Interpersonal Coordination in Dyadic Performance

Dyadic musical performance provides an excellent framework to study interpersonal coordination because it involves multiple agents performing matched, rhythmic and/or interactive behaviors. In this chapter, we explore interpersonal coordination using Canonical Correlation Analysis as a coupling measure. To provide some context when interpreting the output of CCA, musicians performed using different expressive manners (deadpan, normal, exaggerated). Overall the results showed the normal performances were slightly more interpersonally coordinated than deadpan and exaggerated. peerReviewed

Expressive gestures in piano performance

A comparison of methods for investigating the perceptual center of musical sounds

In speech and music, the acoustic and perceptual onset(s) of a sound are usually not congruent with its perceived temporal location. Rather, these "P-centers" are heard some milliseconds after the acoustic onset, and a variety of techniques have been used in speech and music research to find them. Here we report on a comparative study that uses various forms of the method of adjustment (aligning a click or filtered noise in-phase or anti-phase to a repeated target sound), as well as tapping in synchrony with a repeated target sound. The advantages and disadvantages of each method and probe type are discussed, and then all methods are tested using a set of musical instrument sounds that syst…

Modelling Perceived Segmentation of Bodily Gestures Induced by Music

This article presents an ongoing investigation whose goal is to model perceived segmentation of music-induced bodily gestures. The investigation consists of three stages. The first stage is a database of multimodal recordings of people moving to music. The data of these recordings are video and motion-capture (acceleration and position at several points of the body). In the second stage the videos produced in the first stage are manually segmented. This is regarded as ground truth for the evaluation of the performance of an automatic gesture segmentation system developed in the third stage of the study. This system extracts kinetic features from motion-captured data. Then a novelty score is…

The application of motion capture to embodied music cognition research

Tapping Doesn't Help : Synchronized Self-Motion and Judgments of Musical Tempo

For both musicians and music psychologists, beat rate (BPM) has often been regarded as a transparent measure of musical speed or tempo, yet recent research has shown that tempo is more than just BPM. In a previous study, London, Burger, Thompson, and Toiviainen (Acta Psychologica, 164, 70–80, 2016) presented participants with original as well as “time-stretched” versions of classic R&B songs; time stretching slows down or speeds up a recording without changing its pitch or timbre. In that study we discovered a tempo anchoring effect (TAE): Although relative tempo judgments (original vs. time-stretched versions of the same song) were correct, they were at odds with BPM rates of each stimulus…

Learning and Synchronising Dance Movements in South African Songs – Cross-cultural Motion-capture Study

Music and dance are human universals. Understanding the communicative nature and the interpersonal dynamics of making music and dancing has a wide area of applications from academic to artistic, educational and therapeutic uses. Cross-cultural and embodied cognitive approaches are important, as they ensure a view across a spectrum of cultural practices and allow us to explore which aspects of cognitive performance are learned and how. In this study, our aims were to use a case study to investigate possible cross-cultural differences in movement, especially corporeal representation of beat and metre; to study group entrainment and factors contributing to synchronisation accuracy. From earli…

Where is the beat in that note? Effects of attack, duration, and frequency on the perceived timing of musical and quasi-musical sounds

The perceptual center (P-center) of a sound is typically understood as the specific moment at which it is perceived to occur. Using matched sets of real and artificial musical sounds as stimuli, we probed the influence of attack (rise time), duration, and frequency (center frequency) on perceived P-center location and P-center variability. Two different methods to determine the P-centers were used: Clicks aligned in-phase with the target sounds via the method of adjustment, and tapping in synchrony with the target sounds. Attack and duration were the primary cues for P-center location and P-center variability; P-center variability was found to be a useful measure of P-center shape. Consiste…

Novel and experimental music technology use in the music classroom : learning performance, experience, and concentrated behavior

In recent years, music technology in the classroom has relied on general devices such as the iPad. In the current study, we used a mixed-methods approach to examine the learning performance, learning experience, and behavior of two class groups of primary school music students (N = 42), using established music technology (i.e., the iPad with the Keyboard Touch Instrument app) and novel music technology (KAiKU Music Glove). Results show a significant difference of change in test scores during learning (p = <.01) and a medium effect-size is found (d = .75), indicating use of the iPad and Keyboard Touch Instrument app contributed to increased learning when compared to the KAiKU Music Glove.…

Motown, Disco, and Drumming

In a study of tempo perception, London, Burger, Thompson, and Toiviainen (2016) presented participants with digitally ‘‘tempo-shifted’’ R&B songs (i.e., sped up or slowed down without otherwise altering their pitch or timbre). They found that while participants’ relative tempo judgments of original versus altered versions were correct, they no longer corresponded to the beat rate of each stimulus. Here we report on three experiments that further probe the relation(s) between beat rate, tempo-shifting, beat salience, melodic structure, and perceived tempo. Experiment 1 is a replication of London et al. (2016) using the original stimuli. Experiment 2 replaces the Motown stimuli with disco…

Hunting for the beat in the body: on period and phase locking in music-induced movement.

