This is your brain on Levitin

Mind Hacks has a nice description of the big NYT article on music neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. I saw Dr. Levitin's papers on Williams' Syndrome and Absolute Pitch back in 1997, and have been impressed with his work ever since. The article does a fair job at describing his research.

Can you hear me now?

My apologies about the dead air time. My plans to live blog the entire Amherst Early Music Festival were squashed by the closing of the computer lab I was using at Connecticut College. Then my darling wife decided to bring me back to the 21st century by dragging me to a tractor pull at the county fair. I had to caught up with my 20th century theory class at IU, check on my stuff moved to a new office at DePauw, empty out our old house, close the sale of said house (only took 15 months!), and get adopted by a little kitten.*

So, the Festival ended well. I performed publically on the cornetto for the first time that Saturday, with three different groups. The small groups went okay, but the best was the Saturday night concert, when I played in the orchestra for Charpentier's Mass for the Dead. My brother and his girlfriend came to that concert, which also featured the faculty in various combinations. One piece listed performers playing the fagotto, dulcian, curtal, and bajoncillo, a veritable tower of Babel orchestra. On Friday night they took me to a casino, my first and quite likely last appearance at a gambling establishment.

Today there was a great interview on the Diane Rehm Show with Daniel Levitin, a specialist in music cognition. He has written a new book, This Is Your Brain on Music, which sounds like a great introduction to the psychology of music. I plan to have the library order it, and then give you a review. He also has a website for the book, which he plans to keep updated with answers to submitted questions and new research results. Levitin has an interesting history, with experience both as a cognitive scientist and as a record producer and session musician.

So, what's new?

*My wife says, "What's up with the kitten by the pool?" I say, "What kitten?" Next thing I know, we have a second cat, an 8-week old that we've named Archie.

Rip Van Winkle

It's been exactly a month since my last posting. During this time I had a lovely nap, started the school year, enrolled my son in karate, started my daughter in piano lessons, purchased an iPhone, took another nap, remodeled my kitchen, got my puppy partially housebroken, attended countless meetings, knocked on some doors for a presidential candidate, played Mario Kart Wii, played in the DePauw Tigers pep band for the opening football game, started revising my article on phenomenology, ran a 5k, and took one more nap. I feel rested, and ready to blog again.

I'll cheat by pointing out some good musical things others have written about recently(ish):

John Scalzi and his readers discuss good film scores for Science Fiction movies. I don't know if the person who suggested Flash Gordon should be stoned or awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Speaking of MacArthur, congratulations to Alex Ross, Leila Josefowicz, and Miguel Zenon. I expect Alex to next be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the New Complexity riots.

Dave Munger has written about five music cognition topics during my nap. 1) What aspects of conducting are most important for synchronizing beats? 2) The ability of music to evoke memory. 3) Tone deafness is very rare. Bad singing is not (alas). 4) The higher prevalence of absolute pitch among Asian populations is not related to genetics. 5) Music helps learn new words.

Mind Hacks also has three music-n-psychology posts: 1) songs about anesthesia. 2) a review of a review of Daniel Levitin's latest book. 3) binaural beats and digital drugs.

Peter Sagel runs for some of the same reasons I do. I don't think I'll be able to run my upcoming half marathon in 1:30 though. I'll be ecstatic if I'm around 2 hours.

Atychiphobia

I am listening to Penn Jillette on the Nerdist podcast, and he just talked about the fear of being wrong.  He was riffing about a quote, and then pointed out the best way to find out if something is true is to say it publicly.  If it is wrong, you will be corrected.  It is only when people are willing to be caught being wrong that the truth will out, that learning will happen.  Penn is notorious for appearing fearless in stating his beliefs, and his willingness to admit when he is wrong.  But he just admitted that he still has fear of being wrong, but is also brave enough to continue despite of that fear.

