Andrew Milne
Dr. Andrew Milne 
is a Senior Research Fellow in Music Cognition and Computation, and leader of the Music Science Lab at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Australia. His research is at the interface of music, cognitive science, mathematics, computing, and their implications for education and well-being.
He received his PhD in 2013 (The Open University, UK) and has published 48 peer-reviewed articles, conference proceedings, and book chapters. His recent research has included cross-cultural music cognition (including on-site field experiments in a remote Papua New Guinean community), the cognition of familiar and unfamiliar (microtonal) harmony, cognitive mechanisms and mathematical models related to the perception, performance, and algorithmic generation of complex rhythms. He is a musician, composer, and occasional performer, and has developed several music software applications (including the widely used XronoMorph rhythm generator), and designed and built new musical interfaces in public art, therapeutic, and educational settings.
He is hosted by, and working with 2017 USIAS Fellow, Dr. Moreno Andreatta at IRMA – the Institute for Advanced Mathematical Research of the University of Strasbourg - to develop new tools for computer-assisted music composition applicable to different genres (from tonal popular music to more sophisticated modal and non-tonal styles). The simplicity of the gestures required to operate the software means it should also lower barriers to music composition/generation for novices and for creatives with physical disabilities.
Lecture - Acoustic and Cultural Explanations for Musical Harmony and its Associated Emotions
January 27, 2023 | From 14:00 until 15:30 | Salle de Conférence, IRMA, 7 rue René Descartes, Strasbourg
By Andrew Milne, MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University (Australia)
A fundamental uncertainty about musical pitch/harmony and its cognition is the extent to which its structure and the emotions it induces are the result of 1) potentially universal acoustic features and 2) cognitive mechanisms related to cultural learning (familiarity and associative conditioning). In this talk, I will detail a series of music cognition experiments with Western-enculturated participants listening to unfamiliar (microtonal) music, and with participants in a remote cloud forest community in Papua New Guinea who have limited exposure to Western music and harmony. The results indicate that cultural aspects play an important role but there is one acoustic element (roughness) with a possibly universal effect.
Conference organised in the context of the Centre for research and experimentation on the artistic act (CREAA), in cooperation with USIAS.