Music has the capacity to induce movement in humans. Such responses during music listening are usually spontaneous and range from tapping to full-body dancing. However, it is still unclear how humans embody musical structures to facilitate entrainment. This paper describes two experiments, one dealing with period locking to different metrical levels in full-body movement and its relationships to beat- and rhythm-related musical characteristics, and the other dealing with phase locking in the more constrained condition of sideways swaying motions. Expected in Experiment 1 was that music with clear and strong beat structures would facilitate more period-locked movement. Experiment 2 was assum…

Synchronization to metrical levels in music depends on low-frequency spectral components and tempo

Previous studies have found relationships between music-induced movement and musical characteristics on more general levels, such as tempo or pulse clarity. This study focused on synchronization abilities to music of finely-varying tempi and varying degrees of low frequency spectral change/flux. Excerpts from six classic Motown/R&B songs at three different tempos (105, 115, and 130 BPM) were used as stimuli in this experiment. Each was then time-stretched by a factor of 5% with regards to the original tempo, yielding a total of 12 stimuli that were presented to 30 participants. Participants were asked to move along with the stimuli while being recorded with an optical motion capture system.…

Emotion-driven encoding of music preference and personality in dance

Thirty rhythmic music excerpts were presented to 60 individuals. Dance movements to each excerpt were recorded using an optical motion-capture system, preference for each excerpt recorded on a 5-point Likert scale, and personality assessed using the 44-item version of the Big Five Inventory. From the movement data, a large number of postural, kinematic and kinetic features were extracted, a subset of which were chosen for further analysis using sequential backward elimination with variance inflation factor (VIF) selection. Multivariate analyses revealed significant effects on these 11 features of both preference and personality, as well as a number of interactions between the two. As regar…

Conscientiousness and Extraversion relate to responsiveness to tempo in dance

Previous research has shown broad relationships between personality and dance, but the relationship between personality and specific structural features of music has not been explored. The current study explores the influence of personality and trait empathy on dancers' responsiveness to small tempo differences between otherwise musically identical stimuli, measured by difference in the amount in acceleration of key joints. Thirty participants were recorded using motion capture while dancing to excerpts from six popular songs that were time-stretched to be slightly faster or slower than their original tempi. Analysis revealed that higher conscientiousness and lower extraversion both correla…

Relationships between perceived emotions in music and music-induced movement

Listening to music makes us move in various ways. Several factors can affect the characteristics of these movements, including individual factors and musical features. Additionally, music-induced movement may also be shaped by the emotional content of the music, since emotions are an important element of musical expression. This study investigates possible relationships between emotional characteristics of music and music-induced, quasi-spontaneous movement. We recorded music-induced movement of 60 individuals, and computationally extracted features from the movement data. Additionally, the emotional content of the stimuli was assessed in a perceptual experiment. A subsequent correlational …

Review of New Perspectives in Music and Gesture

Exploring relationships between pianists’ body movements, their expressive intentions, and structural elements of the music

Body movements during music performance have been found to be indicative of the performer’s musical intentionality, and contribute to an observer’s perception of expressive playing. This study investigates the effect of structural elements of the score, and the playing of different levels of expression on body movements during a piano performance. Pianists were required to play the same piece in four different performance conditions. Their movements were tracked by an optical motion capture system, and the comparisons that were made between specific parts of the body used, performance condition, and musical score locations were subsequently statistically examined. We found that the head an…

Effects of the Big Five and musical genre on music-induced movement

Nine-hundred-and-fifty-two individuals completed the Big Five Inventory, and 60 extreme scorers were presented with 30 music excerpts from six popular genres. Music-induced movement was recorded by an optical motion-capture system, the data from which 55 postural, kinematic, and kinetic movement features were computed. These features were subsequently reduced to five principal components of movement representing Local Movement, Global Movement, Hand Flux, Head Speed, and Hand Distance. Multivariate Analyses revealed significant effects on these components of both personality and genre, as well as several interactions between the two. Each personality dimension was associated with a differen…

Guest Editors' Introduction: Music as Embodied Experience

Technology has impacted music’s role in contemporary society in extraordinary ways. In addition to how people use music for professional and artistic pursuits, technology has opened a wide variety of new avenues for research and application, particularly as a reliable therapeutic and salutogenic tool. Recently, a useful framework for studying this shifting perspective surrounding musical experience has emerged: embodied music cognition, which conceptualizes the body as being at the center of music experiences. The papers in this thematic issue highlight how music technologies have matured to the point where they affect the way music is created, performed, enjoyed, and researched.

