This study aimed to adapt and conduct a preliminary psychometric evaluation of a European Portuguese version of the Flow State Scale-1 (FSS-1) for use with musicians, addressing the lack of a validated instrument in this language to assess flow in musical performance. A total of 194 musicians (91 female, 75 male and 28 who did not report their gender; mean age = 23.14, standard deviation = 6.69) participated, with an average of 12.22 years of instrumental experience. The adaptation process included translation, back-translation, expert consensus and pilot testing for semantic clarity, followed by confirmatory factor analysis to examine internal structure. The nine-factor model showed good fit indices (chi-square/degree of freedom = 1.70; comparative fit index = .99; Tucker–Lewis index = .98; root mean square error of approximation = .06). Internal consistency was satisfactory, with McDonald's omega ranging from .74 to .91 and composite reliability ≥.80 for all factors. Factor 9 (autotelic experience), reflecting the intrinsic reward of the musical experience, showed the strongest psychometric indicators. These results provide preliminary evidence that the European Portuguese version of the FSS-1 is internally consistent and theoretically coherent for the assessment of flow in musical performance. The scale may support future research and applied use, pending further evidence of validity.
Research on music and health is rapidly expanding, but a systematic, data-driven overview of this interdisciplinary literature is lacking. This gap limits our understanding of key research trends and applications, potentially hindering the use of music as a health-promoting resource. To address this need, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of 7,503 articles on music and health indexed in Web of Science in the last 50 years (1970–2024). We identified (1) major themes in music and health research; (2) the evolution of research trends; (3) key publishing journals, authors, and countries; and (4) research collaboration networks. Our results revealed five main areas—music psychology and health, music perception, music interventions in healthcare, music interventions for older people, and music interventions for children—with overlapping interests but distinct goals, methods, and audiences. There has been a substantial increase in publications across all areas, yet we observed a thematic division in how these topics appear in journals and how authors collaborate. These findings highlight challenges in consolidating knowledge and establishing a cohesive and collaborative identity for the field. Overall, our analysis emphasizes the discipline's growth, mapping essential themes, contributors, and collaborations, offering valuable insights for advancing music and health scholarship and its practical applications.
To what extent do different people find the same moments in a music therapy improvisation session salient, and how similarly or differently do they interpret the same moments? Four half-hour sessions at a music therapy center between different trained music therapists and musically experienced first-time attendees were videorecorded. Immediately after the sessions each participant watched the video of their session individually and commented on the one to five moments that struck them as most noteworthy. For each session, two other participants—one trained music therapist and one other musically experienced observer—also watched the videos and commented on one to five noteworthy moments. An online questionnaire for each session was subsequently created that included all four participants’ comments (anonymized and edited for ratability) and the corresponding video segments. Each participant individually rated the extent to which they agreed with all the anonymized comments about their session. Analyses focused on the extent to which different participants selected the same moments as worthy of commentary, their levels of endorsement of comments originally authored by participants in the different roles, and overall patterns of rating agreement between participants in the different roles. Overall levels of agreement were low, but across the four sessions the trained music therapists’ judgments tended to be more aligned with each other's, with some asymmetries: Session music therapists endorsed statements by the commenting music therapists more, but not the other way around. There was also evidence for greater agreement between session outsiders (commenting music therapists and commenting observers) than between session participants (session music therapists and attendees). In fact, by some measures session attendees’ interpretations of what happened were particularly different from everyone else's. The findings are not consistent with a view that everyone is likely to see the same thing in a video clip of a moment in music therapy.
Musicians, including music students in training, often have lengthy exposure to sounds 85 dB or higher, which places them at risk for noise-induced hearing loss and reduced sensitivity to musical features. While many music students are aware of this risk, uptake of hearing protection is uncommon. The purpose of this study was to compare the responses of college music students to hearing health promotion presented in two conditions: (1) a written document (WDC) on hearing health, and (2) a video (VC) on hearing health with socially relevant role models, emphasizing social persuasion, attitudinal, and emotional factors. Following each condition (WDC, VC), participants were given non-custom filtered earplugs to keep and use. Sixty-six collegiate music students were randomly assigned to the WDC or VC. During the first session, participants completed questionnaires measuring knowledge of hearing health and their readiness/attitude toward the use of hearing protection. Following the intervention (WDC or VC), participants repeated those questionnaires, evaluated the WDC or VC, and were instructed on how to use hearing protection. Participants were invited for a 3-week follow-up testing knowledge retention, readiness/attitudes regarding hearing health and protection, and use of hearing protection between the first and follow-up sessions. T-tests were used to examine changes from pre- to post-testing for each condition as well as between each condition. Both groups achieved significant improvements in knowledge of hearing health and readiness to use hearing protection; while the mean scores were typically higher for the video condition, there was no significant difference between the two conditions in improvement. The video group was significantly more satisfied with the content, format, and usefulness of their intervention than the written document group.
