Universale in music processing

This article outlines areas of musical processing that may be universal to humans. Music here refers to temporally structured human activities, social and individual, in the production and perception of sound organized in patterns that convey non-linguistic meaning. Music processing refers to the neural contribution in perception, cognition, and production of music. The universal music processes discussed are hypotheses that require investigation and falsification in as many and varied cultural contexts as possible. The discussion begins with processes of grouping and segmentation, then moves on to statistically universal features of musical environments, and ends with more general-purpose psychological processes. It illustrates some processes drawing on examples of production of song from particular Australian Aboriginal cultures.