The Open University

Graduate Student, Computing

Thesis Title: A Computational Model of the Cognition of Harmonic Tonality

About

I am full-time funded postgraduate student at The Open University, and I live in the beautiful (and undiscovered) countryside of Bedfordshire, England.

My principal research interest is music cognition, with a focus on building computational models of how we, as humans, respond to tonal-harmonic music. For example, can acoustical features help explain the perceived affinity of different pairs of chords, or why successions of tones, chords, and keys, induce feelings of expectation and resolution. And, to what extent can such models explain tonal music’s richly emotional and expressive capabilities?



I am also interested in exploring how alternative tunings and tones with non-harmonic partials open up the possibility of alternative, but still perceptually grounded, systems of tonality. Dynamic Tonality—developed by myself, Bill Sethares, Jim Plamondon, and Anthony Prechtl—is an audio synthesis and control framework that helps musicians to explore novel tunings, scales and timbres using a small number of intuitive parameters. We provide a free software resource at www.dynamictonality.com.

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