Content, progress and pedagogy of the module

Musical information is created, communicated and processed in a wide variety of contexts and activities.  Musical information may encode musical sound, perceived musical structure, the affective or semantic content of music, musical gestures or musical interactions. The ability to design and build effective and efficient computing systems for processing musical information requires an understanding of how such information is created, represented, communicated and processed by humans.

This course introduces experimental, theoretical, computational and neuroscientific work that has contributed to our understanding of how musical information is created, represented, communicated and processed, both in the brain and the body, when humans perform musical tasks such as listening, dancing, performing, composing and improvising.

Learning objectives

Knowledge

Students who complete this course must gain the following knowledge:

• Must understand the basic cognitive and motoric mechanisms underlying music perception and cognition when creating, communicating or interacting with music
• Must understand current theories of how perception of musical structure is influenced by cognitive and cultural variables
• Must understand current theories of how motion (embodiment) and emotion (affect) are represented and communicated by music

Skills

Students who complete this course must gain the following skills:

• Apply empirical methodologies in the design and execution of appropriate experiments for testing hypotheses in the field of music perception and cognition
• Must be able to apply knowledge on basic computational models of specific aspects of music perception and cognition (e.g., perception of musical streams, expressive timing)
• Must be able to apply theories and models of music perception and cognition

Competences

Students who complete this course must gain the following competencies:

• Must be able to apply and synthesize understanding of experimental, computational, theoretical and neuroscientific research on music perception and cognition in the design and testing of music computation systems

Type of instruction

Refer to the overview of instruction types listed in § 17.

Exam

Exams