Alexander P. Demos

Rocking to the beat: effects of music and partner's movements on spontaneous interpersonal coordination.

People move to music and coordinate their movements with others spontaneously. Does music enhance spontaneous coordination? We compared the influence of visual information (seeing or not seeing another person) and auditory information (hearing movement or music or hearing no sound) on spontaneous coordination. Pairs of participants were seated side by side in rocking chairs, told a cover story, and asked to rock at a comfortable rate. Both seeing and hearing the other person rock elicited spontaneous coordination, and effects of hearing amplified those of seeing. Coupling with the music was weaker than with the partner, and the music competed with the partners influence, reducing coordination. Music did, however, function as a kind of social glue: participants who synchronized more with the music felt more connected.

Musicians body sway embodies musical structure and expression: A recurrence-based approach:

Musicians’ sway during performance seems to be related to musical structure. However, it has yet to be shown that examples of the relationship are not simply due to chance. Progress has been impeded by three problems: the assumption that musical structure is constant across performances; the complexity of the movements; and the inability of traditional statistical tests to accurately model the multilevel temporal hierarchies involved. We solved these problems in a study of the side-to-side postural sway of two trombonists as they each recorded two performances of each of two solo pieces in each of three different performance styles (normal, expressive, non-expressive). The musicians reported their phrasing immediately after each performance by marking copies of the score. We measured the rate and stability (mean line) of recurrence (self-similarity) and assessed the effect of serial position within a phrase, using mixed linear models to model the nesting of phrases within pieces, within performances, across expressive styles and musicians. Recurrence and stability of recurrence changed systematically across the course of a phrase, producing sinusoidal-like and arch-shaped phrasing contours that differed with the performance style and length of phrase. As long suspected, musicians’ expressive movements reflect musical structure.

Recording thoughts while memorizing music: a case study.

Musicians generally believe that memory differs from one person to the next. As a result, memorizing strategies that could be useful to almost everyone are not widely taught. We describe how an 18-years old piano student (Grade 7, ABRSM), learned to memorize by recording her thoughts, a technique inspired by studies of how experienced soloists memorize. The student, who had previously ignored suggestions that she play from memory, decided to learn to memorize, selecting Schumann’s “Der Dichter Spricht” for this purpose. Rather than explicitly teaching the student how to memorize, the teacher taught her to record her thoughts while playing by marking them on copies of the score, adapting an approach used previously in research with experienced performers. Over a 6½ week period, the student recorded her thoughts during practice (five times) and while performing from memory for the teacher (three times). The student also video-recorded 3 weeks of practice, three performances, and the reconstruction of the piece from memory after a 9½-weeks break. The thoughts that the student reported were prepared during practice, stable over time, and functioned as memory retrieval cues during reconstruction. This suggests that the student memorized in the same way as the more experienced musicians who have been studied previously and that teaching student musicians to record their thoughts may be an effective way to help them memorize. The speed and durability of her memorization surprised the student, inspiring her to perform in public and to use the same technique for new pieces.