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patrickesavage.bsky.social
Pat Savage
@patrickesavage.bsky.social
2.5K followers 710 following 710 posts
Director: @compmusiclab.bsky.social. Rutherford Discovery Fellow @U Auckland. Assoc. Prof. @Keio U. PI @manyvoices.bsky.social. Music, evolution, diversity. He/him. Tangata tiriti.
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patrickesavage.bsky.social
Did this for the first time in ages - felt great, highly recommend
Jason Gay @jasongay There's a guy in this coffee shop sitting at a table, not on his phone, not on a laptop, just drinking coffee, like a psychopath. Me at Midnight Espresso sitting at a table, not on my phone, not on my laptop, just drinking coffee, like a psychopath. (Well, technically I used my phone to take the picture…)
January 10, 2026 at 9:21 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
It’s a Christmas miracle: new highest chess rating!
Lichess blitz rating showing recent increase to new highest rating of 1988
December 26, 2025 at 8:52 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/mich...
Figure 1: Relationship between early and adult performance in the full population (black) and elite performers (red). Conditioning on elite status induces a negative association despite a positive population relationship.
December 22, 2025 at 1:06 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Just submitted corrected proofs for my first book!
Publication (open access) is scheduled for late Feb 2026 (but the preprint is already available if you don't want to wait: osf.io/preprints/ps...)
COMPARATIVE MUSICOLOGY: Evolution, Universals, and the Science of the World's Music By Patrick E. Savage (to published by Oxford University Press in Feb 2026)
December 14, 2025 at 9:59 PM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
I largely agree, but we as educators are also failing to teach students how to efficiently read, write, and think critically. It has never been possible to read every word of assigned readings, and that's OK.
I wrote a reading/writing tutorial that applies in a ChatGPT era: osf.io/p37zj_v3
Figure 3. Stylised figure showing my proposed reading/writing order to maximise efficiency given diminishing marginal returns as you read academic research in greater detail.
December 10, 2025 at 9:07 PM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
I largely agree, but we as educators are also failing to teach students how to efficiently read, write, and think critically. It has never been possible to read every word of assigned readings, and that's OK.
I wrote a reading/writing tutorial that applies in a ChatGPT era: osf.io/p37zj_v3
Figure 3. Stylised figure showing my proposed reading/writing order to maximise efficiency given diminishing marginal returns as you read academic research in greater detail.
December 10, 2025 at 9:07 PM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
I'm now thrilled to share the 2nd Stage 2 manuscript from our @pci-regreports.bsky.social programmatic protocol, led by Honours student Nelson Shi. In NZ English, we replicated song-speech acoustic differences and explored differences in social bonding effects:
osf.io/mk34q_v1
Figure 5. Mean distribution of acoustic features between singing and speaking. Compared to conversation, singing exhibited a consistent trend of higher pitch, slower tempo, and greater stability during singing, as opposed to conversation conditions. The blue dots represent the mean acoustic values for each participant (n=20). Figure 7. Exploratory analysis of mean social bonding scores before and after experiment. The figure depicts the mean change in social bonding scores (before and after the first experimental condition). The number of participants for pre-condition and post-condition are N = 23. There is an overall positive increase in the mean social bonding score across all groups, but the increase appears stronger for “Unison Singing” group than for the “Conversation” or “Lyrical Recitation” group.
December 10, 2025 at 10:54 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
NZ continues to shoot itself in the foot with short sighted STEM obsession
Wētā FX, one of the world’s most successful screen technology companies, depends not only on advanced computing and engineering, but also on storytelling, design, digital humanities, creative production and cultural imagination.
December 7, 2025 at 8:46 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
In journal club today an astute grad student pointed out that these macaque tapping data look nothing like human beat synchronisation data. Nor, for that matter, like data from vocal learners like Snowball the cockatoo. Doesn't seem like evidence for synchronisation - are we missing something?
Human beat synchronisation data are generally centred on 0 degrees (i.e., synchronised to the beat) or phase-shifted 180 degrees Macaque tapping data generally don't appear centred on 0 degrees (i.e., not synchronised to the beat) nor to be phase-shifted 180 degrees Snowball head bobbing data generally centred on 0 degrees (i.e., synchronised to the beat)
December 5, 2025 at 11:35 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Good (albeit depressing and long) analysis of the existential crisis we face in higher education:
www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...
The real tragedy isn’t that students use ChatGPT to do their course work. It’s that universities are teaching everyone—students, faculty, administrators—to stop thinking.
December 4, 2025 at 8:42 PM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Haven’t read the full article yet, but this is a big deal if true!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
macaques can synchronize to a subjective beat in real music and even spontaneously do so over alternative strategies.
November 28, 2025 at 10:02 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Same content posted same time to Bluesky vs. LinkedIn: ~10x more engagement on LinkedIn, although I have ~10x more followers on Bluesky...
