Australian Music & Psychology Society
December, 2016
Edition 5
Australian Music & Psychology Society Newsletter Merry Christmas! Somehow we’ve made it through 2016, and what an eventful year it has been! Of course, the best thing about this year, is that it was the first full year of AMPS Newsletters. Thank you to you, our loyal readers, for reading, sharing and particularly writing for us. I’m writing this looking out over lake Zürich in Switzerland, hoping for a white Christmas, but dreaming about some Australian sun. The festive season is very different up North, but at least the Christmas carols make more sense. Incidentally, in Finland they don’t have the expression “white Christmas”, because that’s just the default option. The alternative, on unusually warm years, is a “black Christmas”. This December we start where the previous issue left off. The first two articles were sent in by Simon Faulkner and Joachim Geaney as a response to our Nature/Nurture theme last issue. I’m sure it’s a conversation that will continue long beyond the pages of this newsletter, and we welcome people to Tweet us with the hashtags #bornormade and #musicscience, or to comment on the Facebook group. After getting the serious stuff out of the way, we decided to let things go a little, for what many people call the ’silly season’. In addition to a quick five minutes with AMPS committee member and social media guru, Anna Fiveash, we then have a suit of three pieces responding to our call for slightly unusual music research. Mark Baynes tries to ruin Christmas carols for us; Anna Fiveash reflects upon some research from Medical Journal of Australia’s own Christmas issue, suggesting that surgeons should avoid listening to AC/DC; and I try to pull things together with the Nature/Nurture debate by discussing the growth of a quirky little artistic project. We hope that you’ll find it at least entertaining, if not informative.
Inside this issue Does talent get in the way? ........ 2 Musical elitism............................ 3 5 mins with Anna Fiveash ........... 4 Musical irony .............................. 5 Music of the cell(f) ...................... 6 AC/DC in the theatre .................. 7 AMPS gift guide .......................... 8
Calendar of events 15th of February, 2017. Articles for AMPS newsletter due. Submissions should be between 500 and 1000 words and may report original research, opinion or summary of others’ research. Submissions to: editors.AMPS@gmail.com
Editorial team
And a happy new year! The Newsletter team is planning on continuing our schedule from this year, so expect to see an issue released in March, June, September and December again (give or take a bit). This issue is the first one to be released simultaneously on issuu, an online publishing platform for magazines. Future editions will be released both on issuu and through the AMPS mailing list, and you can turn to issuu if you’re looking for any back issues. We’re also looking for themes for upcoming issues, so don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any ideas! I hear the summer break is a great time to get some writing done... Merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, hyvää joulua (as we say in Finland), and have a wonderful new year! See you in 2017, Joshua Bamford
Joshua Bamford, James Brown, Anna Fiveash, Rebecca Gelding, Solange Glasser, James Richmond.
Previous AMPS Newsletters can be found at https://issuu.com/ ausmuspsysoc For more about AMPS, find us on social media!
Does talent get in the way? Simon Faulkner (Director, Rhythm2Recovery)
What leads people to stop or avoid playing music, to lose the myriad of benefits that accompany musical participation? This is a question stemming from Australian research showing some 5.15 million of our fellow citizens (5+ yrs) as lapsed players and 9.67m who have never played (AMA, 2003, 2007), as well as my personal experience as a community music facilitator observing the trepidation many adults associate with playing music. It is also a question posed by the dearth of research on community music making for people without music education, or even its very mention within the literature on the sociology of music (Bentley, 2015). Could the answer lie in the focus and search for elite talent, the competitive nature that envelops music, and its economic role in modern society? Beginning in the classroom where music teachers are a dwindling presence, the number of children actively playing music drops rapidly from early primary school, so that by the end of high school over 60% of those given an opportunity are no longer playing (AMA, 2003, 2007). Many commentators have put this down to reduced access and the decline in the status of music when compared to other academic subjects, but there are also other factors at work, that stem from ongoing judgements in individual ability that erode self-belief and musical confidence (Ruddock & Long, 2005). The mythology surrounding innate talent (Sloboda, Davidson & Howe, 1994), is one of the ongoing, underlying barriers to active community music making, and is still maintained through selective testing within practices implemented across the musical education sphere. Reinforced through a range of mediums including the new range of talent shows that actively deride the less accomplished, this discrimination leads to life-long judgements of musical inability and a visible fear of participation, even in the safest contexts. Given the widely recognised social, emotional and psychological benefits for both individuals and society in communal music, it seems a high price is being paid. Culturally, since the advent of recorded music, engagement with music for a significant majority has shifted to passive observation, and consumption. This is accompanied by the huge growth of a commercial industry, whose interests often run contrary to open participation. Music has been limited, in keeping with the individualistic nature of our society, to the realm of specialist. Whilst this offers great benefit to many it
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also actively conspires to reduce access to music making for the greater community and with it the many communal benefits that stem from this more inclusive approach (Cross, 2007). There is a growing field of community music making for the musically uneducated, where the focus is on inclusion, connection and relationships, and the quality of the music is a secondary consideration. This form of community music differs from others that require a degree of confidence or prior experience, like community bands and many choirs, instead welcoming and integrating the uninitiated. Key to its success is its initial simplicity, allowing quick access, and quick successes, coupled with a safe space where judgement is suspended and each participant welcomed and valued. Of-course, not surprisingly, this form of connection often gives rise to quite exquisite and sophisticated music, particularly when facilitated by an enabling practitioner.
