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The article focuses on evaluating music as a mood regulator in Slovakia using the Music in Mood Regulation Scale (MMR). It investigates how effectively the MMR tool, originally developed in Finland, can be adapted to Slovak conditions. It aims to identify how music influences mood regulation in Slovak respondents, analyze differences in mood regulation strategies based on demographic factors such as age and gender.

This article examines the concept of tonality in music theory and its potential connection to systemic racism. The author, a music psychology researcher and immigrant, questions the racial implications of tonality and explores its definition as both an institution and a set of organizing principles. The article suggests alternative approaches to studying diverse musical systems and proposes the use of artificial tonal systems and grammars for future research. It also discusses the Bohlen-Pierce scale, a 13-step scale that challenges traditional Western tonality, and emphasizes the importance of curiosity, humility, and interdisciplinary collaboration in music-theoretical development. The author advocates for a more inclusive and forward-thinking approach to music studies. [Extracted from the article]

Using three musical pieces as musical stimuli from Romania, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia, this study extended Fung's study by examining Chinese pre-service music teachers' (n = 115) and schoolteachers' (n = 131) personal preferences and external preferences for orchestral, folk, and popular music pieces. Two groups of participants were asked to select their preferred music from three pieces and to provide verbal descriptions of the reasons for their selections. The results showed (a) no significant differences in personal preference between the two groups but statistical significances in external preferences between the two groups; (b) the highest preference rating by both groups of teachers was folk music and the highest forced-choice preference was popular music; (c) statistically significant correlations between personal preference and external preference were evident in both groups across all three pieces; and (d) frequent descriptions by both groups of participants of the pieces in terms of musical characteristics were shared. The implications of this study are as follows. (1) Psychologists and music researchers gain insights about Chinese young adults' listening preferences, which might offer implications for future research in the field of psychology; and (2) By enhancing multicultural awareness, music education teachers and researchers should combine different music styles to broaden students' music horizons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical large-scale form is investigated using an electronic dance music piece fed into a Finite-Difference Time-Domain physical model of the cochlea, which again is input into an Impulse Pattern Formulation (IPF) Brain model. In previous studies, experimental EEG data showed an enhanced correlation between brain synchronization and the musical piece's amplitude and fractal correlation dimension, representing musical tension and expectancy time points within the large-scale form of musical pieces. This is also in good agreement with a FitzHugh–Nagumo oscillator model.However, this model cannot display temporal developments in large-scale forms. The IPF Brain model shows a high correlation between cochlea input and brain synchronization at the gamma band range around 50 Hz, and also a strong negative correlation with low frequencies, associated with musical rhythm, during time frames with low cochlea input amplitudes. Such a high synchronization corresponds to temporal lobe epilepsy, often associated with creativity or spirituality. Therefore, the IPF Brain model results suggest that these conscious states occur at times of low external input at low frequencies, where isochronous musical rhythms are present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt is made to comprehend the latest developments in such a field of neuroscience as neuroethics, music through the perception of the human brain. Yes, for example, the key ideas of neuroethics are generally in line with the spirit of Kantian apriorism, reinterpreted in the current terms of cognitive neuroscience. Today, more and more arguments are found that "music excites such internal physiological programs that contribute to the restoration of the homeostatic equilibrium of the organism .... This means that music plays a role in human evolution. The article proposes the concept of a musical module, which correlates with a cognitive neurostructure. The theoretical and methodological features of the formation of today's classical music are investigated. The methods of analysis, synthesis, explanatory, research and scientific methods have been applied to conduct an effective research. Priority directions of modern music development in the context of neurophysiological development have been determined. Formed the results of the study, which were the basis for determining aspects of prospective musical development. Scientific research in the field of music and the field of psychology is investigated, which is the basis for the development of neuroscience. The relevance of the article is determined by the need to adapt music to the challenges of information and communication society and to determine the prospects for further development of today's classical music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 2012 to 2023, the American Psychological Association served as publisher of Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain. Annabel Cohen and Mark Schmuckler were the successive editors-in-chiefs during this time. As the journal is ceasing publication, the two editors reflect on the development and progress of the journal in the context of the history of psychology and publication trends. They present their review in 10 short movements each with a unique musical emotional expressivity: overture, amabile, vivace, elegy doloroso, sforzando, capriccio, con brio, pendolo, agilmente, and finale risonante, ending on a very upbeat note! Early on, Psychomusicology offered a much-needed research forum for the psychology of music. More recently, the recognized importance of music psychology to almost all areas of psychology has led to increasing numbers of outlets for publication. During the 12 recent years under APA's stewardship, the journalmore than doubled the number of articles published since the journal's inception in 1981. The entire corpus of almost 600 articles represents foundational and well-cited contributions to such current research areas as musical expectancy, performance excellence, musical development, neuroscience, emotion, preference, and film music, among others. Cohen and Schmuckler express deep gratitude to the authors, past editorial board members, and reviewers for their contributions to this corpus, and to the American Psychological Association Publications office and staff both for support and, importantly, for holding and making accessible in perpetuity the outstanding scholarship within the archives of Psychomusicology: MusicMind & Brain and Psychomusicology: A Journal of Music Cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical abilities and the possibilities of measuring them have drawn the attention of both music educators and music psychologists for decades. Due to parallel development of these disciplines, the assessment of musical abilities can be categorized into two main types – evaluation by music educators (primarily based on reproduction assessment) and the measurement of perceptual abilities through tests. Although the majority of standardized psychological tests for musical abilities emerged during the 20th century, it is evident that this issue continues to inspire researchers in more recent times. Consequently, there is a considerable number of newer tests for assessing musical abilities. The aim of this study is to present the characteristics of tests published after the year 2000, highlighting their potential applications in educational practice and within the scope of research on musical abilities across different disciplines. The following instruments have been analyzed: Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI), Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA), University of Washington Clinical Assessment of Music Perception Test, The Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Musical Abilities (MBEMA), MBEMA on tablet, Implicit Tonal Ability Test (ITAT), Musical Aptitude Test (MAT), Musical Ear Test (MET), Profile of Music Perception Skills (PROMS), Brief PROMS, PROMS-S, Mini-PROMS, and Micro-PROMS. The results of the research reveal evident differences in the content and purpose of the tests. Some tests can be applied as early as the age of 4 to 6 years (MBEMA on tablet), from 6 to 8 years (MBEMA), and from 6 to 12 years (ITAT), while others are intended solely for adult participants. Variations also exist in the content of the tests, determining which types of musical abilities will be measured. While MET includes only two subtests (Melody and Rhythm), others incorporate tasks such as Harmony, Dynamics (MAT), Tuning, or Loudness (PROMS). Another significant variable is the duration of the assessment, ranging from as little as 10 minutes for implementation (Micro-PROMS) to as much as 90 minutes (MBEA). Depending on the research needs, the manner of expressing results should be considered, as most tests calculate a total score, whereas MAT presents results in the form of a five-dimensional profile. In conclusion, there is a solid selection of tests for musical abilities published after the year 2000, accessible to researchers. Some of them are adapted for online use, enabling a broader range of participants in research in the field of music pedagogy and other disciplines. We hope that the test overview presented in this study will aid researchers in selecting suitable instruments for their investigations, taking into account different types of abilities in relation to research needs, participant age, or planned assessment time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the undervaluation of silence in academic film analysis and theories, emphasizing the significance of audiovisual silence as a lever for change and transition in filmmaking. It also highlights the role of audiovisual silence in conveying meaning, rhythm, and communicative alternation in narratives, contributing to a theoretical framework for understanding its importance.

The article discusses the impact of sounds and music on emotions and cognitive abilities. It highlights that auditory stimuli can influence attention, memory, problem-solving, decision-making, and creativity. The article presents research on the effects of learning to play a musical instrument on cognitive abilities and academic success, as well as the cognitive and emotional benefits of musical training. It also explores how music can enhance mood, cognitive functions, and quality of life for individuals with brain damage or neurodegenerative diseases. The article includes studies on the performance of cognitive tasks by musicians and non-musicians, the influence of music on artistic creativity, and the use of music in therapeutic settings. The authors emphasize the positive effects of music on mood regulation and cognitive performance for individuals of all expertise levels and mental health statuses. [Extracted from the article]

From the framework of enactive cognition, musical sense emerges-at least in part-from the movements that people make during musical perception or performance. In cases of social musical practices, movements are coupled both to sonic changes (synchronies with musical metrical structure and form, for example) and to other's people movements. Motor patterns emerge from these person-music and person-person interactions and express the sense-making of the environment. Since the case of the dance is rarely studied by the psychology of music, it was necessary to introduce the anthropology perspective, which considers that dances-at least the folkloric ones-have a structure made by spatiotemporal regularities of the movements. In this article, it is proposed that dance at electronic parties is organized in motor patterns defined by the interaction of each person with the music and the other people. An empirical study was based on the audiovisual record of a tech house party (La Plata city, Argentina), and a microanalysis arms and legs movements of 20 persons at the dance floor, with the aim to identify and describe the motor patterns shared by people and their links with music. Based on this analysis, a dance structure formed by the constant repetition of a motor patterns' set, spatiotemporal defined was identify. The predominant motor patterns of the legs are two: one formed by two steps (44 % of the total time) and the other by four (50.8%). In both cases, people synchronize their steps with the musical beat, which produce a pattern of two beats length and other of four. The predominant motor patterns of the arms are also two, each formed by a direct movement and another in the opposite direction: one pattern's spatial trajectory is horizontal (48.8 %) and the other, sagittal (47.4 %). People synchronize their arms' movements with the metrical structure of music; the pattern's length varies between one (39.7 %), two (46.7 %) and four beats (9 %). People repeat each arm and leg's pattern multiple times before switching to the next. The moment at which each person switches their movements from a pattern to another is not temporarily aligned either with other people change of movements or with significant musical changes. Although motor coordination with metrical structure is a characteristic feature of a huge number of musical genres, the omnipresent synchrony with metrical levels of one, two and four beats of this type of dance is probably promoted by the specific features of electronic music for dance, which is analyzed in the article. The temporality of these dance movements can be described as an emergency from the interaction with the music and therefore reciprocally determined by both the music and the person. Instead, spatial features of motion patterns do not seem to have any relation with music. These features can be described as an emergency from the coordination of spatial trajectories between people at the dance floors of several parties, and therefore determined by the social interactions and the culturally right ways of moving in this context. Thereby, the