On Day 4 I attended a session which contained two talks about drumming. I was really interested to hear both as discussions of rhythmic skills are rarer than they should be at music psychology conferences. The first was given by Simone Dalla Bella (who I have mentioned before as having worked with amusia in the past) and the second was by Rick Ashley. I may not be able to follow these talks in as much detail as some of the others, as rhythm is really not my speciality, but these guys are both wonderful speakers and although I don’t understand everything I do enjoy the content. You never know where…

The last thing I did on the Wednesday was to attend a talk on the development of a new test for measuring musicality. Why is this necessary? There is a growing issue in the literature in terms of how musicians and nonmusicians are defined. Typically the only measure that is the amount of formal musical training an individual has received in their life, measured in years. In the past this measure, even though not consistently applied across papers, has  successfully revealed replicable differences in behaviour and brain structure between ‘musicians’ and ‘nonmusicians’; but something is still missing. Such a dichotomous definition of musicianship does not take into account a person’s…