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Recently, Spotify provided each user of the application with lists of their most listened to genres and songs. But what can the music we have been listening to all year say about us? They turn out quite a few. Research data with 15 minutes agreed to share a member of the Finnish Interdisciplinary Music Research Center, researcher dr. Nerdinga Snape.
The members of this center carry out research in collaboration with various Finnish universities, hospitals and other institutions. Here N. Snape, along with his colleagues, delves into the psychology of music, changes in brain states, movement analysis, and computer technology.
“My specialization is music therapy, but my other research is related to listening to music in my daily activities and how musical experiences are affected by various internal and environmental aspects”, says the interlocutor.
How is music research done?
According to N. Snape, research with music can be done in a number of ways. For example, one can take individual interviews of a person and delve into their personal experiences, but it is also possible to invite a large group of people and observe their discussion to determine how the influence of other people changes our perception and experience of music.
“It is also possible to invite research participants to the music lab. Then we give them various musical tasks (for example, listening to recordings, dancing to music, playing an instrument) and examining videos, data provided by magnetoencephalography or electroencephalography, test results psychological to understand the effect of music on a person “, says the expert.
It is important to mention that the category of gender is often neglected in current research. As N. Snape says, survey participants are asked to provide specific examples of musical works because people can assign the same song to different genres. When the attribution of a gender is left to the computer or the professional, the results of the investigation are much more precise.
“Then we use computer analysis of the music to distinguish the tempo, the harmonic structure, various parameters. Let’s say Spotify playlists use the same music information retrieval (Search for Lithuanian musical information – MIR), which we not only apply in practice, but also work to improve the reliability of these algorithms ”, reveals the peculiarities of the work.
Photo album of the personal album / scientific seminar held on the cruise ship
N. Snape herself is currently conducting a comparative study of music listening experiences in different cultures, interviewing people from Lithuania, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Russia, China, India, Latin America and several English-speaking countries. According to the researcher, no research has yet been conducted that fully covers the taste of Lithuanian music in the global context.
“We are now collecting data for a large and important international study that we hope will better understand how unique our music culture is and how similar we are to people around the world. Therefore, I strongly invite everyone who wants to participate to complete the survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WGLW5JJ?lang=en), because the more Lithuanians participate in it, the better our culture will be represented, and it is not clear when the opportunity will arise in the future, ”says N. Snape.
By the way, according to N. Snapes, research on taste for Lithuanian music may have been done before, but it was held back by the language barrier – the fact that certain musical terminology is difficult to translate into Lithuanian.
“Music research is being done with larger countries. The problem is that most of the research is done in English to gather enough participants. In the current research, we translated the survey into eleven languages so that Finns could respond in Finnish and Lithuanians in Lithuanian. Because the perception of music is highly cultural, language differences cause significant problems.
For example, English has the term “blue”, which we cannot translate into Lithuanian, because you will not say that you feel sad when you listen to music. We say that we are sad, but it is not the same. Therefore, the surveys that are being developed for Western research must also adapt to the Lithuanian worldview ”, says the interlocutor.
However, according to the researcher, it can be assumed that music listening habits in Lithuania differ from global trends. “In fact, we are unique because we have polyphonic, mainstream folk music. Therefore, it can be expected that the listening habits of Lithuanian music are different compared to other countries.
But again, we don’t know how tangible it will be, because our younger generation is very cosmopolitan. After all, you can listen to music from different cultures through Spotify, no matter what country you are from. Therefore, older people are likely to have more “Lithuanian” characteristics for listening to music. On the other hand, it is difficult to persuade older people to participate in research, so it is not clear if this part of society will be active, ”Nnape shares.
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