I realized that this is my problem with my current writing block, and with all my previous writing blocks.  I am afraid of being caught being wrong.  Occasionally I let myself relax and write something outrageous.  Apparently I did so in my first blogging contest* entry, inspiring one judge (I think Nico Muhly?)  to call the post right, wrong, brilliant and infuriating. I also used to have a lot more humor on the blog, until with one post I manged to offend someone who let me know about it.  And since I'm not a sociopath, I do want people to like me, and therefore made the bad decision to curb my humor, especially the sarcasm.  Going through a divorce also hit me in the 'nads of affirmation.  Sometimes divorce makes people more bitter and cocky.  It made me self-effacing, questioning who I was in a very quiet way while trying to remain strong for my kids.  I've come back from the divorce, but I still have less bravery than what's good for me, something I need to fix.

So, I will make bold statements, always with the effort of being correct, but without the need to have my inner lawyer triple check each statement for accuracy.  I leave that to you, gentle readers, to point out to me in excruciating detail how I am wrong.  First up:  the key of a piece still matters in this world of equal temperament with a population of non-APers.  I'm taking this from the perspective of the listener, not the performer, though the comfort-level of the performer will affect the listener's experience.  Equal temperament did away with the characteristic "mistunings" of different keys that led to the various key characteristic charts.  And while Dan Levitin showed that most people can sing their favorite songs within a half-step of the original recording, the majority of the population cannot identify what key they just sang in, unless they studied the score (a statistically insignificant part of the population).

I believe keys matter for two reasons.  First, the timbre is affected by the key, and this is perceivable by the listener.  A string instrument that plays more open strings will have a different sound than playing more stopped strings.  An Ab4 has a different color than a Bb4 on a trumpet, due to different pipe lengths and compromises made in the instrument design.  And key choices will affect whether the music is in the high, middle, or low part of the instrument/voice's range, which will directly affect the color of the sound.  Second, the choice of key will affect that piece's relationship to surrounding pieces.  If Bach or the Ramones play everything in G major, a certain tension is created by the static nature of the timbre/key.  If a movement of a symphony is in an distantly-related key to the previous movement, the listener will experience a frisson of doubt that these movements belong together, or at least a reset of subconscious expectations. A pump-up within a song may be cheesy, but it is noticeable, because of the perceived relationship.  I have a question.  Is there an example of a pop or rock album that has a pump-up between songs?  (Song 1 is in C major.  Song 2 is in D major.  Song 3 is in Eb major, etc. etc.)

*Congratulations to Jennifer Rivera for winning, and to all of the finalists for some great writing.

Links

Cognitive Daily on Absolute Pitch.
One point about this study that Dave didn't emphasize is the bimodal distribution. Many people, myself included, regard absolute pitch as an ability that exists on a continuum. But most of the participants of this study either had no AP ability, or had very strong AP ability. Some of this might be due to the task, unlike the Levitin study that showed how many people can sing their favorite music within a semitone of the correct key.

Mind Hacks on epilepsy in rap music.

The Last Protestant Dinosaur on 20 ways to make the Episcopal liturgy more welcoming. Points 5, 6, 9, 15, 16, and 20 are about the music. One quote: "THE GLORIA (ack, ick,) this is praise? no, this is impenetrable dogma set to shitty music."
I like the Gloria's from most of the masses sung at the cathedral. And priests have such potty mouths!

The Chicago Cultural Center is hosting a discussion on the music industry going green.

I've Got Rhythm, I've Got Brains...

A free symposium on "Music, Rhythm, and the Brain" will be held at Stanford University on May 11-13. The keynote speaker is Daniel Levitin, speaking in Clark Center Auditorium at 7:30 on Friday the 11th. This speech, "Music and Flow," is open to the general public. The rest of the symposium does require registration. Here are all of the events in full detail.

Earworms

When I see this term, the first thing I think of is that scene from Star Trek II. 



