Music Cognition Group
The research of the Music Cognition Group (MCG) has a
special focus on the everyday listener, using theoretical, empirical and
computational methods. The research program aims to identify the basic
(neuro)cognitive mechanisms that constitute musicality (and effective ways to
study these in human and nonhuman animals) and to develop methods to
unravel the cognitive, biological and environmental mechanisms that underpin
our capacity for music.
"Over the years it has become clear that we all
share a predisposition for music, just like we have for language. Even those of
us who can’t play a musical instrument or predisposition, in all its
complexity, as 'musicality', defined as a natural, spontaneously developing set
of traits that are based on and constrained by our cognitive abilities and its
underlying biology. As such, 'music', in all its diversity, can be defined as a
social and cultural construct that is built on this musicality" (Honing et
al., 2015).
prof. dr
Henkjan Honing (Full professor)
Henkjan
Honing is a professor of Music Cognition at both the Faculty of Humanities and
the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). He studies what
musicality is or can be and to what extent human beings share musicality with
other animals. His aim is to define the cognitive and biological mechanisms
that underpin musicality.
In addition to a research agenda (The Origins of
Musicality, 2018, MIT Press), Honing has published several books for the
general public, including the English-language publications Musical Cognition
and The Evolving Animal Orchestra. Honing’s books and lectures are popular with
a broad audience and are appreciated both inside and outside the scientific
world.
Dr. J. Ashley Burgoyne (Assistant
Professor in Computational Musicology)
John Ashley
Burgoyne is the Lecturer in Computational Musicology at the University of
Amsterdam and a researcher in the Music Cognition Group at the Institute for
Logic, Language, and Computation. Cross-appointed in Musicology and Artificial
Intelligence, he is interested in understanding musical behaviour
at the audio level, using large-scale experiments and audio corpora.
His McGill–Billboard corpus of time-aligned chord and
structure transcriptions has served as a backbone for audio chord estimation
techniques. His ‘Hooked-on Music’ project reached hundreds of thousands of
participants in almost every country on Earth while collecting data to
understand long-term musical memory. Currently, he is working through the
Amsterdam Music Lab to understand what people are hearing – and what they are
ignoring – while they stream music every day.
Dr. Makiko Sadakata (Assistant Professor
in Cognitive Musicology)
Makiko Sadakata is a lecturer at the musicology
department of the University of Amsterdam. She is one of the core research members at the Music
Cognition Group (MCG) at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation. Her
research revolves around the question of what music is to our mind and how it differs
from other sounds, such as language and environmental sounds. To address this question she uses various
methods, but mainly behavioural.
Makiko is also involved in different research projects
and topics with the keywords: sound learning, rhythm perception, and background
music. Besides, Makiko enjoys teaching music cognition. She learns so much from
preparing courses but also from supervising students. Currently, she is
teaching several courses related to music cognition and research skills at the
University of Amsterdam
Dr. Fleur Bouwer (NWO VENI recipient;
FMG Associate)
Since 2021, Fleur is a postdoctoral researcher and
lecturer at the University of Amsterdam on a personal NWO Veni
grant, examining the relationship between expectations in time and rhythm and
beat perception in the brain. She is continuing the work she did on a personal
ABC Talent grant at the University of Amsterdam (2016-2019), and the Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam (2020), supervised by Prof. Dr. Heleen
Slagter.
In June 2016, Fleur obtained her PhD in the music
cognition group at the UvA, supervised by Prof. Dr. Henkjan Honing. She holds
both a Master of Science in Psychology (cum laude, 2011, University of Amsterdam)
and a Master of Music (with distinction, 2009, Amsterdam Conservatory). In her
research, she combines my fascination for the human brain and my passion for
music in examining the neural underpinnings of rhythm and beat perception.
In addition to my work as a researcher, Fleur is an
enthusiastic educator. She taught courses at the bachelor's and master’s levels
and is asked as a public speaker on a regular basis to bring the science about
the exceptional bond between humans and music to the public.