dance structure at electronic parties emerges from the union of the musical and the other's dance sense making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As faculty members, we should support students who want to engage in music research, either in our own labs or in collaboration with music researchers - even if one has never studied music before - and we should encourage the development of our own departments, in terms of the courses we offer and the people we hire. When psychologist Sandra Trehub passed away in January 2023, many of her colleagues noted her role in putting music on psychologists' radar - especially research on music in development. The evidence is all around us all: just look in your pocket (where a device is available that plays music) or at your credit card bill (where you've likely spent money on music) or at your children's education (which likely includes music). A bright future for developmental science on music We see this Special Issue as an existence proof for the vitality, breadth, and importance of music as a core domain of research in developmental science. [Extracted from the article]

This review elaborates on the influence of music on the psychological well-being of adolescents, covering the potential advantages, drawbacks, and necessary strategic interventions associated with music exposure. Initially, we characterize music and delve into a multifaceted classification system. Music, as a pervasive art form, is categorized based on regional and national parameters, and it also distinguishes through the assorted genres and traits. The mental well-being of adolescents is significantly influenced by music through mechanisms such as the facilitation of emotional expression and regulation, fortification of social bonds and the sense of belonging, as well as the fostering of creativity and cognitive development. Nonetheless, music, if misused or associated with inappropriate content, could elicit a spectrum of issues ranging from auditory impairment, diversion of attention, addiction tendencies, to the induction of negative emotions. To counteract these potential hazards, we propose several mitigation strategies including the selection of appropriate music styles, the establishment of a wholesome music environment, the promotion of the constructive role of music education, and fostering active participation in music activities among the youth. In conclusion, we underscore the necessity of a collaborative endeavor from all sectors of society to ensure a healthy music environment for the youth, which in turn would enhance the positive influence of music on the mental health development of this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A crucial aspect of musical ability is a music-specific empathic capacity that enables the performer to uncover subjective meanings from musical materials and fully feel them during performance. Based on insights from both theoretical and empirical research into the psychology of music performance and from pedagogical practice, this capacity is thought to rely on a more general empathic ability and can be nurtured easily in most people, including those scoring rather poor on standard musical aptitude tests measuring "melodic", "rhythmic", or "harmonic" skills. In my paper, I present the theoretical bases of a new pedagogical approach for nurturing in musicians the capacity of feeling the elements of musical meaning in real time (in the act of performance): I introduce a new theory of musical expressiveness by defining, from a psychological point of view and from the perspective of the performer's phenomenology, the various layers of musical meaning (the "what" system) and the temporal-attentional abilities that enable to express them in real time (the "how" system). The paper concludes with a short introduction to a novel implementation of the above model of performer's phenomenological processes into performance teaching: a full training of musical attention called "Practice Methodology". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GROOVE AND CATCHINESS ARE CENTRAL PROPERTIES of popular music that frequently appear together. Yet, a possible relationship has neither been postulated nor examined. In music psychology, groove is commonly understood as a pleasurable urge to move. Catchiness is often tied to the memorability of music, but it is less researched, and definitions are elusive. In this study, we conducted stimuli-guided expert interviews with popular music creators to unveil their understandings of groove and catchiness based on their experiential, practical, and artistic knowledge. These insights allowed us to expand the ontologies of groove and catchiness. We found that groove consists of a bodily experience and positive affect, with participation, immersion and social aspects playing a part as well. We propose catchiness as a multi-dimensional quality that depends on the listener’s perception and experience of music, in which memorization and positive affect are central, and engagement, immediacy, and clarity are other aspects. We found considerable overlap in groove- and catchiness-promoting structures, and hypothesize that they positively interact and support each other, with some exceptions. The perspective of music creators, our detailed discussion of the ontologies, and the hypothesized relationship can broaden the psychological concepts, help with the explanation of previous, and inspire future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music listening plays a pivotal role for children and adolescents, yet it remains unclear how music modulates brain activity at the level of functional networks in this young population. Analysing the dynamics of brain networks occurring and dissolving over time in response to music can provide a better understanding of the neural underpinning of music listening. We collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 17 preadolescents aged 10–11 years while listening to two similar music pieces separated by periods without music. We subsequently tracked the occurrence of functional brain networks over the recording time using a recent method that detects recurrent patterns of phase‐locking in the fMRI signals: the leading eigenvector dynamics analysis (LEiDA). The probabilities of occurrence and switching profiles of different functional networks were compared between periods of music and no music. Our results showed significantly increased occurrence of a specific functional network during the two music pieces compared to no music, involving the medial orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortices—a brain subsystem associated to reward processing. Moreover, the higher the musical reward sensitivity of the preadolescents, the more this network was preceded by a pattern involving the insula. Our findings highlight the involvement of a brain subsystem associated with hedonic and emotional processing during music listening in the early adolescent brain. These results offer novel insight into the neural underpinnings of musical reward in early adolescence, improving our understanding of the important role and the potential benefits of music at this delicate age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(Grassi p 6) There are various approaches to writing about music and psychoanalysis. It reminded me of the concept of "Remembering, Repeating and Working through" (Freud [1]) Overall I think Grassi is offering a wonderfully stimulating contribution to the literature on music and psychoanalysis but I must confess it is not an easy read. Ludovica Grassi's book The Voice of the Unconscious Psychoanalysis as Music 2021 is a welcome addition to a fairly limited but growing repertoire of books on psychoanalysis and music. In her book, Ludovica Grassi wishes to go 'beyond the application of psychoanalysis to music in order to achieve a musically informed psychoanalysis'. [Extracted from the article]

