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Centre for Music and Science

 

Interested students are highly encouraged to make music and science a significant part of their undergraduate degrees at the Faculty of Music. Currently, there are three main music and science options that you can select during your degree:

  • The Part IB (second-year) course Introduction to Music and Science. This course provides a broad introduction to the field of music and science, ranging from the acoustics of pitch perception to the evolutionary basis of musical emotions. The course also provides a grounding in empirical research methods, with a view to supporting students to conduct research projects in the future.
  • The Part II (third-year) course Exploring Music Psychology: From Theory to Practice. This course takes a deeper dive into music psychology, providing a chance to explore particular research topics in greater detail, and to design one's own research projects.
  • The Part II (third-year) dissertation. This is an open coursework option that allows students to design and conduct a full research project in the domain of music and science.

These courses are primarily attended by undergraduate students from the Faculty of Music; however, it is also possible for Part II Biological and Biomedical Sciences students to take the Part II music psychology course as a Minor Subject.

It is also possible for other students at the Faculty of Music to audit music and science classes informally and without examination. Students interested in this possibility should contact the CMS director Peter Harrison as soon as convenient.

Please see this link for more general information about applying for undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Music.

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Latest news

New paper: Computational analysis of improvised music at scale

1 October 2024

Our new paper entitled “Jazz Trio Database: Automated Annotation of Jazz Piano Trio Recordings Processed Using Audio Source Separation” is just published in Transactions of the International Society of Music Information Retrieval (TISMIR). This paper arises from work completed by Huw Cheston during his PhD at the CMS, in...

New paper: Coordinating online music performances

1 October 2024

Our new paper entitled “Trade-offs in Coordination Strategies for Duet Jazz Performances Subject to Network Delay and Jitter” has just been published in Music Perception. This paper arises from work completed by Huw Cheston during the early stages of his PhD at the CMS, and was funded by an award from Cambridge Digital...

New paper: Consonance in the carillon

21 August 2024

Our new paper entitled 'Consonance in the carillon' has just been published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. This paper grew out of an undergraduate dissertation by James MacConnachie. Well done James! The paper explores an interesting phenomenon whereby the idiosyncratic frequency spectrum of the...