SMPC new site – Music Psychology

This week I thought I would blog about the launch of a really interesting online resource in the world of music pyschology. I first heard about the new resource at ICMPC 11 where it was announced by Ani Patel. I am launching my own ‘resources’ tab over this weekend, which will contain links to online sites such as this one, to provide quick routes to information formy readers. But since the present new site in question is recently launched, and very well designed, I thought I would tell you a bit about it.

The new site is the homebase for the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC). This society basically the home for the study of music psychology in the USA and Canada. Here in the UK we have the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE), in Australia they have The Australian Music & Psychology Society (AMPS), in Europe there is the The European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM) and so on…(se my resources for more links).

Here I am focusing on SMPC. SMPC’s aims, in their own words, are:

to further the scientific and scholarly understanding of music from a broad range of disciplines, including music theory, psychology, psychophysics, linguistics, neurology, neurophysiology, ethology, ethnomusicology, artificial intelligence, computer technology, physics and engineering;
to facilitate cooperation among scholars and scientists who are engaged in research in this interdisciplinary field; and
to advance education and public understanding of knowledge gained.

SMPC organises and runs biannual music psychology conferences in the USA and Canada which host scholars from all over the world. I have yet to attend one of these meetings myself but I am told they are excellent conferences that are superbly organised. The next meeting will be from August 11-14, 2011 in Rochester, New York. In addition, SMPC cooperates with other organizations in music cognition to host international conferences, including the recent ICMPC 11.

So, that is the background and here is the point of this blog: SMPC have re-launched their website – and it is a cracker! At the end of this text you can see a screen shot of their homepage (taken and published here with the kind permission of Ani Patel, SMPC President). I would recommend anyone to visit this super site. It is packed full of useful links, including videos from some of the key lecturers in the field of music psychology. They have a youtube channel– a brilliant idea! It also includes an events list that links to all upcoming music psychology related events in the USA and Canada, as well as international music psychology meetings. I particularly like the links to related journals (in ‘resources’), where many of the leading music psychology articles are published. This page saves me a lot of time hunting for the journals individually! Finally, you can even become a member by using the links on the site.

I gather the site is not completely finished at the time of writing. The ‘news’ tab is still under construction, as are a few of the resource links like ‘labs’, for example. Still, it is well worth a visit and certainly I believe anyone in our field would benefit from bookmarking this site for future reference. Enjoy! 🙂

SMPC Site: http://www.musicperception.org/index.html