We present a music-robotic system capable of performing an accompaniment for a musician and reacting to human performance with gestural and facial expression in real time. This work can be seen as a marriage between social robotics and computer accompaniment systems in order to create more musical, interactive, and engaging performances between humans and machines. We also conduct subjective ev...

A controversy exists over the “Mozart effect,” which is the influence of Mozart’s classical music on spatial-reasoning abilities. There are contradicting studies of whether listening to Mozart’s music improves performance on spatial-reasoning tasks. This study tested the effect of classical music on performance and investigated the role of arousal and relaxation. Participants were randomly assi...

What makes a musician? In this review, we discuss innate and experience-dependent factors that mold the musician brain in addition to presenting new data in children that indicate that some neural enhancements in musicians unfold with continued training over development. We begin by addressing effects of training on musical expertise, presenting neural, perceptual, and cognitive evidence to sup...

Comparisons of musicians and non-musicians have revealed enhanced cognitive and sensory processing in musicians, with longitudinal studies suggesting these enhancements may be due in part to experience-based plasticity. Here, we investigate the impact of primary instrument on the musician signature of expertise by assessing three groups of young adults: percussionists, vocalists, and non-musici...

This paper presents work in progress on the modelling of emergence in an intelligent music composition/performance system. A model is described which seeks to encourage such emergence by facilitating interaction between musician and system. A complex adaptive systems population of musical behaviours inhabits a landscape which in turn is shaped by a process of description and redescription of th...

This paper describes our on-going theoretical research into the design of computer music instruments. Traditionally, an acoustical instrument is used as an extension of the body. We feel the importance of this tight relationship between musician and instrument has traditionally been underestimated in the design of computer music controllers. In this paper, we will show the benefits of a cyberne...