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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Sep 6

Well deserved and so excited for you!!

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Aug 24

sounds fascinating! Just wanted to point out that there is no indication on the web of when the workshop is actually taking place (at least from mobile version)

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Aug 8

thanks for joining Julia and lovely to see you! Fun fact I watched kpop demon hunter night before the defence 😈

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Jul 18

After few flights and 8hrs of canoe ride up the Maniqui river, we met the Tsimane villagers in Bolivian Amazon to understand what they find appealing to hear and see, and how they compare to other parts of the world. @manuelangladatort.bsky.social @norijacoby.bsky.social

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Jun 12

Thanks Lennie ☺️

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Reposted by Harin Lee

Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · Jun 11

7.5 years after signing the contract, I finally submitted the full manuscript of my book to Oxford University Press!!!
Thanks to Keio's Fukuzawa Fund, it will be published open access. You can already read the submitted version as a preprint at osf.io/b36fm
I hope you all find it useful!

Comparative Musicology
Evolution, Universals, and the Science of the World’s Music

Patrick E. Savage
Senior Research Fellow, School of Psychology, University of Auckland / Waipapa Taumata Rau
Associate Professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University

Contents

Prologue: How to read/teach this book ii

Epigraphs vi

Foreword (Psyche Loui, President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition) x

Foreword (Svanibor Pettan, Past President of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance) xii

Acknowledgments xiv

Ch. 1. Introduction: Aims, chapter structure, and key definitions 1

Ch. 2. Tutorial: Acoustic comparison within and between societies (and species) 12

Ch. 3. History: The rise and fall and rise of comparative musicology 34

Ch. 4. Universals: Absolute, statistical, and non-universal aspects of music beyond the “universal language” metaphor 72

Ch. 5. Evolution: Cultural and biological evolution of music(ality), language, and animal song 94

Ch. 6. Applications: Copyright, music therapy, language acquisition, cultural heritage, social bonding, AI, and beyond 120

Epilogue: “Many Voices” and the future of qualitative comparative musicology 135

Appendix: Companion audio recordings/code availability statement 139

Index 140

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Jun 6

Extremely honoured to be the recipient of the Best Student Paper award at the upcoming ICMPC 2025 in São Paulo, the largest international conference on music cognition and perception. All possible through working with the great team and supervisors.

Nori Jacoby @norijacoby.bsky.social · Jun 6

I am proud to share that my PhD student @harinlee.info co-supervised by Marc Schönwiesner, has won the student best paper award at #ICMPC!
www.icmpc2025.abcogmus.com/conteudo/vie...
If you are interested in doing cutting edge work on music and culture consider joining us on @co3lab.bsky.social

18th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition - Submissions - // ICMPC AWARD

www.icmpc2025.abcogmus.com

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Jun 4

Link to paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Open analysis code and data: github.com/harin-git/mu...

Mechanisms of cultural diversity in urban populations - Nature Communications

Analysis of over 2.5 million music listeners in three countries reveals how larger cities foster greater cultural diversity not only through demographic variety but also by enhancing individual cultur...

www.nature.com

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Jun 4

Demographic mixing in cities certainly contributes a lot to the musical diversity, especially in megapolis like Paris and Sao Paulo. However, it doesn't entirely explain the rise, so something about the urban interactions and experience itself seems to be at play.

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Jun 4

One might then wonder, the heightened diversities in big cities, could that simply have come from there being more of younger people in metropolitans? To account for demographics, we gather an extensive array: from age, education, income to number of Facebook friends and access to music venues.

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Jun 4

Additionally we document how this listening radius changes over the course of life. One's radius expands rapidly from the mid-teens, reaches its peak in late-twenties, and then narrows through mid-life and beyond.

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Jun 4

Also at the individual level, people living in larger urban areas tend to listen to a broader variety of music themselves (i.e., wider listening radius), expanding their personal musical repertoire.

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Jun 4

Size matters! Across all three countries, the larger the city, the more distinct people’s musical tastes were from their neighbours. In other words, there’s less of a single, shared musical taste in big cities.

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Jun 4

We measured diversity of music in two ways: (1) how different people’s musical tastes were from their neighbours in the same area, (2) how wide-ranging each individual’s personal music 'listening radius' was. We processed more than 250 million listening logs across France, Brazil, and Germany.

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Jun 4

Big cities are vibrant hubs of culture, but why exactly is that? Now out in @natcomms.nature.com, we analysed music listening patterns of over 2.5 million people and demographics to examine mechanisms driving cultural diversity. With @researchdeezer.bsky.social @norijacoby.bsky.social

Highlights ⬇

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · May 19

Ready to submit my PhD thesis.

After taking this picture I realised that the thesis cover I designed matches the lamp and the sofa in my flat. Definitely some psychological priming going on here!

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · May 9

2. Are Expressions for Music Emotions the Same Across Cultures? arxiv.org/abs/2502.08744

While many studies have relied on predefined set of emotion categories, we propose a systematic pipeline to mine the taxonomy across languages without presumptions of the emotion space.

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · May 9

1. Visual and Auditory Aesthetic Preferences Across Cultures arxiv.org/abs/2502.14439

Do people from different parts of the world find certain shapes, colour combinations, and musical sounds more beautiful? Recruiting 4,835 participants from 10 countries, we try to answer this.

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · May 9

Excited to share two papers tapping into cross-cultural perception of aesthetics and word associations to music emotion across languages. Accepted to be presented at the upcoming CogSci 2025 conference! @mpicbs.bsky.social

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Apr 25

Contact [email protected] for any inquiries and we will respond promptly.

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Apr 25

Serving as a co-chair for ISMIR 2025 in Korea, we are excited to announce call for the music-program! If you have MIR integrated creative music performance in mind to be performed at gorgeous KAIST auditorium, do consider applying.

Submission: ismir2025.ismir.net/call-for-music
Deadline: 30th June

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Mar 31

Congrats, a significant leap!

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Mar 18

If you wish to join online, please DM me or email me! [email protected]

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Mar 17

Tomorrow at Cambridge! Visiting the Centre for Music & Science led by @pmcharrison.bsky.social

www.mus.cam.ac.uk/events/under...

Understanding music in the age of machine learning (Harin Lee, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science) | Faculty of Music

We live in an exciting time where the abundance of digital media and advanced computational tools, such as machine learning, enables the study of music and culture on an unprecedented scale.

www.mus.cam.ac.uk

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Harin Lee @harinlee.info · Mar 17

Emotional to be returning to Goldsmiths where did my undergrad and masters! @goldsmithsuol.bsky.social

Manuel Anglada-Tort @manuelangladatort.bsky.social · Mar 17

Excited to announce our next Whitehead Lecture by @harinlee.info on Understanding Music in the Age of Machine Learning. Join us online or in person: Wednesday, 4pm (see link). @goldsmithsuol.bsky.social #MusicCognition #BigData

Harin Lee will talk on "Understanding music in the age of machine learning"

Harin leverages big data to explore music from diverse cultures worldwide and investigates the psychological foundations of human music perception.

www.gold.ac.uk

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