Prevalent neuroscientific theories are combined with acoustic observations from various studies to create a consistent geometric model for music perception in order to rationalize, explain and predict psycho-acoustic phenomena. The space of all chords is shown to be a Whitney stratified space. Each stratum is a Riemannian manifold which naturally yields a geodesic distance across strata. The resulting metric is compatible with voice-leading satisfying the triangle inequality. The geometric model allows for rigorous studies of psychoacoustic quantities such as roughness and harmonicity as height functions. In order to show how to use the geometric framework in psychoacoustic studies, concepts for the perception of chord resolutions are introduced and analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we evaluated heart rate variability (HRV) changes in a pianist, playing in a laboratory, to investigate whether HRV changes are guided by music temporal features or by technical difficulty and/or subjective factors (e.g., experienced effort). The pianist was equipped with a wearable telemetry device for ECG recording during the execution of 4 classical and 5 jazz pieces. From ECG we derived the RR intervals series (tachogram), and, for each piece, analyzed HRV in the time (RR, RMSSD, Stress Index) and frequency domains (Total spectral power) and performed non-linear analysis (Multiscale Entropy). We also studied the correlation (Pearson) between the time course of music volume envelope and tachogram. Results showed a general reduction of parasympathetic and an increase of sympathetic activity, with the greatest changes during the classical pieces execution, the pianist appraised as more demanding than the jazz ones. The most marked changes occurred during the most technically/emotionally demanding piece, and correlation analysis revealed a negative association between music volume envelope time course and tachogram only for this piece, suggesting a modulation of the limbic system on the synchronization between heart rhythm and music temporal features. Classical music was also associated with the increase of entropy (1st scale) with respect to rest, indicating its effectiveness in driving flexible, healthy, heart dynamics. In conclusion, HRV seems modulated not only by the music temporal features, but also by the pianist's emotional involvement, which is greatly influenced, in a non-trivial manner, by the technical demands and musician expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Since decades, the "Mozart effect" has been studied. However, the diverse effects of Mozart's music components have not been yet defined. Authors aimed to identify a differential response to short-term exposure to Mozart's music, or to its rhythmic signature only, on subjective and objective measures. Methods: The Mozart Sonata in A major K 331 (Mozart), the same piece consisting only of beat (Destructured), and duration-matched silence were administered to 25 healthy young adults, stood supine in a relaxing setting. The Italian Mood Scale questionnaire was administered before and after each listening. Heart rate variability (HRV) metrics were calculated from ECG recording, and breath flow was registered during experiments. Results: After Destructured, there was no change of fatigue and tension. After Mozart, fatigue was significantly reduced (and a tendency appeared for tension), whereas vigor was not. Breathing rate tended to be higher during Mozart. The nonlinear parameter HFD of HRV analysis, even though not significantly, was slightly lower during Destructured; Poincaré plots SD1 and SD2 tended to be lower during Mozart. Discussion/Conclusion: Mozart's music may allow to maintain arousal during relaxing condition. Psychological response of music and physiological dynamics were not necessarily entangled. Musical pieces based on individual physiological signature may lead musical psychological interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented highlighting the importance of studying aesthetic responses to music and the need for integration between the fields of music cognition and empirical aesthetics. The article focuses on three main topics: aesthetic responses to music in live concert settings, the role of musical features in aesthetic judgments, and individual differences in listeners' aesthetic and emotional responses to music.

The article highlights a study on the interaction effect observed specifically on the direct modulation condition was a result of the idiosyncrasy of the present stimuli or if it was a true indication of the effect of training. It discusses the exploratory principal components analysis identified a few variables that may have contributed to accuracy, the variability inherent to real stimuli make it difficult to pin down exactly what the contributing factors are.

When listening to music, we often feel a strong desire to move our body in relation to the pulse of the rhythm. In music psychology, this desire to move is described by the term groove. Previous research suggests that the sensation of groove is strongest when a rhythm is moderately complex, i.e., when the rhythm hits the sweet spot between being too simple to be engaging and too complex to be interpretable. This means that the relationship between rhythmic complexity and the sensation of groove can be described by an inverted U-shape (Matthews 2019). Here, we recreate this inverted U-shape with a stimulus set that was reduced from 54 to only nine rhythms. Thereby, we provide an efficient toolkit for future studies to induce and measure different levels of groove sensations. Pleasure and movement induction in relation to rhythmic complexity are emerging topics in music cognition and neuroscience. Investigating the sensation of groove is important for understanding the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying motor timing and reward processes in the general population, and in patients with conditions such as Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and motor impairment after stroke. The experimental manipulation of groove also provides new approaches for research on social bonding in interpersonal movement interactions that feature music. Our brief stimulus set facilitates future research on these topics by enabling the creation of efficient and concise paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how emotional experiences manifest in music that takes listeners on a dynamic, time-sensitive emotional trajectory. It mentions perceptual and cognitive experiences of music are necessarily informed by predictions derived from past musical exposure; and also mentions impact of cultural-specific exposure on expectation, in turn informing emotions.

