Undergraduate Psychology of Music and Music Education
At the University of Sheffield, undergraduate students are introduced to a wide variety of approaches to the study of music. Psychology of Music and Music Education together form a thriving area of undergraduate activity within the department of music.
Undergraduate Psychology of Music and Education modules
Undergraduate level modules include an introduction to hearing and psychoacoustics, to specialist topics in psychological approaches to performance (e.g. acquiring musical skill, memorisation, performance anxiety), music perception (in which students learn how to design and carry out controlled laboratory style experiments), and music development and education (which involves short placements in schools). You can also choose to focus on psychology of music and/or education in the final year in a dissertation. Students are encouraged to develop links with music education projects run by local schools and arts organizations, perhaps with a view to future employment or postgraduate research in those areas. If you choose every option in this subject area, you can take almost half of your degree in psychology of music and music education.
Empirical Research
As part of the work for undergraduate modules (including dissertations) in psychology of music and music education, students design and carry out empirical work; they gather information about the musical phenomena that is the focus of their study using appropriate methods. These methods include survey-style questionnaires, interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, controlled laboratory style experiments, and field-experiments. The City of Sheffield and surrounding areas have a lively and varied musical life, offering scope for studies of music in diverse public settings. Furthermore, there are opportunities to explore the psychology of performance with the Department of Music´s current world musician in residence, Indian tabla and santur performer John Ball, and the Ensemble in Residence, Ensemble 360. Recent undergraduate projects include:
- The relationship between musical structure and the experience of “goose bumps” when listening to music
- Perception of ‘virtual’ space and location in pop recordings
- Performance anxiety amongst singers compared to instrumentalists
- Expression and perception of emotion in solo, monodic instrumental performance and speech
- Memorization strategies used by performers of Western classical music
- A cross-cultural comparison of pitch perception in familiar and unfamiliar tonal systems
- A case study of a music therapist’s musical interactions with an autistic child
- A study of a Sheffield amateur orchestra with reference to social and musical experiences
- The effects of friendship groups on adolescents’ musical preferences
- The effects of background music in the classroom environment
- Equal opportunities in secondary school music -making