular brain area represent different features’
c. ‘Single cortical neurons with similar “interests” tend to be vertically arrayed in cortical columns like thin cylinders’
d. ‘What we perceive as music originates from distributed processing but combines into one conscious feature that forms a robust mental representation’ (p. 448)
e. ‘Neuronal plasticity is crucial for the neurobiology of learning…’ (p. 448)
f. ‘There are regional differences in the synaptogenesis in human brains. Huttenlocher… compared the development in two cortical areas: the auditory and prefrontal cortex. He found that synaptic density increase more rapidly in the auditory cortex (maximum at age 3 months) than in middle frontal gyrus (peak after age 15 months)’ (p. 448)
g. ‘The discovery of an inverted U shaped structure in brain development is confirmed by the development of glucose metabolism. Cerebral glucose consumption rises from birth until about 4 years of age, maintains from 4 until about 9-10 years, and then gradually declines (Chugani, 1998). These findings have important implications for our understanding of brain plasticity and critical periods for learning.’ (p. 448)
h. [page 448 is good overview for entire chapter]
III. Neurobiological research on music and learning
a. Overview
i. ‘M. H. Johnson (1998) has identified four factors… important to any understanding of the neurobiology of music learning and cognition’ (p.450)
1. ‘There are neural structures in the brain that are common to both humans and other mammals… Differences between humans and other animals primarily concern the extent of the cerebral cortex. Subcortical structures, such as the hippocampus and cerebellum, are structurally similar across mammalian species’
2. ‘The cerebral cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum continue to develop throughout childhood’
3. ‘Different areas of the cerebral cortex develop at different rates’
4. ‘Studies on cortical plasticity suggest that cortical specialization is heavily influenced by experience’
IV. Brain research on music cognition and learning
a. Processes need to be understood instead of just the roles of certain structures in the brain, as we have gained with imaging studies
b. Transfer effects (i.e. “The Mozart Effect”) – research findings are tentative at best, and Gardner views music as a separate intelligence
c. However ‘the importance of studying the transfer of musical learning to spatial learning [as exhibited in “The Mozart Effect”] becomes evident when one considers the overall significance of spatial abilities to cognitive function. High levels of spatial ability have frequently been linked to creativity, not only in the arts but in science and mathematics as well.’ (p. 454)
V. Music learning by individuals with brain disorders
a. Alzheimer’s, Down’s, Williams all have musically interesting features
b. Cochlear implants
VI. Applications to music education
a. ‘Results from brain research and neurobiological findings alone can hardly lead to immediate applications and recommendations for music education. These data cannot be directly transferred to educational practice because scientific descriptions are essentially different from educational prescriptions’ (p. 455)
b. The chapter concludes with 6 points of tentative conclusions (p. 456), which summarizes the chapter well.

Week 8: 'The Perception of Singing' (Sundberg)

