Peer-Reviewed Talks*
*bolding indicates presenter; italicizing indicates lab students
Citation:
Spyra, J. & Woolhouse, M. H. Contribution of surface features on large-scale tonal memory. Oral presentation at ICMPC16/ESCOM16 (online). University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, 28 July-3 August 2021.
Abstract:
How strong is human memory for musical keys? Using a stimulus-matching paradigm, Woolhouse et al. (2016) addressed this question; by modifying the duration of an intervening key, they found that responses were significant for durations under 12s. Furthering this research, Farbood (2016) observed that memory for musical key remains active for 20s after modulation, provided that the intervening section repeats a single chord. These findings provide support to work by Cook (1987) who carried out conceptually similar experiments using repertoire pieces; in this case, the perception of large-scale tonal structures did not surpass a minute. In comparison, the stimuli of Woolhouse and Farbood were texturally limited: the textures in Woolhouse et al. (2016) were homophonic, while Farbood (2016) used repeated arpeggios. The use of real excerpts by Cook (1987) and the extended effects he obtained suggests that musical features—in addition to harmony—may be important in maintaining nonadjacent key relationships. The current study investigated this issue by manipulating surface musical features and their effects on nonadjacent harmonic perceptions. Two music-theoretically defined features were tested: melodic and rhythmic Figuration (e.g., suspensions and passing tones) and Activity, i.e., number of notes per beat. By replicating the stimulus-matching paradigm of Woolhouse et al. (2016), we could observe the influence of the musical surface by pairing two stimuli, identically matched except for the feature under investigation. Stimuli were segmented into three parts: X1 (key establishing sequence), Y (second key), and X2 (probe cadence either in the same key as, or in a different key to, X1). Concluding each stimulus was a probe cadence, rated by participants for goodness-of-completion. We investigated the effects of the musical surface by seeing whether the presence of surface features increased memory for the key in X1. We hypothesize that there will be a main effect of Nonadjacent Key Relationship, meaning stimuli which have matching keys between X1 and X2 (the initial and probe sections) will be rated higher, overall, than stimuli with unmatched keys. We also hypothesize that there will be a significant interaction between Nonadjacent Key Relationship and Figuration and/or Activity. There was, indeed, a significant main effect of Nonadjacent Key Relationship (F1,81 = 30.21, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.272) where matching nonadjacent keys were rated significantly higher than nonmatching. There was also a significant main effect of Figuration (F1,81 = 7.57, p < 0.05, ηp2 = 0.085) but not of Activity (p = 0.80). However, there was a significant interaction between Figuration and Activity (F1,81 = 11.85, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.128), where the ratings for conditions with both Figuration and Activity present were disproportionally higher than conditions with only Figuration or Activity and conditions with neither factor present. Unexpectedly, there was no interactions between Nonadjacent Key Relationship and either Figuration or Activity. Our results were consistent with the notion that surface musical features contribute to the establishment and maintenance of temporally nonadjacent key relationships within tonal harmonic music. The fact that there was a significant additive interaction between the two surface features suggests that these features may work closely together. More studies are needed to explore this possibility. These results also inform the design of stimuli in Music Cognition. Surface features, a small step towards more ecologically valid yet easily controllable stimuli, may have a significant effect on perceptual measurements. Finally, these findings have implications beyond our understanding of cognition and perception; they can inform composition, our understanding of music theory, and, consequently, the way we teach theory.
Cook, N. (1987). The perception of large-scale tonal closure. Music Perception, 5(2), 197-206.
Farbood, M. (2016). Memory of a tonal center after modulation. Music Perception, 34(1), 71-93.
Woolhouse, M., Cross, I., & Horton, T. (2016). Perception of nonadjacent tonic-key relationships. Psychology of Music, 44(4), 802-815.
Citation:
Spyra, J. & Woolhouse, M. H. From melody to memory: Contribution of surface features to nonadjacent key relationships. Oral presentation at Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC) Conference. New York, USA, 5-7 August 2019.
Abstract:
Temporally nonadjacent key relationships are ubiquitous in music: a passage, beginning in the tonic, may temporarily modulate before returning to the home key. However, the degree to which these structural relationships are perceived is uncertain. Previous experiments, using homophonic chord progressions (Woolhouse et al., 2016) and/or stimuli relatively devoid of surface features (Farbood, 2016), indicated that memory for a key can remain active for up to 20s after modulation. Moreover, Spyra et al. (2018) showed that melodic and rhythmic complexity enhances key-memory preservation within nonadjacent musical contexts. The current study sought to expand upon this research by presenting stimuli in which musically rich progressions (i.e. containing melody and rhythmic activity) were systematically separated from each other by intervening keys of varying durations. The experiment tested the effects of these manipulations on global key perception through harmonic closure. Stimuli consisted of three parts: X1 (key establishing sequence; tonic), Y (second key; modulation), and X2 (probe cadential sequence in the key of X1). Surface features were operationalized as the addition of melodic figuration and rhythmic activity to standard Western tonal chord progressions. Y was modified to last between 6 and 36 seconds (8 to 48 chords), well beyond the 20s time limit of previous studies. Participants were asked to rate, on a 7-point scale, the goodness of completion of X2. Analysis is pending; however, based on pilot results, we hypothesize that the addition of surface musical features will extend the effect of X1 beyond that previously measured. If confirmed, this will provide further evidence that surface musical features strengthen the perception of temporally nonadjacent key relationships. These results and possible mechanisms by which surface musical features affect nonadjacent key relationships will be presented at the conference.
Farbood, M. (2016). Memory of a tonal center after modulation. Music Perception, 34(1), 71-93.
Spyra, J., & Woolhouse, M.H. (2018). Effect of Melody and Rhythm on the Perception of Nonadjacent Harmonic Relationships. In Parncutt, R., & Sattmann, S. (Eds.) Proceedings of ICMPC15/ESCOM10, 421-425. Graz, Austria: Centre for Systematic Musicology, University of Graz.
Woolhouse, M. H., Cross, I. & Horton, T. (2016). Perception of non-adjacent tonic-key relationships. Psychology of Music. 44/4: 802–815.
Citation:
Bansal, J., Chhin, A., Zaranek, A., Noseworthy, M., Paulseth, J. & Woolhouse, M. H. Neurophysiological effects of dance technologies on the development of Parkinson’s disease. Oral presentation at 15th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition. Montréal, Canada, July 2018.
Abstract:
The combination of music and dance is increasingly seen as a remedial modality for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s (PD; Westbrook & McKibben, 1989). Spurred on by the realization of the palliative efficacy of music and dance, organizations have sprung up which provide PD-focused dance lessons, including Hamilton City Ballet’s Dance for Parkinson’s program in Ontario. Based on some of the choreography from these classes, our team has developed a dance-based technology for PD patients to use in the comfort of their own homes. The system provides users with an on-screen virtual dance instructor, which is animated using the motion-captured data of a real dancer (Woolhouse & Zaranek, 2016). Utilizing the motion-sensing capabilities of Microsoft’s Kinect camera, the virtual dance instructor adapts to a user’s movement abilities as they mimic its gestures: should a user’s movements be restricted, the instructor modifies the expressivity of its gestures accordingly. Over the past year, we conducted a pilot study examining the effects of our dance technology on physiological and psychological symptoms of PD. We tested the hypothesis that daily engagement with the system benefits three main areas of PD: (1) neurological aspects of the disease’s progression; (2) kinesthetic measures including coordination, gait timing, and balance; and (3) psychological symptoms such as emotion and motivation. The pilot study consisted of five subjects who engaged in two sessions: a 4-week control period and a 4-week intervention period. During the control period subjects maintained regular living conditions; during the intervention period subjects had the technology installed in their homes and engaged in daily dance activities. At the beginning and end of each session, three types of measures were taken: (1) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to assess neurological markers of PD including cortical thinning, brain iron content, myelin integrity, connectivity of brain networks, and blood flow rates;(2) clinical assessments of physiological and psychological measures including the United Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale and speed-coordination tasks; and (3) a subjective survey of mood and motivation. Analysis of MRI, clinical assessment, and subjective survey data is currently underway and shows promising trends for improvement of neurological, physiological, and emotional symptoms of PD throughout the intervention condition. Measures taken pre- and post- the control and intervention periods will be contrasted in data analysis. Data from the study will be used to corroborate and expand existing knowledge into the effects of music and dance on neurodegenerative disease. If the benefits of intervention prove to be substantial, which we hypothesize will be the case, it may inspire researchers and clinicians to incorporate music and dance technologies into palliative healthcare procedures. Study results will be considered and incorporated into further developments of the system, in order to maximize its therapeutic potential and optimize it to the requirements of individuals with PD.
Westbrook, B. K., & McKibben, H. (1989). Dance/movement therapy with groups of outpatients with Parkinson’s disease. American Journal of Dance Therapy, 11(1), 27-38.
Woolhouse, M. H., & Zaranek, A. (2016). Intuitive navigation in computer applications for people with Parkinson’s. Journal of Biomusical Engineering, 4(115).
Citation:
Barone, M., Dacosta, K., Vigliensoni, G., & Woolhouse, M. H. Database linking music metadata across artist, release, and track. Oral presentation at 4th International Digital Libraries for Musicology Workshop (DLfM). Shanghai, China, October 2017.
Abstract:
Linking information from multiple music databases is important for MIR because it provides a means to determine consistency of metadata between resources/services, which can help facilitate innovative product development and research. However, as yet, no open access tools exist that persistently link and validate metadata resources at the three main entities of music data: artist, release, and track. This paper introduces an open-access resource which attempts to address the issue of linking information from multiple music databases. The General Recorded Audio Identity Linker (GRAIL – api.digitalmusiclab.humanities.mcmaster.ca) is a music metadata ID-linking API that: i) connects International Standard Recording Codes (IS- RCs) to music metadata IDs from services such as MusicBrainz, Spotify, and Last.FM; ii) provides these ID linkages as a publicly available resource; iii) confirms linkage accuracy using continuous metadata crawling from music-service APIs; and iv) derives consistency values (CV) for linkages by means of a set of quantifiable criteria. To date, more than 35M tracks, 8M releases, and 900K artists from 16 services have been ingested into GRAIL. We discuss the challenges faced in past attempts to link music metadata, the methods and rationale which we adopted to construct GRAIL and to ensure it remains updated with validated information.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Guided eye movements made in response to dance. Oral presentation at 19th European Conference on Eye Movements. Wuppertal, Germany, August 2017.
