Cross-cultural diversity in perception and production of musical pitch

• Project/Area Number: 19K14476
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 10040:Experimental psychology-related
• Research Institution: Keio University
• Principal Investigator: サベジ パトリック 慶應義塾大学, 環境情報学部(藤沢), 特任准教授 (50821790)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Project Status: Discontinued (Fiscal Year 2019)
• Budget Amount: ¥4,160,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥960,000); Fiscal Year 2022: ¥390,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥90,000); Fiscal Year 2021: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000); Fiscal Year 2020: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000); Fiscal Year 2019: ¥1,690,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥390,000)
• Keywords: music / cognition / cross-cultural / speech / cross-species / evolution

Outline of Research at the Start

There is little cross-cultural data on the degree of variation in musical production and perception with which to understand the evolution of music. I propose to address this problem through a combination of 1) automated acoustic analysis of ~300 recordings of music, speech, and bird song recordings, and 2) perceptual experiments on ~300 participants from Japan and the USA. By synthesizing global data on pitch production and perception, I aim to shed new light on the way biology and culture combine to create human music, with important practical implications for the music industry.

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

This research project was cancelled during the first year due to acceptance of a separate JSPS Kakenhi grant. Therefore, we only used a very small amount of the funding received (~\5,000) to present the following two posters at the 2019 meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition in New York City:
Sato, S., Fujii, S., & Savage, P. E. (2019). Automatic comparison of global children’s and adult songs supports a sensorimotor hypothesis of scale origin. Poster presented at the 2019 meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, New York University, New York, USA.
Ho, M.-J., Konno, R., Tomokane, J., McDermott, J., Tokui, N., Fujii, S., & Savage, P. E. (2019). Aesthetic responses to microtonal intervals. Poster presented at the 2019 meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, New York University, New York, USA.

These results advanced our knowledge of cross-cultural diversity in music perception and production, and we will build in them in our new Kakenhi proposal entitled "Understanding global diversity in music perception and production".

Research Products

• [Presentation] Automatic comparison of global children’s and adult songs supports a sensorimotor hypothesis of scale origin (2019)
  • Author(s): Sato, S., Fujii, S., & Savage, P. E.
  • Organizer: Society for Music Perception and Cognition, New York University, New York, USA
  • Int'l Joint Research
• [Presentation] Aesthetic responses to microtonal intervals (2019)
  • Author(s): Ho, M.-J., Konno, R., Tomokane, J., McDermott, J., Tokui, N., Fujii, S., & Savage, P. E.
  • Organizer: Society for Music Perception and Cognition, New York University, New York, USA
  • Int'l Joint Research