Frank Desmet

Assessing a clarinet player's performer gestures in relation to locally intended musical targets

Abstract Musicianship is known to display high-level skills, which involve different aspects of mental processing and corporeal control. Of particular interest is the match between the musicians mental focus on musical targets (the so-called musical intentions) and the expressive (or so-called auxiliary) body movements. To what extent are these related to each other? And what does this relationship reveal about mind–body connections? To approach these questions, a case study was set up around a clarinet solo performance played from score, covering a style of music unfamiliar to the player. The clarinetists movements were recorded with an optical movement tracking system. A statistical analysis method was developed, to account for movement data in relation to the potential musical intentions and targets. The bottom-up movement analysis method was validated with the performers annotations of targets in the musical score and the performers annotations of communicative/sound facilitating gestures in the performance video. The results reveal that the mental focus on musical targets is related to bodily expression. This finding supports the idea of an embodied model of musical syntax processing, which is strongly related to corporeal gestures.

Statistical Analysis of Human Body Movement and Group Interactions in Response to Music

Quantification of time series that relate to physiological data is challenging for empirical music research. Up to now, most studies have focused on time-dependent responses of individual subjects in controlled environments. However, little is known about time-dependent responses of between-subject interactions in an ecological context. This paper provides new findings on the statistical analysis of group synchronicity in response to musical stimuli. Different statistical techniques were applied to time-dependent data obtained from an experiment on embodied listening in individual and group settings. Analysis of inter group synchronicity are described. Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) and Cross Correlation Function (CCF) were found to be valid methods to estimate group coherence of the resulting movements. It was found that synchronicity of movements between individuals (human–human interactions) increases significantly in the social context. Moreover, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed that the type of music is the predominant factor in both the individual and the social context.

Spontaneous Velocity Effect of Musical Expression on Self-Paced Walking

The expressive features of music can influence the velocity of walking. So far, studies used instructed (and intended) synchronization. But is this velocity effect still present with non-instructed (spontaneous) synchronization? To figure that out, participants were instructed to walk in their own comfort tempo on an indoor track, first in silence and then with tempo-matched music. We compared velocities of silence and music conditions. The results show that some music has an activating influence, increasing velocity and motivation, while other music has a relaxing influence, decreasing velocity and motivation. The influence of musical expression on the velocity of self-paced walking can be predicted with a regression model using only three sonic features explaining 56% of the variance. Phase-coherence between footfall and beat did not contribute to the velocity effect, due to its implied fixed pacing. The findings suggest that the velocity effect depends on vigor entrainment that influences both stride length and pacing. Our findings are relevant for preventing injuries, for gait improvement in walking rehabilitation, and for improving performance in sports activities.

The consequences of additional cognitive load on performing musicians

When musicians play music, they seem to be fully concentrating and occupied with their performance. But what happens when concentration is affected, such as during examinations or concert performances? Our hypothesis was that the expressiveness of the music would be affected due to the fact that an additional cognitive load would occupy the cognitive resources that are needed for the timing and articulation of the musical action. To test this hypothesis, we asked experienced musicians to perform a musical piece with and without a secondary task (dual task condition). Jury judgements revealed that pieces performed under an additional cognitive load suffered a decrease in expressiveness. An analysis of the audio recordings revealed that for almost all performances, the durations of the pauses in between musical phrases during the performance in dual task conditions were significantly shorter than those performed without a secondary task, while the musical phrases themselves were not affected in their duration. We attribute this phenomenon to the fact that musicians can base the timing during playing on a (non-cognitive) corporeal reference, while during the pauses, this reference is lost. Insight into this effect may lead to educational practices that teach how to cope with additional load.