Abstract:
Studies involving expert and novice viewers indicate that biological-motion schemas influence eye movements in the observation of dance (Stevens et al. 2010); some gestures and/or musical manipulations create relatively concentrated fixation clusters amongst participants, whereas others lead to more diffuse patterns (Woolhouse & Lai 2014). These, and other similar findings (e.g., Schubert et al. 2013), suggest that experienced dancers may have the ability to dictate where and how they are observed, guiding viewers’ gaze and attention in a structured manner. Which is to say, with respect to dance, the power of where to look lies not with the observer, but with the observed. We investigated the influence of specific dance gestures on eye movements, and the extent to which these influences are shared between participants. To investigate individual dancer and dancer gaze-direction effects, two females were videoed performing choreographed dance-gesture sequences under three gaze-direction conditions: (1) looking at camera; (2) looking off camera; and (3) looking at their own gestures. Simultaneously, the dancers’ biological movement data were recorded using an infrared passive-marker motion-captured system, which enabled body kinematics and moving ROIs (e.g., right hand, left foot) to be included in the analysis. Choreography included 3 anatomical groups (arms, legs, full-body), 2 action locations (peripheral, medial), 2 movement types (staccato, legato), which resulted in 12 gestures. Gestures were arranged into 2 pseudo-random orders prior to being performed and videoed. Videos were presented to 32 males/females, while an optical eye-tracking camera recorded participants’ eye movements. Results reveal the significant impact upon observers’ eye movements of dancer gaze-direction, limb type and location, and independent kinematic variables, including peak velocity, periodicity and acceleration.
Schubert, E., Vincs, K., & Stevens, C. J. (2013). Identifying regions of good agreement among responders in engagement with a piece of live dance. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 31(1), 1-20.
Stevens, C., Winskel, H., Howell, C., Vidal, L. M., Latimer, C., & Milne-Home, J. (2010). Perceiving Dance Schematic Expectations Guide Experts’ Scanning of a Contemporary Dance Film. Journal of Dance Medicine & Science, 14(1), 19-25.
Woolhouse, M. H., & Lai, R. (2014). Traces across the body: influence of music-dance synchrony on the observation of dance. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 965.
Citation:
Barone, M., Zhang, W. & Woolhouse, M. H. Influence of main-genre acoustic features on secondary musical preferences. Oral presentation at Society for Music Perception and Cognition Conference. San Diego, USA, July-August 2017.
Abstract:
Big data from digital-music services is enabling global music-consumption research to be undertaken on an unprecedented scale. Using a database of 1.3-billion music downloads, we examined whether acoustic features pertaining to individuals’ main (i.e., favourite) genres influenced the music they listened to when exploring secondary genres. For example, do people who favour Metal, which is typically faster than other styles, listen to up-tempo Jazz and/or Reggae, rather than slower tracks within these genres? We explored this issue using ten acoustic features and the download collections of over 5 million music consumers from multiple countries. Distinct feature distributions for pairs of ten genre- defined user subgroups were identified using correlation analysis; these distributions examined the degree of similarity between subgroups’ main genres and the other music within their download collections. Main-to-secondary genre influences were further explored through the production of ten “feature-influence” matrices, corresponding to the ten acoustic features within the analysis. Within each matrix, cell values indicated the percentage change in a particular feature for genres and user subgroups compared to overall population averages. Lastly, using the data subset of 3.8 million users, we investigated whether users whose main genre strongly dominated their collections exhibited a greater degree of feature influence with respect to secondary genres in comparison to users with relatively heterogeneous collections. Results strongly indicated that certain acoustic features in users’ main genres influence the music they listened to when downloading secondary genres; the intensity of this influence appears to be related to the strength of preference for the main genre. The nature of this effect, as well as its possible cognitive mechanisms, are discussed with respect to research on statistical learning, music and personality, and musical preference.
Citation:
Spyra, J., Stodolak, M.& Woolhouse, M. H. Effects of intervening keys manipulated by events and time on nonadjacent harmonic perceptions. Oral presentation at Society for Music Perception and Cognition Conference. San Diego, USA, July-August 2017.
Abstract:
Increasing the duration of an intervening contrasting key influences memory for the original, nonadjacent key. For example, Woolhouse, Cross & Horton (2016) measured nonadjacent tonic-key perception and found that increasing the duration of an intervening contrasting key decreased the global effect or memory for the original key. Subsequently, Farbood (2016) found that recollection of an original key only remained for ca 20 seconds after the beginning of a new key section. But factors other than the duration of an intervening, contrasting key might influence the cognitive processing of nonadjacent key relationships. Accordingly, using a probe-cadence paradigm, this study sought to determine whether time versus the number of musical events (chords) determined the deterioration in memory of nonadjacent key perception. Stimuli were constructed in three parts: (1) a major key was established through a standard chord progression; (2) an intervening section, either 6 or 9 seconds in duration formed from either 4 or 6 chords, was introduced in 12 possible keys; and (3) a short pause was followed by the probe cadence in the original key, i.e., the key at (1). 51 participants were asked to rate, on a scale of 1-7, the amount of harmonic closure of the probe cadence. Results confirmed previous findings on the significant negative effects of time on the influence of the initial, nonadjacent key. However, there were no significant effect of number of events, and no significant interaction between the two factors. This provides evidence that it is the length of time, not the number of musical events, in an intervening section of music that determines the recollection of the original key.
Farbood, M. M. (2016). Memory of a tonal center after modulation. Music Perception, 34(1), 71-93.
Woolhouse, M., Cross, I., & Horton, T. (2016). Perception of nonadjacent tonic-key relationships. Psychology of Music, 44(4), 802-815.
Citation:
Vempala, N., Barone, M., Russo, F. & Woolhouse, M. H. Identification of listener genre preference using the Echo Nest API features. Oral presentation at Cognitively Based Music Informatics Research Seminar (CogMIR). Columbia University, New York, USA, August 2016.
Abstract:
The extent to which subgroups of users, defined by musical preference, can be accurately identified using current, industry-standard audio features is a topic of relevance, not only to commercial music services, but also to the field of musicology more broadly (Panagakis et al., 2014; Aljanaki et al., 2015). With respect to the former, service providers may wish to recommend tracks, possibly from the long tail of their catalogs, that have unreliable or incomplete metadata (Tidhar et al., 2009; Levy & Bosteels, 2010; Zhang et al., 2012). Similarly, emerging musical styles can have track-related metadata that is either sparse or that lies outside a service provider’s current genre schema; newly evolving “Filthstep” or “Skweee” (Marino, 2015) arguably being cases in point. In these circumstances, the ability to classify users based on the audio features of their collections, and also to recommend new music to particular users based solely on audio features, could be an attractive addition or alternative to systems that rely overtly on high-quality metadata and/or collaborative filtering (Herlocker et al., 2004). Musicologically, the ontology of musical genre—ranging from audio signal to social construct (“bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches respectively)—is an active area of research. From a bottom-up perspective, the quantifiable audio features of music have enabled researchers to develop machine-learning tools that are designed to estimate musical genre automatically and objectively (Tzanetakis and Cook, 2002; McKay and Fujinaga, 2004; Poria et al., 2013). However, despite the relative success of this approach, top-down standpoints asserts that genre depends upon the social context in which the music is heard (i.e., cultural reception is key; Rentfrow and Gosling 2007), and thus that human judgments and computationally derived genre classifications are unlikely ever to align precisely (Lippens, et al., 2004). This study attempted to combine both top-down and bottom-up musical-genre information, with the specific purpose of comparing the relative performance of four different ML models. Specifically, we sought to establish the degree to which subgroups of users within a music-consumption database, defined by musical preference, could be accurately identified using industry-standard audio features. With respect to the top-down, “ground-truth” information used in this study, genre designations per track originated from record labels holding the rights to particular artists, and were therefore derived entirely from human judgements. Bottom-up information was supplied in the form of 10 extracted audio features from The Echo Nest, and included high-level attributes such as dancability, valence, and acousticness. Acting as a behavioural “link” between the top-down and bottom-up information, the users in our study comprised of 1200 individuals, all of whom had relatively extensive music-download histories. Our underlying hypothesis was as follows: that salient track-style information is contained within the audio summary features used in our study, accessed via The Echo Nest API. Accurate identification using one or more of the ML models could be considered as evidence in support of the hypothesis; failure to accurately identify users’ preferred genres would show that the hypothesis lacked support. Testing this hypothesis enabled us to critically assess the effectiveness of four ML models with respect to genre-preference detection of users.
Aljanaki, A., Yang, Y. H., & Soleymani, M. (2015, September). Emotion in music task at mediaeval 2015. In Working Notes Proceedings of the MediaEval 2015 Workshop.
Herlocker, J. L., Konstan, J. A., Terveen, L. G., & Riedl, J. T. (2004). Evaluating collaborative filtering recommender systems. ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), 22(1), 5-53.
Levy, M., & Bosteels, K. (2010). Music recommendation and the long tail. In1st Workshop On Music Recommendation And Discovery (WOMRAD), ACM RecSys, 2010, Barcelona, Spain. (pp. 55-58).
Lippens, Stefaan, Jean-Pierre Martens, and Tom De Mulder. 2004. “A comparison of human and automatic musical genre classification.” Paper published in Proceedings (ICASSP’04) of IEEE international conference on acoustics, speech, and signal processing, 2004, Montreal, Canada, May 17-21. 4: 233-236.
Marino, G. (2015). “What Kind of Genre Do You ink We Are?” Genre eories, Genre Names and Classes within Music Intermedial Ecology. In Music, Analysis, Experience: New Perspectives in Musical Semiotics, 239-54. edited by Costantino Maeder, Mark Reybrouck. Leuven University Press.
