In recent decades, we have seen a surge in published work on embodied music cognition, and it is ... more In recent decades, we have seen a surge in published work on embodied music cognition, and it is now broadly accepted that musical experience is intimately linked with experiences of body motion. It is also clear that music performance is not something abstract and without restrictions, but something traditionally (i.e., before the advent of electronic music) constrained by our possibilities for body motion. The focus of this paper is on these various constraints of sound-producing body motion that shape the emergent perceptual features of musical sound, as well as on how these constraints may enhance our understanding of agency in music perception.
The focus of this mini-review is on rhythm objects, defined as strongly coherent chunks of combin... more The focus of this mini-review is on rhythm objects, defined as strongly coherent chunks of combined sound and body motion in music, typically in the duration range of a few seconds, as may for instance be found in a fragment of dance music, in an energetic drum fill, in a flute ornament, or in a cascade of sounds of a rapid harp glissando. Although there has been much research on rhythm in continuous musical sound and its links with behavior, including the neurocognitive aspects of periodicity, synchrony, and entrainment, there has been much less focus on the generation and perception of singular coherent rhythm objects. This mini-review aims to enhance our understanding of such rhythm objects by pointing to relevant literature on coherence-enhancing elements such as coarticulation, i.e., the fusion of motion events into more extended rhythm objects, and intermittent motor control, i.e., the discontinuous, instant-by-instant control and triggering of rhythm objects.
The aim of this paper is to present principles of constraint-based sound-motion objects in music ... more The aim of this paper is to present principles of constraint-based sound-motion objects in music performance. Sound-motion objects are multimodal fragments of combined sound and sound-producing body motion, usually in the duration range of just a few seconds, and conceived, produced, and perceived as intrinsically coherent units. Sound-motion objects have a privileged role as building blocks in music because of their duration, coherence, and salient features and emerge from combined instrumental, biomechanical, and motor control constraints at work in performance. Exploring these constraints and the crucial role of the sound-motion objects can enhance our understanding of generative processes in music and have practical applications in performance, improvisation, and composition.
In this paper we present results from an experiment in which infrared motion capture technology w... more In this paper we present results from an experiment in which infrared motion capture technology was used to record participants' movement in synchrony to different rhythms and different sounds. The purpose was to determine the effects of the sounds' spectral and temporal features on synchronization and gesture characteristics. In particular, we focused on the correlation between sounds and three gesture features: maximum acceleration, discontinuity, and total quantity of motion. Our findings indicate that discrete, discontinuous motion resulted in better synchronization, while spectral features of sound had a significant effect on the quantity of motion.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there emerged a radically new kind of music based on recorded ... more In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there emerged a radically new kind of music based on recorded environmental sounds instead of sounds of traditional Western musical instruments. Centered in Paris around the composer, music theorist, engineer, and writer Pierre Schaeffer, this became known as musique concrète because of its use of concrete recorded sound fragments, manifesting a departure from the abstract concepts and representations of Western music notation. Furthermore, the term sound object was used to denote our perceptual images of such fragments. Sound objects and their features became the focus of an extensive research effort on the perception and cognition of music in general, remarkably anticipating topics of more recent music psychology research. This sound object theory makes extensive use of metaphors, often related to motion shapes, something that can provide holistic representations of perceptually salient, but temporally distributed, features in different kinds of ...
We can see many and strong links between music and human body movement in musical performance, in... more We can see many and strong links between music and human body movement in musical performance, in dance, and in the variety of movements that people make in listening situations. There is evidence that sensations of human body movement are integral to music as such, and that sensations of movement are efficient carriers of information about style, genre, expression, and emotions. The challenge now in MIR is to develop means for the extraction and representation of movement-inducing cues from musical sound, as well as to develop possibilities for using body movement as input to search and navigation interfaces in MIR.
