Comp Music Lab

Welcome to our lab!

Welcome to the CompMusic Lab for comparative and computational musicology! We study the science of the world's music with the aim of promoting cross-cultural diversity and understanding. For an overview of our philosophy on diversity, equity, and inclusion, see this MIT Press chapter proposing best practices in cross-cultural collaborative research. And for an accessible introduction to our research, check out the following:

This Nautilus piece on music and evolution, universals, and social bonding featuring our articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and the SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture alongside work from other leading scholars and musicians around the world.
This Scientific American podcast and Current Biology commentary on our Current Biology article about the cultural evolution of Japanese and English folk songs.
This New York Times article featuring the Global Jukebox, where you can listen to and analyze over 5,000 songs from almost 1,000 societies around the world that have been coded using Cantometrics.
This MUTEK keynote lecture/concert video, which includes live performances of traditional Japanese, Ainu, and Amami Island music by our lab members and Utae Ehara that are then remixed with samples from music around the world (The HU, Sonah Jobarteh, Baka Gbiné, Timbaland, and Queen).

If you are interested in applying to join the lab, please email our director, Patrick Savage, including a CV, academic transcript, and short (<500-word) description of your research interests and how they fit with the lab. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds – especially from historically underrepresented groups. Please read through our lab manual to get a sense of what life in our lab is like and what our expectations are for potential lab members, funding options, etc.

For more about who we are and what we do, please see our "Members" and "Publications" pages.