What did you study?
Sequencing is important for many of the things that we do in life. Whether cooking, performing a scientific experiment or doing a workout routine, we often follow an ordered list of actions that must be performed in order to achieve our goals. My dissertation analyses how professional musicians decide the order in which their songs are presented to the listener, as well as the effect that different song sequences have to the listener.
What were the results of your study or what is its main finding?
We performed a computational analysis of 50,000 released music albums and interviewed more than 100 professional musicians. A few interesting statistical patterns remained consistent across our studies. For instance, musicians tend to open and close their albums with energetic and positive-sounding music.
In a psychological study with around 250 participants, we found that the perception of a song depends on what we heard just before it. If a song is very energetic, the next song you listen to tends to be perceived as slightly quieter. Overall, we provide the first robust evidence that sequencing is relevant to professional musicians, as well as to the way that music is experienced by the listeners.
How can the results be applied? What new insights did the research contribute to the topic?
In the age of technology, our findings may be used to inform music-recommendation algorithms and automated DJ systems. Artistically, our findings are relevant for musicians, producers, and artists who, one way or another, have to decide how a set of musical pieces are presented to their audience. Scientifically, our findings provide new insights into how musicians decide the order of songs, as well as the psychological and perceptual effects that may influence their decisions.
MSc Pedro Alcantara Senra Oliveira Neto defends his doctoral dissertation in musicology "Song sequences, albums, statistical regularities and perceived emotions" on 19 September 2026 at 12:00 noon in the Seminarium Building (S212).
