Introduction to the Workshop

Until recently, the issue of musical representation had focused primarily on symbolic notation of musical information and structure, and on the representation of musical performance. Research on how we represent musical experience in the brain is emerging as a rich area of investigation thanks to ongoing advances in brain-scanning technology such as EEG and fMRI. This day of the workshop addresses the problem of representation of musical experience in the brain from a computational modelling approach chiefly based on machine learning and signal processing. The overarching question addressed by this workshop is whether we can devise efficient methods to study and model the representation of musical experience in the brain by combining traditional forms of musical representation (musical notation, audio, performance, etc.) with brain scanning technology. This problem is of particular relevance for the successful modelling of cognitive music behaviour, design of interactive music systems, informing techniques in contemporary composition, providing methods to enhance music performance, and even helping music analysis in suggesting ways of listening to music.