Introducing a new blog about music and the mind
"When I tell someone what I do, they often devote a lot of energy to explaining that they don’t know anything about music. “Music!” they’ll say, “I don’t know anything about music!” Yet these same people, so eager to disavow any expertise, might listen to music several hours a day. They might sing in their car, tap the steering wheel in sync with the beat, and be moved to tears by a song. These experiences rely on a remarkable array of highly sophisticated cognitive processes. The more I study the perceptual mechanisms underlying music listening, the more convinced I am that the vast majority of us, despite our protests, know an incredible amount about music. ..."