Music 6

Psychology

Main article: Music psychology
Modern music psychology aims to explain and understand musical behavior and experience.[114] Research in this field and its subfields are primarily empirical; their knowledge tends to advance on the basis of interpretations of data collected by systematic observation of and interaction with human participants. In addition to its focus on fundamental perceptions and cognitive processes, music psychology is a field of research with practical relevance for many areas, including music performance, composition, education, criticism, and therapy, as well as investigations of human aptitude, skill, intelligence, creativity, and social behavior.

Neuroscience

Main article: Neuroscience of music
The primary auditory cortex is one of the main areas associated with superior pitch resolution.
Cognitive neuroscience of music is the scientific study of brain-based mechanisms involved in the cognitive processes underlying music. These behaviours include music listening, performing, composing, reading, writing, and ancillary activities. It also is increasingly concerned with the brain basis for musical aesthetics and musical emotion. The field is distinguished by its reliance on direct observations of the brain, using such techniques as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), magnetoencephalography (MEG), electroencephalography (EEG), and positron emission tomography (PET).

Cognitive musicology

Main article: Cognitive musicology
Cognitive musicology is a branch of cognitive science concerned with computationally modeling musical knowledge with the goal of understanding both music and cognition.[115] The use of computer models provides an exacting, interactive medium in which to formulate and test theories and has roots in artificial intelligence and cognitive science.[116]
This interdisciplinary field investigates topics such as the parallels between language and music in the brain. Biologically inspired models of computation are often included in research, such as neural networks and evolutionary programs.[117] This field seeks to model how musical knowledge is represented, stored, perceived, performed, and generated. By using a well-structured computer environment, the systematic structures of these cognitive phenomena can be investigated.[118]

Psychoacoustics

Main article: Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of sound perception. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological and physiological responses associated with sound (including speech and music). It can be further categorized as a branch of psychophysics.

Evolutionary musicology

Main article: Evolutionary musicology
Evolutionary musicology concerns the "origins of music, the question of animal song, selection pressures underlying music evolution", and "music evolution and human evolution".[119] It seeks to understand music perception and activity in the context of evolutionary theory. Charles Darwin speculated that music may have held an adaptive advantage and functioned as a protolanguage,[120] a view which has spawned several competing theories of music evolution.[121][122][page needed][123] An alternate view sees music as a by-product of linguistic evolution; a type of "auditory cheesecake" that pleases the senses without providing any adaptive function.[124] This view has been directly countered by numerous music researchers.[125][126][127]

Cultural effects

Main article: Culture in music cognition
An individual's culture or ethnicity plays a role in their music cognition, including their preferences, emotional reaction, and musical memory. Musical preferences are biased toward culturally familiar musical traditions beginning in infancy, and adults' classification of the emotion of a musical piece depends on both culturally specific and universal structural features.[128][129] Additionally, individuals' musical memory abilities are greater for culturally familiar music than for culturally unfamiliar music.[130][131]

Perceptual

Since the emergence of the study of psychoacoustics in the 1930s, most lists of elements of music have related more to how we hear music than how we learn to play it or study it. C.E. Seashore, in his book Psychology of Music,[132] identified four "psychological attributes of sound". These were: "pitch, loudness, time, and timbre" (p. 3). He did not call them the "elements of music" but referred to them as "elemental components" (p. 2). Nonetheless, these elemental components link precisely with four of the most common musical elements: "Pitch" and "timbre" match exactly, "loudness" links with dynamics, and "time" links with the time-based elements of rhythm, duration, and tempo. This usage of the phrase "the elements of music" links more closely with Webster's New 20th Century Dictionary definition of an element as: "a substance which cannot be divided into a simpler form by known methods"[133] and educational institutions' lists of elements generally align with this definition as well.
Although writers of lists of "rudimentary elements of music" can vary their lists depending on their personal (or institutional) priorities, the perceptual elements of music should consist of an established (or proven) list of discrete elements which can be independently manipulated to achieve an intended musical effect. It seems at this stage that there is still research to be done in this area.
A slightly different way of approaching the identification of the elements of music, is to identify the "elements of sound" as: pitch, duration, loudness, timbre, sonic texture and spatial location,[134] and then to define the "elements of music" as: sound, structure, and artistic intent.[134]

