An investigation of conductors' temporal gestures and conductor— musician synchronization, and a first experiment

Abstract

A B S T R AC T This article reports an empirical investigation into the characteristics of conductors' temporal gestures and people's ability to synchronize with them. It describes a new approach to the investigation of the characteristics of conductors' gestures, the investigation of conductor-musician synchronization, and a first experiment to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach. As part of this approach, a new computer-based environment for manipulating and presenting conductors' gestures, and recording participants' responses, was developed. This involved the creation of several pieces of new software, all of which were developed under Microsoft ® Windows ® using Visual Cϩϩ. Used in combination, these programs allowed:(1) the manipulation of the size and viewing angle of high-quality three-dimensional (3D) recordings of conductors' gestures; (2) the presentation of these gestures to participants in a controlled experimental setting; (3) the recording of participants' temporal responses to these gestures; (4) the calculation of various parameters of both the trajectory of the gestures (e.g. instantaneous speed, radius of curvature along the trajectory) and participants' responses (e.g. mean response point and associated standard deviation); and (5) the graphical display of relevant features of both the gestures and participants' responses in a clear visual form. In the experiment, participants tapped in time with simple conducting gestures while several factors that might be expected to affect synchronization accuracy were manipulated. These factors were (1) the radius of curvature with which the beat was defined; (2) the experience level of the conductor; and (3) the experience level of participants. Results indicated that only participants' previous experience affected their synchronization ability; no effects of conductors' previous experience, or radius of curvature with which the beat was defined were found. This first experiment successfully demonstrated the feasibility of the new approach for the investigation of conductors' gestures and conductormusician synchronization, and this article concludes by suggesting a number of subsequent experiments that could be undertaken in this computer-based environment to investigate these topics further. K E Y W O R D S : conducting, gestures, visual beat perception Psychology of Music Psychology of Music

Six Functions of Conducting

“…6 Compared to repetitive mechanics that musicians sometimes come to ignore, expressive conducting is fresh, challenging, and engaging, which promotes even more precise synchronization.…”

Exploring the Spatio-Temporal Properties of Simple Conducting Gestures using a Synchronization Task

“…Other related work includes a considerable literature on basic human synchronization skills, most of which has examined synchronization with auditory stimuli (see Repp, 2005, for a review), but some of which deals with visually mediated synchronization (e.g., Engström, Kelso, & Holroyd, 1996;Luck & Nte, 2007;Repp & Penel, 2004), or visual perception of synchronization (e.g., Zaal, Bingham, & Schmidt, 2000). However, with the exception of Luck and Nte (2007), this literature focuses on repeated sequences of stimuli, and none of it examines the features of the beat with which people synchronize.…”

What Is Conducting? Signs, Principles, and Problems

“…In a couple of studies (Luck & Nte [2008] and Luck & Sloboda [2007]), participants were presented with single instances of point-light representations of simple single beat and three-beat conducting gestures, and had to tap in synchrony with the beat in each case. he tests show that musicians tend to be synchronized with features such as high, and frequently negative, acceleration, and low position in the vertical axis (= onset) (Clayton [1986] 21 ; Luck & Sloboda [2007]).…”

“…Clayton, A.M.H. (1986), Coordination Between Players in Musical Performance, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Edinburgh University, UK, the results quoted in Luck and Nte (2008).…”