25 April 2013, New Trends in e-Humanities, John Ashley Burgoyne

Abstract:
What makes music 'catchy'? Most of us feel that we know the 'hook' in a piece of music when we hear it – but most of us are equally at loss to explain exactly why. This talk will introduce an ongoing study of musical catchiness from the perspective of music cognition. It will begin with an an introduction to some musicological theories of musical catchiness, most of which have never been tested empirically. It will go on to describe the design of a novel experiment that will test some of these theories: a name-that-tune game for iOS and Android devices that we hope will generate the largest database available to date for studying this question. The game is currently being piloted, and after a brief discussion of how to analyse data from such an experiment and some preliminary results from the pilot, members of the audience will be invited to try the game themselves.

The e-Humanities Group is an initiative of the KNAW that brings together expertise and research in the development and use of digital technologies in the humanities and social sciences. The e-Humanities Group generally holds a research meeting every Thursday afternoon, and persons interested in the topics of the presentations are welcome to attend.

For more information, see http://ehumanities.nl/