This study investigates how listeners reduce polyphonic drum patterns into simplified monophonic rhythm contours through tapping behavior. We examine how these contours relate to metrical structure, onset density, syncopation, and frequency-weighted onset density (FWOD), and whether these features can support rhythm retrieval tasks. Across three experiments, participants tapped rhythmic contours using a force-sensitive interface while listening to polyphonic drum patterns. The results show that tap force is shaped primarily by metrical structure, while FWOD captures an additional bottom-up component related to timbral and density-based salience. Among the analytical contour representations tested, FWOD also provided the best performance in rhythm retrieval tasks within a two-dimensional rhythm-space embedding. Together, these findings suggest that listeners simplify polyphonic rhythmic information through a combination of metrical expectations and spectrally weighted onset density. The study further supports FWOD as a compact and behaviorally relevant representation for rhythm analysis, retrieval, and interactive music systems, with potential applications in rhythm-based interaction, music production workflows, and generative musical interfaces.
This study examines factors affecting how people integrate live music (concert) experiences into their self-care, specifically related to improvements in mood. Our team investigated conditions of how music delivery affects listeners’ experience and level of engagement based on influential factors. We partnered with Carnegie Hall Weill Institute faculty as we sought to learn about conditions affecting music listening, alone or with others, and how prior concert attendance influences the extent to which attending current music concerts might improve the mood of attendees. We studied factors influencing well-being through instituting Wellness Concerts called “Sound Journeys.” Overall 314 participants enrolled, and many were recruited from the general population of New York City. Some of the participants included patients from Mount Sinai Health System who had depression and attended sessions weekly at our clinic: children, teens, post-NICU (Neonatal Internsive Care Unit) adults and older adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Our program included a series of six concerts designed to improve the mood among the attendees of live music performances. The content was matched to meet the ages of the attendees. Our research group consisted of musicians and music therapists who surveyed the attendees prior to and immediately after the live, in-person performances. There was a significant positive change in the participants’ mood in relation to concert attendance. As live music concerts involve a relationship between listeners (audience) and performers (musicians), we also surveyed the performers after each performance. Although social prescribing is increasing globally, the unique potential for live music experiences planned with understanding of the influential elements that influence perception is not well described. The capacity to improve wellbeing of audience members is an interesting proposition with little research to date. We are hopeful that our findings will encourage future studies that seek to define how live music concerts impact people’s mood and meet their quest for wellness.
Many pieces from the canon of Western classical music have been recorded by a variety of performers, often representing a wide spectrum of performance styles. Various factors, such as playing technique, stylistics, or instrumentation, influence the perceived musical similarity – or dissimilarity – between various recordings of one composition. The present study investigated the perceived dissimilarities of two melody sequences, using Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto as an example. The collected data were analyzed using weighted multidimensional scaling (INDSCAL), with which the dissimilarities of the pairwise tested melody sequences were represented as distances between spatial coordinates. In addition, acoustic features were extracted from the melody sequences to interpret the resulting INDSCAL dimensions. The results showed that participants shared the same perceptual space in terms of similarity assessment and were implicitly guided in their judgment by the respective instrumentation and musical design. Furthermore, melody sequences were perceived as more similar when they shared the same spectral properties. The present work extends the current state of research regarding the similarity assessment of different musical interpretations, with a specific consideration of Romantic and historically informed performance practices. Furthermore, this study provides the basis for further studies on the perceived similarity of cover versions of popular music, studio vs. live recordings, or electric vs. acoustic recordings and their evaluation. Future research should therefore consider a larger number and variety of stimuli and be performed under more controlled acoustic conditions.