Music is too important to be left to the musicians, and in recognizing this fact we strike a blow at the experts' domination, not only of our music, but also of our very lives. If it is possible to control our own musical destiny, provide our own music rather than leaving it altogether to someone else to provide, then perhaps some of the other outside expertise that controls our lives can be brought under control also (Small 1977). References Australian Music Association. (2003, 2007). Australians' attitudes to music. Retrieved from http://www.australianmusic.asn.au/ Bentley, J.E. (2015). Tuning In: Towards a grounded theory of integrative musical interaction, Doctoral thesis, University of Strathclyde, In Press Cross, I. (2007). Music and cognitive evolution. In R. I. M. Dunbar & L. Barrett (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 649-667): Oxford University Press. Ruddock, E., & Leong, S. (2005). ' I am unmusical!': The verdict of self-judgement. International Journal of Music Education, 23(1), 9-22. Sloboda, J. A., Davidson, J. W., & Howe, M. J. A. (1994a). Is everyone musical? The Psychologist, 1(8), 349-354 Small , C. (1977). Music-Society-Education. London: John Calder
Musical elitism: A music-maker’s lament Joachim Geaney (University of Melbourne)
It frustrates and saddens me to hear people say, “I’m not musical” or “I reached 8th grade piano, but haven’t played since”. Such beliefs and facts reflect an underlying elitist culture that has denied far too many people the joys of lifelong engagement with music. Hopefully this is slowly changing for the better and one day Western culture will celebrate human musicality at all its heights. We do not need to shirk the facts and deny human individuality to resolve this issue. Not all “Little Mozarts” will live up to the name, and not everyone has the conscientiousness (or hand-span) to tackle a concerto by Rachmanninov. But why then should this mean that someone of unexceptional ability is denied the sense of their own musicality or the confidence to participate? People differ in all major aspects of our shared psychological architecture, musicality included. However, for some regrettable reason human musicality appears especially prone to segregation along the lines of supposed aptitude, leading to a false sense that you’ve either got it, or you don’t. Despite natural individual differences, musicality is a human birthright, and music psychologists, musicians, and music educators alike need to advocate for this fact. That is if you agree, of
course. Some of us have benefited from musical elitism and don’t feel alienated by the highbrow speaking style of the classic FM radio DJ, and perhaps even revel in being one of the ‘talented ones’. But like the virtuoso who was never encouraged to improvise and now believes he or she is unable to, we are all potential victims of this culture. Fortunately, regardless of what you value more - wider participation or unique virtuosity - a more open-minded and inclusive attitude that encourages creative freedom would benefit everyone. If we all grow towards our musical potential, a greater number of brilliant and accomplished musicians will emerge. So teachers, the next time you jam with a fledgling instrumentalist, remember that you are a custodian of their future love of music making. Don’t wind up the metronome and open up the drills book in lesson one. Just have fun creating and sharing musical sounds. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t aim high in life, but the last thing you want is for ‘music lessons' to become synonymous with anxiety and dread; for young music-makers to reach ‘8th grade’, and then quit altogether.
Join the conversation! Thanks to everyone who has participanted in the discussion started last issue. If you still have something to say about musical ability, don’t hesitate to jump on Twitter and add your thoughts with #bornormade and #musicscience or post in our Facebook group.
