schemata

So, in a comments exchange earlier I started talked about cognitive schemata and music. I just kind of started throwing the term around, but I realized I don't think I've ever actually read anything that applied that sort of cognitive psychology stuff to music listening. Well, I've seen some stuff in the popular press about "framing" and "cumulative advantage." It's hard to tell to what extent these concepts come from cognitive psychology or related areas (for once I miss all of the laborious putting-everything-in-context exposition I'm used to from academic pieces) because these are popular pieces. But if they're not from cognitive psychology per se, there's an obvious relationship there.

But I haven't happened upon any academic stuff using cognitive psychology in the way I'm used to it being employed with other media (mostly film) to look at music reception. Not that I'm so familiar with it in that context, either--I just have a passing understanding of some basics. But I'm going to try to do a little amateur cognitive psychology of music reception thing here. I'm making a list of schemata that might come into play when you first hear new music. In my dorky cognitive psych dilettante way.

knowing the difference between music and other sounds
recognizing familiar scales and modes
recognizing instruments
recognizing song structure (verses, choruses)
deciding the gender of a vocalist
recognizing time period (contemporary, old, retro)
recognizing genre (this could be broken down into a bunch of sub-categories)
recognizing proficiency or the lack thereof
varying degrees of lyrical comprehension
mobilizing any number of various schema for determining value
placing oneself in relation to the song racially/ethnically (comparing oneself to the artist and/or the seemingly intended audience)

Anyways, this stuff is all on the basic side...I'm thinking about some stuff along these lines but more involved, but I may need to read up on my theory before I can really formulate it.