0000000000828426
AUTHOR
Marjaana Penttinen
Silent music reading: Amateur musicians' visual processing and descriptive skill
This article addresses the silent reading of music notation, combining eye-movement measures with a semantic analysis of readers’ verbal descriptions of the notated music. A group of musical novices ( n = 16) and two groups of musical amateurs (less experienced n = 11 and more experienced n = 10) participated in three separate measurement sessions during a nine-month-long university music course designed for future primary-school teachers. In each session they viewed a notated folk song for 30 s and then described what they had seen. Greater musical experience was found to be connected with shorter fixation durations, more linear scanning of the notated music, and more accurate and integra…
Reading ahead: Adult music students’ eye movements in temporally controlled performances of a children’s song
In the present study, education majors minoring in music education ( n = 24) and music performance majors ( n =14) read and performed the original version and melodically altered versions of a simple melody in a given tempo. Eye movements during music reading and piano performances were recorded. Errorless trials were analyzed to explore the adjustments of visual processing in successful performances. The temporal length of the eye–hand span (time between gaze and the performed note) was typically around one second or less. A measure of gaze activity indicated that performers generally inspected two quarter-note areas between two metrical beat onsets. The performance majors operated with s…