Lecture

Digital Musicology: Pitch, Scales, and Cognitive Principles

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In course

DH-401: Digital musicology

This course will introduce students to the central topics in digital musicology and core theoretical approaches and methods. In the practical part, students will carry out a practical project. ...

Description

This lecture explores the metrical structure in language and poetry, the definitions and perceptual aspects of pitch, octave equivalence, pitch schemata, and Dowling's levels of pitch analysis. It delves into the construction principles of scales, the emergence and universality of scale systems, cross-cultural differences, and the cognitive principles behind scale formation. The presentation also covers the categorical perception of pitch, the cognitive schema of scales, and common scale types like chromatic, diatonic major, and pentatonic scales.

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Instructor

Martin Alois Rohrmeier

Teaching & PhD PhD Students Joris Monnet, Marina Borsodi-Benson, Xinyi Guan, Xiaoxuan Wang, Zeng Ren Past EPFL PhD Students Fabian Claude Moss, Daniel Harasim, Christoph Finkensiep, Johannes Hentschel, Gabriele Cecchetti, Shuxin Meng Courses Digital musicology DH-401 This course will introduce students to the central topics in digital musicology and core theoretical approaches and methods. In the practical part, students will carry out a practical project. Musical theory and creativity

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Art

Performing arts: Music

Related concepts (32)

Chromatic scale

The chromatic scale (or twelve-tone scale) is a set of twelve pitches (more completely, pitch classes) used in tonal music, with notes separated by the interval of a semitone. Chromatic instruments, such as the piano, are made to produce the chromatic scale, while other instruments capable of continuously variable pitch, such as the trombone and violin, can also produce microtones, or notes between those available on a piano. Most music uses subsets of the chromatic scale such as diatonic scales.

Major scale

The major scale (or Ionian mode) is one of the most commonly used musical scales, especially in Western music. It is one of the diatonic scales. Like many musical scales, it is made up of seven notes: the eighth duplicates the first at double its frequency so that it is called a higher octave of the same note (from Latin "octavus", the eighth). The simplest major scale to write is C major, the only major scale not requiring sharps or flats: The major scale has a central importance in Western music, particularly that of the common practice period and in popular music.

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviourism, which held from the 1920s to 1950s that unobservable mental processes were outside the realm of empirical science. This break came as researchers in linguistics and cybernetics, as well as applied psychology, used models of mental processing to explain human behavior.

Musicology

Musicology (from Greek μουσική mousikē 'music' and -λογια -logia, 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some music research is scientific in focus (psychological, sociological, acoustical, neurological, computational). Some geographers and anthropologists have an interest in musicology, so the social sciences also have an academic interest. A scholar who participates in musical research is a musicologist.

Systematic musicology

Systematic musicology is an umbrella term, used mainly in Central Europe, for several subdisciplines and paradigms of musicology. "Systematic musicology has traditionally been conceived of as an interdisciplinary science, whose aim it is to explore the foundations of music from different points of view, such as acoustics, physiology, psychology, anthropology, music theory, sociology, and aesthetics.

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