Gender has traditionally been a key focus in efforts to address equity and diversity in orchestras and other musical settings. Since the mid-1990s, indicators and assessment of performance or achievement of gender equity have traditionally relied on quantitative methodologies that broadly “count” parity (and success) as when 50/50 employment between male and female musicians is achieved. Research and industry leaders have commonly pointed to such quantitative changes as reflective of positive cultural change. Yet, concerningly, despite purported gains made, persisting gender inequities have shown to be stubbornly persistent in classical music workplaces, and orchestras in particular. In this article we consider the utility and limitations of this methodological approach to assessing gender equity. To do so, we undertake a quantitative analysis of female-identifying musicians’ representation in orchestral workspaces in Australia, and map gender differences according to role, instruments, and leadership status based on available data. In so doing, we offer new insights into the gendered make-up of Australian orchestras and show the benefits and limitations of the “habit” of reliance on demographic data to assess gender representation. In particular, we argue that attending to how and what demographic data is collected and analyzed, and complementing quantitative modes of research in knowledge production, is critical to understanding persisting uneven power relations and unequal gender dynamics in musical spaces. We suggest that adopting a feminist intersectional approach to how gender equity is “counted” and constituted via research methods is critical to change ingrained research and workplace “habits” that otherwise sustain gender (and other) inequities in orchestral settings.
Polytempo music – where multiple, simultaneous tempi are performed – poses unique challenges for ensemble coordination, yet empirical research on its performance remains scarce. This exploratory study investigates how expert musicians execute different forms of polytempo, comparing temporal stratification (distant tempi) and phasing-like configurations (close tempi) to both a simple polyrhythm condition and a baseline condition (in which all musicians played at the same tempo). Six highly experienced performers completed 32 trials in which they played isochronous pulses at individually assigned tempi while hearing individualized click tracks that either continued or disappeared early in the trial. We analyzed temporal regularity, tempo change, and group-level success in maintaining prescribed tempo ratios. Across measures, polytempo configurations elicited greater difficulty than the polyrhythm condition, which did not clearly differ from unison tempi, suggesting that expert performers may spontaneously assimilate simple tempo ratios into a shared rhythmic framework. Performances at distant tempi produced significantly more tempo change and markedly lower success in reproducing target ratios than either close tempi or polyrhythms, indicating that temporal stratification is more challenging than phasing when performed without shared structural cues. Individual click tracks had limited influence on stability or coordination, though they did reduce tempo change in both polytempo conditions. These findings provide the first empirical comparison of various types of polytempo performance in an ecologically valid, multi-instrumental context, offering insight into the coordinative demands of contemporary polytempo practice, suggesting new considerations for composers and performers working with complex temporal structures, and shedding new light on the broader cognitive mechanisms involved in resisting the seemingly inescapable tendency to synchronize with one another.
Musical engagement, including actively listening or participating in music-making experiences, fosters socio-emotional development, emotion regulation, and the overall health and well-being of individuals across the lifespan. Further, musical care offers the context for practices that are inclusive and accessible beyond traditional health care environments. Building on musical care principles, the current study explores the acceptability of a music-based emotion intervention program as a form of musical care that holds the potential to ensure equal access for marginalized groups, such as students with learning difficulties, who are a growing population but often do not enjoy the same opportunities as their peers. Developed to be integrated into the academic curriculum across four European countries, the current program is built on the increasingly recognized importance of socio-emotional development as a crucial component of a comprehensive education, vital for students’ academic and career success. Findings from this applicability study provide emerging evidence that multimodal, music-enhanced psychoeducational programs can be both acceptable and beneficial for university students as they help them navigate complex emotional states. Across countries, students consistently reported high levels of satisfaction, enjoyment, and perceived relevance of the course content as evidenced by the high overall acceptability scores. Further, the app was perceived as usable and accessible across diverse user groups, with minimal barriers related to demographics, academic background, or disability status. These results are promising, as they indicate that the design, content, and implementation of the project is well aligned with the needs and requirements of university students with different geographical, cognitive, and cultural backgrounds. Recommendations for future research and policy focus on further developing music-enhanced universal psychosocial programs to enhance mental and social well-being of individuals with diverse needs.