Upcoming event Meter Symposium 2 at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. 24-25th of February, 2017. The symposium will cover a range of issues relating to meter, from a range of perspectives and different types of music, and will feature invited local and international speakers.
Upcoming Conferences The 2nd Nordic Music Therapy Student Conference, Oslo, Norway, 3rd-5th of February, 2017. The Improvising Brain III, Atlanta, USA, 26-28th of February, 2017. International Convention of Psychological Science (ICPS 2017), Vienna, Austria, 23-25th of March, 2017. ISME European Conference, Salzberg, Austria, 18-22nd of April, 2017. Neuroscience and Music - VI, Boston, USA, 15-18th of June, 2017. Movement 2017 - Brain - Body - Cognition, Oxford, UK, 9-11th of July, 2017. 25 years of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM 2017), Ghent, Belgium, 31st of July - 4th of August, 2017. Society of Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC), San Diego, USA, 31st of July - 4th of August, 2017. 6th Conference of the Asia Pacific Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (APSCOM 6), Kyoto, Japan, 25-27th of August, 2017. 10th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus17), London, UK, 13-15th of September, 2017. The 13th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR), Matosinhos, Portugal, 25-28th of September, 2017. International Conference on Music Psychology and Music Performance, Madrid, Spain, 57th of October, 2017. Combined ICMPC and ESCOM. Graz, Austria, 23rd-28th of July, 2018. Stay tuned for more info!
Free registration at http://music.sydney.edu.au/event-listings
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In the media A selection of the latest writings in The Conversation, mostly by Australian reserachers. Why music is not lost. Richard Vella, Shane Homan, and Tracy Redhead. Sad music and depression: Does it help? Sandra Garrido. How listening to music could help you beat insomnia. Victoria Williamson. Trump slammed by musicians for appropriating music, but pop and politics have a long history. Adam Behr. We have a moral obligation to allow drug analysis at music festivals. Julian Savulescu, Connor Rochford, and Daniel D’Hotman. ARIA there yet? Causes galore and some poop talk at the music industry awards. Catherine Strong. ‘No reason for livin’: Early death in female popular musicians. Dianna Theadora Kenny and Anthony Asher. Sequins and symphonies: How opera ran away with the circus. Peta Tait.
In other news: A music student in the US has given a premier performance of a piece written on the rear-end of a figure in a 500-year-old painting.
Christmas Playlist Need some festive music? Here’s a Christmas Selection Box from Spotify, care of @DrBrocktagon Looking for something a little different? Maybe some traditional carols from Finland, performed by a traditional Finnish metal band.
5 minutes with... Anna Fiveash Anna is a student representative on the AMPS Committee, and a current PhD student at Macquarie University in Sydney. Her research interests are focused on commonalities of syntax processing between music and language. We sat down with her for a chat, in the form of a standardised email questionnaire, to discover a little bit more about the person behind the Twitter handle. Why did you choose this particular field of study? I have always been interested in Psychology, and when it came time to do honours, I just added in my other main love - music! My honours supervisor specialised in language, and so I did my honours in music AND language. It worked out really nicely! What is your favourite aspect of your job? That I get to do so many different types of things. I get to read, write, plan experiments, make stimuli, code (not so keen on this one!), test participants, analyse data, write grants, go to conferences… there's just always exciting things to do! In your opinion, what is the most challenging aspect of your job? Constantly being at the edge of knowledge… I can't just google, or study the answer to something, I have to think about it A LOT! This is also the most exciting part though :) What challenges have you had to face in your career? I'm still pretty early on in my career so thankfully there haven't been too many challenges yet!
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What has been your proudest achievement to date? Hmm there have been lots of nice achievements along the way! Probably moving to Finland to do a Master's Program in Music, Mind, and Technology for 2 years, without knowing anybody or anything about Finland! It was luckily 2 of the best years of my life :) Getting into the PhD program at Macquarie with Prof. Bill Thompson has also been a great achievement! What has been the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you? Work hard, play hard, don't let them see you sweat! What is the last book you read? Pretending it wasn't a trashy fantasy book… I would say "All the Light we Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr. What is your ‘go-to’ piece of music? I've been listening to A-team by Ed Sheeran a lot recently… if I want a sadder song, then Grey by Ani Di Franco. I also listen to a lot of great folk bands. My latest favourite is Mustered Courage. They are an alternative bluegrass band :) What was the first concert you attended? The Dresden Dolls! What was the first Vinyl/Cassette/CD you bought for yourself? B-witched or Avril Lavigne I think! Both of which I played so much that they stopped working! (I was young - no judging!) Where is one place you’d like to travel to and why? India - so many colours!
