This presentation outlines a study conducted through collecting data from student assignments in a music production educational programme between 2023 and 2025 about how students interpret music recordings. The majority of the students in question were already active as music producers and regarded analysis assignments as a way to improve their own productions.
The analysis assignment consisted of two sections. In the first, students described what they heard, in the second, they described the lasting impressions the recordings had on them after a few days had gone since they heard the recordings. The preliminary results point to students focusing on various musical properties in their analyses. In some recordings, the prominent properties were perceived through bottom-up processes where students focused on the stimulus, that is, they reacted to sensory data. In other recordings, the prominent properties were those perceived through top-down processes that were more contextual and dependent on the student’s frame of reference. In short, what students report that they first and foremost hear in recordings varied quite a lot, but it was possible to discern some trends.
This assignment was a way to tackle the challenge of music analysis of recordings where the central musical properties fall outside of the score, where music analysis traditionally operates. This study is a part of a PhD-thesis-in-progress on salience in music recordings, which investigates foreground and background relations in music recordings as a possible method to tackle the aforementioned challenge of analyzing music recordings. The study also aims to develop pedagogical methods to facilitate communication of musical content that students perceive.