An excerpt from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus about #music and ambiguity:
« Relationship [in music] is everything. And if you want to give it a more precise name, it is "ambiguity." To illustrate the meaning of the word, he played for me chord-progressions belonging to no definite key; demonstrated for me how such a progression fluctuates between C major and G major, if one leaves out the F [...] how it keeps the ear uncertain [...] "You know what I find?" he asked. "That music turns the equivocal into a system. Take this or that note. You can understand it so or respectively so. You can think of it as sharpened or flattened, and you can, if you are clever, take advantage of the double sense as much as you like." »
This somewhat echoes the conclusion of a scientific paper by Pressnitzer, Suied and Shamma on #Auditory Scene Analysis :
« Music is an especially challenging stimulus to make sense, as most of it is abstract without any clear reference to an external object. By embedding several latent perceptual organizations into complex acoustical scenes, music may well be able to challenge the listener with a rich set of possibilities that can be freely entertained, with no other potential consequence than being surprised, rejoiced, or moved. » https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00158/full #ASA #AuditorySceneAnalysis #MusicPerception #Cognition #CognitiveScience

An excerpt from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus about #music and ambiguity:
« Relationship [in music] is everything. And if you want to give it a more precise name, it is "ambiguity." To illustrate the meaning of the word, he played for me chord-progressions belonging to no definite key; demonstrated for me how such a progression fluctuates between C major and G major, if one leaves out the F [...] how it keeps the ear uncertain [...] "You know what I find?" he asked. "That music turns the equivocal into a system. Take this or that note. You can understand it so or respectively so. You can think of it as sharpened or flattened, and you can, if you are clever, take advantage of the double sense as much as you like. »
This somewhat echoes the conclusion of a scientific paper by Pressnitzer, Suied and Shamma on #auditory Scene Analysis :
« Music is an especially challenging stimulus to make sense, as most of it is abstract without any clear reference to an external object. By embedding several latent perceptual organizations into complex acoustical scenes, music may well be able to challenge the listener with a rich set of possibilities that can be freely entertained, with no other potential consequence than being surprised, rejoiced, or moved. » https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00158/full #ASA #AuditorySceneAnalysis #MusicPerception #Cognition #CognitiveScience

An excerpt from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus about #music and ambiguity:
« Relationship [in music] is everything. And if you want to give it a more precise name, it is "ambiguity." To illustrate the meaning of the word, he played for me chord-progressions belonging to no definite key; demonstrated for me how such a progression fluctuates between C major and G major, if one leaves out the F [...] how it keeps the ear uncertain [...] "You know what I find?" he asked. "That music turns the equivocal into a system. Take this or that note. You can understand it so or respectively so. You can think of it as sharpened or flattened, and you can, if you are clever, take advantage of the double sense as much as you like. »
This somewhat echoes the conclusion of a scientific paper by Pressnitzer, Suied and Shamma on #auditory Scene Analysis :
« Music is an especially challenging stimulus to make sense, as most of it is abstract without any clear reference to an external object. By embedding several latent perceptual organizations into complex acoustical scenes, music may well be able to challenge the listener with a rich set of possibilities that can be freely entertained, with no other potential consequence than being surprised, rejoiced, or moved. » https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00158/full #ASA #AuditorySceneAnalysis #MusicPerception

New account, new #introduction

I am working on a PhD in music theory with a specialization in music cognition. I'm pretty new to the cognition stuff, with my formal training to date being very music focused (from flute and piano performance to composition to music theory). I am still at the dissertation proposal stage, but will be doing research related to auditory perception and auditory scene analysis.

I have another account in the fediverse on a more humanities focused server. I decided to try out a second instance, with a more science-based "Local" community. Server A is currently broken, so while the sysadmins there figure out how to fix it seemed like a good time for me to start exploring another instance. My username is the same for both. I may migrate over here, or I may keep using both. Time will tell.

#music #cognition #perception #MusicCognition #AuditoryPerception #AuditoryNeuroscience #AuditorySceneAnalysis