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Hierarchical structure with nested nonlocal dependencies is a key feature of human language and can be identified theoretically in most pieces of tonal music. However, previous studies have argued against the perception of such structures in music. Here, we show processing of nonlocal dependencies in music. We presented chorales by J. S. Bach and modified versions in which the hierarchical structure was rendered irregular whereas the local structure was kept intact. Brain electric responses differed between regular and irregular hierarchical structures, in both musicians and nonmusicians. This finding indicates that, when listening to music, humans apply cognitive processes that are capable of dealing with long-distance dependencies resulting from hierarchically organized syntactic structures. Our results reveal that a brain mechanism fundamental for syntactic processing is engaged during the perception of music, indicating that processing of hierarchical structure with nested nonlocal dependencies is not just a key component of human language, but a multidomain capacity of human cognition.

Music moves us. Its kinetic power is the foundation of human behaviors as diverse as dance, romance, lullabies, and the military march. Despite its significance, the music-movement relationship is poorly understood. We present an empirical method for testing whether music and movement share a common structure that affords equivalent and universal emotional expressions. Our method uses a computer program that can generate matching examples of music and movement from a single set of features: rate, jitter (regularity of rate), direction, step size, and dissonance/visual spikiness. We applied our method in two experiments, one in the United States and another in an isolated tribal village in Cambodia. These experiments revealed three things: (i) each emotion was represented by a unique combination of features, (ii) each combination expressed the same emotion in both music and movement, and (iii) this common structure between music and movement was evident within and across cultures.

Domain-general tuning processes may guide the acquisition of perceptual knowledge in infancy. Here, we demonstrate that 12-month-old infants show an adult-like, culture-specific pattern of responding to musical rhythms, in contrast to the culture-general responding that is evident at 6 months of age. Nevertheless, brief exposure to foreign music enables 12-month-olds, but not adults, to perceive rhythmic distinctions in foreign musical contexts. These findings may indicate a sensitive period early in life for acquiring rhythm in particular or socially and biologically important structures more generally.

Much of our enjoyment of music comes from its balance of predictability and surprise. Musical pitch fluctuations follow a 1/f power law that precisely achieves this balance. Musical rhythms, especially those of Western classical music, are considered highly regular and predictable, and this predictability has been hypothesized to underlie rhythm's contribution to our enjoyment of music. Are musical rhythms indeed entirely predictable and how do they vary with genre and composer? To answer this question, we analyzed the rhythm spectra of 1,788 movements from 558 compositions of Western classical music. We found that an overwhelming majority of rhythms obeyed a 1/fβ power law across 16 subgenres and 40 composers, with β ranging from ∼0.5–1. Notably, classical composers, whose compositions are known to exhibit nearly identical 1/f pitch spectra, demonstrated distinctive 1/f rhythm spectra: Beethoven's rhythms were among the most predictable, and Mozart's among the least. Our finding of the ubiquity of 1/f rhythm spectra in compositions spanning nearly four centuries demonstrates that, as with musical pitch, musical rhythms also exhibit a balance of predictability and surprise that could contribute in a fundamental way to our aesthetic experience of music. Although music compositions are intended to be performed, the fact that the notated rhythms follow a 1/f spectrum indicates that such structure is no mere artifact of performance or perception, but rather, exists within the written composition before the music is performed. Furthermore, composers systematically manipulate (consciously or otherwise) the predictability in 1/f rhythms to give their compositions unique identities.

Intrinsic perceptual biases for simple duration ratios are thought to constrain the organization of rhythmic patterns in music. We tested that hypothesis by exposing listeners to folk melodies differing in metrical structure (simple or complex duration ratios), then testing them on alterations that preserved or violated the original metrical structure. Simple meters predominate in North American music, but complex meters are common in many other musical cultures. In Experiment 1, North American adults rated structure-violating alterations as less similar to the original version than structure-preserving alterations for simple-meter patterns but not for complex-meter patterns. In Experiment 2, adults of Bulgarian or Macedonian origin provided differential ratings to structure-violating and structure-preserving alterations in complex- as well as simple-meter contexts. In Experiment 3, 6-month-old infants responded differentially to structure-violating and structure-preserving alterations in both metrical contexts. These findings imply that the metrical biases of North American adults reflect enculturation processes rather than processing predispositions for simple meters.