Do y’wanna ‘know’ what I ‘know’? - A Christmas case study of musical irony Mark Baynes (MAINZ Aukland)
Spoiler alert – if you love Christmas carols then please read no further. In the book, The evolution of emotional communication, Altenmuller, Schmidt, and Zimmermann suggest that emotional responses of basic emotions (e.g. happiness, sadness, anger, fear) are ‘remarkably invariant across listeners of different ages’ (2013, p.277). Juslin and Sloboda found that ‘the ascribed emotion of a music performance could be well predicted from a fairly small set of characteristics, relating to pitch, speed, intensity, and articulation etc.’, and that these characteristics are also used to evaluate emotions in a person’s speech (Juslin & Sloboda, 2011, p.84). But in Expression of emotion in music and vocal communication: Introduction to the research topic, Bhatara, Laukka, and Levitin agree that emotions resulting from incongruent songs (containing incongruent interaction between music and lyrics) are more complex than basic emotions, due to the ironic context from which they are experienced (2014, p.212). “Incongruent interactions transform meaning from what might be gleaned from listening to either the music or the lyrics alone…incongruent interactions make messages more poignant and can serve as an anthem for social movements…however, incongruent interactions run the risk of listener misinterpretation” (Herrmann and Herbig, 2016, p.72). For example, incongruence can be found in a track entitled Perfect day (Reed, 1972), where the subtext of the song alludes to a premise that the singer’s day is made ‘perfect’ from an addiction to opiates. The musical accompaniment is innocent but the lyrical meaning is darker. Another example is Do you hear what I hear? made famous by Bing Crosby in the 1960’s. On one level, this is simply a contemporary Christmas song, arguably an interpretation of Christian nativity. Lyrical indicators in this carol that corroborate this interpretation include phrases such as “Shepherd boy”, “A star dancing in the night”, “Mighty king”, and “A child shivers in the cold”. With the exception of the military style drumming the music accompaniment could easily be described as initially calm, choral and reflective, moving towards a denser climatic finale using strings, a transposition up a minor second, use of a brass section, and increased counterpoint. Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne Baker composed this carol during the period of unease caused by the Cuban missile crisis and its lyrics reflect a message for peace. Ironically (and anecdotally) Bing Crosby recorded his vocals to the song on November 22, 1963, the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas,
Texas (see https://www.carols.org.uk/do-you-hearwhat-i-hear.htm). Non-congruence is effective in providing the listener with mixed messages, arguably interpreted as irony through a darker twist of a seemingly positive message. In the case of Do you hear what I hear, the lyrics “A star, a star, dancing in the night with a tail as big as a kite” now suggests images of war; a nuclear missile heading towards an innocent narrator perhaps, rather than a navigational constellation and interstellar awe. Likewise, the lyrics “A song, song, high above the tree with a voice as big as the sea”, infers images of a thermonuclear explosion, rather than a choral culmination. This was a surprise, and the psychological affect that this song has on me is forever changed. In Sweet anticipation, David Huron states, “The phenomenon of ‘surprise’ represents a failure of expectation. From a biological perspective, surprise is always a bad thing. Even when the surprising outcome turns out to be good, failing to anticipate the outcome means that the brain has failed to provide useful information about possible futures. Predictive failures are therefore cause for biological alarm. If an animal is to be prepared for the future, the best surprise is no surprise” (Huron, 2006, p.21). From a phenomenological perspective, my lived experience of listening to Do you hear what I hear? after my hermeneutical epiphany, is quite different from my initial listen - the snare drum has much more significance, clearly inferring military action, and the lyrics far more sobering. The surprise that I felt gave salience to my perception of this track, and has continued to do so every listen since. References Altenmuller, E., & Schmidt S., & Zimmermann E. (2013). The Evolution of Emotional Communication: From Sounds in Nonhuman Mammals to Speech and Music in Man. Oxford University Press. Bhatara, A., Laukka, P., & Levitin, D. J. (2014). Expression of emotion in music and vocal communication: Introduction to the research topic. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 399. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00399 Huron, D. (2006). Sweet anticipation: Music and the psychology of expectation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Herrmann, A. and Herbig, A. (2016). Communication Perspectives on Popular Culture. Lexington Books. Juslin P.N., & Sloboda J. (2011). Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, and Applications. Oxford University Press. Reed, L. (1972). Transformer. RCA, London.
