Justin London

Education & Professional History

University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, BMus; MMus; University of Pennsylvania, PhD

Justin London is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music, Cognitive Science, and the Humanities at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, where he teaches courses in Music Theory, Music Psychology, Cognitive Science, The Philosophy of Music, and American Popular Music.  He received his B.M. in Classical Guitar and M.M. in Music Theory from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and he holds a Ph.D. in Music History and Theory from the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked with Leonard Meyer.  His research interests include rhythm and meter in western and non-western music, music perception and cognition, and musical aesthetics. He has held teaching and research appointments at The University of Cambridge, the University of Jyäskylä, Finland (both on Fulbright Fellowships), as well as The University of Oslo, and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt.  He served as President of the Society for Music Theory in 2007–2009, and as President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition in 2017–2018.  In 2022 he received a lifetime achievement award for the Society for Music Perception and Cognition. He is also the guitarist in the “Spare Niche” jazz trio.

Highlights & Recent Activity

Visiting Professor of Musicology, The University of Oslo, September-December 2016 & September-December 2023.

Housewright Visiting Scholar, Florida State University, December 2021.

Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, September-December 2018.

Core Fulbright Scholar Grant, Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research, University of Jyväskylä, January-May 2014.

Fulbright UK Distinguished Scholars Lecturing/Research Grant, Centre for Music and Science and Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, Fall 2005-Spring 2006.

Organizations & Scholarly Affiliations

Society for Music Perception and Cognition (President, 2017-18)

Society for Music Theory (President, 2007-2009)

European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music

Psychonomic Society

Cognitive Science Society

Acoustical Society of America

American Society for Aesthetics

Current Collaborative Research Projects

PerformingTime: Synchrony and Temporal Flow in Music and Dance: book project, co-edited with Clemens Wöllner (University of Hamburg); under contract for publication with Oxford University Press.  The volume will address how experiences of time and temporality are modulated in music and dance, and how these experiences relate to current psychological and neuro-scientific theories as well as aesthetic concepts.

Microtiming, Meter, and Ensemble Coordination in West African Percussion Music: ongoing collaborative research with Rainer Polak and Nori Jacoby (Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt). Our current research has developed a cross-culturally comparative perspective on structures of micro-rhythmic asymmetry—colloquially referred to as rhythmic “feel” or “swing”—in Malian percussion ensemble music. We use cross-correlation analyses of micro-timing shifts to determine who is leading and who is following within the drum ensemble, and how attentional resources are optimized amongst the members of the ensemble.

Time: Timing and Sound in Musical Microrhythm: collaborative research project with Anne Danielsen (PI) at the University of Oslo. This project explores the microstructure of musical sounds, such as temporal shape, intensity, and timbre, and the ways they influence our sense of when a sound occurs in time. This in turn will affect how we are able to hear the ebb and flow of a series of sounds, and how we can coordinate our attention and action with them.

Selected Recent and Noteworthy Publications

(for a full list of publications, please see: https://www.carleton.edu/people/jlondon)

N. Jacoby, R. Polak, & J. London. Extreme Precision in Rhythmic Interaction is Enabled by Role-Optimized Sensorimotor Coupling: Analysis and Modeling of West African Drum Ensemble Music. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (2021). DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0331

Two Kinds of “Bad” Musical Performance: Musical and Moral Mistakes. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism XX (2021), 1-13. DOI: 10.1093/jaac/kpab034.

What Should An Undergraduate Music Theory Curriculum Teach? (And, Alas, What Most of the Time We Don’t). In The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, Leigh VanHandel, Ed. Routledge (2020): 424-432.

Metric Entrainment and the Problem(s) of Rhythm Perception. In The Aesthetics of Rhythm: Science, Philosophy, Music, Dance, Poetics, Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2019): 171-182.

J. London, B. Burger, M. Thompson, M. Hildreth, J. Wilson, N, Schally, and P. Toiviainen. Motown, disco, and drumming: An exploration of the relationship between beat salience, melodic structure, and perceived tempo. Music Perception 37.1 (2019): 26-41.

J. London, M. Thompson, B. Burger, M. Hildreth, and P. Toiviainen. Tapping doesn’t help: Synchronized self-motion and judgments of musical tempo. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics (2019), https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-019-01722-7.

A. Danielsen, Kristian Nymoen, E. Anderson, G. Schmidt Câmara, M. T. Langerød, M. Thompson, & J. London. Where is the beat in that note?: Effects of attack, duration and frequency on the perceived timing of musical and quasi-musical sounds. Journal of Experimenal Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 45.3 (2019): 402-418.

D. J. Levitin, J. Grahn, & J. London. The Psychology of Music: Rhythm and Movement. Annual Review of Psychology 69.1 (2018): 13.1-13.25.

J. J. Neiworth, J. London, M. J. Flynn, D. Rupert, O. Aldritt, & C. Hyde. Artificial Grammar Learning in Tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) In Varying Stimulus Contexts. Journal of Comparative Psychology (2017) Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/com0000066.

R. Polak, J. London, & N. Jacoby. Both Isochronous and Non-Isochronous Metrical Subdivision Afford Precise and Stable Ensemble Entrainment: A Corpus Study of Malian Jembe Drumming. Frontiers in Human Neurosicence: Special Issue on the Evolution of Rhythm: Timing in Music and Speech (2016): 10:285. DOI 10.3389/fnins.2016.00285

J. London, B. Burger, M. Thompson, & P. Toiviainen. Speed on the Dance Floor: Auditory and Visual Cues for Musical Tempo. Acta Psychologica 164 (2016): 70-80.

Hearing in Time, Oxford University Press (August 2004; 2nd Edition April 2012).

“Rhythm”, main entry in Grove Music Online. (2001)  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/