Sarah Louden

Background

About Sarah Louden

I am a music theorist, teacher, and digital pedagogy specialist. I currently serve as the Program Director for the Music Theory and History Program at New York University Steinhardt. My research combines work in multisensory perception, cognitive neuroscience, and music. I’m interested in how sensory information (e.g. sight, touch, smell, and taste) influences the way we hear sound, and how sound influences our perception of other senses and memory. My work explores applications within multimedia analysis, digital pedagogy, inclusive classroom design, live stage performance, composition, and music technology. I earned my Ph.D. in Music Theory at the University at Buffalo SUNY in 2018. My dissertation, “Cross-Sensory Perception in Music and Visual Media: A Neuro-Cognitive Approach to Cross-Domain Mapping in Multimedia,” received the university’s distinguished dissertation award. It presents an analytical model for mapping contrapuntal relationships between audio and visual parameters in multimedia. Drawing in crossmodal research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology, it demonstrates how audio and visual elements combine perceptually to alter a spectator’s experiences in opera, live stage performance, and film. More recent research includes a chapter on audio-visual illusion in film (2020) and conference presentations that explore crossmodal association as a tool for improving memory and aural recognition in ear-training pedagogy (2019) and applications of principles of crossmodal perception to promote accessibility and diversity in the music classroom (2020). I currently teach a graduate seminar at NYU called Music and the Senses, that explores the role of sensory perception in performance, analysis, dance, stage production, film, pedagogy, and music technology.(Syllabus here) Last year, I initiated a collaboration with Rising Software to help create a library of music theory and ear-training content with music examples by women and black composers for use in the Musition and Auralia software. The growing library of examples currently includes more than 800 questions for use on assignments, quizzes, and practice. I’m also currently collaborating with Rising Software to expand content on non-western music and contemporary popular music. This past summer, I worked with Oxford University Press to author and create content for the online courseware assessment and practice materials for Joseph Straus’s Elements of Music, 4th ed (Oxford 2022).