McKay, Cory, and Ichiro Fujinaga. 2004. “Automatic genre classification using large high-level musical feature sets.” Paper published in ISMIR: 5th international society for music information retrieval conference, Spain, Barcelona, October 10-15, 525-530.
Panagakis, Y., Kotropoulos, C. L., & Arce, G. R. (2014). Music genre classification via joint sparse low-rank representation of audio features. Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, IEEE/ACM Transactions on,22(12), 1905-1917.
Poria, S., Gelbukh, A., Hussain, A., Bandyopadhyay, S., & Howard, N. (2013). Music genre classification: A semi-supervised approach. In Pattern Recognition (pp. 254-263). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Rentfrow, Peter J., and Samuel D. Gosling. 2007. “The content and validity of music-genre stereotypes among college students.” Psychology of Music 35.2: 306-326.
Tidhar, D., Fazekas, G., Kolozali, S., & Sandler, M. B. (2009). Publishing Music Similarity Features on the Semantic Web. In ISMIR (pp. 447-452).
Zhang, Y. C., Séaghdha, D. Ó., Quercia, D., & Jambor, T. (2012, February). Auralist: introducing serendipity into music recommendation. In Proceedings of the fifth ACM international conference on Web search and data mining (pp. 13-22). ACM.
Samson, Jim. “Genre.” Grove Music Online, edited by L. Macy. Accessed October 20, 2014.
Tzanetakis, George, and Perry Cook. 2002. “Musical genre classification of audio signals.” Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 10.5: 293-302.
Citation:
Bansal, J., Renwick, J. & Woolhouse, M. H. Expression of acoustic features across multiple genres within individual download collections. Oral presentation at Cognitively Based Music Informatics Research Seminar (CogMIR). Ryerson University, Canada, September 2015.
Abstract:
This research examines the extent to which acoustic features pertaining to a user’s preferred genre are expressed in songs they consume in other genres. For example, do people who prefer fast-tempo dance music prefer fast-paced pop or rock music? The data used in the study are from a five-year data-sharing agreement between McMaster University and MixRadio, and consist of over 1.3 billion music downloads from countries across the globe. Previous study of user-download histories revealed that some genre-based subgroups are more heterogeneous than others with respect to genre diversity. Methodologically, the current research calculates the median and mean values for each acoustic feature and compares these with the corresponding values within genre-based subgroups. Results are pending, however initial exploration suggests that certain acoustic features of a user’s preferred genre are indeed expressed in songs they consume in other genres. The cognitive implications of this for music processing are explored.
Citation:
Barone, M., Dacosta, K., Renwick, J. & Woolhouse, M. H. GRAIL: A scalable music metadata collection interface. Oral presentation at Cognitively Based Music Informatics Research Seminar (CogMIR). Ryerson University, Canada, September 2015.
Abstract:
We introduce “GRAIL”, an interface in development that links the identity spaces of open-access metadata from diverse online music services. Companies such as Last.fm, MusicBrainz, and Discogs provide valuable access to their comprehensive corpuses of music metadata. As the music industry continues to transition to online models of delivery, such as Pandora and MixRadio, development of sophisticated decision-making applications increasingly relies upon accurately linking identity-space data. Currently, these massive libraries are somewhat disjoint, and linking these databases presents unique challenges. GRAIL eases data collection and enhances discovery for multi-disciplinary music informatics. We describe the architecture of Grail, which is scalable to petabytes of information. GRAIL is being used to develop research applications that are being tested on a database of 1.36 billion downloads provided by MixRadio. We explore the difficulties in collating digital-music information from multiple sources as well as the scalability of future music information retrieval.
Citation:
Barone, M., Rawlins, R., Vandenberg, T. & Woolhouse, M. H. Digital music consumption with respect to socio-cultural development. Oral presentation at Cognitively Based Music Informatics Research Seminar (CogMIR). Ryerson University, Canada, September 2015.
Abstract:
Previous research has linked composite measures of human development, such as those contained within the United Nations’ Human Development Report (HDR), and global-music consumption patterns. With an appreciation for the explanatory limitations of correlation, we conduct a fine-grained analysis that attempts to discover which components of human development are closely related to music consumption and those which are unrelated. Our methodology is (1) to identify salient patterns within MixRadio’s music-consumption database consisting of over 1.36 billion music downloads, such as genre dispersion and audio summary information derived from The Echo Nest, and (2) to calculate the degree of association between these features and the components of the indices in question. The indices used were from the United Nations Human Development Report and World Values Survey. The former consists of factors such as life expectancy, access to education, suicide rates and economic measures; the latter consists of religious affiliation, social and political attitudes, and information relating to post-materialism. Our findings provide insights into the degree to which music is socially embedded and a vehicle of cultural expression.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Hahn, M. Developing pedagogical connectivity in the School of the Art’s Piano Lab. Oral presentation at Learning Technologies Symposium. McMaster University, Canada, May 2015.
Abstract:
In 2012 the School of the Arts at McMaster purchased 11 digital pianos as the basis of a new piano lab within the school. In order to take advantage of this resource and to maximise its pedagogical potential, beginning in summer 2014, we developed a connectivity system whereby MIDI information can be routed between any of the pianos within the lab. Using a specially developed touch-screen user interface, the instructor is able, for example, to (1) demonstrate to the entire class, (2) connect two or more students together as a duet or piano ensemble, and (3) listen to specific students and provide feedback. In addition, using the classroom’s SMART board, a virtual keyboard can be projected upon which chord progressions are graphically shown in real time to the class, greatly increasing the pace at which musical information is communicated to students. This talk will outline the problems associated with having 11 pianos in a single room, and the ways in which technology has been used to ameliorate these problems whilst enhancing student experience in the context of keyboard-harmony pedagogy.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Renwick, J. Music as behaviour: Exploring the extent to which people with diverse genre preferences differ from one another. Oral presentation at Canadian Society for Digital Humanities Conference. Brock University, St. Catherines, Canada, May 2014.
Abstract:
Music-personality studies have proposed a possible link between an individual’s levels of extraversion, creativity and open-mindedness, and musical preference (e.g., Collingwood, 2008; North and Hargreaves, 2008; North, Desborough, and Skarstein, 2005). We use the data provided by a five-year data-sharing agreement between McMaster University and the Microsoft to explore a similar question with respect to patterns of downloading and genre preference. The Agreement gives the Digital Music Lab at McMaster access to Microsoft’s music-download database (formally owned by Nokia), presently consisting of hundreds of millions of records, with metadata attributes such as Country, User ID, Date/Time, Track, Artist, Genre, and so on. The data are organized into a relational database management system and queried using MySQL and a Python API. We investigated the following questions by undertaking an exhaustive query-based analysis: (1) To what extent do consumers of different genres represent distinct populations, and (2) if distinct populations do exist, do the members of different populations exhibit different behaviours with respect to the acquisition of music? For example, compared to consumers of pop, do rock fans acquire new songs relatively gradually, and is there a preference for historical tracks over modern tracks? An analysis of tracks belonging to rock, pop, metal and rap genres indicates a clear preference for historical tracks within the rock genre. Moreover the download trajectories of rock and metal songs are consistently “flatter” than those of pop and rap, indicating that the acquisition of rock music is more circumspect, or takes longer to unfold than pop and rap. We explore whether this is due to the existence of distinct populations or simply that individuals acquire music belonging to different genres in different ways.
Collingwood, J. (2008). Preferred Music Style Is Tied to Personality. Psych Central.
North, A., & Hargreaves, D. (2008). The social and applied psychology of music. OUP Oxford.
North, A. C., Desborough, L., & Skarstein, L. (2005). Musical preference, deviance, and attitudes towards music celebrities. Personality and individual differences, 38(8), 1903-1914.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Writing a music e-book. Oral presentation at Learning Technologies Symposium. McMaster University, Canada, May 2014.
Abstract:
This talk is based upon research activities supported by a Teaching and Learning Grant awarded to Matthew Woolhouse by MIIETL, formally the CLL. The grant helped to support a research assistant, Kyla Whelan, employed from May to August 2012. During this period, the RA and myself wrote an eBook dedicated to music-theory pedagogy using the authoring tool Vook. Entitled Second-Level Harmony: An eBook Designed to Accompany Music 2CC3, the text contains over 150 embedded audio files, enabling students to see, hear and learn musical examples simply by touching the screen. Moreover, the eBook’s file formats, epub and mobi, allows it to be used on multiple systems, including iPad and Android devices and phones. This greatly enhances the text’s portability, enabling students to access the course’s material ‘on the go’. The eBook was officially launched in Fall 2013 and sold to students via the campus bookstore. Funds raised from the sale of the text are returned to the School of the Arts, minus the bookstore’s commission, generating funds for the School. The eBook turns out to the first in-house curated course material within McMaster, an achievement that the authors are proud of and for which we are grateful to MIIETL/CLL for supporting. In addition to the eBook, our CLL-supported research into music-theory pedagogy and technology helped to generate hands-on experience that provided lasting insights into the efficacy of teaching music theory using tablet applications. The session will provide a demonstration of the book and the process by which was written.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H., Tidhar, D. & Collins, N. Music on the march: Exploring the dynamics of fame through song downloads. Oral presentation at World Social Science Forum. Montréal, Canada, October 2013.
