Research & Projects

Lab Scope and Methods

The Music Cognition and Computation Lab uses experimental and computational methods to address fundamental questions about the composition, performance, and reception of musical traditions across the globe.

The lab employs methods from psychophysics, experimental psychology, linguistics, (music) information retrieval, geographic information science, (ethno)musicology, and music theory and analysis. 

We also regularly explore theories related to the induction and expression of emotions, the formation of expectations and activation of learned schemata, and the acquisition of semantic/cultural associations during music listening.

Global Music Radio 

Music Informatics for Radio Across the GlobE (MIRAGE) is a large-scale database of music metadata broadcast by radio stations around the world. 

The project combines computational music analysis with geographic, cultural, and demographic data to study how listeners around the world encounter music. 

Nguyen, N. V. T., Acosta, E. A. M., Dang, T., & Sears, D. R. W. (2024). Exploring internet radio across the globe with the MIRAGE online dashboard. Proc Int Soc Music Inf Retrieval Conf, 281–287.

Geographic Listening

Geographic Listening explores whether, and to what degree, listeners form geographic associations with music. 

The project combines online gamefied behavioral experiments with geospatial analytical methods to examine how musical features and cultural exposure shape our perception of where music comes from. 

Play the game now!

Music & Language Processing 

Music and Language Processing explores how listeners learn and mentally represent the structural regularities that shape sequences in music and language. 

The project combines behavioral experiments and computational models to examine the sensory and cognitive mechanisms that underlie music and language processing. 

Sears, D. R. W., Verbeten, J., & Percival, H. M. (2021). Intonation discrimination for tonal chord sequences in a priming paradigm. Auditory Percept and Cog, 4, 33–48.

Sears, D. R. W., Verbeten, J. E., & Percival, H. M. (2023). Does order matter? Harmonic priming effects for scrambled tonal chord sequences. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform, 49, 999–1015.

Computational Music Theory

Computational Music Theory develops tools for the discovery, classification, and prediction of recurrent patterns in music. 

Our research adapts string-based methods from corpus linguistics like skip-grams, statistical association measures, and finite context models, among others.

Sears, D. R. W., & Forrest, D. (2021). Triadic patterns across classical and popular music corpora: Stylistic conventions, or characteristic idioms? J Math Music, 15, 140–153.

Windholz, M. O., Sears, D. R. W., & Moss, F. C. (2026). Harmonic patterns in Brazilian choro. MusMat: Brazilian Journal of Music and Mathematics, 10(1), 54–71.

Music Perception & Cognition

Music Perception & Cognition explores the sensory and cognitive mechanisms underlying our experience of music. 

We examine how topics like attention, learning, and memory shape our experience of music's various organizing principles, including timbre, scale structure, melody and harmony, and rhythm and meter. 

Sears, D. R. W., Verbeten, J. E., & Percival, H. M. (2021). Intonation discrimination for tonal chord sequences in a priming paradigm. Aud Percept Cogn, 4(1–2), 33–48. 

Sears, D. R. W., Pearce, M. T., Spitzer, J., Caplin, W. E., & McAdams, S. (2019). Expectations for tonal cadences: Sensory and cognitive priming effects. Q J Exp Psychol, 72(6), 1422–1438.