0000000001217932
AUTHOR
Erkki Huovinen
Silent Reading and Aural Models in Pianists’ Mental Practice
This study addresses musicians’ learning outcomes and subjective experiences in two common types of mental practice: silent score reading and score reading while listening to the music. The study incorporates expert ratings of performances before and after mental practice, questionnaire data concerning modal preferences, as well as semi-structured interviews. The results revealed individual differences in learning outcomes, attitudes toward the two types of mental practice, and the use of imagery. The participants’ attitudes and strategies were variously affected by their ability to audiate newly encountered music, their possible preference for learning by ear, and their need to process the…
Successful approaches to mental practice : A case study of four pianists
Musicians often use mental practice for enhancing performance, but individuals may have different preferences and skills in their characteristic, individually successful ways of carrying out such practice. In this study, we focus on the approaches to mental practice of four pianists who, according to the ratings of a panel of expert judges, showed outstanding improvement in their performances following their mental practice of a new piece in at least one of the two conditions: silent reading of the score or reading the score while simultaneously listening to the music. The four pianists’ approaches to mental practice were studied through self-reports in post-task interviews that were compar…
Expert pianists’ practice perspectives: A production and listening study
The purpose of this study was to investigate how professional pianists practice music for a concert, and whether their individual cognitive orientations in such practice processes can be identified accurately from the resulting performances. In Study I, four pianists, previously found to be skilled music memorizers, practiced and performed a short piece by André Jolivet over the course of two weeks, during which their practice strategies were studied using semi-structured interviews, and analyses of practice diaries, practice activities, and eye-movement data. The results indicate that the pianists used similar basic strategies but had different cognitive orientations, here called “practic…
Improvising on Emotion Terms: Students’ Strategies, Emotional Communication, and Aesthetic Value
Studies in musical improvisation show that musicians and even children are able to communicate intended emotions to listeners at will. To understand emotional expressivity in music as an art form, communicative success needs to be related to improvisers’ thought processes and listeners’ aesthetic judgments. In the present study, we used retrospective verbal protocols to address college music students’ strategies in improvisations based on emotion terms. We also subjected their improvisations to expert ratings in terms of heard emotional content and aesthetic value. A qualitative analysis showed that improvisers used both generative strategies (expressible in intramusical terms) and imagina…
Interaction affordances in traditional instruments and tablet computers: A study of children’s musical group creativity
In order to promote children’s collaborative musical creativity in new digital environments, we need a better understanding not only of the sound production capabilities provided by the new digital tools, but also of the interaction affordances involved. This study focuses on the interactional patterns emerging in children’s musical creativity, comparing creative group processes on iPad tablet computers (with GarageBand software) to processes on traditional musical instruments. Both instrumentations were assigned to five groups of four 10–12-year-olds for creating sound landscapes for a “space” movie. The traditional instrument groups’ processes were characterized by peer teaching as well …
Pleasant Musical Imagery
This article introduces the notion of pleasant musical imagery (PMI) for denoting everyday phenomena where people want to cherish music “in their heads.” This account differs from current paradigms for studying musical imagery in that it is not based a priori on (in)voluntariness of the experience. An empirical investigation of the structure and experiential content in 50 persons’ experiences of PMI applied the elicitation interview method. Peer judgments of the interviews helped to bridge a phenomenological investigation of particular experiences with systematic between-subjects analysis. Both structural features of the imagery (e.g., Looseness of structure or Looping) and content features…
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…
The Semantics of Musical Topoi
The article introduces an empirical approach to studying music’s extrinsic meanings, based on the idea of musical topos as a set of musical entities that is delimited and furnished with meaning by extramusical associations in a listener population. The proposed methodology involves free, associative responses as well as responses on semantic variables addressing the imagery. After deriving potential topical structures for a given musical domain from the quantitative results, the structures are substantiated by using them to guide a rule-based, qualitative analysis of the free responses. The approach allows a view to the topical organization of a musical domain in which the identity of each …
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…
Jyväskylän Hippos-Kampus alueen kehittyminen Harjun reunasta ja kaviourasta opetuksen, tutkimuksen sekä liikunnan keskukseksi
The Semantics of Musical Topoi : An Empirical Approach
THE ARTICLE INTRODUCES AN EMPIRICAL APPROACH to studying music’s extrinsic meanings, based on the idea of musical topos as a set of musical entities that is delimited and furnished with meaning by extramusical associations in a listener population. The proposed methodology involves free, associative responses as well as responses on semantic variables addressing the imagery. After deriving potential topical structures for a given musical domain from the quantitative results, the structures are substantiated by using them to guide a rule-based, qualitative analysis of the free responses. The approach allows a view to the topical organization of a musical domain in which the identity of each …
Pleasant Musical Imagery : Eliciting Cherished Music in the Second Person
This article introduces the notion of pleasant musical imagery (PMI) for denoting everyday phenomena where people want to cherish music ‘‘in their heads.’’ This account differs from current paradigms for studying musical imagery in that it is not based a priori on (in)voluntariness of the experience. An empirical investigation of the structure and experiential content in 50 persons’ experiences of PMI applied the elicitation interview method. Peer judgments of the interviews helped to bridge a phenomenological investigation of particular experiences with systematic between-subjects analysis. Both structural features of the imagery (e.g., Looseness of structure or Looping) and content featur…