Music:Music psychology
From Arcthon
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_psychology
Music psychology, or the psychology of music, may be regarded as a branch of psychology or a branch of musicology. It aims to explain and understand musical behavior and musical experience. Modern music psychology is mainly empirical: music-psychological knowledge tends to advance primarily on the basis of interpretations of data about musical behavior and experience, which are collected by systematic observation of and interaction with human participants. Music psychology is a field of research with practical relevance for music performance, music composition, music education, music medicine, and music therapy.
Scope
The modern, international field of music psychology is gradually exploring a multitude of issues that surround the question of why humans spend enormous amounts of time, effort, and money on musical activities. Music psychology may be regarded as scientific research about human culture. The results of this research have, and will continue to have, direct implications for matters of general concern: human values, human identity, human nature, and quality of life.
Research areas
Questions in music psychology are often difficult to answer. It is therefore necessary to subject the research literature to careful quality control procedures. These generally take the form of anonymous expert peer review, which is a standard feature of all leading music-psychological societies, conferences, and journals. Music psychologists investigate all aspects of musical behavior by applying methods and knowledge from all aspects of psychology. Topics of study include for example:
- Perception of musical sounds
- Perception of sound patterns
- Memory for music
- Absolute pitch
- everyday music listening (while driving, eating, shopping, reading...)
- musical rituals and gatherings (religious, festive, sporting, political...)
- the specific skills and processes involved in learning a musical instrument or singing in a choir
- musical behaviors such as dancing and responding emotionally to music
- development of musical behaviours and abilities throughout the lifespan
- the role of music in forming personal and group identities
- preferences: the reasons why we like some music genres and not others
- Social influences on musical preference (peers, family, experts, social background, etc.)
- the structures that we hear within music: melody, phrasing, harmony, tonality, rhythm, meter, danceability, BPM, or quasilinguistic elements such as syntax
- the psychological processes involved in musical performance, including:
- music reading, including eye movement in music reading
- improvisation
- the interpersonal/social aspects of group performance
- the composition/arrangement of music on paper or with the aid of computers