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Music as expression of the cell(f): Cultivating a new perspective on nature and nurture Joshua Bamford (University of Jyväskylä; University of Vienna)
Guy Ben-Ary had a childhood dream of becoming a musician. Without regard for the previous discussion within these pages, he believed himself to be of little talent. This wasn’t to discourage him from pursuing his dream, however. It simply forced him towards novel solutions. Guy is currently a resident artist at SymbioticA, the Department of Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia (UWA). Their work connects Art and Science in order to explore the possibilities of bioengineering and open them up for the public, bluring the lines between art exhibition and science museum. They have a history of cultivating cells, such as in the famous exhibit Victimless Leather, in which rat skin cells were grown into the shape of a tiny jacket. Clothing is just one of the possibilities of such technology, however. Thanks to the work of Shinya Yamanaka, it is possible to convert skin cells into stem cells. Specifically, they are called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. From there, an iPS cell can be grown into a neuron, with the right stimulation. With this technology, Guy was able to arm himself with a second brain, grown from his arm. A biopsy from his wrist yeilded enough skin cells to be converted into iPS cells, and then into neurons which were cultivated on a multiple electrode array (MEA) in a petri dish. The neurons would serve as the brain, and the MEA would allow it to communicate with the world outside. As those of us who work with Embodied Music Cognition are aware, a brain needs a body. For Guy, the ideal body for his musical cells is an analogue synthesiser. The MEA allows his neural network to send signals to the synthesiser, while also recieving signals from a microphone. With inputs and outputs, it becomes a fully embodied nervous system, and a fully autonomous instrument.
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I was lucky enough to encounter an early version of what is now known as the CellF project, while I was studying at UWA. This was early in CellF’s musical training, and it hadn’t yet realised its potential. It has rather an unfair advantage over the rest of us, however. We must learn to use our ears and voices through experience, making connections between pitch and tension of the vocal chords, or to coordinate our limbs as they manipulate an instrument. Meanwhile, CellF has Guy and a team of specialists there to adjust its ‘body’, enabling it to create radically different sounds. Last time I heard, it was still struggling with the concept of pitch, but I’m sure it’s come a long way in the last two years. CellF creates a wonderful opportunity for us to reflect upon our own musicality. In many ways, we have much in common: it has a body which is capable of producing sound, and must learn to use it, just as we do. Some may challenge whether a synthesiser counts as a ‘body’, but then, don’t many instrumentalists speak of their main instrument as though it were part of themselves? I would not be so quick to dismiss the analogy. CellF may have Guy to guide it’s development, but then, don’t we all have a little guy in us, reminding us to get back in the practice room. Where CellF had a team of bio-engineers, we had millions of years of evolution to craft us into musically able beings. Guy has finally achieved his dream, at least, a collection of his cells in a petri dish have on his behalf. You can hear him/it perform live at the MOFO festival in Hobart in January. For more information about Guy Ben-Ari and the CellF project, head over to http://guybenary.com/work/cellf/
AC/DC in the theatre: Detrimental effects of Aussie rock on surgical skills Anna Fiveash (Macquarie University)
The effect of background music on task performance is a complex and important area of research that has many practical applications, especially in cases of life and death. New research by Fancourt, Burton, and Williamon (2016) – recent winners of the Medical Journal of Australia’s Christmas Science Competition for jokey yet rigorous research - have found that playing the song ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC makes men (but not women) worse at performing the game ‘Operation’. Operation involves participants acting as surgeons to remove body parts from a board game – a feat of handeye coordination that aims to simulate actual operating procedure without the technical skill. Fancourt et al. (2016) found that operating times were significantly worse when male participants (nonsurgeons) were listening to AC/DC compared to classical music or operating room sounds. Aside from an obvious desire to play air guitar, it is likely that other aspects of the music (and the participants themselves) may have had an effect on performance. Looking to other studies of background music on task performance, a meta-analysis by Kämpfe, Sedlmeier, and Renkewitz (2010) found no clear pattern of results – it appears that background music can have a positive effect, a negative effect, or no effect at all. The authors point out that within these inconsistent effects are a number of uncontrolled variables. These variables are likely to include the music itself, musical preference, the task, arousal levels, and personality (to name a few). One variable that was not measured in the current study is personality. Previous research has suggested that personality (most clearly extraversion and introversion) lead to different levels of optimal arousal. Introverts are suggested to have a higher level of internal arousal to begin with, and so need very little external arousal before they exceed their level of optimal arousal and performance is impaired. These might be the type particularly affected by AC/DC. Extraverts on the other hand are said to have a lower