The article presents the discussion on providing an essentially pre-Covid perspective on musical interaction. Topics include interruption of coordinated behavior and the inhibition of multisensory perception due to latency problems in computer communication; and proposing four levels of constraint indicating gene-culture coevolution working on the nature of music.

The rapid development of technology and hectic lifestyles have led to an increase in stress, anxiety, and dissatisfaction. Processes related to psychological stress contribute to the multifactorial risk for the occurrence and development of various diseases. The high incidence of acute heart disease imposes the need to create efficient and cost-effective prevention and rehabilitation strategies. As a young discipline, music therapy can be considered interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary because it contains elements from several professional fields and disciplines connected in new ways and represents the professional use of music and musical elements to achieve therapeutic goals. As a complementary therapy, receptive music therapy serves to relax and manage stress and has no sideeffects. A meta-analysis on the effects of music on stress and anxiety shows that listening to music can most effectively reduce the degree of anxiety in people if they are offered to make a choice of music content according to their preferences. Further studies should examine the way music is perceived with regard to patient musical preferences within a cardiovascular rehabilitation program. To establish this, it is necessary to design instruments for assessing and collecting data on music preference and perception of music, as well as to include a certified music therapist in the cardiovascular rehabilitation team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategies to support the psychosocial well-being of older adults living in aged-care are needed; and evidence points toward music listening as an effective, non-pharmacological tool with many benefits to quality of life and well-being. Yet, the everyday listening practices (and their associated specific psychosocial benefits) of older adults living in residential aged-care remain under-researched. The current study explored older adults' experiences of music listening in their daily lives while living in residential aged-care and considered how music listening might support their well-being. Specifically, what might go into autonomous listening activities? 32 Australian residents (aged 73–98) living in two Australian care facilities participated in semi-structured interviews. The results of a qualitative thematic analysis revealed three themes pertaining to "previous music experiences and interest," "current music listening," and "barriers to listening." While an interest in and access to music did not necessarily result in everyday listening practices, of those participants who did listen to music, perceived benefits included outcomes such as entertainment, enjoyment, relaxation, and mood regulation. Drawing on Ruud's notion of music as a "cultural immunogen" supporting well-being and Self-Determination Theory, theoretical implications of the findings are addressed, relating to how to create and support music activities in aged-care facilities so that they are engaging, meaningful, and promote emotional regulation, community, and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To take just one example: a musical tone is composed of many features, including pitch, loudness, timbre, and so on, and Deutsch argues that "we perceive each tone as a bundle of attribute values." Musical Illusions and Phantom Words: How Music and Speech Unlock Mysteries of the Brain. (89) To test the linkage of absolute pitch and spoken language, Deutsch and her colleagues worked with native Vietnamese example 1: Deutsch, Figure 2.6 (The beginning of the final movement of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony - The Path etique). Deutsch writes that "my right ear heard "high tone-silence-high tone-silence" while at the same time my left ear heard "silence-low tone-silence low tone" (24). [Extracted from the article]

Musical grammar, in Zbikowski's view, is based on a succession of "sonic analogs" for dynamic processes, in which individual grammatical units of music are defined as being combinations of communicative form and function. Zbikowski's synthesis of disparate strands from music theory and cognition into his grammar of music is both original and well-calibrated for music analysis. Having established these essential aspects of human musical experience, many with clear linguistic dimensions - process, meaning, coherence, communicativeness, sequential organization - it is only natural that the central question of Zbikowski's project should be whether or not there is an underlying musical grammar at play? Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, xiv th 255 pages. reviewed by mark reybrouck Lawrence Zbikowski's book, Foundations of Musical Grammar, is a valuable addition to the Oxford Studies in Music Theory series and a notable effort in bridging the gap between traditional musicology and the cognitive sciences. [Extracted from the article]

As the sixth entry in the Peeters Publishing Analysis in Context series - a line of edited volumes whose goal is to present recent trends in music analysis - Music, Analysis, and the Body centers on a complex question: whether the act of analyzing music is, or ought to be, an embodied practice. While some recent theories of music have developed with the role of the human body in musical sensemaking explicitly in mind - topic theory, gesture theory, embodied cognition, and musical expectation, to name a few 3 - the methods and objects of music analysis have customarily been left out of the conversation. These embodied musical energies include "generalized gravity" (the sense that music rises and falls, regardless of where the tonic is in relation to the motion), "registral mass variance" (the perceived size and weight of musical events based on register), and "rhythmic inertia" (the idea that rhythmic speed is indicative of different bodily energy levels). After an informative introduction by Reyland and Thumpston, the sixteen chapters of Music, Analysis, and the Body are organized into two halves: Part One - Theories/ Analyses contains the first seven chapters; and Part Two - Performers/Composers/Audiences (theories/analyses) the remaining nine. [Extracted from the article]

