The Society for Music Perception and Cognition recently held their conference in San Diego (CA), where the Ohio State School of Music was a dominant force. More than ten percent of all conference presentations involved School of Music-affiliated scholars. Presentations were authored by a number of current affiliates including Sarah Bishop, Andrew Brinkman, Neils Chr. Hansen, Brennan Harris, David Huron, Joungmin Lee, Hubert Léveillé Gauvin, Alissandra Reed, Lindsey Reymore, Caitlyn Trevor and Lindsay Warrenburg.

Additionally, presentations were made by a number of alumni and former affiliates, including Joshua Albrecht, Yasas Amarasinghe, Claire Arthur, Song Hui Chon, Nat Condit-Schultz, Dana DeVlieger, Edward Large, Devin McAuley, Kirsten Nisula, Peter Pfordresher, Daniel Shanahan, David Temperley and Leigh VanHandel.

School of Music Professor David Huron, theory, received the 2017 Society for Music Perception and Cognition Achievement Award—by far the youngest recipient of that organization's highest distinction.

The school’s participation was facilitated through a grant from The Humanities and the Arts Travel Grants Program (part of OSU Discovery Themes) awarded to Professor Huron. The grant application, authored by Neils Chr. Hansen, was acknowledged as a strong example of the type of program the Humanities and the Arts Discovery Theme wishes to support.

The effort was a cross-departmental research collaboration between the Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory (CSML) at the School of Music, the Language Perception Laboratory (LPL) at the Department of Psychology, and the newly founded Speech, Language and Music Lab (SLAM) at the Department of Speech and Hearing Science.

Topics presented at the conference:

TALKS

"Entropic Ebbs and Flows: The Expectancy Dynamics of Musical Phrases"
Niels Chr. Hansen Peter Vuust, Marcus Pearce, David Huron

"Twirling Triplets: The Qualia of Rotation and Musical Rhythm"
Niels Chr. Hansen, David Huron

"Do Flat-Side Harmonies and Tempo Predict Emotion of Lyrics in Popular Music?”
Hubert Léveillé Gauvin, Lindsey Reymore, Andrew Brinkman, Niels Chr. Hansen, Altug Karakurt

“Sadness versus Grief: Has research on musical ‘sadness’ conflated two different affective states?”
David Huron

“Twirling Triplets: The Qualia of Rotation and Musical Rhythm”
Niels Chr. Hansen, David Huron

“Entropic Ebbs and Flows: The Expectancy Dynamics of Musical Phrases”
Niels Chr. Hansen, Peter Vuust, Marcus Pearce, David Huron

“Drawing Listener Attention in Popular Music: Testing Five Musical Features Arising from the Theory of Attention Economy”
Hubert Léveillé Gauvin

“Do Flat-Side Harmonies and Tempo Predict Emotion of Lyrics in Popular Music?”
Hubert Léveillé Gauvin, Lindsey Reymore, Andrew Brinkmann, Niels Chr. Hansen, Altug Karakurt
 
“Psychological Description in Analysis of Liszt’s Il Penseroso”
Alissandra Reed

“Does Proper Voice Leading Sound Better?”
Lindsey Reymore (graduate student), David Huron

“Do Downbeats Influence Harmonization Preferences?”
Christopher White, Nicholas Shea, Christopher Pandiscio

POSTERS

"Does solo instrumentation convey sadness in orchestral music?"
Niels Chr. Hansen, David Huron

"Are there universal melodic tendencies? Testing fifteen purported characteristics of melodies"
David Huron, Yasas Amarasinghe, Sarah Bishop, Andrew Brinkman, Niels Chr. Hansen, Brennan Harris, Joungmin Lee, Hubert Léveillé Gauvin, Kirsten Nisula, Alissandra Reed, Lindsey Reymore, Caitlyn Trevor, Lindsay Warrenburg

“The Leading Sixth Scale Degree: A Test of Day-O'Connell's Theory”
Andrew Brinkmann, David Huron

“Signaling Fear in Horror Movie Soundtracks: The Use of Acoustic Features of Human Screams”
Caitlyn Trevor