When we think of music, we often bring to mind the music that is most familiar to us. However, it is important to remember that, across the globe, there is a wide range of musical styles, each with their own musical language that is made up of a set of characteristics including rhythm, melody, instrumental … Continue reading What does cross-cultural research tell us about harmony perception?
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Durham to Jyväskylä: Insights and experiences as a visiting PhD researcher
Introduction During your PhD or at other times in your career you may be fortunate enough to be able to organize a research visit with another research group in a different university or institution. Trips like these can be an exciting premise for your research and professional life but the work to set this kind … Continue reading Durham to Jyväskylä: Insights and experiences as a visiting PhD researcher
How automatic are emotional responses to musical chords?
Insight from a pre-registered study published in the Music Perception journal When starting out my music psychological research a good ten years ago (can’t believe I’m writing this!) I was interested in the question of whether the smallest building blocks of musical harmony, namely single isolated chords, could convey emotions to listeners in a robust … Continue reading How automatic are emotional responses to musical chords?
NEMuR 7: A Day of Interdisciplinarity and Collaboration
Written by Aliyah Ramatally, Elizabeth Galbo & Joshua Schlichting On Friday 11th of November, the Durham University Music and Science Lab hosted the 7th biannual meeting of the Northern Network for Empirical Music Research (NEMuR 7) at Van Mildert College, Durham, where participants from seven member institutions across Northern England gathered in-person and online. As … Continue reading NEMuR 7: A Day of Interdisciplinarity and Collaboration
An Interdisciplinary Gathering: Attending the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Society for Education and Music Psychology Research (SEMPRE)
This weekend (2nd-4th September 2022), I was glad to attend the 50th anniversary conference of the Society for Education and Music Psychology Research (SEMPRE). Set in the imposing Senate House of the University of London, delegates gathered for two days of discussion and presentation of the latest research in music & science/music education, as well … Continue reading An Interdisciplinary Gathering: Attending the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Society for Education and Music Psychology Research (SEMPRE)
A New Variant of Conference: highlights from SysMus21
Back to face-to-face conferences? Well… not quite. A hybrid conference that is going to shape the way future conferences are run? Definitely. Nonetheless, the opportunity to meet and greet with those wonderful scholars from the world of music science without my pyjamas on was a welcome change to the last year. The student run conference, … Continue reading A New Variant of Conference: highlights from SysMus21
Separating the Cultural from the Universal in Harmony Perception
Some two years ago, I asked the question in the Music & Science blog series whether the perception of consonance and dissonance is universal. While the world has well and truly changed since then, pandemics aside these past two years have been fruitful for the Music & Science Lab in terms of new research into … Continue reading Separating the Cultural from the Universal in Harmony Perception
Examining a PhD thesis
We try to give advice to our doctoral students about how to prepare for the PhD examination. These instructions (link), training events (link), and mock examinations are useful orientations for the pinnacle of doctoral students’ careers, but describing the process from the other side of the table, from the examiner’s point of view, is what … Continue reading Examining a PhD thesis
New MA Specialism in Music and Science
Authors: Tuomas Eerola & Kelly Jakubowski We are very pleased to be launching a new pathway in Music and Science within our Taught Masters (MA) programme in Durham’s Music Department from Autumn 2021. In this post we outline some of the key features of the programme, and our views on what makes it unique and … Continue reading New MA Specialism in Music and Science
The two (or more) hats of a music psychologist: Communicating research to different disciplinary audiences
This post picks up on a recurring theme I’ve written about a couple times now, which is the unique challenges one faces when working in an area that falls ‘between’ traditional disciplines. Some of the challenges that arise in music psychology may be due to the fact that it is a relatively less ‘established’ discipline; … Continue reading The two (or more) hats of a music psychologist: Communicating research to different disciplinary audiences
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