Abstract:
In the summer of 2012, Matthew Woolhouse entered into a 5-year data sharing and cooperation agreement with the Nokia Corporation, with the objective of establishing a digital music lab at McMaster University dedicated to the analysis of the Nokia’s vast music-download database from sociocultural and musicological perspectives. Nokia currently has online music stores in some 40 countries, representing all areas of the globe; in total, over 20 million tracks are available in all genres. The data provided by Nokia cover a five-year period from 2007 to the present, which allows music-listening patterns to be studied longitudinally and at a global level. The dataset contains hundreds of millions of metadata downloads, with information pertaining to country, (anonymized) user, date, time, artist, genre, subgenre, and so on. The research presented in this paper explores how the fame of artists, bands, and their songs spreads across the globe. Two hypotheses are tested. The first proposes that the instantaneous nature of modern mass communication leads to the random spreading of fame, in which popularity arises in multiple countries more-or-less simultaneously. The second hypothesis suggests that the popularity of artists and/or songs follows certain pathways, either through the global coordination of track-release dates or, more interestingly, because some countries are consistently “ahead of the curve” with respect to spotting rising talent and musical innovation. The influence of song-type and genre will also be considered. Finally, the research will study trajectories of fame through time, and seek to understand the dynamics of the birth, life and (artistic) death of musicians and their music. Download information are organized using a relational database management system and queried using the MySQL implementation of SQL (Structured Query Language). In addition, data mining algorithms will be used to sort, filter and perform various analyses within the research.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H., Tidhar, D. & Bansal, J. “Whistle while you work”: The influence of work patterns on music downloading. Oral presentation at Society for Music Perception and Cognition Conference. Toronto, Canada, August 2013.
Abstract:
In the summer of 2012, Matthew Woolhouse entered into a 5-year data sharing and cooperation agreement with the Nokia Corporation, with the objective of establishing a digital music lab at McMaster University dedicated to the analysis of the Nokia’s vast music-download database from sociocultural and musicological perspectives. Nokia currently has online music stores in some 40 countries, representing all areas of the globe; in total, over 20 million tracks are available in all genres. The data provided by Nokia cover a five-year period from 2007 to the present, which allows music-listening patterns to be studied longitudinally and at a global level. The dataset contains hundreds of millions of metadata downloads, with information pertaining to country, (anonymized) user, date, time, artist, genre, subgenre, and so on. This research focuses on the extent to which music downloading is influenced by patterns of work across twenty-four-hour, weekly, and seasonal timescales. For example, in many nations there is typically a surge in music downloading on Mondays as people prepare for their working week and its associated commute. Across a 24-hour period music downloading peaks in the mid- to late evening as people relax and (presumably) unwind. In addition, a secondary peak occurs at midday, during the workday lunch hour. These and other related download patterns raise the following questions. How do the dynamics of the working day influence genre selection? What are the overall tempo changes across the working day? Are some genres/artists more suited to pre-work than to post-work situations? And how are downloading patterns influenced by the work and cultural practices of various countries? The presentation will explore these and other questions, and in so doing will aim to illuminate the multiple ways in which music is used in relation to work across the globe.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H., Collins, N. & Renwick, J. Tracking tracks through time: Exploring the changing fortunes of artists and songs via music downloading. Oral presentation at Society for Music Perception and Cognition Conference. Toronto, Canada, August 2013.
Abstract:
In the summer of 2012, Matthew Woolhouse entered into a 5-year data sharing and cooperation agreement with the Nokia Corporation, with the objective of establishing a digital music lab at McMaster University dedicated to the analysis of the Nokia’s vast music-download database from sociocultural and musicological perspectives. Nokia currently has online music stores in some 40 countries, representing all areas of the globe; in total, over 20 million tracks are available in all genres. The data provided by Nokia cover a five-year period from 2007 to the present, which allows music-listening patterns to be studied longitudinally and at a global level. The dataset contains hundreds of millions of metadata downloads, with information pertaining to country, (anonymized) user, date, time, artist, genre, subgenre, and so on. The research presented in this paper explores the ways in which the fame of artists, bands, and their songs spreads across the globe. Two hypotheses are tested. The first proposes that the instantaneous nature of modern mass communication leads to the random spreading of fame, in which popularity arises in multiple countries more-or-less simultaneously. The second hypothesis suggests that the popularity of artists and/or songs follows certain pathways, either through the global coordination of track-release dates or, more interestingly, because some countries are consistently “ahead of the curve” with respect to spotting rising talent and musical innovation. The influence of song-type and genre will also be considered. Finally, the research will study trajectories of fame longitudinally through time, and seek to understand the dynamics of the birth, life and (artistic) death of musicians and their music. Download information are organized using a relational database management system and queried using the MySQL implementation of SQL (Structured Query Language). In addition, data mining algorithms will be used to sort, filter, and perform various analyses used within the research.
Citation:
Lai, R., Woolhouse, M. H. & Kuperman, V. The influence of music-dance synchrony on eye fixations and dwell times. Oral presentation at Society for Music Perception and Cognition Conference. Toronto, Canada, August 2013.
Abstract:
In a previous study investigating entrainment and person perception, in-tempo dancing with others was found to enhance memory for incidental person attributes (Woolhouse & Tidhar, 2010). The experiment used 40 dancers (all of whom were unaware of the experiment’s aim), multi-channel silent-disco radio headphones, a marked-up dance floor, two types of music, and memory identifiers (sash colors and symbols). In each trial, 10 dancers wore radio headphones and different coloured sashes, some of which carried symbols. Using “silent-disco” technology, one type of music was surreptitiously transmitted to half the dancers, while music at a different tempo was transmitted to the remaining dancers. Pre-experiment the dancers’ faces were photographed; post-experiment each dancer was presented with the photos of the other dancers and asked to recall their memory identifiers (sash color and symbol). The results showed that in-tempo dancing significantly enhanced memory for sash color and symbol. Although the memory effect outlined above was robust, the process(es) by which it is actuated is/are not known. In this current study, two hypotheses were investigated: that enhanced memory for person attributes is the result of (1) increased gaze time between in-tempo dancers, and/or (2) greater attentional focus between in-tempo dancers. To explore these possible mechanisms, the research moved from the dance floor to an eye-tracking lab. Here, participants watched videos of pairs of dancers in which only one of the dancers was synchronized with the music, the other being asynchronous. Participants were asked to watch the dancers and to tap in time to the music. In the subsequent analysis, gaze dwell time served as the dependent variable of interest in the current study. The data were computed for each condition defined by the factorial combination of synchrony of music and dance (1. fast dance, slow music, 2. fast dance, fast music, 3. slow dance, slow music, 4. slow dance, fast music), horizontal (1, left, 2. right), vertical (1. top, 2. bottom), and colour (1, blue, 2. red). A four-factor (synchrony, horizontal, vertical, and colour) within-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA) performed on dwell time revealed a significant main effect of synchrony of dance and music, F(3,736)=18.590, p<.001, such that participants spent a longer time looking at dancers in synchrony with the music than when they are out-of-sync. In addition, there was a significant main effect of vertical, F(1, 736)=317.448, p<.001, such that there was increased dwell time on the head and torso of the dancer than for the legs. In addition, there was a significant interaction of synchrony of music and dance, and vertical, F(3,736)=22.467, p<.001. To assess the tapping data, we employed the median absolute deviation (MAD) statistic. Inter-onset-interval (IOI) served as the dependent variable. The IOIs were computed for each condition, defined by the factorial combination of music-tempo (1. fast, 2. slow) and gaze-synchrony (1. synchronous dancer, 2. asynchronous dancer) factors and were submitted to a within-subjects ANOVA. The analysis did not reveal a significant main effect of either tempo or synchronicity of gaze; nor were there any interactions. However, overall, there was an apparent trend in the data, suggesting that participants were better at entraining to the tempo under the asynchronous gaze condition than the synchronous gaze condition. The results were consistent with the first hypothesis: that music-dance synchrony gives rise to increased visual inspection (dwell/gaze) times. In addition, the data show a preference for torso- and head-directed (rather than leg-directed) fixations across both synchronous and asynchronous conditions. However, the results do not support the second hypothesis: that people do entrain better to synchronous audio-dance conditions.
Woolhouse, M. H. & Tidhar, D. (2010). ‘Group dancing leads to increased person perception.’ Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition, pp605-608. Seattle, USA.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Renwick, J. Trajectories of fame: Mapping the life and death of artists and songs through music downloading. Oral presentation at Canadian Society for Digital Humanities Conference. Victoria, Canada, June 2013.
Abstract:
In the summer of 2012, Matthew Woolhouse entered into a 5-year data sharing and cooperation agreement with the Nokia Corporation, with the objective of establishing a digital music lab at McMaster University dedicated to the analysis of the Nokia’s vast music-download database from sociocultural and musicological perspectives. Nokia currently has online music stores in some 40 countries, representing all areas of the globe; in total, over 20 million tracks are available in all genres. The data provided by Nokia cover a five-year period from 2007 to the present, which allows music-listening patterns to be studied longitudinally and at a global level. The dataset contains hundreds of millions of metadata downloads, with information pertaining to country, (anonymized) user, date, time, artist, genre, subgenre, and so on. The research presented in this paper explores the ways in which the fame of artists, bands and their songs spreads across the globe. Two hypotheses are tested. The first proposes that the instantaneous nature of modern mass communication leads to the random spreading of fame, in which popularity arises in multiple countries more-or-less simultaneously. The second hypothesis suggests that the popularity of artists and/or songs follows certain pathways, either through the global coordination of track-release dates or, more interestingly, because some countries are consistently “ahead of the curve” with respect to spotting rising talent and musical innovation. The influence of song-type and genre will also be considered. Finally, the research will study trajectories of fame longitudinally through time, and seek to understand the dynamics of the birth, life and (artistic) death of musicians and their music. Download information are organised using a relational database management system and queried using the MySQL implementation of SQL (Structured Query Language). In addition, data mining algorithms will be used to sort, filter and perform various analyses used within the research.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. From metadata to meaning: Exploring 1.8 million music downloads from 13 countries. Oral presentation at Canadian University Music Society Conference. Victoria, Canada, June 2013.
Abstract:
This presentation will report findings from a previous study in which 1.8 million anonymized music downloads from 13 countries, supplied by the Nokia Corporation, were analysed from sociocultural perspectives. The data were generated by Nokia’s online music stores, which allow users to purchase and download music directly onto a mobile device or home computer. The research explored factors such as the level of musical diversity and individual adventurousness within each country and download patterns and genre changes across 24 hours. Some of these findings were then correlated with demographic measures such as language acquisition and migration. In addition, countries’ musical genre preferences were matched with music preference-personality measures (North, 2010; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003) to derive a profile of “national characteristics” for each country. The research revealed numerous intriguing differences and similarities between countries from the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
North, A.C. 2010. Individual Differences in Musical Taste. American Journal of Psychology, 123(2): 199-208.
