Researcher
Experiments, statistical and computational models of melodic memory, learning, playing by ear and singing, plus the open-source testing software that runs them.
Systematic musicology · music psychology · computational modelling
Dr.Seb Silas
researcher
data scientist
musician
I study how people perceive, remember, and learn music, and how that knowledge can be put to work, from music education to sonic branding. I build the methods, models, and tools that make music psychological theory actionable in the real world.
HamburgHannoverLondon
a melodic network: melodies as nodes, similarity as edges
hover a melody to see its neighbours · click to hear it
About
Musician, psychologist, data scientist
I am an interdisciplinary researcher, data scientist, and musician working at the intersection of musicology, psychology, and technology.
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Systematic Musicology, University of Hamburg, where I investigate how musical information is perceived, remembered, learned, and transmitted. Drawing on music psychology, systematic musicology, cognitive science, and computational modelling, my research focuses on melodic cognition, musical memory, playing by ear, singing, sonic branding, and musical similarity. More broadly, I seek to understand how musical stimuli interact with human cognition to shape behaviour and experience.
Across academia and industry, I combine experimental research, statistical modelling, machine learning, software development, and cloud technologies. My work spans musical cognition, auditory memory, sonic branding, psychometrics, and longitudinal modelling, and has involved the development of large-scale testing platforms, adaptive assessment systems, and data products used by universities, research institutes, and commercial organisations.
Being a musician, a psychologist and a data scientist lets me approach complex questions from several angles, linking human behaviour, computational modelling, and practical application. I am particularly interested in developing tools and models that advance our understanding of learning, memory, and the role of music in human experience.
Roles
Three ways into the same questions
Data Scientist
Sonic branding: modelling how audiences respond to music and sonic logos, and building the data products and testing platforms behind it.
Musician
Saxophonist working in jazz and improvisation. Playing by ear on the bandstand is where many of my research questions started.
Positions
Current positions
Postdoctoral ResearcherInstitute of Systematic Musicology, University of Hamburg
Research
Lead Lecturer, Psychology of MusicBIMM University, London
Teaching
Data Scientist, Sonic BrandingSoundOut
Industry
Research interests
My research involves a layered set of problems.
Hover over topics for representative work.
Top tierapplications
Where the findings are put to use: in teaching and learning music, and in the music brands use to reach people.
SongBird
An app for choir singers to learn their parts: listen to a melody, sing it back, and practise it again when it starts to fade.
Slonimsky
Adaptive ear training: hear a melody, play it back by ear, and the app chooses what to practise next from a model of your learning.
Middle tierabilities, cognition & memory
How musical abilities develop, and the cognitive processes underneath them: how a melody is perceived, held in memory, learned over repeated hearings and reproduced.
Bottom tiermeasurement & models
The methods everything above rests on: ways to quantify how similar two melodies are, models of how learning unfolds, and tests that measure ability precisely.
01Computational and statistical modelling of music
02Sonic branding and consumer responses to music
03Adaptive assessment and learning technologies
04Musical memory, learning, and melodic cognition
Publications
Selected papers
In review & in preparation
Awards
Awards & scholarships
Article award
Douglas C. West Advertising Creative Article Award
For research in sonic branding: Musical manipulation of visual scenes in video, film, and TV advertisements (Journal of Advertising Research, 2024).
Doctoral scholarship
DAAD
German Academic Exchange Service doctoral scholarship.
Doctoral scholarship
Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes
German Academic Scholarship Foundation doctoral scholarship.
Contact
Get in touch
Email
sebastian.silas@uni-hamburg.deOffice
Institute of Systematic Musicology
University of Hamburg
Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, ESA 1, Room 11
20146 Hamburg