In the past years, professional musicians of participatory music practices in healthcare contexts have increasingly worked as artistic allies for care. The musicians shaping these practices have developed ways of engaging with patients and their families, collaborating with healthcare professionals, and potentially also guiding novice musicians. Working with people in a vulnerable situation, care professionals and less-experienced “newcomers” in the interprofessional community of practice, healthcare musicians fulfil various new responsibilities beyond conventional music professionalism. Particularly when coming from a tradition of performance, they are confronted with dilemmas of an ethical nature that require a situated response, especially as they operate in improvised situations with vulnerable patients. Yet, little is known about the nature and types of “ethics work” and how musicians go about solving them. This article explores some typical ethical dilemmas encountered by healthcare musicians in their engagements with people on site, drawing from research underpinning an existing music-in-hospitals practice. Building upon the works of Goldbard and Matarasso, the point of departure is that artists working in any social context will undoubtedly encounter ethical dilemmas but often lack preparedness to deal with them. “Thick” descriptions are analyzed through the framework of care ethics in music-making, and the ethics of participatory arts and community music. The findings present seven intertwined ethical dimensions of musicians working in participatory music practices in hospitals, suggesting that, although the applied situational ethics of their work are partially safeguarded by collaborative means with healthcare professionals, musicians need structural support for building practical skills and awareness of the multidimensional ethics of musical care, also for their own wellbeing.
This systematic review synthesizes six years (2019–2025) of scholarly discourse on Chinese national music education in higher education. It employs Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory to diagnose multi-level challenges and strategize pathways for sustainable development, positioning the issue at the intersection of cultural policy, digital transformation, and human development in the Asia-Pacific region. Adhering rigorously to PRISMA 2020 guidelines, a qualitative synthesis was conducted on 64 peer-reviewed studies from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database. The analysis employed a hybrid inductive-deductive approach: open coding allowed themes to emerge from the data, which were then systematically mapped onto Bronfenbrenner's ecological framework—macrosystem (policy/culture), mesosystem (institution), microsystem (pedagogy), and individual level (student)—with attention also to the chronosystem (temporal change). The ecosystem is characterized by policy-practice decoupling, curricular Westernization, a digital divide, and a crisis of cultural confidence. A paradigm shift is evident in post-2020 literature, advocating for digitally-enabled pedagogies (AI, VR), interdisciplinary “New Liberal Arts” fusion, and a transition from cultural inheritance to innovation. The findings underscore the necessity of synergistic, multi-level interventions. External validity concerns, similar to those noted in the broader Chinese educational research landscape, are also discussed. This is the first review to apply a robust ecological framework to this domain, transforming fragmented findings into a coherent diagnostic and strategic model. It explicitly links cultural heritage education to global development agendas and offers evidence-based, scalable policy insights for stakeholders across the Asia-Pacific, contributing to comparative studies on cultural sustainability in education.
Music and memory are intrinsically intertwined, yet the nature of their relationship remains poorly understood. This article explores how auditory memory shapes the perception and experience of music, and how music may, in turn, influence memory more broadly. We propose a theoretical framework developed around four conceptual axes: music is virtual, music is future, music is embodied, and music is sensory. These dimensions are explored in terms of the acoustic, perceptual, and cognitive features of music, which require a particular kind of temporally extended perceptual and cognitive processing. We argue that music, as a complex and multifaceted experience, engages the activation and interaction of multiple brain functions as well as bodily arousal and motor activity, interconnecting them with the auditory system. From this distributed and embodied engagement emerges an interacting system, forming a functional meta-structure that extends beyond auditory processing. We suggest that this meta-structure may act as a “memory amplifier”: its temporal, embodied, sensory, and imagery characteristics may provide an alternative means of cognitive processing through music, granting access to multiple brain areas and functions even in circumstances where other cognitive faculties fail. We further propose that the repeated reactivation of this meta-structure may actively contribute to the consolidation and preservation of memory. The meta-structure might therefore constitute a strong case for the evolutionary value of music as a universal human capacity. In essence, music perception and cognition represent a form of memory: an ottofixation— a term coined to capture this capacity of musical experience to function as both a vehicle and an architecture for memory.