Rentfrow, P.J. & Gosling, S.D. 2003. The do re mi’s of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(6): 1236-1256.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H., Tidhar, D. & Bansal, J. Songs from overseas: Music downloading as a marker of migration. Oral presentation at 41st Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of Information Science. Victoria, Canada, June 2013.
Abstract:
Findings from the Digital Music Lab in Association with Nokia at McMaster University are reported. Diasporas and migration patterns are studied by comparing the popularity of genres in their “mother” country, i.e., place of origin, with their popularity in subsequent host countries. The human stories that underlie these comparisons, whether related to work, war, famine, or simply the desire to “seek a better life” are, where possible, linked to the research findings.
Résumé:
Les résultats du Digital Music Lab en association avec Nokia à l’Université McMaster sont rapportés. Les diasporas et les schémas migratoires sont étudiés en comparant la popularité des genres dans leur pays « mère », c’est-à-dire leur lieu d’origine, avec leur popularité dans les pays d’accueil ultérieurs. Les histoires humaines qui sous-tendent ces comparaisons, qu’elles soient liées au travail, à la guerre, à la famine ou simplement au désir de « chercher une vie meilleure » sont, dans la mesure du possible, liées aux résultats de la recherche.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, it’s off to work we go: The influence of employment patterns on music downloading. Oral presentation at International Association for the Study of Popular Music Conference. Hamilton, Ontario, May 2013.
Abstract:
In the summer of 2012, Matthew Woolhouse entered into a 5-year data sharing and cooperation agreement with the Nokia Corporation, with the objective of developing a lab dedicated to the analysis of the Nokia’s vast music-download database from sociocultural and musicological perspectives. Nokia currently has online music stores in some 40 countries, representing all areas of the globe; in total, over 20 million tracks are available in all genres. The data provided by Nokia cover a five-year period from 2007 to the present, which allows music-listening patterns to be studied longitudinally and at a global level. The dataset contains hundreds of millions of metadata downloads, with information pertaining to country, (anonymized) user, date, time, artist, genre, subgenre, and so on. In line with the theme of the conference, the presentation will focus on the extent to which music downloading is influenced by patterns of work across twenty-four-hour, weekly and seasonal timescales. For example, in many nations there is typically a surge in music downloading on Mondays as people prepare for their working week and its associated commute. Across a 24-hour period music downloading peaks in the mid- to late-evening as people relax and (presumably) unwind. In addition, a secondary peak occurs at midday, during the workday lunch hour. These and other related download patterns raise the following questions. How do the dynamics of the working day influence genre selection? What are the overall tempo changes across the working day? Are some genres/artists more suited to pre-work than to post-work situations? And how are downloading patterns influenced by the work and cultural practices of various countries? The presentation will explore these and other questions, and in so doing will aim to illuminate the multiple ways in which music is used in relation to work across the globe.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Whelan, K. An evaluative assessment of using interactive technologies to teach music theory. Oral presentation at Conference of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Hamilton, Ontario, October 2012.
Abstract:
This paper reports the findings of a six-week study, conducted from mid-February to early April 2012, in which electronic tablet and Smartboard technologies were used to teach music theory to second-year students at McMaster University. Two problems commonly associated with teaching music theory are (1) that traditional methods afford only limited interaction between students and professor, and (2) that current classroom arrangements restrict the ability of students to hear the music they write. To address these problems, we took two music theory classes (n = ca 20 per class), which had previously been taught in conventional classrooms, into the Wong e-Classroom in the Mills Memorial Library at McMaster University. Here students were able to tackle in-class harmony exercises using iPads running the NOTION music “app”, which gave them instant auditory feedback and allowed them to correct errors through repeated listening. Moreover, the instructor was able to display an individual’s work to the entire class via a large-screen Apple TV so that everyone could see and hear their work and respond. Current research suggests that students respond positively to technology in the classroom, and with hundreds of software applications now available to students and teachers, educational possibilities are expanding rapidly (Shillingford, 2011). A considerable amount of experimentation is being undertaken in relation to the pedagogical potential of new technologies in the classroom, especially iPads (Rodriguez, 2011). It is commonly accepted that iPads offer great potential in the classroom, but exactly how they should be used is still under debate (Valstad, 2010). To assess the effectiveness of our approach, following the students’ course of instruction, with the help of the Centre for Leadership in Learning at McMaster University data comparing the two teaching environments – conventional versus Wong e-Classroom – were gathered from the students through a detailed questionnaire and focus group. Following a demonstration of the technology and pedagogical processes adopted in the Wong e-Classroom, this presentation will provide an assessment of the project’s success in term of students’ learning outcomes derived from the questionnaire and focus group. Moreover, we will report how shortcomings and limitations in the application software were fed back to the developers so that future educational demands can be adequately met. Finally, we will outline a related project aimed at converting the theory component of the music curriculum at McMaster into an interactive iBook. We would like to express our thanks to members of the Centre for Leadership in Learning, and Jeff Trzeciak and Dale Askey of the Mills Memorial Library for generously supporting this project with their time and expertise. Funding for the iBook project was provided by McMaster University as part of Teaching & Learning Grants provided by the Centre for Leadership in Learning.
Rodriguez, E. (2011). Forget textbooks: It’s iPads for all at Lake high school. Orlando Sentinel, July 27 2011.
Shillingford, D. (2011). MIDI and Other Technology in the Music Classroom. MIDI Technology MUC 1342.
Valstad, H. (2010). Norwegian University of Science and Technology iPad as a pedagogical device. Program.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Tidhar, D. Querying 1.8 million music downloads from 13 countries. Oral presentation at 40th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of Information Science. Waterloo, Ontario, May 2012.
Abstract:
Findings from an international study are reported in which music download data supplied by the Nokia Corporation were analyzed from sociocultural perspectives. Novel methods capturing musical diversity and adventurousness were employed for each country in the study. Current research involving download data and Music Information Retrieval are also discussed.
Résumé:
Les résultats d’une étude internationale seront discutés. Les données relatives aux téléchargements de musique fournies par Nokia Corporation sont analysées selon une perspective socioculturelle. De nouvelles méthodes de capture de la diversité musicale et du degré d’aventure ont été utilisées pour chaque pays de l’étude. Seront également discutés la recherche actuelle sur le téléchargement de musique et le repérage de l’information musicale.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Whelan, K. Harmonizing the tablet to sugar the pill: Using interactive iPad and SMART technology to teach music theory. Oral presentation at Learning Technologies Symposium. McMaster University, April 2012.
Abstract:
This practical session will demonstrate how we have been using iPads and SMART technology to deliver music theory to second-year McMaster music students. Traditional methods of teaching music theory present two main problems. First, interaction between the instructor and students is restricted, as well as between students and their peers. The instructor cannot easily attend to the needs of an individual student or play their music, because doing so disturbs the (quiet) concentration of other students. Second, music harmony requires auditory feedback for students to recognize mistakes and find options for correcting them. Using the interactive technologies available in the Wong e-Classroom we have attempted to overcome these problems: iPads running the music “app” NOTION enables students to hear their work in real time, and for it to be projected and discussed within class; the SMART board running music software Sibelius allows the instructor to demonstrate technical issues with relative ease.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Tidhar, D. Exploring dance interaction and person perception using silent disco technology. Oral presentation at Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology, CIM10 Nature Versus Culture. Sheffield University, UK, July 2010.
Abstract:
Previous research (Macrae et al., 2008; Miles, et al., 2009) has found that synchronized limb movements assist social memory, i.e., people who move their hands in time with each other, remember more about each other. We explored the above finding in the context of dance and music, and investigated the following hypothesis: music-induced motor coordination between individuals (as in dance) leads to increased person perception (i.e., people who dance in time with each other, remember more about each other), and thus may facilitate social bonding. In our experiment, we used radio headphones, a marked-up dance floor, two types of music, and memory identifiers (sash colours and symbols). Each dancer wore radio headphones, and a different coloured sash and symbol. Ten dancers were split into two groups, A and B. Using silent disco technology, one type of music was transmitted to group A while at the same time another type of music was transmitted to group B. The types of music were distinguished by tempo and mood. Each dancer was allocated a specific position on dance floor such that (s)he was equidistant from identical numbers of dancers in each group. To control for physical proximity effects, at regular time intervals the dancers moved to other positions on the dance floor so that all the dancers were adjacent to one other at some point within the experiment. Pre-experiment, the dancers were photographed. Post-experiment, the dancers were presented with photographs of all the other dancers and asked to recall each dancer’s sash colour and sash symbol. To avoid the adoption conscious memory strategies during the experiment, the participants were ignorant of the existence of this memory task prior to being presented with the photographs of the other dancers. The results, to be presented at the conference, were analysed in order to assess whether dancing at the same tempo as other people significantly enhances sash colour and sash symbol memory, and, by implication, thereby facilitates and/or enhances person perception and social bonding.
K. Miles, Nind, L. K. and Macrae, C.N. (2009). The rhythm of rapport: Interpersonal synchrony and social perception. Journal of experimental social psychology. Vol. 45, no3, pp. 585-589.
Macrae, C. Neil; Duffy, Oonagh K.; Miles, Lynden K.; Lawrence, Julie. (2008). A case of hand waving: Action synchrony and person perception. Cognition. Vol. 107, no2, pp. 718-728.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Tidhar, D. Silent-disco project. Oral presentation at Interdisciplinary workshop: Entrainment, Joint Action and Ensemble. Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, December 2009.
