Honing, H. (2006). How to make a machine listen? Intensive Science, 21. Sony Computer Science Laboratory: Paris.

Abstract

Imagine what it would look like: A machine that is able to listen and react in a human and musical way... What should such a machine know, what should it listen for, how could it respond, and how can we compare and evaluate them? The design of a "listening machine" that embodies the musical and listening skills common to most humans turns out to be a full-fledged research program and is part of the scientific enterprise generally known as music cognition. Like language, music is a uniquely human capacity that arguably played a central role in the origins of human cognition, and as such an important topic in the cognitive sciences. In this field of research computational modeling (formalizing a theory in the form of a computer program and relating it to human behavior) is an influential methodology that has contributed to a further understanding of music as a process in which the performer and the listener play a central role.