Which of the following performances is less expressive than the other (if there is any difference)?Ī few musicians’ data had to be thrown out (it’s a long story), so ultimately there were just 18 musicians’ worth of recordings.In which of the following performances is there tempo instability (if there is any)?.In which of the following performances are there wrong phrasings (if there are any)?.In which of the following performances are there rhythmic hesitations (if there are any)?.And they were also asked to indicate if one performance was less expressive than the other. There are lots of different aspects of musicality and expressiveness of course, but they were asked to listen specifically for differences relating to a) rhythmic hesitations, b) wrong phrasings, and c) tempo instability. To find out, three professional musicians were asked to listen to each pair of baseline/distracted recordings, in random order, and with no idea that distractions were involved in one of the recordings. So did anything about their singing/playing change when they were distracted? A panel of musicians Even though they were told to play exactly the same in the dual-task recording as they did in the baseline recording. And the idea was to see what exactly might change in their playing/singing, when their cognitive resources were being shifted away from the music and onto something totally irrelevant. And unlike in their baseline recording, this time they had to pay very close attention to what was on the screen, as they were asked to count up the total number of circles and triangles (but not squares) that appeared over the course of two minutes. Second takeĭuring their second performance, however, they were presented with multiple shapes appearing simultaneously on the screen – squares, circles, and triangles – constantly changing every second or so. The idea was to establish a baseline of how well they were capable of playing/singing when they had the mental bandwidth to focus on their performance. Although they were asked to look at the screen, they were free to ignore the squares, so this wasn’t intended to be particularly challenging or distracting. First takeĭuring their first performance, they were presented with blue squares on the screen, one at a time, in random locations. All with at least 8 years of formal music training.Įach was asked to perform a short piece of memorized, well-learned music twice, each time while looking at a computer screen on which shapes would randomly appear. Altogether there were 9 singers and 12 instrumentalists (including string, winds, and brass), ranging in age from 18 to 40. Is this something that we do have to think about during a performance? Or should “musicality” just flow out of us naturally? Where everything is so well-ingrained that we could easily give an inspired performance (as far as the listener is concerned), while thinking up new ice cream flavors on stage? A study of singers and instrumentalistsĪ group of Belgian researchers ( Çorlu et al., 2015) recruited 21 musicians to participate in a study to explore this. But what about the musical or expressive aspects of our playing? Whether it’s elements of phrasing and timing, dynamics, sound and color, articulation, or even one’s physical movements, expressive musical performances include ingredients from many different dimensions indeed!īut how much of this do we need to think about on stage? Research and experience tells us that thinking too much about what our fingers or body ought to be doing on stage is just asking for trouble (more details about why that is here). Pianist Leon Fleisher once said something along the lines of how playing a note is easy – but playing that note musically is much more difficult.Īnd when you start adding more notes, and more expressive possibilities to the equation, the challenge only increases.
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