Fortunately, thinking of Walter Koenig screaming is more disturbing than the idea of a song rattling around in my mind, so I'm not overly concerned by the real earworms.  There is an article in BBC News Magazine, written by Rhitu Chatterjee, talking about recent research on earworms.  Vicky Williams talks of involuntary memory, and has found suggestions that stress is a triggering factor in causing earworms.  Dan Levitin says we might have evolved with the ability to remember music well, since humans could well have used music to encode information before language developed.  The article doesn't mention that music is unique in stimulating large swathes of the brain, more than perceiving language. Thus it has more of a chance of being stored in memory, because of the redundancies involved in perception.  


 

My guess would be that most earworms involve a high level of repetition within the musical structure.  So just as Mozart was able to transcribe Allegri's Miserere after one hearing, because the subject is repeated so many times, and because the structure is so clear, an earworm song is (too) easy to remember because of the repetitive nature.

Music Cognition Chat

Seed Magazine, which sponsors ScienceBlogs, has a great discussion between Daniel Levitin and David Byrne (yes, that David Byrne). They discuss the evolution of music, Asperger's and Williams Syndrome, memory, absolute pitch, synthesia, pattern detection, the social aspects of music; running through most of the curriculum I teach in my Psychology of Music course. It is a rather informal discussion, with each of them taking turns talking about things that they are working on. But that very informal nature makes the highly informative discussion that much more impressive. (via)

Wired conductors

From NPR last weekend, Keith Lockhart was wired for physiological measurements as he conducts the Boston Pops last weekend. 5 musicians will also be measured, and 50 members of the audience. Dan Levitin of McGill University is conducting (heh) this study, in hopes to find agreements with emotion theory. Lockhart is conducting the overture from the Marriage of Figaro and Robert Kapilow's settings of Dr. Seuss stories for soprano and boy soprano (Green Eggs and Ham) or soprano and girl soprano (Gertrude McFuzz) with the orchestra. The results should be interesting.

Boston Globe article here.

Is Perfection Teachable?

In comments to my previous post, Patty of Oboeinsight asks if absolute pitch can be taught. Do a google search for Learn absolute pitch and you will find many claims that you can do just that. The French conservatory method of ear training uses fixed-Do solfège in efforts to develop absolute pitch. My conclusions are based upon my own development of quasi-AP and from listening to countless undergraduate and graduate applicants to the Eastman School of Music as an Aural Skills supervisor.

First, adults without AP can develop a memory for specific pitches. I was required to memorize A440 as an undergraduate student, which I was able to do. I can still reproduce this note whenever I want, though my accuracy is not exact (± a quarter-tone). I can also reproduce a G when I think of the beginning to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, or a C# for the beginning of Mahler's Fifth Symphony. This is because I practiced these trumpet excerpts over and over for many years, so the memory was reinforced to the point of permanence.

Second, this ability will deteriorate very quickly if it isn't practiced constantly. Students who learned AP through fixed-Do solfège did not do well at sight singing, especially if they had finished their solfège training a year or more before the audition. My ability to produce an A fluctuates with how much I practice it, though lately I've been continuously reinforced from my daughter's Suzuki practice.

Third, some people still show more propensity to develop AP skills than others, suggesting a possible genetic component.

Finally, the quasi-AP that is learned is not the same type of pitch perception as "native" APers. A person with true AP places any pitch automatically within its proper pitch-class category. AP-as-a-second-perception does not engender this automatic labelling.

For some articles on Absolute Pitch, start with W. Dixon Ward's chapter in The Psychology of Music (Diana Deutsch, ed.) Next, Daniel Levitin's "Absolute representation in auditory memory," Perception and Psychophysics, 56,(1994), 414-423; R.W. Lundin, "Can perfect pitch be learned?" Music Education Journal, 69,(1963), 49-51; and K. Miyazaki, "Absolute pitch as an inability," Music Perception, 11,(1993), 55-72. Heck, just look through many of the articles in Scholar Google. Fortunately, much of the research was done under the auspices of NIH, so it is available online.