7. The appetite for music

Music can seem captivating and integral to our lives, yet these affective dimensions are precisely the ones for which understanding remains most elusive. It is relatively straightforward to study something like musical memory by manipulating excerpts in various situations and seeing whether people remember them; however, studying the way music moves us requires deeper thought. It also represents a unique opportunity for the psychology of music. “The appetite for music” considers emotional responses to music. How does sound so easily take on such powerful associations with the life circumstances in which it was encountered? Aesthetic responses to music, musical preferences, and the motivations behind people’s interest in music are also discussed.

2. The biological origins of music

Vocal and instrumental music exists in all known human cultures. The age and ubiquity of music seem to argue that its origins are biological. But the diversity of musical practices around the world seems to argue, instead, that its origins are cultural. This diversity extends to the very notion of what constitutes music. “The biological origins of music” first considers what musical features tend to be shared across cultures. It then looks at how neuroimaging can identify the regions of the brain that engage when listening to music, how music can affect human life and wellness, and the evolutionary origins of music. It also considers whether nonhuman animals can be musical.

1. The art and science of music psychology

Music can seem to be the human behavior that is least susceptible to explanation, but a long history exists of applying various frameworks to try to understand it. The cognitive science of music integrates ideas from philosophy, music theory, experimental psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and computer modeling to answer questions about music’s role in people’s lives. The art of music psychology is to bring rigorous scientific methodologies to questions about the human musical capacity while applying sophisticated humanistic approaches to framing and interpreting the science.

4. Listening in time

Music unfolds dynamically, note by note, moment by moment. A performance cannot be taken in all at once; listeners must orient to each passing musical moment using memory systems to reconstruct events that have passed, perceptual systems to take in events that are presently sounding, and predictive mechanisms to anticipate what might happen next. All of these systems affect the experience of when individual events occur and the capacity of successive whens to cohere into distinct temporal perceptions, such as a beat, a rhythm, a beginning, or an ending. “Listening in time” considers the perception of meter and rhythm, the temporal emergence of melody and voices, and action and perception in music listening.

3. Music as language

Music can feel like it is communicating powerfully. “Music as language” considers whether music is actually a kind of language and, if so, what it means and how it conveys these meanings. As communicative systems, music and language both feature some universal components and much cultural variation. Both consist of complex auditory signals that can be visually represented in notation. Both can involve interpersonal coordination. Both combine discrete sound units into rich structures—sentences and paragraphs in the case of language, phrases and sections in the case of music. Musical grammar and musical expressivity are discussed along with learning in music and language, musical meaning, and music-language interactions.

8. The future

From its disparate roots in diverse fields, the psychology of music has coalesced since the 1980s into a cohesive research area. Yet some of music’s most compelling mysteries remain elusive. “The future” explores how the psychology of music occupies an intriguing nexus among the arts, the humanities, and the sciences. This capacity for interplay and flexible thinking seems ever more critical to the broad challenges of the twenty-first century. Current and future areas of research include corpus studies using digital tools to identify patterns in large repertoires of music, harnessing the increasing power of neuroscience to understand the circuitry that underlies musical memory in greater detail, and more sophisticated cross-cultural approaches.

6. Human musicality

What does it mean to be musical? What kind of musicality are people born with, and how does it develop in such diverse ways? The fact that the ability to perform and appreciate music varies so substantially from person to person raises questions about the nature of musical capacity and its acquisition. “Human musicality” first considers one of its central aspects—pitch perception—and outlines the difference between relative and absolute pitch. It then examines the stages of development across which people acquire musical skills and the effects of musical training. It also discusses individual differences in musical abilities and behaviors, including musical savants, amusia, and musical anhedonia.

5. The psychology of music performance

Performers occupy a special role within contemporary Western musical culture. Since two individuals can produce markedly different responses by playing the same notes, it is clear that notation fails to capture some of the most critical dimensions of musical communication. What are these dimensions? What does it take to acquire the kind of expertise in manipulating them that top-notch performers possess? How do listeners perceive and respond to them? “The psychology of music performance” tries to understand this expressive power. It considers expressivity in performance as well as its mechanics, the way that practice shapes performance, listener responses to performer choices, and the processes of creativity and improvisation.