104 questions

What is Music Cognition?

Questions: 

1) Why do people make music?

2) Does music contribute for human survival?

3) Why does different cultures have similar music? 

4) Are animals able to understand/appreciate human music? 

5) Does music always have to involve sounds? 

6) Can a deaf person appreciate music (e.g. by reading a score)? 

7) Why are some people more “musical” than others? 

8) What are the elements of musical ability? 

9) Is there an independent music intelligence? 

10) Can musical talent be identified/measured? 

11) What is (do we mean by) musical talent? 

12) How to develop musical potential? 

13) Can we predict which children are musically gifted? 

14) Why are some people “tone deaf” (amusia) 

15) Can tone deafness be cured/treated? 

16) Why do so few people have perfect pitch? 

17) Can perfect pitch be learned? 

18) Is musical ability/talent inherited? If so, which components?

19) What is the nature of musical creativity? 

20) How is music produced? 

21) How do composers know what to write? 

22) What are the origins of composition rules?    

23) What happens when musicians improvise? 

24) How does music give pleasure? 

25) Why does the sound of finger nails scratching on a blackboard sound so awful? 

26) What makes some chords sonority sounds pleasant? 

27) What is consonance and dissonance? 

28) Why do people disagree on music “likes” and “dislikes”?

29) What factor contribute for the formation of music taste? 

30) Why do our musical preferences change over time?

31) Why does music itself change over time?

32) Where do music fashion and styles come from? 

33) Are musical preferences related to the listener’s personality? 

34) Does everyone listen to music in the same way?

35) How does our musical hearing change as we grow up and grow old?

36) Do children experience music the same way as adults do?

37) Can we understand music from another culture in the same way as the people from that culture do? 

38) Do we need so much music? (considering that there is a huge amount of music in the world)

39) Why don’t people limit their music appreciation repertoire? (for instance from 5 to 10 works to music) 

40) Why can’t we listen to 2 musics at the same time? 

41) Is music similar to speech or  language? 

42) Are there common principles underlying music organization?

43) What is melody?

44) Why are melody and rhythm so important in music? 

45) What is harmony? 

46) Why do some chord progressions sound better then others?

47) Are some scales better than others? 

48) Why do performers make use of rubato?

49) Why isn’t music played strictly on its notated timing?

50) What makes some interpretations of a piece of music sound better than others? (how is that two performers can play exactly the same notes but one produces a pedestrian performance and the other creates a performance that is utterly inspired)

51) Why are some melodies remmorable while others are forgettable? 

52) Why does some melodies get “stuck in our head”? 

53) Is there a way to get melodies “unstuck”? 

54) Why don’t all melodies get stuck in our head? 

55) Why can’t we recall everything we ever heard? 

56) How is that repeatedly listening to a work change our experience of it? (with training, how might we listen differently?) 

57) How does music evoke emotions? 

58) Are there some emotions that can’t be evoked by music? (e.g. shame, guilt)

59) Why do some musics make us nostalgic? 

60) Why are people willing to listen to music that make them sad? 

61) Does listening to sad music really make us feel sad, or some other emotion?

62) What factors sometimes make us actively hate some piece of music? 

63) What is the role of music in culture? 

64) Does music contribute for a sense of community? If so, how? 

65) What is the relation of music in personal or group identity? 

66) How do people use music in their lives? 

67) What role does music play in health and well being? 

68) Can music help to recover from illness? If so, how? 

69) Can a music harm a person psychologically? 

70) Can music corrupt or enhance moral behavior?

71) Is listening to certain types of music bad for your? (e.g. background music)

72) How are group of performances able to coordinate their activities? 

73) What is going on when a group of performances “get into a groove”?

74) What happens when performers make that “special connection” with an audience? 

75) How it is that some people are able to improvise music? 

76) How do groups of improviser musicians work together? 

77) Why do some type of music make people want to dance? Why dance, instead of other activity? (e.g. eat, work) 

78) Is music essential for dance? (are cultures where dance occurs without music?)

79) What is that make something musical?

80) Why do musicians have to practice so much? 

81) Is there a better way to practice or to teach music? 

82) Why do some performers suffer from stage fright? Is there anything that can be done to lessen or avoid stage fright? 

83) Why do most people prefer tonal over atonal music?

84) What is tonality?

85) Why is easier to listen to music while driving a car over reading a book? 

86) What does make some music more distracting than others?    

87) Can a person listen to too much music? 

88) Can listening to music make you smarter? 

89) Is it detrimental not to listen to music from time to time? 

90) Why are some people more enthusiastic about music than others? 

91) Does our personal physiology affects our experience in music? 

92) How does illness of physical abnormality affects musical experience? (e.g. when Huron is sick,, he doesn't feel like listening to music)

93) Are there musical hallucinations? 

94) What happens when a person imagine music in their head? 

95) Can drugs enhance/attenuate musical pleasure? If so, why?

96) Does music happen in particular parts of the brain? 

97) Are there brain structures specialized only for music? 

98) How do different types of brain damage influence musical experience? 

99) Are there different ways or strategies for listening to music? 

100) With train of effort, how differently might we be able to experience music? 

101) Are there limits to what music could be? 

102) What is the relationship between music and spiritual/religious experience? 

103) What is the relationship between music and other arts? 

104) How do the broad patterns of history and culture relate to music? 

Cognitive science: 1) Philosophy, 2) Psychology, 3) Anthropology, 4) Linguistics, 5) Neuroscience, 6) Artificial intelligence 

Music cognition: A branch of scholarship that approaches music as a phenomenon of human minds.