The term coarticulation designates the fusion of small-scale events such as single sounds and sin... more The term coarticulation designates the fusion of small-scale events such as single sounds and single sound-producing actions into larger chunks of sound and body motion, resulting in qualitative new features at the mediumscale level of the chunk. Coarticulation has been extensively studied in linguistics and to a certain extent in other domains of human body motion, but so far not so much in music, so the main aim of this paper is to provide a background for how we can explore coarticulation in music. The contention is that coarticulation in music should be understood as based on a number of physical, biomechanical and cognitive constraints, and that it is an essential shaping factor for several perceptually salient features of music.
A musical texture, be that of an ensemble or of a solo instrumentalist, may be perceived as combi... more A musical texture, be that of an ensemble or of a solo instrumentalist, may be perceived as combinations of both simultaneous and sequential sound events. However, we believe that also sensations of the corresponding soundproducing events (e.g. hitting, stroking, bowing, blowing) contribute to our perceptions of musical textures. Musical textures could thus be understood as multimodal, with features of both sound and motion, hence the idea here of sound-motion textures in music. The study of such multimodal sound-motion textures will necessitate collecting and analyzing data of both the produced sound and of the sound-producing body motion, thus entailing a number of methodological challenges. In our current work on soundmotion textures in music, we focus on short and idiomatic figures for different instruments (e.g. ornaments on various instruments), and in this paper, we present some ideas, challenges, and findings on typical sound-motion textures in drum set performance. Drum set...
People tend to perceive many and also salient similarities between musical sound and body motion ... more People tend to perceive many and also salient similarities between musical sound and body motion in musical experience, as can be seen in countless situations of music performance or listening to music, and as has been documented by a number of studies in the past couple of decades. The so-called motor theory of perception has claimed that these similarity relationships are deeply rooted in human cognitive faculties, and that people perceive and make sense of what they hear by mentally simulating the body motion thought to be involved in the making of sound. In this paper, we survey some basic theories of sound-motion similarity in music, and in particular the motor theory perspective. We also present findings regarding sound-motion similarity in musical performance, in dance, in so-called sound-tracing (the spontaneous body motions people produce in tandem with musical sound), and in sonification, all in view of providing a broad basis for understanding sound-motion similarity in music.
We experience and understand the world, including music, through body movement?when we hear somet... more We experience and understand the world, including music, through body movement?when we hear something, we are able to make sense of it by relating it to our body movements, or form an image in our minds of body movements. Musical Gestures is a collection of essays that explore the relationship between sound and movement. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to the fundamental issues of this subject, drawing on ideas, theories and methods from disciplines such as musicology, music perception, human movement science, cognitive psychology, and computer science.
We have seen important advances in musical acoustics, psychoacoustics, and more recently in embod... more We have seen important advances in musical acoustics, psychoacoustics, and more recently in embodied music cognition, but we still seem to lack a good conceptual apparatus for speaking about subjectively experienced sonic features in music. Inspired by the seminal work of Pierre Schaeffer and coworkers half a century ago, one of our long-term goals is trying to bridge the gap between subjectively experienced sonic features expressed in various tactile and/or kinematic metaphors such as rough, smooth, narrow, open, thick, thin, etc., and corresponding sound signal features. Such tactile-kinematic metaphors can be collectively called 'sound shapes', and could also be useful for musical aesthetics as a conceptual apparatus for speaking about subjectively experienced sonic features.
... Gestures and the Timbre of Plucked Stringed Instruments Obviously, there is a great variety b... more ... Gestures and the Timbre of Plucked Stringed Instruments Obviously, there is a great variety both of playing techniques and of the resultant timbral features among guitars and other plucked instruments within different styles of music, including classical guitar, rock, pop, jazz, etc. ...