I. Introduction
a. Two types of investigation in the study of singing: (1) consideration of an acoustical property which is varied systematically, and (2) acoustic correlates of certain types of voices or phonations
II. Function of the Voice
a. Vocal organ consists of (1) the respiratory system, (2) the vocal folds, and (3) the vocal tract
b. Formant frequencies: the ability of the vocal tract to respond with sympathetic resonance (and increase amplitude) of certain harmonics
i. 2 lowest formants determine vowel quality
ii. formants 3 and higher determine voice quality
III. Resonatory Aspects
a. Formant Frequencies
i. Singers abandon the formant frequencies of normal speech and move the frequency of the first formant due to the higher range of singing than speaking. The first formant may be lowered by opening the jaw (which also effects all other formant frequencies)
b. Sound Intensity and Masking
i. Orchestras often perform at 90-100 dB when playing loudly. The singer can be heard over the orchestra by singing louder through the use of formant frequencies that occur above the orchestra frequencies (loudness here is measured in mels)
c. Vowel Intelligibility
i. Vowels may be less clear in singing due to the need to adjust for formants. However, beginning and ending of the tone also helps with vowel identification.
IV. Bass, Baritone and Alto Singing
a. The “Singer’s Formant’
i. About 2800 Hz; results from the clustering of the 3, 4, and 5th formants
b. Audibility
i. ‘It seems to be an extremely good idea to enhance the spectral partials in thi frequency range. These partials are likely to be readily perceptible, because the competition from the orchestra’s partials is moderate at these high frequencies’
c. Modification of Vowel Quality
i. Modifying the color of vowels is the price for obtaining a singer’s formant, and it is essential that the formant not vary much between differing vowels
V. Voice Classification
a. Main classification is on range, but also important are formant frequencies
b. The females vocal tract is not a smaller version of the male one; the pharynx-to-mouth ration is smaller in females.
c. ‘The formant frequencies including the center frequency of the singer’s formant typically differ between singers’ voices, and these difference are significant to our possibility to classify them in terms of bas, baritone and tenor. These differences probably reflect difference in vocal tract dimensions as well as the pharynx-to-mouth length ratios.’
VI. Phonation
a. Loudness, Pitch and Phonation Type
i. ‘In summary, two main aspects of vowel sounds can be varied rather independently: the amplitude of the fundamental, which is controlled by glottal adduction, and the amplitude of the overtones, which is controlled by subglottal pressure.
b. Register
i. Definition
ii. Female Chest and Middle Register
iii. Male Modal and Falsetto Registers
1. ‘It has been shown that physiologically the vocal folds are longer, stiffer and thinner in falsetto than in modal register. As a rule, the glottis is never completely closed in falsetto’
VII. Aspects of Voice Timbre
a. Larynx Height
i. A higher larynx results in higher formants; the larynx is generally lowered in singing
b. Naturalness
VIII. Vibrato
a. Background
b. Perceptual Aspects
i. Vowel Intelligibility
1. ‘vibrato does not seem to facilitate vowel identification’
ii. Singleness in Pitch
1. ‘Although the fundamental frequency varies regularly in… tones, the pitch we perceive is perfectly constant as long as the vibrato rate and extent are kept within certain limits’
iii. Pitch and Mean Fundamental Frequency
1. ‘The ear seems to compute the average undulating frequency, and perceived pitch corresponds closely to this average’
IX. Pitch in Practice
a. ‘An important conclusion regarding the benefit of vibrato can be made. We have see nthat vibrato free representations of mistuned consonant intervals give rise to beats, and beats seem to be avoided in most types of music. By adding a vibrato, the singer escapes the beats.’
X. Expression
a. ‘By singing with expression, singers seem to aim at helping the listener with three mental tasks: (1) to realize which tones belong together and where the structural boundaries are, (2) to differentiate tone and interval categories, and (3) to sense the emotional landscape of the song.’
b. The origin of the code of expressivity in singing is likely the code of expressivity in speech

Website about the Brain

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/kinser/Structure1.html

This is a very simple overview

Webster's Model of Musical Creative Process

To add to last night's discussion...

LINK

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

Week 7: Creativity Research in Music, Visual Art, Theater and Dance

I. Operational definition of creativity

a. “a creative product is one that is both novel (to its creator) and is ‘appropriate’ or ‘valuable’ in the context of a domain, and a creative person is one who produces creative products.

II. Music composition research: a growing field

III. Content general or content specific

a. There is a lack of agreement whether creativity is global or specific to one area, like music

IV. Recent empirical studies

a. U-shaped growth (Gardner, 1982): creative until middle adolescence, when creativity drops; creativity manifests again as one enters adulthood and beyond

b. Development of creative thinking in music

i. Swanwich and Tillman (1986, 1991): not U-shaped, but progresses through stages

V. Assessment

a. Torrance Tst of Creative Thinking (TTCT)

b. Webster’s Measurement of creative thinking in music-II (1994) is the current dominating measure

c. Table 23.1 on p. 401 includes all the creative tests discussed in chapter (good for review)

VI. Problem-finding: ‘Gezels and Czikszentmihalyi hypothesized that the first step in creative activity involves the discovery or formation of the problem itself, not problem finding’ (p. 404). Some studies have supported this.

VII. Creative thinking processes in music

a. LISTENING AS A CREATIVE PROCESS (SEE DUNN, 1977)

VIII. Relationships between creativity and aptitude or achievement

a. ‘the results of correlations between all of the variables showed that factors most related to children’s artistic creative capacity were: intellectual ability, competence of the preschool teacher, general creative thinking, and the self-esteem of the child’ (p. 405)

IX. Arts experiences and creativity

a. Correlation studies are conflicts, but it seems that instruction in the arts may increase creativity (p. 408)

Week 7: Creativity

Creativity

Definitions

· People’s capacity to generate and apply new ideas

· Ability to produce novel and appropriate work

· Measuring/studying creativity is difficult. J. P Guilford 1950 started explosion of research

· No common process for creativity (discovered by looking at eminent creative minds e.g Jung, Einstein, Mozart). Most new ideas consist of repeated use of methods of everyday problem solving

· Four distinct stages of creativity (Helmholtz, Wallas)

