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Where is the Beat in That Note? How Musical Expertise Affects Music Perception
Mar 1, 2024
01:30 PM - 02:30 PM
93 East Burlington Street, Iowa City, IA 52240
Music psychologists often make broad distinctions between musicians and non-musicians, and sometimes expert musicians versus non-expert musicians ("amateurs"), rarely, if ever, are specific forms of expertise taken into account. Yet most musicians know all too well that being proficient in one genre does not automatically carry over to another: jazz musicians may have difficulty playing with classical musicians, and vice-versa. This is not simply due to knowing different repertoire, or having experience improvising versus following detailed scores. In a series of experiments, Anne Danielsen and colleagues at the RITMO center in Oslo have shown that expert instrumentalists (Jazz musicians, Hardanger Fiddlers, and EDM producers) and singers (professional Jazz and Classical singers), actually do not hear the "same" musical sound in the same way, especially in terms of its rhythmic microstructure. This presentation will review these two experiments, from the details of their design and data to their results and their implications for music performance and analysis. Additionally, this work shows the important ways that music psychology and performance science can add to our knowledge of human perception and cognition more generally.
Justin London is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music, Cognitive Science, and the Humanities at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, where he teaches courses in Music Theory, The Philosophy of Music, Music Psychology, Cognitive Science, and American Popular Music. He has held teaching and research appointments at The University of Cambridge, the University of Jyäskylä, Finland, The University of Oslo, and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt. He served as President of the Society for Music Theory in 2007–2009, and as President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition in 2017–2018. In 2022 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Music Perception and Cognition. He is also the guitarist in the “Spare Niche” jazz trio.
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