finding your MUSE

What exactly does it mean to understand music?

 Researchers Marcel Zentner and Lily Law sought to find out just that. 

Their research has isolated 9 factors primary to musical perception across pitch, rhythm, and sound quality:

1. melody

2. pitch

3. timbre

4. tuning

5. standard rhythm

6. rhythm-to-melody

7. accent

8. tempo

9. loudness

Using powerful statistical techniques, we can create a composite score for overall musical perception skills and isolate which factors are most crucial for individual development. 

How can we assess the quality of a musical performance?

 Professor Brian Russell of the University of Miami has compiled some objective empiricism on the subject. 

His research has compressed musical performance assessment factors from 44 variables down to 8:

1. tone

2. intonation

3. rhythmic accuracy

4. articulation 

5. tempo

6. dynamics 

7. timbre

8.  interpretation  

We can also create a composite score for overall musical performance skills, detailing the relationships among variables, as well as discovering which variables influence the overall composite score the most for each individual. 

So what exactly are we to make of all of this? 

Music perception and music performance have shared skills. 

Some variables are more influential than other variables toward a person's music perception or music performance score. This varies individually; thus a "blanket approach" toward music education is not ideal! 

Using statistics ensures optimal and individualized educational results as well as a unique experience only offered through musIC!

At musIC, we utilize cognitive neuroscience methods, music cognition research, and statistical models to provide anyone with the most powerful individualized music education. 

Finding your MUSE -- your musicological understanding structural equation -- is just that: a personalized statistical model of all variables involved in musical perception and performance, how they relate to each other, and how they relate to a composite score.