1. Preparation (define and research problem)

2. Incubation(no conscious work on the problem except connections)

3. Illumination (‘Eureka’ moment)

4. Verification (turning new idea into reality)

CRYSTALLISATION experience (Gardner), when individual realizes gift and changes approach toward that domain

Theories of creativity

· Sternberg (1999) Handbook of Creativity. Two approaches (outside science):

1) Mystical approach

2) Pragmatic approach – aim to develop techniques for promoting creative thinking in business executives

3) Investment theory - people who identify unfashionable ideas and make them so

· Martindale (1999) reviews biological mechanisms in explaining creativity

Three main mechanisms

1) cortical arousal

2) hemisphere asymmetry

3) frontal lobe activation

· Kris (1952) explains creativity in terms of:

1) ‘primary processes’ – everyday, rational activity

2) ’secondary processes – irrational; activity e.g. dreams, hallucinations

· Psychoanalytical approach (Freudian) – based on the inner struggle between socially accepted and instinctual sexually oriented behavior

Artistic creativity is sublimation (converting internal conflict of instincts versus socially-accepted, into acceptable activities)

· Bisociation (Koestler) and Associative theory – creative people are able to make unstereotypical associations with simple stimulus e.g. table

· Psychometric approach – e.g. tests of divergent thinking ‘Torrance Tests of Creative thinking’. Attempted to show that creative thinking was as important as intelligence

· Cognitive theories of creativity identify mental plans, structures, process of creative thinking (Sloboda)

· Computational theories of creativity uses artificial intelligences e.g. computer program for jazz improvisation(Johnson-Laird)

· Social-personality approach focuses on personality traits of specific creative people (Teresa Amabile, Social Psychology of Creativity)

Week 7: The Brain that Makes Music and is Changes by it - Alvaro Pascual-Leone

Brain Plasticity

· Experience-dependent modification in neural structure (Sensorimotor cortex changes with skill acquisition)

· Functional and structural changes

· Converting declarative into procedural knowledge, sensory to motor system (motor and sensory cortex involved in motor skill learning)

· Neuroimages document research e.g TMS

Experiment had two groups of participants who were not musically trained, practicing a simple finger exercises. First five days had two-hour practice sessions with a test following. Thereafter, group 1 continued daily practice while group 2 did not. Cortical output maps were used to document progress.

Interesting elements:

- rest period of 20-30 minutes required between practice and test to show improvement

- obvious reorganization required for perfection of exercise i.e. established new connections (sprouting), and unmasking of previously existing connections

Mental practice

Imagined rehearsal of a motor act with the intent of learning without movement.

Cognitive representation of motor task created in advance of physical practice allowing reorganization of motor output to finger flexor and extensor muscles

Prefrontal and supplementary motor areas, basal ganglia, and cerebellum are part of the network involved in the mental simulations of motor acts.

Risks

This flexibility can result in unwanted change, injury, unwanted cortical arrangement, overuse syndrome, focal dystonia (neurological involuntary movements due to disturbances in motor program i.e abnormal motor function commonly associated with pain)

Disorganizaion of sensory representations by inhibiting functional segregation of e.g. individual digits.

The Brain

I needed a 'cheat sheet' for the brain so I thought I'd share it on the blog as well. Please add where you feel is important.....

Cerebral cortex (asymmetrical)– emotional responses, consciousness, judgments, decisions, memory for habits, and motor activities (gray matters in the outer cerebral hemisphere)

Left hemisphere – language, math, reasoning, rhythmic tasks, absolute pitch

Right hemisphere – holistic functioning, melodic contour

Corpus Callosum – connects right and left hemispheres

Parietal lobe – visual, touch perception

Occipital lobes – vision

Temporal lobes (one on either side)– distinguish between different sounds, smells, short-term memory, sotring new information

Right lobe – visual memory

Left lobe – verbal memory

Brain stem – breathing, heart rate, swallowing, reflexes to seeing and hearing, blood pressure, digestion, temperature, ability to sleep

Vestibular – sense of balance

Cerrebellum – coordination of voluntary movement, balance

Parietal lobe – sensory input processing, sensory discrimination

Frontal lobe – planning, prganziing, problem solving, personality

Environment, motivation, and musical skill

‘Folk psychology’ of music - musical ability is largely innate and peculiar to just a select few.