level of internal arousal, and so external, arousing background music (such as the opening riff to Thunderstruck) could lead to an optimal level of arousal, and enhanced performance (Eysenck, 1967; Furnham & Allass, 1999). It is clear from the large discrepancies between studies that the effects of background music on task performance greatly depend on the person, the music, and the task. Highlighted in the current study is the finding that ‘operating’ speed significantly decreased for men when listening to rock music. This is concerning when the outcome could be misplaced organs or death as opposed to slightly lowered reading comprehension or memory abilities. In her book ‘You are the music: How music reveals what it is to be human’, Victoria Williamson gives a nice review of the background music literature and suggests that there should never be any ‘prescribed’ or mandatory background music in work situations, as there are too many variables at play. With Fancourt et al. (2016) citing evidence that music is played between 62-72% of the time in operating theatres, a review into operating outcomes in the presence of background music may be necessary. While the field is in need of some strong theories and predictions concerning background music, followed up by rigorous research methods (Kämpfe et al., 2010), one thing is clear. AC/DC should not be allowed in operating rooms with male surgeons. Female surgeons on the other hand - get your air guitars ready. References Eysenck, H. (1967). The biological basis of personality. Springfield: Thomas Fancourt, D., Burton, T., & Williamon, A. (2016). The razor’s edge: Australian rock music impairs men’s performance when pretending to be a surgeon. The Medical Journal of Australia, 205(11), 515-518. doi: 10.5694/mja16.01045 Furnham, A., & Allass, K. (1999). The influence of musical distraction of varying complexity on the cognitive performance of extroverts and introverts. European Journal of Personality, 13 (1), 27-38. Kämpfe, J., Sedlmeier, P., & Renkewitz, F. (2011). The impact of background music on adult listeners: A meta-analysis. Psychology of Music, 39(4), 424-448. doi: 10.1177/0305735610376261 Williamson, V. (2014). You are the music: How music reveals what it means to be human. London: Icon Books Ltd.
Christmas Playlist cont. If you’re not familiar with Thunderstruck (shame on you, that’s unAustralian), check it out on YouTube. Alternatively, here’s a cover by a band from Jyväskylä, Finland.
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The AMPS gift guide for 2016
Australian Music & Psychology Society (AMPS) AMPS was formed in 1996 and since, has grown steadily. It now represents the national body of researchers in this field, and is a member of APSCOM. The idea to form a psychology and music society came about during the Fourth International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition (ICMPC4) held at McGill University, Montreal. At that meeting, there was interest for ICMPC to be held in Australia. The first step was to form a group that could coordinate the organization of such an event and to form a music and psychology society similar in focus to those in Europe (ESCOM), Japan (JSMPC), and the United States (SMPC). Our aim is to bring Australian researchers together and to represent Australian research overseas. The members of AMPS regularly meet to discuss research, with local and overseas presenters addressing a variety of topics. These have ranged from psychophysics and psychoacoustics, cochlear mechanics, rhythm and pitch perception, to emotional responses to music, musical development, skill acquisition, and social aspects of ensemble performance. At present our Seminar Series, Music Auditory Cognition & Mind (MACAM), meets regularly at The University of Melbourne.
In case you happen to have any spare cash after Christmas and are feeling in a charitable mood, the AMPS Newsletter team has compiled a short list of music related charities and non-profits that could be deserving of your dollars. A donation is also a great last-minute gift for the ethical music psychologist, in place of more traditional capitalist fare. If you know of an organisation which should be on this list but isn’t, please contact us!
Guitar lessons for a child in Vanuatu, from Oxfam.
Merchandise from the School of Hard Knocks. All proceeds go towards funding their community music projects.
Musicians Making a Difference (MMAD) run camps and programmes for vulnerable young people. You can donate here to sponsor a young person to attend or can purchase merchandise here.
Catch Music is a community music group that runs open jam sessions, and they’re always looking for sponsors.
Donate to the Spirit of the Streets Choir.
Support the music-therapy work of Nordoff-Robins.
Musicians without Borders do some really interesting work around the world, and always welcome donations.
We welcome new members, students and researchers alike. Membership is free! Becoming a member is as simple as joining our mailing list.
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