Words Are Music: Exploring the Speech-to-Song Illusion

Thursday, March 12th

1:00–2:00PM ET

12pm CT / 11am MT / 10am PT / 7am HT / 19h CET

Have you ever listened to a word so much it becomes a musical sequence of sounds?

This month, come play with spoken words using the human phenomenon called the speech-to-song illusion. We’ll mess around with audio clips of our favorite words played on repeat, discover melodies, and gain a deeper understanding of how our perception of words and sounds can change over time. No music experience required!

This workshop will be facilitated by my colleague Joe Diaz, who’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet and runs the MIT pK-12 Full STEAM Ahead summer program for middle schoolers and an annual Heavy Metal 101 class for everyone, with an appearance by my friend and mentor Dr. Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel from the MIT Speech Communication Group, known for decades of psycholinguistic research in speech production planning and speech errors, notably tongue twisters.