Dr. Fabian Moss (Research Fellow in
Cultural Analytics; FGw Associate)
Fabian is a
Research Fellow in Cultural Analytics at the Media Studies Department at
University of Amsterdam (UvA). He is also affiliated with the Language &
Music Cognition (LMC) research unit at UvA’s
Institute for Language, Logic and Computation (ILLC). He engages with the
activities of the Music Cognition Group (MCG) and the Amsterdam Music Lab (AML)
as well as with the project Creative Amsterdam: an e-Humanities Perspective
(CREATE).
His research is inherently interdisciplinary and aims
to bridge the humanities and the sciences. He draws on methods and concepts
from Musicology and Music Theory, Mathematics, Music Information Retrieval,
Data Science & Machine Learning, Music Psychology & Cognition, and the
Digital Humanities. Working with large symbolic datasets of musical scores and
harmonic annotations, he is primarily interested in Computational Music
Analysis, Music Theory, Music Cognition, and their mutual relationship.
Before his appointment at UvA, Fabian worked as a
postdoctoral researcher in the Digital and Cognitive Musicology Lab (DCML) at
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL,
Switzerland) for the project Distant Listening: The Development of Harmony over
Three Centuries (1700–2000), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
(PI: Martin Rohrmeier). He also directed the project
Digitizing the Dualism Debate: A Case Study in the Computational Analysis of
Historical Music Sources, supported by the EPFL-UNIL funding scheme CROSS -
Collaborative Research on Science and Society.
Dr. Atser Damsma (Postdoc on UvA-ABC Project)
Atser Damsma is
a postdoctoral researcher in the Music Cognition Group at the Institute for
Logic, Language, and Computation (ILLC). His work is supported by an Amsterdam
Brain and Cognition (ABC) Project Grant in collaboration with Prof. Henkjan
Honing, Dr. Fleur Bouwer and Dr. Pilou Bazin. His research interests focus on how we perceive
rhythm, and how this creates expectations when we listen to music.
To answer these questions, he likes to combine
computational modelling with behavioural experiments
and neuroimaging. He has a background in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Psychology
and obtained his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Groningen
in 2020, supervised by Prof. Hedderik van Rijn, Prof.
Niels Taatgen and Prof. Ritske
de Jong. Besides his scientific endeavours, he has
been producing and performing music internationally as a keyboard player and
has been collaborating on several sound art installations.
Jiaxin
Li, MA (PhD in NWO-OC Project)
Jiaxin Li works as
part of the Music Cognition Group (MCG) at the Institute for Logic, Language
and Computation (ILLC), University of Amsterdam (UvA). Her PhD project is
funded by NWO-OC in collaboration with Prof. Henkjan Honing, Dr. Ashley
Burgoyne, Prof. dr. Karline
Janmaat and Dr. David Baker. She is interested in probing the core components of
musicality and how they manifest in different cultures. Computational modelling
and behavioural experiments (gamified online and
offline cross-cultural experiments) will be combined to investigate these
questions.
This interest can be traced back to her master's study
in Systematic Musicology at the University of Hamburg, Germany, where her
Gold-MSI-SC online-survey project obtained 300,000 hits in two weeks. Besides
her academic life, she has been a producer of two short films and is a choir
singer living with 35 fishes and more than 35 plants. She sometimes enjoys
teaching piano, and always enjoys bouldering.
Dr. David J. Baker (Postdoc in NWO-OC Project)
Dave Baker is
interested in music, theory, and the sciences. He currently works as a
postdoctoral research associate as part of the Music Cognition Group at the
Institute Logic, Language, and Computation at the University of Amsterdam. As
an academic researcher, he investigates how tools from cognitive psychology and
computational musicology can help understand cognition in ways only possible
with music. Dave has a PhD from Louisiana State University in Music Theory and
did his graduate minor in Cognitive and Brain Sciences.
As a data scientist, he solves problems for clients
who need someone who can both ask meaningful musicological questions as well as
use the right technical tools to answer them. He provides both data consultancy and
educational services which are run through his private, limited company. As an
educator, Dave has taught classes at the university level, has worked as a lead
instructor at a data science bootcamp, received certification as an RStudio tidyverse instructor, and gave one-on-one support to anyone
who might need help. Besides, he currently serves as the interim chair of the
Society for Music Perception and Cognition’s Anti-Racism and Equity committee, participates
as a part of the WiMIR mentoring program, and serves
as the Proceedings chair for the 2022 Digital Libraries for Musicology
conference.
