Learning on the job

Abstract

The application of new methods and measures in domains with few methodological traditions of that kind often presents researchers with a challenge; they may have to take up the task of developing their understanding of the phenomenon while, at the same time, creating the practices for its study. For us, the method was eye tracking, and the topic, music reading. One key characteristic of music reading is that the music reader's gaze moves slightly ahead of the current point of performance. This gap allows the performer to prepare for the upcoming motoric responses. In this paper, we present our 10-year-long path, describing the steps we have taken while studying this "looking ahead" in music reading. We will point out how we have, after both advances as well as setbacks, come to change our views on how best to explain the various components affecting this specific act and how it is best measured. Finally, we discuss some of the lessons we have learned, hoping in this way to provide practical suggestions for others who plan to take up methods from other domains and use them in novel ones.

Gaze Analysis of Pianists’ Sight-reading: Comparison Between Expert Pianists and Students Training to Be Pianists

“…However, in others, sight-reading was defined as performing a music score after reading it silently (Drai-Zerbib et al, 2012). To specify sight-reading, it is important to make a distinction between performance tasks and tasks where music notation is only read and not performed in any way (Puurtinen, 2018b).…”