The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns disrupted social connectivity, prompting individuals to seek alternative sources of socioemotional support. This study investigated whether beat-based music, characterized by the Spotify danceability feature, served as a surrogate for social reward during the first European lockdown (March–May 2020). We integrated large-scale Spotify streaming data with psychological measures of socioemotional support from the COVIDiSTRESS global survey and governmental stringency indices across 11 European countries. Results from a linear-mixed effects model indicate that people listened to music with higher danceability during social distancing after the COVID onset (30 March – 30 May 2020) compared with the same pre-COVID period in the year before. A quasi-Bayesian multilevel mediation analysis further revealed that stricter social distancing policies predicted lower perceived socioemotional support, which in turn was associated with increased listening to more highly danceable music. This effect was specific to certain facets of socioemotional need, namely emotional attachment and reassurance of worth, which delineates the instantaneous rewarding nature of social recognition, often encountered during common activities, such as dinner parties, (band or dance) rehearsals, or (themed) excursions. These findings suggest that individuals may intuitively gravitate toward rhythmically engaging music to compensate for diminished social affirmation and bonding, highlighting beat-based music as a potential non-pharmacological tool for addressing transient socioemotional deficits during social isolation.
Since Peterson's influential work on musical omnivorousness, researchers have debated whether broad musical tastes serve as markers of high socioeconomic status in modern Western societies. However, existing measures rely on simple genre counts or problematic a priori assumptions about genres’ social associations. This study introduces a novel continuous measure of musical taste breadth that accounts for both the number of liked genres and their sonic-social distance, based on expert ratings. Using a representative German sample ( N = 2,086), we tested core assumptions of omnivore theory while examining relationships between taste breadth and sociodemographic factors through Sinus lifestyle milieus. Our similarity-weighted measure revealed greater differentiation than simple sum scores. The results challenge general assumptions on cultural omnivorousness. While breadth increased slightly with socioeconomic status, effect sizes were small, with high-status individuals liking only one additional genre on average. Contrary to expectations, classical music lovers showed only average taste breadth, while fans of funk, jazz, and non-European music demonstrated the broadest tastes. The most pronounced differences emerged along cultural distance rather than social hierarchy: High-status groups preferred culturally distant genres (soul, blues, non-European music), while low-status groups favored familiar, domestic genres (Schlager, German traditional music). Linear regression models revealed that individual attitudes—particularly openness to experience and reorientation toward new values—were stronger predictors than socioeconomic status alone. These findings suggest that broad tastes are not a strong means of vertical social distinction in contemporary Germany, but that tastes have become increasingly aligned. Social distinction now operates primarily through high-status rejection of domestic “trivial” genres rather than broad inclusive tastes, highlighting the importance of considering both sociological and psychological factors in cultural taste research.
This study focuses on the first stage of instrument development, content validity, and provides guidance on what steps should be taken when designing and evaluating content through the development of an instrument to reflect a recent theory concerning emotional episodes. To establish this instrument, we (1) operationalized the theory, identifying 25 sub-constructs for topics such as listening attention, meaning generation, preferences, familiarity, reward, and functions attributed to the use of music to regulate affectual states; (2) proposed a set of items (N = 495) to represent the relevant constructs operationalized here from the Episode Model; (3) analyzed and reduced the item pool with natural language processing (NLP); (4) assessed whether items were indeed reflective of their assumed construct and would garner appropriate responses using feedback supplied by subject matter experts; (5) refined the item pool based on expert feedback; (6) reassessed the revised items which resulted in a reduced item sample (N = 168). Through this collaborative content validity process, experts supported the theoretical positioning of the Episode Model through their agreement with the operationalized constructs. Expert insight shaped the implementation of theory from loosely associated items into a more tightly interrelated set of items, comprising fewer and more distinct constructs. We conclude by discussing the purpose of these content validity processes and outline the next stages of instrument development to construct a robust instrument which contextualizes emotional episodes experienced with music.