Abstract:
Recent research has shown that synchronised limb movement assists social memory; for example, people who move their hands in time with each other, remember more about each other. We sought to explore this finding in the context of dance and music. We hypothesised that music-induced motor coordination between individuals (as in dance) leads to increased person perception, i.e., people who dance in time with each other, remember more about each other. In this experiment we used radio headphones, a marked-up dance floor, two types of music, and memory identifiers (sash colours and symbols). Each dancer wore radio headphones, and a different coloured sash and symbol. Ten dancers were split into two groups, A and B. Using silent disco technology, one type of music was transmitted to group A while at the same time another type of music was transmitted to group B. The types of music were distinguished by tempo and/or mood. Each dancer was allocated a specific position on dance floor such that (s)he was equidistant from identical numbers of dancers in each group. To control for physical proximity effects, at regular time intervals the dancers moved to other positions on the dance floor so that all the dancers were adjacent to one other at some point within the experiment. Pre-experiment, the dancers were photographed. Post-experiment, the dancers were presented with photographs of all the other dancers and asked to recall each dancer’s sash colour and sash symbol. The results showed that dancing at the same tempo as other people significantly enhances sash colour and sash symbol memory, and, by implication, thereby facilitates and/or enhances person perception and social bonding.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Modelling the influence of metre on tonal attraction. Oral presentation at 7th Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. Jyväskylä, Finland, August 2009.
Abstract:
Woolhouse & Cross (2006) presented a formal grouping model that describes the level of tonal attraction between adjacent harmonies. The model is based on the interval cycle proximity hypothesis, which states: within a tonal context, the feeling of attraction between successive pitches or chords is a function of the sum of the interval cycles formed between these events. An interval cycle is the minimum number of iterations of an interval that are required for the original pitch classes to be restated—a property that is hypothesized to lead to abstract grouping and, subsequently, tonal attraction. An important but untested aspect of the model is the way in which metre (at the level of beat, bar, sub-phrase, and phrase) impacts on tonal attraction. Referred to as “metrical expectation”, this component attempts to model how metre influences our anticipation of phrase closure: it is hypothesized that the stronger the anticipation of phrase closure the higher the level of tonal attraction, and vice versa. The research aims to test the accuracy of the metre component, and therefore to ascertain whether its inclusion within the larger model of tonal attraction is empirically justified. An objective reaction time priming paradigm will be used in a series of experiments, in which subjects are required to identify detuned or timbre-altered chords within grammatically regular musical phrases. Multiple examples of phrases will be used to ameliorate the confounding effects of harmony. It is conjectured that due to attention resource allocation effects, reaction times will be a function of “metrical expectation”, in that positions within a phrase that the model associates with high anticipation of closure will elicit quicker reactions times than positions within a phrase that are associated with low anticipation of closure. The data will be analyzed and modelled using standard statistical techniques, including ANOVA and regression. The findings and implications will be discussed with respect to other metrical models and within the framework of the pre-existing research into musical expectation.
Woolhouse, M. H. & Cross, I. (2006). An interval cycle-based model of pitch attraction. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition, 763-771, Bologna, Italy.
Citation:
Rohrmeier, M. & Woolhouse, M. H. Is there a relationship between pitch attraction and generative grammar in Western tonal music? Oral presentation at 10th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition. Sapporo, Japan, August 2008.
Abstract:
Despite recent theoretical and empirical advances linking language and music, an important question remains unanswered: how is a particular chord and/or tone allotted to a particular position within a grammatically structured musical phrase? For example, in a statistical study by Rohrmeier (2005) of the frequencies of diatonic chord progressions in Bach chorales, chord II was five times more likely to follow chord IV than to precede it; chord I followed chord V twice as often as preceding it, and so on. This research draws together the two existing lines of research with the aim of showing how local and possibly global dependency relationships specified in Rohrmeier’s (2007) generative grammar may be linked to and supported by chord attraction levels as specified in Woolhouse’s (2007) interval cycle proximity model. It will be argued that, to a large degree, the generative rules of tonal harmony can be explained and understood in terms of pitch attraction. Woolhouse & Cross (2006) presented a formal, chord-to-chord grouping model that describes the level of attraction between adjacent harmonies and/or pitches. The model is based on the interval cycle proximity hypothesis, which states: within a tonal context, the feeling of attraction between successive pitches or chords is a function of the sum of the interval cycles formed between these events. (An interval cycle is the minimum number of iterations of an interval that are required for the original pitch classes to be restated – a property that give rise to abstract grouping). The model was tested empirically and found to predict listeners’ experience of pitch attraction to a high degree (Woolhouse & Cross, 2006; 2004). The model also provides an explanation of chord-order and asymmetrical dependency relationships within tonal music. Rohrmeier (2007) proposes a hierarchical, generative grammar account of harmonic progressions. The grammar is grounded on several rules, which account for both adjacent dependency relationships, as well as prolongational or non-adjacent aspects of a musical phrase. The generative grammar shows that relatively few rules specifying elaborations of cadential harmony are required to account for a large range of tonal progressions – a finding that may imply that tonal music is based upon elaborations of cadential harmony. The research holds out the possibility of providing a more coherent, potentially unified explanation for chord-order in music, and thus aims to advance our understanding of the formation of tonal-harmonic music as implicit generative musical grammar.
Rohrmeier, M. (2005) Towards modelling movement in music: Analysing properties and dynamic aspects of pc set sequences in Bach’s chorales. MPhil Thesis. University of Cambridge, 2005. Published as Darwin College Research Reports 04.
Rohrmeier, M. (2007) A generative grammar approach to diatonic harmonic structure. In Spyridis, Georgaki, Kouroupetroglou, Anagnostopoulou (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th Sound and Music Computing Conference, pp97-100
Woolhouse, M. H. (2007). Interval Cycles and the Cognition of Pitch Attraction in Western Tonal-Harmonic Music. Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Woolhouse, M. H. & Cross, I. (2006). An interval cycle-based model of pitch attraction. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition, pp763-771, Bologna, Italy.
Woolhouse, M. H. & Cross, I. (2004). The role of interval periodicity in hierarchical pitch perception. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition, pp486-492, Evanston, Ill., USA.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Rohrmeier, M. The role of pitch attraction in the formation of generative musical grammar. Oral presentation at Music, Language, and the Mind Conference. Tufts, USA, July 2008.
Abstract:
Despite recent theoretical and empirical advances linking language and music, an important question remains unanswered: how is a particular chord and/or tone allotted to a particular position within a grammatically structured musical phrase? For example, in a statistical study by Rohrmeier (2005) of the frequencies of diatonic chord progressions in Bach chorales, chord II was five times more likely to follow chord IV than to precede it, chord I followed chord V twice as often as preceding it, and so on. Woolhouse & Cross (2006) presented a formal, chord-to-chord grouping model that describes the level of attraction between adjacent harmonies and/or pitches. The model is based on the interval cycle proximity hypothesis, which states: within a tonal context, the feeling of attraction between successive pitches or chords is a function of the sum of the interval cycles formed between these events. (An interval cycle is the minimum number of iterations of an interval that are required for the original pitch classes to be restated – a property that give rise to abstract grouping). The model was tested empirically and found to predict listeners’ experience of pitch attraction to a high degree (Woolhouse & Cross, 2006; 2004). The model also provides an explanation of chord-order and asymmetrical dependency relationships within tonal music. For example, within the model chord V is more strongly attracted to chord I (0.807, within a range of 0 to 1) than chord I is to chord V (0.735); this may account for some major empirical frequency-of-occurrence distributions as, for example, outlined in paragraph 1 above. In addition to diatonic chords, the attraction of chromatic harmony can also be modelled. For example, the French 6th (Db, F, G, B) is very strongly attracted to its usual pitch/chord of resolution (C, 0.892). Rohrmeier (2007) proposes a hierarchical, generative grammar account of harmonic progressions. The grammar is grounded on a number of rules, which account for both adjacent dependency relationships, as well as prolongational or non-adjacent aspects of a musical phrase. The generative grammar shows that relatively few rules specifying elaborations of cadential harmony are required to account for a large range of tonal progressions – a finding that may imply that tonal music is based upon elaborations of cadential harmony. The presentation will focus largely on drawing together these two lines of research with the aim of showing how local and global dependency relationships specified in the generative grammar may be linked to and supported by chord attraction levels as specified in the interval cycle proximity model. The research holds out the possibility of providing a coherent, potentially unified explanation for chord-order in music, and aims to advance our understanding of the formation of tonal-harmonic music as implicit generative musical grammar.
Rohrmeier, M. (2005) Towards modelling movement in music: Analysing properties and dynamic aspects of pc set sequences in Bach’s chorales. MPhil Thesis. University of Cambridge, 2005. Published as Darwin College Research Reports 04.
Rohrmeier, M. (2007) A generative grammar approach to diatonic harmonic structure. In Spyridis, Georgaki, Kouroupetroglou, Anagnostopoulou (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th Sound and Music Computing Conference, pp97-100
Woolhouse, M. H. & Cross, I. (2006). An interval cycle-based model of pitch attraction. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition, pp763-771, Bologna, Italy.
Woolhouse, M. H. & Cross, I. (2004). The role of interval periodicity in hierarchical pitch perception. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition, pp486-492, Evanston, Ill., USA.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H., Cross, I. & Horton, T. The perception of non-adjacent harmonic relations. Oral presentation at 9th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition. Bologna, Italy, August 2006.
Abstract:
Most research on cognition of harmonic relations has focused on the experience of relations between successive events. Yet a major feature of theories of harmony is elucidation of relationships between non-adjacent events. The present study seeks to address this issue empirically. A series of pilot studies demonstrated that listeners can be sensitive to relations between non-adjacent harmonic events, and two larger-scale studies have extended these findings, in the process providing new evidence concerning the cognitive structure of fifth relations. The aim of this study is to explore: (a) the extent to which listeners with different levels of musical training exhibited sensitivity to non-adjacent harmonic events; and (b) whether such sensitivities are in accord with music-theoretic accounts of harmonic relations. Two studies were conducted using a probe-cadence paradigm. The first used sequences of nine chords which started in one key and modulated to another, all possible modulations being employed. Each sequence was followed by a cadence (V-I) which could be in any key (including the initial and terminal keys of the sequence), which listeners were required to rate for its closural properties in respect of the entire sequence. Listeners’ responses were compared with those in a control condition involving non-modulating sequences. In the second, modulating sequences were used in which the proportion of the total sounding duration of the sequence in the second key was varied. Listeners again responded by rating probe-cadences in a range of keys. The results fit with the predictions of Reimannian harmonic theory, in that sequences which modulate to keys that can be interpreted as “functional” in the context of the initial key elicit higher ratings for the initial key than sequences in which the modulation is to a non-functional key. Moreover, listeners’ experience of increasing key “distance” from an initial key follows a pattern analogous to an inverse-square function. Listeners with different musical backgrounds are sensitive to relations between non-adjacent harmonic events, though that sensitivity is dependent on the nature of the relationship and on sequence duration.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Cross, I. An interval cycle-based model of pitch attraction. Oral presentation at 9th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition. Bologna, Italy, August 2006.
