The movements made by performers in a skilled quartet: a distinctive pattern, and the function that it serves

Abstract

When people perform a task as part of a joint action, their behavior is not the same as it would be if they were performing the same task alone, since it has to be adapted to facilitate shared understanding (or sometimes to prevent it). Joint performance of music offers a test bed for ecologically valid investigations of the way non-verbal behavior facilitates joint action. Here we compare the expressive movement of violinists when playing in solo and ensemble conditions. The first violinists of two string quartets (SQs), professional and student, were asked to play the same musical fragments in a solo condition and with the quartet. Synchronized multimodal recordings were created from the performances, using a specially developed software platform. Different patterns of head movement were observed. By quantifying them using an appropriate measure of entropy, we showed that head movements are more predictable in the quartet scenario. Rater evaluations showed that the change does not, as might be assumed, entail markedly reduced expression. They showed some ability to discriminate between solo and ensemble performances, but did not distinguish them in terms of emotional content or expressiveness. The data raise provocative questions about joint action in realistically complex scenarios.

A new method of onset and offset detection in ensemble singing

“…the lower voice) tended to lag at NB and NE, but precede at OF. Furthermore, these contrasting patterns of leader-follower relationships show bidirectional adaptations between performers rather than a clear separation of roles, corroborating previous studies analysing the synchronization of onsets among string quartets (29)(30)(31)(32). This also suggests that the reciprocal and iterative adjustments are not limited to the attack of the note, but to the full performance of notes, including NB, NE and OF in addition to ON.…”

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

“…In musical performance, a performer's body movements and gestures can convey a range of meaningful information to audiences and co-performers alike, including emotional expression (Castellano, Mortillaro, Camurri, Volpe, & Scherer, 2008;Dahl & Friberg, 2007;Davidson, 1993Davidson, , 1994 and phrasing (Juchniewicz, 2008;Vines, Krumhansl, Wanderley, & Levitin, 2006), as well as musical ideas and timing (Glowinski et al, 2013;Goebl & Palmer, 2009;Williamon & Davidson, 2002). The salience of visual kinematic information (i.e., visual information about performers' body movements and gestures) for an observer's perception and experience of a musical performance has been widely documented (e.g., Chapados & Levitin, 2008;Davidson, 1993;Tsay, 2013;Vines, Krumhansl, Wanderley, Dalca, & Levitin, 2011;Vines et al, 2006), and a recent meta-analysis by Platz and Kopiez (2012) revealed that, compared to audio-only presentations, audiovisual information has a moderate effect on participants' evaluations of a musical performance.…”

Social retrieval of music content in multi-user performance

“…This feature is regarded as an indicator of the degree of synchronisation between a pair of performers in a team. Especially in the field of music and dance, synchronisation is used to measure the level of collaboration and entitativity of a group of people (that is, their tendency to act as a single entity) performing a joint activity [39][31]. In the proposed system, the synchronisation between a pair of performers is computed starting from the bpm they are expressing by moving their mobile devices.…”