icmpc8.umn.edu/proceedings/I … 040152.PDF
Variation between polished performances? Gee. It’s called artistry.
Christ that is the most retarded article I’ve ever seen. Even a little change of mood affects a performance in a huge way.
Psychology=Fail
Psychology of Musical Performance= MEGA FAIL
Why do people have to make a science out of an art? Why can’t they just marvel at it?
I didn’t read this article, but the psychology of art is actually pretty important, I think. It doesn’t demystify it to me… For instance, musical congnition studies have resulted in some interesting observations, like the fact that our musical cognition for “random” music like Cage’s chance pieces is almost indistinguishable from our musical cognition of “totally ordered” pieces like Marteau sans Maitre, or Babbitt’s 4th String Quartet.
It’s not really the demystification that science offers (on the contrary, I love the fact that the more I learn about something, the more interesting it becomes, as by studying its various properties one can marvel at its beauty in more levels than what they can sense), it’s the fundamental difference that lies between science and art, a difference that can be appreciated if one compares their definitions, that makes me loathe this.
For example, I listen to music for the sense of beauty that it gives me, and I never cared to analyse if this beauty comes from the composer’s work, or the way the performer played this broken chord or that trill, as such an analysis cannot provide me with any tangible data to prove anything, not even to myself. I “just like” Music.
Mathematics, on the contrary, I enjoy because of the concreteness that is ensured by its methods. Yeah, it might not be “real”, something we can sense , but it offers the ability to make mathematical models in diverse scientific fields, as it is a language that helps you “prove” things.
Psychology can’t, to my knowledge,really predict anything, as a science should do. It just seems too subjective.
coming from someone who loves music, you’d think the “subjective” wouldn’t be such a turnoff
Yeah, it’s a turnoff when you try to make it into a science.
@ DaVent (just a sidenote, have not read the article yet): as far as I can determine, modern psychology is not subjective at all; on the contrary, research in psychology usually follows rather rigid and generally accepted scientific standards; psychological principles are just different from mathematical rules and if they are less (not) predictive, this has a lot to do with the fact that the subject matter is too complex to be fully taken into consideration in one’s experiments, etc.
it was clearly written by a total retard
well, they are from the univ. of connecticut… 
oh and also, this is from a conference on music cognition as you can see; alot of these academic conferences contain papers done by grad students rather than established experts, which is what i’m sure the situation is here.