Influences of rhythm- and timbre-related musical features on characteristics of music-induced movement

Music makes us move. Several factors can affect the characteristics of such movements, including individual factors or musical features. For this study, we investigated the effect of rhythm- and timbre-related musical features as well as tempo on movement characteristics. Sixty participants were presented with 30 musical stimuli representing different styles of popular music, and instructed to move along with the music. Optical motion capture was used to record participants’ movements. Subsequently, eight movement features and four rhythm- and timbre-related musical features were computationally extracted from the data, while the tempo was assessed in a perceptual experiment. A subsequent c…

Speed on the dance floor : auditory and visual cues for musical tempo

Musical tempo is most strongly associated with the rate of the beat or “tactus,” which may be defined as the most prominent rhythmic periodicity present in the music, typically in a range of 1.67–2 Hz. However, other factors such as rhythmic density, mean rhythmic inter-onset interval, metrical (accentual) structure, and rhythmic complexity can affect perceived tempo (Drake et al., 1999 and London, 2011Drake, Gros, & Penel, 1999; London, 2011). Visual information can also give rise to a perceived beat/tempo (Iversen, et al., 2015), and auditory and visual temporal cues can interact and mutually influence each other (Soto-Faraco and Kingstone, 2004 and Spence, 2015). A five-part experiment w…

Gestural Agency in Human-Machine Musical Interaction

Musical technologies are evolving in such a way that they start to resemble the people that use them. In this vision it seems pertinent to abandon the conception of musicians as users of musical instruments in favor of machines and humans interacting to make music. Both the machine and the human can be modeled as embodied cognitive agents that comprise a network of musical gestures. These gestures are multi-modal signals that allow the agents to exert influence upon each other towards making music. This standpoint integrates traditional and novel music-making technologies, towards a better understanding of musical interaction. peerReviewed

Dance moves reflect current affective state illustrative of approach–avoidance motivation.

Interaction of sight and sound in the perception and experience of musical performance

Recently, Vuoskoski, Thompson, Clarke, and Spence (2014) demonstrated that visual kinematic performance cues may be more important than auditory performance cues in terms of observers’ ratings of expressivity perceived in audiovisual excerpts of piano playing, and that visual kinematic performance cues had crossmodal effects on the perception of auditory expressivity. The present study was designed to extend these findings, and to provide additional information about the roles of sight and sound in the perception and experience of musical performance. Experiment 1 investigated the relative contributions of auditory and visual kinematic performance features to participants’ subjective emotio…

Tapping doesn't help: Synchronized self-motion and judgments of musical tempo.

For both musicians and music psychologists, beat rate (BPM) has often been regarded as a transparent measure of musical speed or tempo, yet recent research has shown that tempo is more than just BPM. In a previous study, London, Burger, Thompson, and Toiviainen (Acta Psychologica, 164, 70–80, 2016) presented participants with original as well as “time-stretched” versions of classic R&B songs; time stretching slows down or speeds up a recording without changing its pitch or timbre. In that study we discovered a tempo anchoring effect (TAE): Although relative tempo judgments (original vs. time-stretched versions of the same song) were correct, they were at odds with BPM rates of each stimulus…

Effect of tempo and vision on interpersonal coordination of timing in dyadic performance

Interpersonal coordination within a dyadic musical performance requires that the two musicians share a similar mental model of the music’s timing structure. In addition to non-fluctuating inter-onset-interval, matched mental models can be observed through corporeal articulations and apparent embodiment of musical features (i.e. synchronous body sway, mimicked or complementary gestures). Our aim was to examine the effect of tempo on interpersonal coordination within a musical dyad. Violin dyads performed three unfamiliar collaborative musical sequences in facing vs. non-facing conditions. Our hypotheses were that interpersonal coordination would be weakened in the non-facing conditions, and …

Motown, Disco, and Drumming : An Exploration of the Relationship Between Beat Salience, Melodic Structure, and Perceived Tempo

In a study of tempo perception, London, Burger, Thompson, and Toiviainen (2016) presented participants with digitally ‘‘tempo-shifted’’ R&B songs (i.e., sped up or slowed down without otherwise altering their pitch or timbre). They found that while participants’ relative tempo judgments of original versus altered versions were correct, they no longer corresponded to the beat rate of each stimulus. Here we report on three experiments that further probe the relation(s) between beat rate, tempo-shifting, beat salience, melodic structure, and perceived tempo. Experiment 1 is a replication of London et al. (2016) using the original stimuli. Experiment 2 replaces the Motown stimuli with disco mus…

Embodied Metre in Spontaneous Movement to Music

Listening to music is often associated with spontaneous body movements, frequently synchronized with its periodic structure. The notion of embodied cognition assumes that intelligent behavior does not emerge from mere passive perception, but requires goal-directed interactions between the organism and its environment. According to this view, one could postulate that we use our bodily movements to help parse the metric structure of music. The aim of the study was to investigate how pulsations on different metrical levels are manifested in spontaneous movement to music. Participants were presented with a piece of instrumental music in 4/4 time, played in five different tempi ranging from 92 B…

Hot or Not? Personality and attraction on the dance floor

Previous research has shown that personality plays a significant role in interpersonal attraction. We took this issue to the dance floor, and investigated how personality characteristics of both observers and dancers affect the former’s attractiveness ratings of the latter. Sixty-two heterosexual adult participants watched 48 short audio-visual point-light animations of eight male and eight female adults dancing to Techno, Pop, and Latin music. Participants rated perceived skill of each dancer, and the likelihood with which they would go on a date with them. Both dancers’ and observers’ personality characteristics were assessed using the Big Five Inventory. Multivariate analyses of variance…