Since communication and expression are central aspects of music performance it is important to develop a systematic pedagogy of teaching children and teenagers expressiveness. Although research has been growing in this area a comprehensive literature review that unifies the different approaches to teaching young musicians expressiveness has been lacking. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide an overview of literature related to teaching and learning of expressiveness from music psychology and music education research in order to build a new theoretical framework for teaching and learning expressive music performance in instrumental music lessons with children and teenagers. The article will start with a brief discussion of interpretation and expression in music performance, before providing an overview of studies that investigated teaching and learning of performance expression in instrumental music education with adults and children. On the foundation of this research a theoretical framework for dialogic teaching and learning of expressive music performance will be proposed and the rationale explained. Dialogic teaching can be useful for scaffolding young musicians' learning of expressivity as open questions can stimulate thinking about the interpretation and may serve to connect musical ideas to the embodied experience of the learner. A "toolkit" for teaching and learning of expressiveness will be presented for practical application in music lessons. In addition, a theoretical model will be proposed to further our understanding of teaching and learning of expressive music performance as a multifaceted and interactive process that is embedded in the context of tutors' and learners' experiences and environment. Finally, implications of this framework and suggestions for future research will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music, from its several possibilities, induces emotional responses, which are reflected in the physiological and cognitive changes of the listeners, this is a thematic of study in common among different disciplines: music psychology, music therapy, music anthropology, neuropsychology, among others. At the neuroanatomical level, neuroimaging studies have shown that music can modulate the activity of limbic and paralimbic structures, that is, structures that are especially involved in the initiation, generation, maintenance, completion and modulation of emotions. Being able to understand how music can affect the mood of people allow us to contribute to the creation of new techniques oriented to emotional regulation through music. The current study was develop with the aim of evaluating the effect of perception of a musical piece, with activating characteristics (experimental group) vs. white noise (control group), as mood modulator, from a neuro sientific perspective. Participated 29 young adults (55 % man), between 18 to 40 years old (M = 22.07, SD = .43), with no presence of neurological diseases or amusia, nor consumption of medications at the time of the study. The selection of the musical piece with activating characteristics was evaluated in a preliminary study, which counted with the participation of 24 young adults, who valued three pieces of music in terms of valence (emotion that the piece generated) and arousal (activation level). The 3 pieces were: “Tika Tika Walk” by Carlos D’alessio; “Leafmen” by Danny Elfman and “Define Dancing” by Thomas Newman. From this preliminary study, the activating stimulus that would be used for emotional modulation was selected (“Leafmen” by Danny Elfman). The emotional induction of the participants was carried out through the observation of 24 images with negative emotional valence (extracted from International Affective Picture System). About procedure, the study consisted of a single session of activity, divided into the following five phases: (1) information phase: participants signed the informed consent and completed the socio demographic questionnaire, (2) emotional induction phase: participants observed 24 negative images, and they had to rate each image from 0 to 10 (not arousing/ emotional at all to highly arousing/emotional), (3) pre- measurement phase: participants completed a scale of mood, instrument used to measure transient moods, (4) perception phase: under a random distribution, a group of volunteers listened the activating music piece and another group listened the white noise (both for 3 minutes), and finally (5) post-measurement phase: participants completed a scale of mood after music or white noise perception. We analyzed the assumptions of normality and homogeneity of the sample using the statistics of Levenne and Shapiro Wilk. The results analyzed through non-parametric tests (Wilcoxon test, with a p value of .05). In the premeasurement of mood, no significant differences were found between groups. Results of post- measurement phase indicated that music with activating characteristics, modulated the emotions of sadness and anxiety, decreasing them significantly. The results obtained indicate that music, specifically selected, aided as a modulator of emotions. It is important not to generalize the results obtained to the whole population, in this sense and thinking in future research, it would be necessary to expand the sample to a larger n, as well as to investigate this effect in other samples. The results obtained allow to open new paths in terms of the intrinsic qualities of music and its elements to promote relief of anxiety and stress, regulate moods and, promote motivation or enable the development of mechanisms to adapt to situations new and/or traumatic. Finally, it could be assumed that music constitutes an effective stimulus to modulate emotional responses, which are reflected in the mood changes of the listeners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Music-based interventions appear to be efficient approaches to improve emotional, social, and cognitive functioning of patients with neurodegenerative diseases.Objective: Because benefits seem to increase with patient's motor involvement, we studied sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) abilities of patients with cognitive impairments (Alzheimer's disease, vascular and mixed dementia) and of patients with no evidence of cognitive impairments. More specifically, we compared the impact of a live performance by a musician to a video recording on SMS.Methods: SMS to a metronomic or a musical stimulus was assessed while patients watched a live musician or his pre-recorded video.Results: SMS to a metronome was better than to music but this effect was modulated by the social context. While SMS to a metronome was better when facing a video than a live performance, there was no impact of social context on SMS to music. No group differences of SMS were found.Conclusion: The decrease in SMS to a metronome in a live performance may be due to social pressure. Such a pressure might be removed in pleasant social activities, like moving with music in a group, explaining the lack of effect on SMS to music. We found no performance differences in groups, suggesting relatively spared SMS in cognitively impaired patients. By showing that it is possible to encourage patients to synchronize with others, even when facing a video, our results indicate that SMS can be used as a relevant predictor in clinical trials and open up promising therapeutic options for isolated patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before those music cognition milestones (twelve months, four to six years, twelve years), children may be able to perceive another culture's music as "music" and not "the other's music. Music can unite members around the world, if Church leaders successfully dismantle the musical hierarchy that puts Western music and Western musicality in the center and relegates all other musics to an unintegrated periphery. The aforementioned studies of children's wide and varied musical abilities are significant because they suggest that children's music, rather than adult hymns, may provide the best chance the Church has of building a cross- cultural musical understanding. " 20 Musics of other cultures may be represented, but if children are taught to develop music processing in a way that makes the Western musical system "understandable", then the other musics of the world 17. [Extracted from the article]