Abstract:
Although a substantial body of literature and empirical research exists which addresses the idea of perceived attraction between pitches (Krumhansl, 1996; Lerdahl, 2001; Larson, 2004), to date no model has been proposed in which specifications for pitch attraction may be formally grounded. Furthermore, although several formal properties of pitch-class structures correspond with certain music-theoretic processes (Balzano, 1982), no link has been established between either these properties or the concept of pitch attraction in the formation of tonal hierarchies (Krumhansl, 1990). This paper presents a computational model of pitch attraction built on the formal property of interval cycles (Woolhouse & Cross, 2004). Experimental research, currently under way, aims to investigate the applicability of the model to the pitch attraction properties of harmonic structures from a number of different music-historical style-periods. The pitch attraction of chord transitions is modelled graphically in the form of pitch-attraction profiles; pitch attraction profiles based on interval cycles correlate significantly with tonal hierarchies recovered by Krumhansl (1990), Brown, Butler & Jones (1994), and Lamont & Cross (1994). Preliminary studies are at present assessing the efficacy of several different experimental methods aimed at measuring listeners’ experience of pitch attraction. Initial results suggest that an attraction-rating paradigm will be used in which listeners’ response profiles will be correlated with the predictions of the model. Experiments testing both ‘real music’ chord-to-chord transitions as well as context-free chord-pair transitions are scheduled for testing in late January and February 2006. In addition to interval cycles, the model also contains several ‘bolt-on’ psychoacoustic components that depending on the musical style being modelled may or may not require inclusion (for example, the effective modelling of diatonic pitch attraction requires a relatively large number of psychoacoustic components). An additional aspect of the research, therefore, involves exploration of the relative balance between cognitive (interval cycle-based) and psychoacoustic constituents inherent in a given musical style-period.
Balzano, G. J. (1982). The pitch set as a level of description for studying musical pitch perception. In Music, mind, and brain (pp. 321-351). Springer, Boston, MA.
Brown, H., Butler, D., & Jones, M. R. (1994). Musical and temporal influences on key discovery. Music Perception, 11(4), 371-407.
Krumhansl, C. L. (1996). A perceptual analysis of Mozart’s Piano Sonata K. 282: Segmentation, tension, and musical ideas. Music Perception, 13(3), 401-432.
Krumhansl, C. L. (1990). Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch, volume 17 of. Oxford Psychology Series.
Lamont, A., & Cross, I. (1994). Children’s cognitive representations of musical pitch. Music Perception, 12(1), 27-55.
Larson, S. (2004). Musical forces and melodic expectations: Comparing computer models with experimental results. Music Perception, 21(4), 457–498.
Lerdahl, F. (2001). Tonal pitch space. Oxford University Press, USA.
Woolhouse, M. H. & Cross, I. (2004). The role of interval periodicity in hierarchical pitch perception. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition, 486-492, Evanston, Ill., USA.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Cross, I. The role of interval periodicity in hierarchical pitch perception. Oral presentation at 8th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition. Evanston, Ill., USA, August 2004.
Abstract:
This paper explores the issue of tonal motion (in terms of tension and resolution). A large body of theoretical and empirical work has shown that the cognition of tonal motion appears to arise through associative processes. Although formal representations (e.g., Balzano, 1980; 1982) have been shown to possess certain group-theoretic properties that correspond to (and to some extent predict) music-theoretic and cognitive properties of pitch-class combinations in tonal contexts (see Browne, 1981: Butler, 1989), as yet no formal theory has been proposed concerning the specification of tonal tension and its relationship to hierarchical pitch structure. It can be suggested that a simple feature of intervals within the cyclic group of order twelve has properties that are directly related to the degree to which intervals appear to require resolution when interpreted in a tonal context. This feature, ‘interval periodicity’, is the number of additive iterations of an interval within the cyclic group of order twelve that are required before its original pitch-classes are restated (Balzano’s 1980 P-cycles). Interval periodicity vectors can be shown positively to correlate with music-theoretic descriptions of tonic-pitch hierarchy, and with the probe-tone profiles of Krumhansl & Kessler (1982), Brown, Butler & Jones (1994) and Lamont & Cross (1994). This paper investigates the extent to which this feature predicts the responses of listeners who are required to judge the degree of resolution and pull exhibited by a range of musical stimuli. Two experiments have been conducted. In the first, musical structures that were identical in construction except for interval periodicity content were presented to two subject groups (musicians and non-musicians) who were required to state whether either structure created stronger feelings of resolution and pull. In the second, stimuli consisting of a chordal dyad (preparation pitches) followed by a single tone (resolution pitch) were presented to listeners who rated the degree of resolution and pull of the preparation pitches in relation to the resolution pitch. In this latter experiment, stimuli were selected to assess the independence of effects of interval periodicity from other factors (such as consonance or dissonance of preparation pitches) that may contribute to the sense of resolution. In the first experiment both subject groups’ responses agreed with the prediction of the hypothesis. In the second experiment, interval periodicity had a statistically significant effect on listeners’ rating of resolution and pull. Based on these experiments, it appears that there may be a formal, group-theoretic, basis for the description of aspects of functional tonality in cognition. The relations between the predictions of the interval-periodicity model and the findings of a wide range of empirical studies are presently being investigated, and a further series of experiments is exploring the robustness of the theory in a wider range of experimental contexts. Results from both ongoing correlation studies and empirical research will be presented at the conference.
Balzano, G. J. (1980). The group-theoretic description of 12-fold and microtonal pitch systems. Computer music journal, 4(4), 66-84.
Balzano, G. J. (1982). The pitch set as a level of description for studying musical pitch perception. In Music, mind, and brain (pp. 321-351). Springer, Boston, MA.
Brown, H., Butler, D., & Jones, M. R. (1994). Musical and temporal influences on key discovery. Music Perception, 11(4), 371-407.
Browne, R. (1981). “Tonal Implications of the Diatonic Set.” In Theory Only 5 (1-2): 3–21.
Butler, D. (1989). “Describing the Perception of Tonality in Music: A Critique of the Tonal Hierarchy Theory and a Proposal for a Theory of Intervallic Rivalry.” Music Perception 6 (3): 219–42.
Krumhansl, C. L., & Kessler, E. J. (1982). Tracing the dynamic changes in perceived tonal organization in a spatial representation of musical keys. Psychological review, 89(4), 334.
Lamont, A., & Cross, I. (1994). Children’s cognitive representations of musical pitch. Music Perception, 12(1), 27-55.
Invited Talks*
*bolding indicates presenter; italicizing indicates lab students
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Parkinson’s Dance Dance Revelation. Lecture given at McMaster Children and Youth University (MCYU). McMaster University, Canada, February 2020.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Parkinson’s rehabilitation using interactive dance technology. Oral presentation at Wolfson College Seminar Series. Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, February 2018.
Abstract:
This talk will present an overview of dance research undertaken in my lab at McMaster University, Ontario. Topics will include: (1) group dancing and interpersonal memory (involving “silent-disco” experiments that surreptitiously transmitted music at different tempi to individuals within groups); (2) eye movements made in response to dance (in which the effects of gestures and synchrony on fixations and saccades were investigated); (3) entrainment, synchrony, and bonding (using videos of hip-hop dancers, pupillometry, and ratings of attraction); and (4) developing dance technology for the rehabilitation of people with Parkinson’s disease. Guiding much of this research is a belief that, “Cultural patterning contributes to the selection of those mechanisms that transform affect and cognition into meaningful patterns of body movement, which arrest attention both because they are intentional and extraordinary” (Hanna 1987).
Hanna, J. L. (1987). To dance is human: A theory of nonverbal communication. University of Chicago Press.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Musings from a Digital Dance Lab. Oral presentation at Centre for Music & Science Guest Lecture Series. Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, UK, November 2017.
Abstract:
This talk will present an overview of dance research undertaken in my lab at McMaster University, Ontario. Topics will include: (1) group dancing and interpersonal memory (involving “silent-disco” experiments that surreptitiously transmitted music at different tempi to individuals within groups); (2) eye movements made in response to dance (in which the effects of gestures and synchrony on fixations and saccades were investigated); (3) entrainment, synchrony, and bonding (using videos of hip-hop dancers, pupillometry, and ratings of attraction); and (4) developing dance technology for the rehabilitation of people with Parkinson’s disease. Guiding much of this research is a belief that, “Cultural patterning contributes to the selection of those mechanisms that transform affect and cognition into meaningful patterns of body movement, which arrest attention both because they are intentional and extraordinary” (Hanna 1987).
Hanna, J. L. (1987). To dance is human: A theory of nonverbal communication. University of Chicago Press.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Dancifying life: Rehabilitating Parkinson’s Disease through dance technology. Oral presentation at President’s Club Reception. McMaster University, Canada, October 2017.
Abstract:
There is growing evidence that music and dance have positive therapeutic effects for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Exposure to music with a clear rhythm has been shown to improve gait speed, stride length, and coordinated actions. Dancing incorporates the benefits of music while also introducing specific movement-coordination tasks. Hamilton City Ballet’s (HCB) Dance for Parkinson’s Program runs biweekly dance classes for people with PD, using choreography and music to provide these benefits for their students. Similar programs have demonstrated improvements to the students, quality of life, and well-being. Since summer 2014, McMaster Researchers and HCB’s Dance for Parkinson’s Program have been working together to create technology-based dance activities for their students. These activities are designed for home use, between HCB’s regular dance classes. Microsoft’s Kinect TM cameras input participants’ body movements into the system and calculate users’ progress within each activity. It is hoped that the introduction of technology-based activities closely linked to the Dance for Parkinson’s program will augment and enhance the benefits seen in similar programs.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Integration of in-home technology for the rehabilitation of people with Parkinson’s. Oral presentation at Health Leadership Academy. McMaster University, Canada, October 2017.
