Background

Musicians and music psychologists have developed Feeling Sound to help us all expand our skills in listening to and engaging with music. The practical skills of professional musicians can be hard to pick up without a lot of time and practice, but everyone can enjoy listening to music - Feeling Sound could help us all get more out of different types of music using new research which is bringing to light some of the techniques that professional musicians use when they listen.

The techniques have been tested on small groups of people at the Royal Northern College of Music, Trinity College of Music and the University of Keele. Initial results suggest that choosing to listen to music using the techniques can enhance our listening and performing skills. Musiclab will enable us to test the techniques with more people, to establish whether effects found in small samples also exist at the level of the general population.

Feeling Sound techniques include thinking about our perception of musical structure were featured on BBC Radio 3's Discovering Music on 18th May, 2008. Listen to the versions of Chopin's Barcarolle played at high-speed discussed on the programme.

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