In many countries, life expectancy has increased considerably in past years, and the importance of finding ways to ensure good levels of wellbeing through aging has become more important than ever. Arts based interventions are promising in this respect, and the literature suggests that musical activities can reduce isolation and anxiety and foster feelings of achievement and self-confidence. The present study examined the effects of group music making programs on the health and wellbeing of nursing home residents in Southern Switzerland. A team of professional and student musicians delivered 10 weekly music sessions in four nursing homes, focusing on singing, rhythm-based activities with percussion instruments, and listening to short, live performances. 22 participants (16 women and 6 men, aged 72-95 years, mean 83.6, SD ± 6.9) were recruited to take part in the study and were interviewed after the last music session. The data were analyzed with thematic analysis to investigate how residents experienced group music making and its effects. The findings show that the music programs were beneficial for residents' wellbeing. Music plays an important role in their lives, both in their pasts and presently, and being involved in musical activities offers engagement and novelty in daily life, providing learning opportunities and facilitating interpersonal relationships. Moreover, these results were due to interactions with the musicians involved. Residents particularly appreciated the opportunity to listen to live performances as part of the sessions. This study suggests that nursing home residents value music and that music based interventions play an important and direct role in enhancing their wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it has extensively been argued that aesthetic categories such as beauty have a direct relationship to emotion, there has only been limited psychological research on the relationship between aesthetic judgments and emotional responses to art. Music is recognized to be an art form that elicits strong emotional responses in listeners and it is therefore pertinent to study empirically how aesthetic judgments relate to emotional responses to music listening. The aim of the presented study is to test for the impact of aesthetic judgment on various psychophysiological response measures of emotion that were assessed in parallel in two contemporary music concerts, each with a different audience and program. In order to induce different levels of aesthetic judgments in participants, we assigned them randomly to one of two groups in a between-subjects design in both concerts: One group attended a talk on the music presented, illustrating its aesthetic value, while the other group attended an unrelated talk on a non-musical topic. During the concerts, we assessed, from 41 participants in Concert 1 (10 males; mean age 23 years) and 53 in Concert 2 (14 males; mean age 24 years), different emotional response components: (a) retrospective rating of emotion; (b) activation of the peripheral nervous system (skin conductance and heart rate); (c) the activity of two facial muscles associated with emotional valence (only Concert 1). Participants listened to live performances of a selection of contemporary music pieces. After each piece, participants rated the music according to a list of commonly discussed aesthetic judgment criteria, all thought to contribute to the perceived aesthetic value of art. While preconcert talks did not significantly impact value judgment ratings, through factor analyses it was found that aesthetic judgments could be grouped into several underlying dimensions representing analytical, semantic, traditional aesthetic, and typicality values. All dimensions where then subsequently shown to be related to subjective and physiological responses to music. The findings reported in this study contribute to understanding the relationship between aesthetic judgment processes and emotional responses to music. The results give further evidence that cognitive-affective interactions have a significant role in processing music stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The effect of different auditory stimuli on short-term memory was examined (presence/absence of music/music genres). • The role of the gender was also examined. • Short-term memory was examined via a standard test for word recollection, while the sample consisted of 168 students. • Gender as a single parameter was noted to be playing a significant role in the recall process (females outperformed males). • Music as a stimulus was also found to affect the recall process significantly, but negatively, regardless of the genre. The purpose of the present research was to examine whether different music settings could influence one's cognitive function – particularly memory. The examined sample consisted of 168 college students with a male:female ratio of 1:2.2. The participants were asked to complete a short-term memory test regarding word recollection while exposed to auditory stimuli. They were divided into three groups, each experiencing very different auditory stimuli (classical music; heavy metal music; no music). The results indicated that gender (as a single parameter) played a significant role in the recall process, with female subjects achieving significantly higher scores than males (p -value = 0.006). Music as an external stimulus was also found to affect the recall process significantly (0.02 < p < 0.04). Gender did not present any statistically significant association with specific music genres although, based on the limitations of this study, findings are in need of further exploration. The results of the present study may direct forthcoming research to address this issue further by examining additional variables as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering its domain and range, folklore is a discipline suitable for interdisciplinary studies by contributing to many scientific disciplines, especially social sciences and arts, or benefiting from them. In this context, we notice that folklorists benefit from the scientific disciplines such as anthropology, linguistics, music, history, sociology