I got the chance to see one of them last night discussing his new book…and then some. Best selling author (and Signal Patterns Science Team member) Dan Levitin was at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble discussing his latest book, The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature. In it, Dan explores the evolution of music and the human brain over tens of thousands of years. And as the title suggests, Dan identifies six types of music that have developed over time and become a key part of our culture.

However, this wasn’t just your typical book store reading that you might catch on C-SPAN. Because in addition to leading the McGill University Laboratory for the Study of Music Cognition, Perception and Expertise, Dan is an accomplished musician, having played professionally with artists like Mel Tormé, Nancy Wilson, and members of the Steve Miller Band and Santana (as well as producing or consulting on albums by artists including Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan and Chris Isaak).

After discussing his book, Dan then played a well-received set with Nashville recording artist Rodney Crowell, highlighting how each of Rodney’s songs fell into one of his categories (like songs of knowledge or songs of comfort).

While pondering Dan’s “six songs” thesis, I kept thinking of our Music Patterns survey, Dan’s research on its underlying FUSES Model and how it all ties together. We’ve been doing a lot of work on this application based on all the feedback we’ve received and look forward to delivering some significant news on this front in the near term.

Just six songs? Guess I need a smaller iPod!

What’s your favorite style of music? Classical or Jazz? Rap or Dance? Salsa or Tango?

The music research we’ve been doing here at Signal Patterns indicates that people’s preferences for music genres tend to group together. In other words, people who really like a particular style of music, say classical, tend to also like certain other genres, like jazz and world music.

So far, it looks like preferences for a large assortment of music genres can be grouped into five music dimensions. Those dimensions spell the acronym FUSES:

• Forceful (described as loud, distorted, and energetic, and includes heavy metal, rock, alternative and punk),
• Urban (described as rhythmic, percussive, and funky, and includes rap, dance, techno and electronica),
• Sophisticated (described as intelligent and inventive, and includes classical, jazz, and world),
• Earthy (described as melancholic and real, and includes country, folk and bluegrass) and
• Smooth (described as relaxing and gentle, and includes R&B and soul).

One of the reasons we’re interested in people’s music preferences is because we believe (as we suspect do most of you) that the types of music people like reveals information about their personalities. To be sure, we’ve compared your responses to our Music Patterns preferences survey with your responses to our Personality Patterns survey. And the results are in…

Forceful music fans tend to be thrill-seeking, rebellious, haphazard, at ease, and self-indulgent.

Urban music fans tend to be outgoing, friendly, confident, warm, and generally happy.

Sophisticated music fans tend to be imaginative, reflective, creative, quick-witted, intellectual, and private.

Earthy music fans tend to be nice, understanding, honest, sympathetic, and nurturing.

Smooth music fans tend to be cooperative, friendly, conventional, rule following, hard working, and empathic.

So there you have it; there are connections between the styles of music people like and their personalities, many of which seem fairly intuitive and may be in line with any stereotypes you have about types of music fans. And that raises another interesting question: Do we listen to music that fits our personalities, or do we acquire personality traits that fit the music?

A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to meet together again for what we internally call a “research summit” - a few days of brainstorming about new research directions and syncing up on the different science tasks. It was great to put the ongoing stuff aside and for a couple of days go back to research-mode and focus on the things we will do beyond the horizon.

Here’s a “band” slide show of the team. From left to right: Dan Levitin, Jason Rentfrow, David Rosen, and the Lew Goldberg.