32 reactions to LinkedIn post with award photos (vs. 3 for Bluesky post of same content) 3 reactions to Bluesky post with award photos (vs. 32 for LinkeIn post of same content)
November 27, 2025 at 1:14 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Review on language evolution just published - haven't read properly yet but from a quick skim looks important!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
ORiGiNS OF LANGUAGe What enables human language? A biocultural framework Inbal Arnon1*, Liran Carmel2, Nicolas Claidière3,4,5, W. Tecumseh Fitch6, Susan Goldin-Meadow7, Simon Kirby8, Kazuo Okanoya9, Limor Raviv10,11, Lucie Wolters12, Simon E. Fisher13,14* Explaining the origins of language is a key challenge in understanding ourselves as a species. We present an empirical framework that draws on synergies across fields to facilitate robust studies of language evolution. The approach is multifaceted, seeing language emergence as dependent on the convergence of multiple capacities, each with their own evolutionary trajectories. It is explicitly biocultural, recognizing and incorporating the importance of both biological preparedness and cultural transmission as well as interactions between them. We demonstrate this approach through three case studies that examine the evolution of different facets involved in human language (vocal production learning, linguistic structure, and social underpinnings).
November 20, 2025 at 8:57 PM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Thanks for sharing. I'm curious why PNAS doesn't seem to have published it officially yet? (doi linked from news reports doesn't show up, so I'm assuming they are delayed in publishing or something?)
November 19, 2025 at 1:31 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Lovely photos from Rebecca McMillan from the @royalsocietynz.bsky.social Research Honours Award ceremony last week (with my parents, @danya-pav.bsky.social, Prof Geoff Chase, and NZ Governor-General, Her Excellency The Right Honourable Dame Cindy Kiro)
www.royalsociety.org.nz/news/researc...
Me receiving my award from Prof Geoff Chase and Her Excellency The Right Honourable Dame Cindy Kiro (NZ Governor-General) Me with my parents (Martha and Mike Savage) and PhD student and collaborator Danya Pavlovich All award winners and special guests at the Research Honours Aotearoa ceremony at Government House (Te Whanganui-Ā-Tara Wellington)
November 19, 2025 at 1:13 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Hope you’re all enjoying the beautiful day like this tūī at the top of Mākara peak
Tūī perched at the top of Mākara peak
November 15, 2025 at 10:43 PM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Here are the two awarded articles (both used @pci-regreports.bsky.social):
1) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
2) rr.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec...

Stay tuned for more exciting results from the @manyvoices.bsky.social project coming in 2026!
Title and authors for "Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slowerand higher and use more stable pitches than speech:A Registered Report" (Ozaki et al., 2024, Science Advances) Title and authors for "Does synchronised singing enhance social bonding more than speaking does? A global experimental Stage 1 Registered Report" (Savage et al., In Principle Accepted, Peer Community In Registered Reports)
November 11, 2025 at 11:18 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
I was deeply honoured to receive the 2025 NZ Research Excellence Award for Humanities tonight. It would never happened without the support of my family and 100+ collaborators, so I was delighted that my parents and several students/collaborators could join!
www.royalsociety.org.nz/what-we-do/m...
2025 Research Excellence Award for Humanities: Music can bond us together better than language, new research finds Dr Patrick Savage of Waipapa Taumata Rau – the University of Auckland has won the Early Career Research Excellence Award for the Humanities for his interdisciplinary research on the relationships between music and language in different cultures. Me with my parents (Martha & Mike Savage) and PhD student (Danya Pavlovich) outside Government House after tonight's Research Honours Aotearoa award ceremony. Me with my honours student, Nelson Shi, outside Government House before the award ceremony.
November 11, 2025 at 11:18 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Bravo Liam (President of the Otago University Students Association) for this eloquent wake-up call for the need to defend the value of universities (in Aotearoa NZ and around the world)
stop treating education as a short-term cost and start seeing it as a long-term nation-building investment in our country’s future. We protect the arts and humanities that create citizens, not just workers
November 10, 2025 at 7:56 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
OK I gave in
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
Music as a coevolved system for social bonding (Zohran for New York parody)
November 10, 2025 at 1:28 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Like so much academic drama, this one also features spreadsheet errors
the spreadsheet initially sent to the PC [Program Committee] included a "grave transposition error"
November 10, 2025 at 1:11 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Yup
Watson radiated contempt in all directions.” But in a lesson Watson apparently over-learned, “his bad manners were tolerated because of the greatness of the discovery he had made.”
November 9, 2025 at 10:54 PM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
Thrilled to share the first Stage 2 manuscript from this @pci-regreports.bsky.social programmatic protocol, led by @zixuanjia.bsky.social. In Mandarin, we replicated song-speech differences found by @yutoozaki.bsky.social et al., and explored the mediating role of musicianship:
osf.io/gwavn_v1
Table 5. Registered Report Design Planner. Includes three hypotheses (H1-H3). Figure 5. Distributions of mean values of three acoustic features (pitch height, temporal rate, pitch stability) across singing and conversation conditions (n = 20 participants). The participants' mean acoustic values are shown as black dots, with dashed lines connecting each participant's produced speech and song. Figure 8. Scatter plots showing the correlation between effect sizes and Musicianship, in terms of self-perceived (left) and complimented by others (right) ratings. The red line represents the pitch height, blue line represents temporal rate, and green line represents pitch stability.
November 9, 2025 at 9:35 PM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
For you normies who haven’t memorized every quote from The Wire, here is the scene referenced:

youtube.com/shorts/9rU21...
Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy? [meme]
November 7, 2025 at 10:28 AM
patrickesavage.bsky.social
We made a similar point in a recent paper (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...). As it happens, one of our 75 global collaborators on that paper (Urise) was Kuikuro. A small example of how the global community benefits from trust-building collaborations like the kind described in the article above.
equitable collaboration is not only an issue of social justice but also an issue of scientific quality
November 7, 2025 at 10:19 AM