Arguments opposing:
-Every person has some degree of inborn musicality which is fed by a
favourable environment
-Maturation, physical capabilities, and inherited talents
- Davidson’s ‘Three types of interaction between genes and environment’
1. Passive covariation (genetic material shapes environment)
2. Reactive covariation (needs of child leads to environmental change)
3. Active covariation (needs of a child leads to child to change
environment)

Environmental factors most important in encouraging musical skill:
1. Parents (early parental support and parental increased involvement later, showed most success)
2. Teachers (beginner musicians require strong music teacher relationship, more mature musicians focus more on teacher’s abilities)
3. Practice (Thomas Edison ‘1% inspiration and 99% perspiration)

Motivation
-what practice strategies are most important
- how skilled musicians are able to practice more than others

Expectancy-value theory (Fishbein and Asjen, 1975)
Why people should believe that playing a musical instrument will be important to them in the future
1. Attainment value
2. Intrinsic value
3. Utility value
4. Perceived cost
Self-efficacy
-Focuses on individual’s belief in their ability and capacity to achieve
Flow Theory (Czikszentmihalyi)
-Experienced when the challenge corresponds with the level of skill.
Attribution theory
-Cause to which people attribute their success or failure. Determines expectations for future success.

The Development of Musicial Abilities, by H. Gembris

This very rich chapter provides an overview of the development of musical abilities from pre-birth through late adulthood. It does this with five primary themes: (1) ‘the examination of fetal learning before and infant learning after birth,’ (2) neurobiological research, (3) expertise research (meaning general research on expert abilities), (4) life-span development of musical abilities, and (5) the emergence of developmental theories from the previous four points. Musical abilities are posited as being normally distributed. Much of the research on 0-10 years of age has been covered elsewhere in this course, but this reading brings it all together in a sequential fashion. Some interesting experimental methodologies are mentioned.

The next section discusses musical development from 10 to 20 years. Here the focus is clearly on musical preference, aesthetic values and cultural identity (which contrasts with the perception/cognition based approach to 0-10, and rightfully so, because 0-10 is a period of more rapid neural development). ‘Open-earedness’ is discussed, as it was in the North and Hargreaves text (in fact, much of this section repeats North and Hargreaves’ text on musical taste). The use of mass media is briefly discussed. Functions of music, listening styles and preferences are all given some discussion, though the discussion does not have enough depth to be very meaningful, unfortunately.

Finally, the author discusses developmental processes in those aged 20 years or more. Biological aspects of aging are discussed, as are the lives of professional musicians, including a section determining which decade of life seems to be most productive for composers (generally 35-45).

Overall, this chapter is a good overview of development, but serves more of a horizontal knowledge based rather than a vertical one.

Week 6: The Brain of Musicians (G. Schlaug)

IMAGE: HUMAN MOTOR CORTEX TOPOGRAPHY (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Human_motor_cortex_topography.png_

Disclaimer: This has been one of my favorite articles so far! Very informative…

Schlaug introduces the chapter by discussing brain plasticity, in terms of structure and function, and indicates that music is an ideal area to study this phenomenon.

STRUCTURAL BRAIN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MUSICIANS AND NONMUSICIANS

Several cross-sectional studies are described here to illustrate finding regarding the structural differences in musicians’ brains. Understanding such neural substrates allow us to understand the effect of music on the brain and potentially other areas for interdisciplinary research. Handedness was controlled for, as this variable can correlate with altered hemispheric brain structures and functions. Using fMRI (with fascinating methodologies that are clearly and succulently described, the following results were attained:

1) The anterior half of the corpus callosum is significantly larger in musicians, particularly those who started musical study when younger than 7 years old. This may be due to the necessity of increased inter-hemispheric communication for completing musical performance tasks.

2) The motor cortex size was measured (indirectly, though measurement of the correlating intrasulcal length of the posterior bank of the precentral gyrus). Results showed a greater symmetry in the left and right hemispheres in the dorsal subregion of the motor cortex. In addition to the greater symmetry, the measures of the motor cortex were larger in both hemispheres than in nonmusicians. This may be due to the right hemisphere controlling the non-dominant left hand, requiring a level of left hand motor refinement unnecessary for nonmusicians.

3) The cerebellum was also examined (in part due to the role of the cerebellum in movement coordination, timing of sequential movements, etc.); as an interesting methodological note, the researcher controlled for the large inter-subject variance in cerebellum size by measuring the cerebellum as a percentage of overall brain matter. There was a gender effect, with male musicians’ brains having a larger cerebellum than nonmusicians. There was no difference in females; of several possible causes, either a ceiling effect (considering the normally smaller size of the female brain) or the fact that most females reach maximum cerebellum size earlier in life than males (and hence not allowing as much time for musical activity to effect its size) are the most likely causes for this gender difference.