When listening to polyphonic music, we often perceive a melody as the figure against the ground of accompanying sounds. However, with repeated exposure, this figure–ground relationship may naturally shift, allowing the melody to recede into the ground. In a previous study, we found the consistent pattern of frontotemporal connectivity for the “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” (TTLS) melody in the headings of two Variations (II and IV) in Mozart's 12 Variations, K. 265, indicating that the TTLS melody, but not the different lower voices, was the figure. However, the frontotemporal connectivity pattern may change in the same phrases repeating in the two variations. In the current study, we examined how frontotemporal connectivity changes in the repeated phrases. In the results, the frontotemporal connectivity pattern between the two variations changed in the final phrase after repeated passages. This suggests that the shift in the figure–ground relationship persists, with the TTLS melody becoming less prominent while the lower voices become relatively more prominent. Additionally, frontotemporal connectivity was strongly correlated with temporofrontal connectivity in the opposite direction. Finally, our data indicate that TTLS melody-based and sensory-based processes in response to a switched figure–ground relationship, are incorporated into the bidirectional connections between frontotemporal and temporofrontal connectivity. Our study highlights the brain's ability to reconfigure figure–ground relationships in the processing of musical voices.

In this article, I focus on three defining characteristics of group creativity: improvisation, collaboration and emergence. To demonstrate these three characteristics, I present several examples of group creativity in both music and theater. Then I explore how structure and improvisation are always both present in group creativity. Improvisations contain elements of structure and structured performances contain improvisational elements. I conclude by suggesting some implications for musical education and for education in general.

As a common multi-modal information carrier, music is frequently used to deliver emotions with lyrics and melodies. Besides lyrics (text) and melodies (audio), the structure of a song is another indicator of emotions creating a strong resonance for listeners. Typically, a pop song is composed of verses and choruses. To improve the performance of existing music emotion recognition models, we first propose a hierarchical model to analyze music structure. Then, a cross-modal interaction method is developed to extract and interact emotions from different modalities. Finally, we perform music emotion recognition by combining music structure analysis and cross-modal interaction. Adequate experiments are conducted on a dataset crawled from Netease Cloud Music, and results demonstrate the effectiveness of music structure analysis and cross-modal interaction. The proposed model COSMIC achieves state-of-the-art performance on music emotion recognition tasks.

THE PARALLELS BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND MUSIC CAN BE explored only in the context of (a) the differences between them, and (b) those parallels that are also shared with other cognitive capacities. The two differ in many aspects of structure and function, and, with the exception of the metrical grid, all aspects they share appear to be instances of more general capacities.

Music therapy has been found to improve communicative behaviours and joint attention in children with autism, but it is unclear what in the music therapy sessions drives those changes. We developed an annotation protocol and tools to accumulate large datasets of music therapy, for analysis of interaction dynamics. Analysis of video recordings of improvisational music therapy sessions focused on simple, unambiguous individual and shared behaviours: movement and facing behaviours, rhythmic activity and musical structures and the relationships between them. To test the feasibility of the protocol, early and late sessions of five client-therapist pairs were annotated and analysed to track changes in behaviours. To assess the reliability and validity of the protocol, inter-rater reliability of the annotation tiers was calculated, and the therapists provided feedback about the relevance of the analyses and results. This small-scale study suggests that there are both similarities and differences in the profiles of client-therapist sessions. For example, all therapists faced the clients most of the time, while the clients did not face back so often. Conversely, only two pairs had an increase in regular pulse from early to late sessions. More broadly, similarity across pairs at a general level is complemented by variation in the details. This perhaps goes some way to reconciling client- and context-specificity on one hand and generalizability on the other. Behavioural characteristics seem to influence each other. For instance, shared rhythmic pulse alternated with mutual facing and the occurrence of shared pulse was found to relate to the musical structure. These observations point towards a framework for looking at change in music therapy that focuses on networks of variables or broader categories. The results suggest that even when starting with simple behaviours, we can trace aspects of interaction and change in music therapy, which are seen as relevant by therapists.