invited and keynote speakers

Invited Speakers

keynote speaker: Carol L. Krumhansl

Invited speaker: Joris de Man

Keynote Speaker

Carol L. Krumhansl, Department of Psychology, Cornell University

Music and Cognition: Links at Many Levels

The talk presents research showing that music and cognition have strong links at many levels. An example of a link at a deep level is the empirical support found for deeply theorized properties of music such as Lerdahl’s theory of musical tension. Confirmation of this theory demonstrates that the cognitive representation of musical structure includes hierarchical trees similar to those proposed for language. At a somewhat higher level, sensitivity to statistically frequent patterns in the sounded events enables listeners to abstract a tonal framework for encoding and remembering music and generating expectations. Violations of these expectations contribute to the emotional response to music and produce neural responses in fMRI studies. Thus, statistical learning, found for language and other perceptual domains, extends to music where it has special significance. Finally, research on music recognition suggests a great deal of surface information is encoded in memory. Very short excerpts of popular music can be identified with artist, title, and release date. Even when an excerpt is not identified, emotion and style judgments are consistent. These results point to a long-term memory for music with large capacity and fine detail as well as schematic knowledge of style and emotional content.

Invited Speaker

Joris de Man, Composer and Sound designer

Behind the Music of Killzone 2

Joris de Man is a Composer and Sound Designer who has worked in the games industry for the past decade, and is best known for his work on the Killzone franchise, developed by Guerrrilla in Amsterdam where he worked as a Musical Director for 7 years. His presentation will focus on the 2 types of music in Killzone 2 and its relation to the game; the challenges of composing adaptive music during gameplay and underscoring the dramatic storyline during the story cutscenes. Topics include the technique developed for seamless switching between different states of music and its approach from a compositional point of view, interactivity with the game, creating realistic midi renditions for the in-game music and the technicalities of creating a dramatic underscore for the story cutscenes. He will also show excerpts from the ‘Behind the Score’ video recorded during production and at the Abbey Road recording.