Courses in Music Cognition at Eastman / University of Rochester

TH 260 (460) - Music and the Mind. Introduction to the discipline of music cognition. Topics include empirical methods, psycho-acoustic principles, influence of Gestalt psychology, music and language, metric and tonal hierarchies, music and the brain, aspects of musical development, and research on musical memory, expectation, and emotion. Offered annually spring semester; instructor, Elizabeth Marvin. Cross-listed as undergraduate or graduate course; cross-listed as Music Theory, Brain and Cognitive Sciences course.

TH 560 - Proseminar in Music Cognition. The objective of this course is to engage in professional-level music-cognitive research. The course surveys primary research in the field of music cognition and functions as a "laboratory" course in experimental method. Students discuss and critique experimental studies published in journals and monographs. In addition, the class works collaboratively to build skills in experimental design and data analysis via readings and class demonstrations/activities. Each student is expected to design and run an empirical experiment or computational project as a final research paper. Offered in alternate years; instructor alternates between Elizabeth Marvin and David Temperley; cross-listed as Music Theory, Brain and Cognitive Sciences course.

Th581 - Seminar on Music and Language. This course explores relationships between musical and linguistic structure. In addition to reading and evaluating early writings on the subject by Bernstein and Lerdahl & Jackendoff, students will assess more recent work by Huron and Patel, and the linguists Hayes and Ladd on prosodic structure. We will also discuss experimental work on prosodic structure in language and on music acquisition in infants. Co-taught by a music theorist and linguist, the course will review basic aspects of phonology, intonational phonology, meter, and memory that are relevant to music. Each student will complete a piece of original research in the form of a term paper and class presentation. Offered at the discretion of the instructors and department; co-taught by Elizabeth Marvin and Joyce McDonough (Linguistics); cross-listed as Music Theory, Linguistics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences course.

Related courses in the M.S. in Electrical Engineering:
ECE 433 Musical Acoustics
ECE 471 Computational Music
ECE 472 Audio Signal Processing for Analysis and Synthesis of Music