How does music do what it does to us? And why? How and why does it entertain us and take our minds off things? Bring people together and shape our social identity? Trigger emotions and influence our mood? Create an “atmosphere”? Make people feel like dancing?
Music seems to move, even if nothing actually moves. Melodies go up and down, tempos increase and decrease. How does music do this and why?
Why do children like music so much? How do musical activities help them to learn skills and abilities - motor, social, linguistic, cognitive? How does music motivate a musician to practice an instrument for thousands of hours? What happens in our brains when we listen to and make music and what influences does this have on other brain functions?
Why does music seem to speak to us, although it contains no words? What is the role of music in rituals? Why is music such an important part of religions, and spiritual and magical traditions, around the world? Music seems to alter states of consciousness - does it really do that and if so, how?
Is music a form of evolutionary adaptation or an evolutionary by-product? Is it a kind of social glue or an aid to mate selection? An auditory drug or a component of rituals? If music can be all of these things, which of them is the real answer to the question of why we like it so much?
These are some of the key questions asked in systematic musicology. If you go into more detail, thousands of more interesting research questions arise. Musical questions can be asked within all subdisciplines of psychology.
The Centre for Systematic Musicology looked at both the big picture and the details. We were interested in musical and related skills, and the perception of musical structures (tonality, rhythm) and emotions. Although our approach was mainly scientific (empirically based quantitative research in the tradition of physics, psychology and neuroscience), we also "systematically" integrated and promoted the musical humanities and practical disciplines.