Inferring musical structure through bodily gestures

Abstract

Despite the idiosyncrasies present in bodily motion during musical performances, it is suggested that these movements are not incidental but instead contribute to the meaning of performed music. Nine pianists performing two Chopin Preludes are recorded using Vicon motion capture, in synchrony with audio and MIDI recordings. Using principal components analysis (PCA) on the recorded upper body motion, motion profiles for each pianist are formed from the weighted combinations of these components. This measure of global body movement produces a comparable measure across performers and pieces, whilst keeping the performers' interpretative gestures in view of their whole concept of the piece intact. This study proposes that performers use these motions as a way of corporeally manifesting their interpretative choices. It is suggested that their overall body motion is underscored by such structures as interpreted from the written music. Results show evident underlying musical structure across performers' motion profiles. These profiles are seen to be constructed from functions of harmonic and melodic relationships in the score. These findings hold significant implications for research into music perception, pedagogy and development of computational technologies for the analysis of music performance.

The Interpretive Shaping of Embodied Musical Structure in Piano Performance

“…Previous investigations sought to examine the generation of repetitive motion over phrases of similar rhythmic duration and complexity by comparing the two-bar phrasing structure of the A major Prelude, and similar instances arising in the B minor Prelude, in order to investigate consistency of performance gesture over similar phrases within multiple performances of differing compositions (MacRitchie et al, 2013). Those findings are extended here to consider the more varied phrasing structure of the B minor Prelude in its entirety.…”

“…The authors have previously identified motion patterns as recurrent and idiosyncratic within nine highly skilled performers' individual motion profiles, generated through principal component analysis (PCA) of overall upper-body and head performance motions (MacRitchie, Buck & Bailey, 2013). A motion profile, as defined in this previous paper, is a weighted combination of the first few principal components such that the total variance explained is above 90%.…”

“…All reference to phrasing segmentation for the two preludes will relate to these markings as depicted unless stated as otherwise within the text. For more detail on the precise nature of phrasing for the A major Prelude see MacRitchie et al (2013).…”

Interaction of Sight and Sound in the Perception and Experience of Musical Performance

“…The former approach is problematic because of the limited validity of ''faked'' expressive movements, and the latter because the movements and gestures in musical performance have been found to arise from a representation of the musical structure, and thus convey meaning in association with specific musical passages (e.g., MacRitchie, Buck, & Bailey, 2013).…”

The influence of cellist's postural movements on their musical expressivity

“…Pour cette raison, plusieurs études se servent de techniques comme l'analyse en composantes principales (PCA) pour décomposer le mouvement en éléments de base localisés (eigenmovements), et estimer leur synchronisation aux unités métriques de la partition. On en trouve un exemple chez [MacRitchie 2009] qui identifie les mouvements de la tête et du haut du buste des pianistes comme des composantes essentielles pour la structure du phrasé. Mais c'est surtout dans le domaine de la danse spontanée en réaction à la musique que s'applique ce type d'analyse du mouvement d'ensemble [Amelynck 2014].…”