Abstract:
There is growing evidence that music and dance have positive therapeutic effects for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Exposure to music with a clear rhythm has been shown to improve gait speed, stride length, and coordinated actions. Dancing incorporates the benefits of music while also introducing specific movement-coordination tasks. Hamilton City Ballet’s (HCB) Dance for Parkinson’s Program runs biweekly dance classes for people with PD, using choreography and music to provide these benefits for their students. Similar programs have demonstrated improvements to the students, quality of life, and well-being. Since summer 2014, McMaster Researchers and HCB’s Dance for Parkinson’s Program have been working together to create technology-based dance activities for their students. These activities are designed for home use, between HCB’s regular dance classes. Microsoft’s Kinect TM cameras input participants’ body movements into the system, and calculate users’ progress within each activity. It is hoped that the introduction of technology-based activities closely linked to the Dance for Parkinson’s program will augment and enhance the benefits seen in similar programs.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Parkinson’s rehabilitation using interactive dance technologies. Oral presentation at Hamilton Therapeutic Recreation Group Workshop. Mohawk College, Hamilton, February 2016.
Abstract:
There is growing evidence that music and dance have positive therapeutic effects for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Exposure to music with a clear rhythm has been shown to improve gait speed, stride length, and coordinated actions. Dancing incorporates the benefits of music while also introducing specific movement-coordination tasks. Hamilton City Ballet’s (HCB) Dance for Parkinson’s Program runs biweekly dance classes for people with PD, using choreography and music to provide these benefits for their students. Similar programs have demonstrated improvements to the students, quality of life, and well-being. Since summer 2014, McMaster Researchers and HCB’s Dance for Parkinson’s Program have been working together to create technology-based dance activities for their students. These activities are designed for home use, between HCB’s regular dance classes. Microsoft’s Kinect TM cameras input participants’ body movements into the system, and calculate users’ progress within each activity. It is hoped that the introduction of technology-based activities closely linked to the Dance for Parkinson’s program will augment and enhance the benefits seen in similar programs.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Building dance technologies for people with Parkinson’s. Oral presentation at McMaster President’s Research Showcase, Big Ideas, Better Cities: Health and Social Innovations through Big Data. McMaster University, Canada, November 2015.
Presentation:
Abstract:
There is growing evidence that music and dance have positive therapeutic effects for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Exposure to music with a clear rhythm has been shown to improve gait speed, stride length, and coordinated actions. Dancing incorporates the benefits of music while also introducing specific movement-coordination tasks. Hamilton City Ballet’s (HCB) Dance for Parkinson’s Program runs biweekly dance classes for people with PD, using choreography and music to provide these benefits for their students. Similar programs have demonstrated improvements to the students, quality of life, and well-being. Since summer 2014, McMaster Researchers and HCB’s Dance for Parkinson’s Program have been working together to create technology-based dance activities for their students. These activities are designed for home use, between HCB’s regular dance classes. Microsoft’s Kinect TM cameras input participants’ body movements into the system, and calculate users’ progress within each activity. It is hoped that the introduction of technology-based activities closely linked to the Dance for Parkinson’s program will augment and enhance the benefits seen in similar programs.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Hahn, M. Developing pedagogical connectivity in the School of the Art’s Piano Lab. Presentation at MIIETL-Humanities Impact Fellow Teaching & Learning Event. McMaster University, Canada, November 2015.
Abstract:
In 2012 the School of the Arts at McMaster purchased 11 digital pianos as the basis of a new piano lab within the school. In order to take advantage of this resource and to maximise its pedagogical potential, beginning in summer 2014, we developed a connectivity system whereby MIDI information can be routed between any of the pianos within the lab. Using a specially developed touch-screen user interface, the instructor is able, for example, to (1) demonstrate to the entire class, (2) connect two or more students together as a duet or piano ensemble, and (3) listen to specific students and provide feedback. In addition, using the classroom’s SMART board, a virtual keyboard can be projected upon which chord progressions are graphically shown in real time to the class, greatly increasing the pace at which musical information is communicated to students. This talk will outline the problems associated with having 11 pianos in a single room, and the ways in which technology has been used to ameliorate these problems whilst enhancing student experience in the context of keyboard-harmony pedagogy.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Speaker at symposium entitled The Ethics Behind the Use of Big Data: Understanding the Boundaries. McMaster University, Canada, December 2014.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. “Rockin’ All Over The World.” Lecture given at McMaster Children and Youth University (MCYU). McMaster University, Canada, October 2014.
Abstract:
Do you ever wonder what music people listen to in other countries across the globe, when they listen to it and why? This session will explore how the fame of bands and artists spreads across the world. Learn why different countries like different types of music and which country’s musical tastes most closely match your own.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. “In Big Data and Partnerships, Granularity Matters.” Speaker on panel entitled “The future of research infrastructure: implications for digital scholarship” (Chair: Ted Hewitt). World Social Science Forum. Montréal, Canada. October 2013.
Abstract:
Whether arranged in a relational database management system or housed on a distributed file system such as Hadoop, Big Data presents several practical and epistemological challenges. Often comprised of various metadata, the task is to establish a meaningful level of granularity and, if necessary, augment the data with more fine-grained information. Music downloads are a case in point because, although composed of metadata such as Artist, Track, Album, User ID and Country, each download refers to one of the richest available sources of behavioural information, music itself. An issue related to granularity is Big Data’s “case-versus-whole” dichotomy, which presents researchers with the question of how best to bridge the divide between individual instances (cases) and the dataset as a whole. A default assumption is that Big-Data analysis deals exclusively with the latter, the whole, but in order for studies to be grounded in everyday experience individual examples are likely to be equally important. My talk will draw parallels between the case-versus-whole dichotomy of Big Data and my ongoing experience of managing the academic side of an academic-industry partnership with Nokia. Chiefly, I will discuss the nature of the partnership in terms of appropriate levels (granularity) of contact and operation and discuss the opportunities and challenges data-sharing and cooperation agreements such as mine can bring. Reference will also be made to the support the partnership receives from SHARCNET, a consortium of Canadian academic institutions who share a network of high-performance computers.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Speaker on panel at Workshop on Knowledge Mobilization in the Humanities (Chair: John Connolly). McMaster University, Canada. May 2013.
Abstract:
In the summer of 2012, Matthew Woolhouse entered into a 5-year data sharing and cooperation agreement with the Nokia Corporation, with the objective of establishing a digital music lab at McMaster University dedicated to the analysis of the Nokia’s vast music-download database from sociocultural and musicological perspectives. Nokia currently has online music stores in some 40 countries, representing all areas of the globe; in total, over 20 million tracks are available in all genres. The data provided by Nokia cover a five-year period from 2007 to the present, which allows music-listening patterns to be studied longitudinally and at a global level. The dataset contains hundreds of millions of metadata downloads, with information pertaining to country, (anonymized) user, date, time, artist, genre, subgenre, and so on.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Drawing inferences from music-download metadata. Oral presentation at Cognitively Based Music Informatics Research Seminar (CogMIR). Ryerson University, Toronto, August 2012.
Abstract:
This presentation will report findings from a 2010 study in which 1.8 million anonymized music downloads from 13 countries, supplied by the Nokia Corporation, were analyzed from sociocultural perspectives. The data were generated by Nokia’s online music stores, which allow users to purchase and download music directly onto a mobile device or home computer. The research explored factors such as the level of musical diversity and individual adventurousness within each country and download patterns and genre changes across 24 hours. Some of these findings were then correlated with demographic measures such as language acquisition and migration. In addition, countries’ musical genre preferences were matched with music preference-personality measures (North, 2010; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003) to derive a profile of “national characteristics” for each country. The research revealed numerous intriguing differences and similarities between countries from the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
North, A.C. 2010. Individual Differences in Musical Taste. American Journal of Psychology, 123(2): 199-208.
Rentfrow, P.J. & Gosling, S.D. 2003. The do re mi’s of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(6): 1236-1256.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. Investigating mechanisms underpinning entrainment in dance. Oral presentation at Centre for Music and Science, Seminar Series. Cambridge University, UK, July 2012.
Abstract:
This 30-minute talk will present an overview of our silent-disco dance research (Woolhouse & Tidhar 2010), begun at the Centre for Music and Science in Cambridge in 2010. Methods and aims of the study will be briefly covered, after which the initial results of a follow-up eye-tracking study conducted at McMaster University, Canada, in 2012 will be presented. Using groups of 10 dancers in “ecologically valid” settings, the original silent-disco study found that in-tempo dancing enhances memory for incidental person attributes. The purpose of the lab-based eye-tracking study was to investigate possible mechanisms that may account for this finding.
Woolhouse, M. H. & Tidhar, D. (2010). Group dancing leads to increased person perception. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition, 605-608. Seattle, USA.
Citation:
Woolhouse, M. H. & Whelan, K. Harmonizing the tablet to sugar the pill: Using interactive iPad and SMART technology to teach music theory. Oral presentation at McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, Seminar & Journal Club. McMaster University, Canada, May 2012.
Abstract:
This practical session will demonstrate how we have been using iPads and SMART technology to deliver music theory to second-year McMaster music students. Traditional methods of teaching music theory present two main problems. First, interaction between the instructor and students is restricted, as well as between students and their peers. The instructor cannot easily attend to the needs of an individual student or play their music, because doing so disturbs the (quiet) concentration of other students. Second, music harmony requires auditory feedback for students to recognize mistakes and find options for correcting them. Using the interactive technologies available in the Wong e-Classroom we have attempted to overcome these problems: iPads running the music “app” NOTION enables students to hear their work in real time, and for it to be projected and discussed within class; the SMART board running music software Sibelius allows the instructor to demonstrate technical issues with relative ease.