Transitional changes in youth are directing young people to ponder about themselves and who they want to become. Previous research has largely focused on identity construction as a psychosocial process, overlooking the way these processes are situated in our everyday life. This study explores identity construction processes in young people's everyday lives through music listening within the framework of musical affordances. We conducted interviews with 15–25-year-old Finnish participants ( N = 64) utilizing photo-elicitation methods to discuss their self-collected digi-ethnographical material related to their everyday music uses, which consisted of photos, videos, and/or audio-recordings of a one-week time period. The interview material was analyzed using Braun and Clarke's reflexive approach to thematic analysis. In our analysis, four psychological mechanisms for self-construction processes were identified: a) self-exploration, b) self-enhancement, c) self-efficacy and agency, and d) self-regulation. These four mechanisms were further defined by processes relating to 1) self-awareness, and 2) self-enactment. We suggest that music listening provided affordances for cinematic musical episodes, such as situating self within current time and space, creating fictional narratives of self and own life, and seeing self as a main character of one's own life from a third-person perspective. Based on our results, music provides affordances for self-constructive processes by increasing listeners’ self-awareness and abilities exercising self-enactment through these cinematic musical episodes. These episodes illustrate the rich and multidimensional affordances that can be picked up for construction of self-identity. Our study empirically identifies how identity construction processes are situated within personal, environmental, and temporal dimensions of everyday life. We encourage future research to investigate identity construction processes from the perspective of 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive) to deepen our understanding of how music listening can support young people's psychological development and well-being by providing a set of affordances in their everyday lives.
In this article, I introduce a cultural approach to musical care by situating health, well-being, and music engagement within specific cultural meaning systems. While existing models of health, including biomedical, biopsychosocial, and socioecological models, have informed music therapy and related practices, they often carry universalist assumptions that overlook cultural diversity in health definitions and behaviors. Similarly, theorizing in music therapy has highlighted the importance of cultural humility, cultural empathy, and intercultural competence, yet has largely focused on therapist reflexivity without fully articulating how cultural insights can inform the design and implementation of music interventions. Drawing on cultural-psychological perspectives, I conceptualize culture as comprising both external conditions and internal psychological processes that shape how individuals experience health and well-being, as well as how they engage with music. Using examples of cultural match and mismatch in music therapy research, I argue that alignment between individual psychological processes, culturally grounded music practices, and culturally sanctioned health goals enhances therapeutic outcomes, while mismatches may limit effectiveness. Beyond outcome measures, a cultural approach requires attention to the diversity of ways people engage with music, including consumption, creation, and response, recognizing music's role in constructing identities and shaping understandings of health. I conclude that cultural match offers a promising direction for future research, advancing both theory and practice in musical care, underscoring the need for more robust, culturally responsive, and culturally sustaining research methodologies and interventions.
Polyrhythms are central to many musical practices. However, the extent to which people can simultaneously track multiple non-metrically related beat patterns remains unclear. Here we studied people's ability to simultaneously track multiple periodic streams containing beat patterns that cannot be perceived according to a single metric framework. Participants listened to one or two beat patterns simultaneously in three conditions: single stream, selectively attending to one of the streams, and simultaneously attending to both streams. Using a probe-tone paradigm, we assessed whether they were tracking the pattern's periodicity, while recording their brain activity using EEG. The EEG showed limited effects of attention. However, our behavioral results show that, while performance during dual attending is overall worse than selective attending and single stream listening, people are able to perform the dual attending task above chance levels, indicating that they can at least extract and evaluate temporal information from both periodic streams simultaneously. We also found evidence of one group being better at dual attending than another. Our findings suggest that tracking of polymetric streams is possible, and that this ability may depend on individual difference.
Objective: Investigations of aesthetic experience have continually searched for field-research methodologies that measure physiological and self-report responses reliably and with little invasiveness. On this background, the interdisciplinary research project “ECR–Experimental Concert Research” set out to study aesthetic experience in live public concerts. Methods: A team of scientists from musicology, psychology, cultural studies, and software engineering were brought together to cooperate in this project. Here we describe the methodology, design, and infrastructure to enable this endeavor, realized in 3 pilot concerts and 11 final concerts, with approximately 900 participants. The technical setup involved the physiological measurements of electrodermal, cardiac, and respiratory activity; facial expressions; and motion capture. Before and after concerts, participants provided sociological information and experiential assessments of the musical performance, including an automated stimulated-recall rating of selected musical segments. Results: The implementation of the methodological framework in the field generated an integrated dataset of high quality and ecological validity. We present the merits and challenges of this framework.
