David Sears
Email: david.sears@ttu.edu
Phone: (806) 834-4330
Office: School of Music, Rm 239

I am an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at Texas Tech University, where
I am also Affiliated Faculty in Music Theory, Co-Director of the Performing Arts Research Laboratory (PeARL), and Coordinator of the Bachelor of Arts program in Interdisciplinary Arts Studies (BA-IAS). Prior to joining TTU, I completed a PhD in music theory in the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal (2016), and a post-doctoral research fellowship
in the Institute of Computational Perception at Johannes Kepler University in Linz (2017).
My current research examines the structural parallels between music and language using
both behavioral and computational methods, with a particular emphasis on the many
topics associated with pitch structure, including scale theory, tonality, harmony,
cadence, and musical form. I also have ancillary interests in topics related to music
and emotion, popular music analysis, and music on the radio, and I regularly attend
conferences related to music perception and cognition (ICMPC, SMPC, ESCOM), music
informatics (ISMIR, CMMR, MML), and music theory and analysis (SMT, EuroMAC). Recent
publications have appeared in venues like Music Perception, Psychology of Music, Auditory Perception and Cognition, the Quarterly
Journal of Experimental Psychology, the Journal of Mathematics and Music, the Journal
of New Music Research, the International Journal of Psychophysiology, and Eighteenth-Century Music (see my Google Scholar Profile for a complete listing of my publications). Much of the behavioral and computational
data associated with my research (stimuli, data sets, analysis scripts, software applications,
etc.) is also available for download on the open science framework and/or Github.
As a pedagogue, I teach graduate seminars for the Fine Arts Doctoral Program (FADP), which serves students in the Schools of Music, Theatre & Dance, and Art. Examples
of recent offerings include The Digital Humanities in the Arts, Language, Evolution, & the Arts, and Psychology Across the Arts. I also regularly teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the music theory area
(e.g., Music and the Mind, Elementary Music Theory I-II, Intermediate Music Theory I-II).


Mapping the location of live radio streams for the Music Listening Across the Globe project.
School of Music
-
Address
18th and Boston Avenue Box 42033, Lubbock TX 79409-2033 -
Phone
806.742.2274 | Fax: 806.742.2294 -
Email
schoolofmusic@ttu.edu