Lecture Series: John Ashley Burgoyne
S.A.107 Prinsstraat 13, Antwerpen, België, BelgiumHow to Make it Stick: A Study of Long-Term Musical Memorability Using Citizen Science.
Psycholinguist Steven Pinker once described music as being ‘auditory cheesecake’, similar to pornography and alcohol. Indeed, human beings do not seem to get enough of it. Music can be enchanting, annoying and intriguing. It helps us to concentrate or forget, it can make us jubilant or melancholic. Some songs, the so-called ‘earwigs’, can haunt us for days. These earwigs in particular are the subject of the upcoming talk. Our speaker will discuss what makes songs stick (i.e. what makes them ‘catchy’) by computationally analysing song structure and music recognition patterns by humans.