4) Regional differences in gray matter (important in processing sensory perceptual data) were examined. Musicians showed greater gray matter in the following regions: the perirolandic region, the premotor region, the posterior superior parietal region, the posterior mesial perisylvian region bilaterally, and the cerebellum.

FUNCTIONAL BRAIN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MUSICIANS AND NONMUSICIANS

Basic points include:

• While some aspects of music may pertain mostly to one hemisphere (e.g. the right hemisphere in melodic contour tasks and the left hemisphere in rhythmic tasks), extensive usage of both sides of the brain are essential for the musician.
• In a study looking for whether or not musicians have a different degree of hemispheric dominance, the researchers found that in only those musicians with absolute pitch, there is an increased left-sided asymmetry of the planum temporale. Presumably, based on this research, this area of the brain in the neural substrate of absolute pitch. It is uncommon for someone to have absolute pitch if they have not commenced musical study by the age of 7. The planum temprale is part of Wernicke’s area, which is important for the processing of language. This could mean that absolute pitch is based, at least in part, on the categorization that the planum temporale provides in language: absolute pitch means giving language to a particular tone without a reference.

The authors discuss the nature/nurture debate. The cross-sectional design of this study of course does not fully allow one to imply causality, as longitudinal studies (which would be nearly impossible for this field) would be required for that; however, the growing body of evidence relating musical tasks and musicians’ brains with specific neural substrates indeed points in the direction of causality (especially during early, formative years before 7 years of age).

WEEK 6: Musicianship

North and Hargreaves shed interesting perspectives on existing research into the personality, identity, and environmental factors that influence musicianship. Although quoting as being founded in existing research, it left me with a lot more questions than answers.

According to Kemp, ‘personality manifests itself through musicianship’ (42) and the particular aspects of personality relevant to musicians include introversion, independence, trait anxiety, gender, and personality.
1) Introversion – somewhat of a contradiction considering the performance nature of musicianship, Kemp states that the extended periods of time spent practicing in isolation qualifies them as such
2) Independence – characteristic of mature musicians whereas young musicians display dependency. Kempt further included the description
a) field dependent
b) field independent
The latter includes the ability to analyse, extract, and reorganize elements of music (43)
3) Trait anxiety refers to emotional instability, frustration, suspiciousness, and apprehensiveness
4) Gender orientation delineates between feminine and masculine qualities. According to Kemp, musicians display an androgynous nature.

Personality and identity also play a distinct role in musical identity. The ‘self-system’ (self identification, self esteem, self efficacy) is closely linked to performance ability although it becomes differentiated with age. This in turn is also linked to motivation, as self-perceptions are intimately associated with the motivation to practice or pursue music. The closing section to the text refers to the influence of sex-typing with regard to musical activities specifically instrument choice. Disappointingly, the authors omit to include Abeles most recent research in the chang of stereotyping.

Physiological responses to music and sound stimulus

Dale Bartett, in his chapter ‘Physiological responses to music and sound stimulus’, in Hodges’ Handbook of Music Psychology, provides a historical and theoretical account of the role of experimental research on the physiological responses to music and sound stimulus, over the past 120 years. This research has been able to provide quantifiable results confirming the affect of music on various physiological functions.
The earliest well controlled studies and experiments in the field dated to the late 1800’s and heavily influenced the standard measurement techniques used today. These include heart and pulse rate (measured by units per minute) respiration rate (measured in the # of breaths per minute), Blood pressure (measured by systolic, diastolic, and pulse pressure), muscular tension, blood volume, skin temperature. Each of these techniques requires specific measuring apparatus. A thorough and varied listing of experiments/studies using the above standard measurements is available to support physiological responses to music.
By the 1900’s, improved instrumentation, methodologies, and statistics were being applied and by 1985, the influence of music on biochemical responses was being researched.
Both physiological and affective responses to music and sound stimulus have been experimented. Historically,
1) Aristotle used the word ‘passion’ to denote affective states relating to bodily experiences
2) Descartes distinguished between passion of the soul and bodily reactions
3) Darwin linked emotion and the stimulus of events
4) And in 1875, Williams James established his ‘Theory of Emotion’ wherein innate reflexes to emotional stimulus causing bodily changes were perceived as emotion.
The focus in the field of study has not changed considerably in the past 120 years with the exception of an increased focus on psychoneuroimmunology (link between psychological processes and the immune system) and research in early infants.
Broad outcomes from the past 120 years of research include,
1) Music and sound stimulus have been found to influence bodily systems (374)
2) Music has the capability of altering our psychological and affective state however, experimental research has yet to concretely prove why.