and psychology at both theoretical and practical levels, and occasionally contribute to these disciplines. It is an unquestionable fact that among mentioned disciplines music, in particular, has a very wide and important place in folklore studies. Music has always appeared with its determinative and distinctive functions both in the process that covers the creation, transfer and sustainability of folklore outputs, and in the processes of defining, collecting, classifying, researching and analyzing them. In this context, even though the importance and function of music in folklore studies have been mentioned in many academic publications, musical features have been included in a specific and limited scope in a significant majority of these publications. Contrary to this situation, detailed musical analyses within the context of folklore have appeared in some studies; however, the number of these studies is limited. Considering current situation, this paper, written in the scope of Turkish folklore, has been prepared based on the view and thesis that it is important and necessary for researcher to incline to an interdisciplinary study, in its researches on musical folklore outputs, by obtaining musical knowledge or benefiting from it. In this context, the paper starts from the importance of music in the solution of the genre, form and maqam in the ashik poetry tradition. Then, it tries to explain with examples the determinative and distinctive features of music in the process of creation and transfer within the master-apprentice learning pattern in the context of ashik and Turkish epic narrative traditions; in the development and performance of religious or non-religious rituals and ritual-centred folklore outputs; the performance of folk dances; the process of creation and transfer of verse genres and forms of anonymous folk literature. The paper evaluates in which functions can be used musical items, such as rhythm (method), tune pattern (maqam/style), tempo, passages, strong pitch, increasing melodic interval size etc., within the processes of defining, collecting, researching, classification and analyzing folklore outputs that have musical features. After these evaluations, the paper discusses the necessity and importance of including musical features in studies in the period from finding and collecting to the analyzing folklore outputs within the scope of the text-centred and context-centred folklore theories. In this context, the paper puts forward the contributions which will occur as a result of the functional use of music in folklore studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MUSIC OFTEN TRIGGERS A PLEASURABLE URGE IN listeners to move their bodies in response to the rhythm. In music psychology, this experience is commonly referred to as groove. This study presents the Experience of Groove Questionnaire, a newly developed self-report questionnaire that enables respondents to subjectively assess how strongly they feel an urge to move and pleasure while listening to music. The development of the questionnaire was carried out in several stages: candidate questionnaire items were generated on the basis of the groove literature, and their suitability was judged by fifteen groove and rhythm research experts. Two listening experiments were carried out in order to reduce the number of items, to validate the instrument, and to estimate its reliability. The final questionnaire consists of two scales with three items each that reliably measure respondents' urge to move (Cronbach's α = . 92) and their experience of pleasure (α = .97) while listening to music. The two scales are highly correlated (r = .80), which indicates a strong association between motor and emotional responses to music. The scales of the Experience of Groove Questionnaire can independently be applied in groove research and in a variety of other research contexts in which listeners' subjective experience of music-induced movement and enjoyment need to be addressed: for example the study of the interaction between music and motivation in sports and research on therapeutic applications of music in people with neurological movement disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a novel set of 200 Western tonal musical stimuli (MUST) to be used in research on perception and appreciation of music. It consists of four subsets of 50 stimuli varying in balance, contour, symmetry, or complexity. All are 4 s long and designed to be musically appealing and experimentally controlled. We assessed them behaviorally and computationally. The behavioral assessment (Study 1) aimed to determine whether musically untrained participants could identify variations in each attribute. Forty-three participants rated the stimuli in each subset on the corresponding attribute. We found that inter-rater reliability was high and that the ratings mirrored the design features well. Participants' ratings also served to create an abridged set of 24 stimuli per subset. The computational assessment (Study 2) required the development of a specific battery of computational measures describing the structural properties of each stimulus. We distilled nonredundant composite measures for each attribute and examined whether they predicted participants' ratings. Our results show that the composite measures indeed predicted participants' ratings. Moreover, the composite complexity measure predicted complexity ratings as well as existing models of musical complexity. We conclude that the four subsets are suitable for use in studies that require presenting participants with short musical motifs varying in balance, contour, symmetry, or complexity, and that the stimuli and the computational measures are valuable resources for research in music psychology, empirical aesthetics, music information retrieval, and musicology. The MUST set and MATLAB toolbox codifying the computational measures are freely available at osf.io/bfxz7. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There's a lot happening in Charles Mingus's 1956 tone poem "Pithecanthropus Erectus", from the album of the same name. Building on this, he argues that there are three interconnected mental spaces: one associated with the source (such as music), one associated with the target (of which the music is trying to be a sonic analogue) and one associated with the inferred connection (Zbikowski uses the term "induced schema" for this [p. 48]) between the two sources. To this end, in Chapter 4, Zbikowski investigates the relationships between music and gesture or dance, first by discussing the coordination of music and movement in Fred Astaire's performance of "The Way You Look Tonight" from the 1936 film I Swing Time i . To make the case, Zbikowski distinguishes between music I as i gesture (in which gesture goes beyond linguistic meaning and exists most purely in music; see Blackmur 1952 and Cone 1974) and music I and i gesture (in which music and gesture are independent - albeit interdependent - forms of expression). [Extracted from the article]