Sociological aspects

Main article: Sociomusicology
Song dynasty (960–1279) painting, Night Revels of Han Xizai, showing Chinese musicians entertaining guests at a party in a 10th-century household
Ethnographic studies demonstrate that music is a participatory, community-based activity.[135][136] Music is experienced by individuals in a range of social settings from being alone, to attending a large concert, forming a music community, which cannot be understood as a function of individual will or accident; it includes both commercial and non-commercial participants with a shared set of common values. Musical performances take different forms in different cultures and socioeconomic milieus.
In Europe and North America, there was a divide between what types of music were viewed as "high culture" and "low culture." "High culture" included Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern-era symphonies, concertos, and solo works, and are typically heard in formal concerts in concert halls and churches, with the audience sitting quietly. Other types of music—including jazz, blues, soul, and country—are often performed in bars, nightclubs, and theatres, where the audience may drink, dance and cheer. Until the 20th century, the division between "high" and "low" musical forms was accepted as a valid distinction that separated out "art music", from popular music heard in bars and dance halls. Musicologists, such as David Brackett, note a "redrawing of high-low cultural-aesthetic boundaries" in the 20th century.[137] And, "when industry and public discourses link categories of music with categories of people, they tend to conflate stereotypes with actual listening communities."[137] Stereotypes can be based on socioeconomic standing, or social class, of the performers or audience of the different types of music.
When composers introduce styles of music that break with convention, there can be strong resistance from academics and others. Late-period Beethoven string quartets, Stravinsky ballet scores, serialism, bebop, hip hop, punk rock, and electronica were controversial and criticised, when they were first introduced. Such themes are examined in the sociology of music, sometimes called sociomusicology, which is pursued in departments of sociology, media studies, or music, and is closely related to ethnomusicology.

Role of women

Main article: Women in music
19th-century composer and pianist Clara Schumann
Women have played a major role in music throughout history, as composers, songwriters, instrumental performers, singers, conductors, music scholars, music educators, music critics/music journalists and other musical professions. In the 2010s, while women comprise a significant proportion of popular music and classical music singers, and a significant proportion of songwriters (many of them being singer-songwriters), there are few women record producers, rock critics and rock instrumentalists. Although there have been a huge number of women composers in classical music, from the medieval period to the present day, women composers are significantly underrepresented in the commonly performed classical music repertoire, music history textbooks and music encyclopedias; for example, in the Concise Oxford History of Music, Clara Schumann is one of the few female composers who is mentioned.
Women comprise a significant proportion of instrumental soloists in classical music and the percentage of women in orchestras is increasing. A 2015 article on concerto soloists in major Canadian orchestras, however, indicated that 84% of the soloists with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal were men. In 2012, women still made up just 6% of the top-ranked Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. Women are less common as instrumental players in popular music genres such as rock and heavy metal, although there have been a number of notable female instrumentalists and all-female bands. Women are particularly underrepresented in extreme metal genres.[138] In the 1960s pop-music scene, "[l]ike most aspects of the...music business, [in the 1960s,] songwriting was a male-dominated field. Though there were plenty of female singers on the radio, women ...were primarily seen as consumers:... Singing was sometimes an acceptable pastime for a girl, but playing an instrument, writing songs, or producing records simply wasn't done."[139] Young women "...were not socialized to see themselves as people who create [music]."[139]
Women are also underrepresented in orchestral conducting, music criticism/music journalism, music producing, and sound engineering. While women were discouraged from composing in the 19th century, and there are few women musicologists, women became involved in music education "...to such a degree that women dominated [this field] during the later half of the 19th century and well into the 20th century."[140]
According to Jessica Duchen, a music writer for London's The Independent, women musicians in classical music are "...too often judged for their appearances, rather than their talent" and they face pressure "...to look sexy onstage and in photos."[141] Duchen states that while "[t]here are women musicians who refuse to play on their looks,...the ones who do tend to be more materially successful."[141] According to the UK's Radio 3 editor, Edwina Wolstencroft, the music industry has long been open to having women in performance or entertainment roles, but women are much less likely to have positions of authority, such as being the conductor of an orchestra.[142] In popular music, while there are many women singers recording songs, there are very few women behind the audio console acting as music producers, the individuals who direct and manage the recording process.[143] One of the most recorded artists is Asha Bhosle, an Indian singer best known as a playback singer in Hindi cinema.[144]