Bas Cornelissen, MSc (PhD student at
ILLC; promotors dr W. Zuidema and dr
J. A. Burgoyne)
Bas is a PhD student in computational musicology,
interested in the cultural evolution of music, and how musical traditions
across the world differ. Some people say 'music' should be a verb: something
you do. It certainly is something Bas loves doing. During his masters he
rediscovered singing and a few years later he found himself studying classical
voice at Utrecht Conservatory. Despite his name, if anything, Bas is a baritone.
Besides, he has worked as a graphic
designer and web developer for over a decade.
Xuan Huang, MA (PhD student at ILLC; CSC
Scholarship; promotors prof. dr H. Honing and dr J. A. Burgoyne)
Xuan Huang completed
a Master’s Program in Applied Musicology at Utrecht University and is a PhD
candidate at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation
at the University of Amsterdam, supervised by Prof. Henkjan Honing and Dr. John
A. Burgoyne. Her research is motivated by the questions of why are some music more memorable than others? What
kinds of musical characteristics that make Chinese music memorable? Are the
features that make Chinese music memorable are the same as Western music? She
is also involved in teaching activities (TA). In her free time, she does choral
singing and teaches Cantonese and
Mandarin.
Zyuan
Ning, MSc (PhD student at UL with Prof. C. ten Cate; CSC Scholarship; prof. dr H. Honing, co-promotor)
Dr. Berit Janssen (Exchange engineer;
PDI-SSH MUSCLE project; AML)
Berit
Janssen is a scientific programmer for the Digital Humanities Lab (Utrecht
University) and the Amsterdam Music Lab (University of Amsterdam). After her MA
in Musicology and English Literature at the University of Hamburg, she
performed her doctoral research at the Dutch Meertens
Institute and the University of Amsterdam, applying computational approaches to
study melodic stability in Dutch folk songs. Since 2017, she supports other
social sciences and humanities researchers to collect and analyse
research data with web applications.
Dr. Albertas Janulevicius (Back-end engineer; PDI-SSH MUSCLE
project; AML)
Albertas has a PhD
from Delft University of Technology in Computational Biology and Biophysics,
and did postdoctoral research at the University of Groningen. Within the Music
Cognition Group, he is a programmer. Fun facts about him? :
<File not found. Check the file name and try again>. OK, perhaps one, he
is constantly trying to find more time to improve his piano skills.
Evert Rot (Webdeveloper;
AML)
Evert Rot
started coding and creating electronic music on a Commodore 64 when he was 12
years old. While keeping these activities as an intensive hobby, or perhaps
even a lifestyle, throughout his life, where he mainly worked as an electrical
engineer, troubleshooting and building computer systems and automatic door
systems. In 2019 some of his music was released on vinyl, containing tracks and
lyrics from 1988, as well as a couple from the century we live in now.
In 2020 he graduated with honours
as a full-stack software developer at Code Institute, Ireland. This enabled him
to work as a freelance coder for KNMI, Magzmaker, and
now here at the Music Cognition Group, where he finally brought all his
interests and youth dreams together.
Zwanet
Young, BSc (Student Assistant, KNAW WTC project)
Zwanet is a master’s student in Brain and
Cognitive Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. In the Music Cognition
Group, she is a student assistant on the ‘KNAW Wetenschapscommunicatie’
project, wherein a Dutch website with games is created to promote the research
areas of the Music Cognition Group.
Mariëlle
Baelemans, BA/BSc (PA to prof. dr
H. Honing)
Mariëlle is a double
master's student in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Music Studies at the
University of Amsterdam. In the Music Cognition Group, she works as a personal
assistant to prof. dr. Henkjan Honing. In the spring semester of 2022, she was
a research intern at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, where
she studied the structural prediction of natural music production. Besides
studying and research, she has a great love for writing (about music), all
different sports activities and taking care of her more than 30 house plants.