In recent decades, we have seen a surge in published work on embodied music cognition, and it is ... more In recent decades, we have seen a surge in published work on embodied music cognition, and it is now broadly accepted that musical experience is intimately linked with experiences of body motion. It is also clear that music performance is not something abstract and without restrictions, but something traditionally (i.e., before the advent of electronic music) constrained by our possibilities for body motion. The focus of this paper is on these various constraints of sound-producing body motion that shape the emergent perceptual features of musical sound, as well as on how these constraints may enhance our understanding of agency in music perception.
The focus of this mini-review is on rhythm objects, defined as strongly coherent chunks of combin... more The focus of this mini-review is on rhythm objects, defined as strongly coherent chunks of combined sound and body motion in music, typically in the duration range of a few seconds, as may for instance be found in a fragment of dance music, in an energetic drum fill, in a flute ornament, or in a cascade of sounds of a rapid harp glissando. Although there has been much research on rhythm in continuous musical sound and its links with behavior, including the neurocognitive aspects of periodicity, synchrony, and entrainment, there has been much less focus on the generation and perception of singular coherent rhythm objects. This mini-review aims to enhance our understanding of such rhythm objects by pointing to relevant literature on coherence-enhancing elements such as coarticulation, i.e., the fusion of motion events into more extended rhythm objects, and intermittent motor control, i.e., the discontinuous, instant-by-instant control and triggering of rhythm objects.
The aim of this paper is to present principles of constraint-based sound-motion objects in music ... more The aim of this paper is to present principles of constraint-based sound-motion objects in music performance. Sound-motion objects are multimodal fragments of combined sound and sound-producing body motion, usually in the duration range of just a few seconds, and conceived, produced, and perceived as intrinsically coherent units. Sound-motion objects have a privileged role as building blocks in music because of their duration, coherence, and salient features and emerge from combined instrumental, biomechanical, and motor control constraints at work in performance. Exploring these constraints and the crucial role of the sound-motion objects can enhance our understanding of generative processes in music and have practical applications in performance, improvisation, and composition.
In this paper we present results from an experiment in which infrared motion capture technology w... more In this paper we present results from an experiment in which infrared motion capture technology was used to record participants' movement in synchrony to different rhythms and different sounds. The purpose was to determine the effects of the sounds' spectral and temporal features on synchronization and gesture characteristics. In particular, we focused on the correlation between sounds and three gesture features: maximum acceleration, discontinuity, and total quantity of motion. Our findings indicate that discrete, discontinuous motion resulted in better synchronization, while spectral features of sound had a significant effect on the quantity of motion.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there emerged a radically new kind of music based on recorded ... more In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there emerged a radically new kind of music based on recorded environmental sounds instead of sounds of traditional Western musical instruments. Centered in Paris around the composer, music theorist, engineer, and writer Pierre Schaeffer, this became known as musique concrète because of its use of concrete recorded sound fragments, manifesting a departure from the abstract concepts and representations of Western music notation. Furthermore, the term sound object was used to denote our perceptual images of such fragments. Sound objects and their features became the focus of an extensive research effort on the perception and cognition of music in general, remarkably anticipating topics of more recent music psychology research. This sound object theory makes extensive use of metaphors, often related to motion shapes, something that can provide holistic representations of perceptually salient, but temporally distributed, features in different kinds of ...
We can see many and strong links between music and human body movement in musical performance, in... more We can see many and strong links between music and human body movement in musical performance, in dance, and in the variety of movements that people make in listening situations. There is evidence that sensations of human body movement are integral to music as such, and that sensations of movement are efficient carriers of information about style, genre, expression, and emotions. The challenge now in MIR is to develop means for the extraction and representation of movement-inducing cues from musical sound, as well as to develop possibilities for using body movement as input to search and navigation interfaces in MIR.
The term coarticulation designates the fusion of small-scale events such as single sounds and sin... more The term coarticulation designates the fusion of small-scale events such as single sounds and single sound-producing actions into larger chunks of sound and body motion, resulting in qualitative new features at the mediumscale level of the chunk. Coarticulation has been extensively studied in linguistics and to a certain extent in other domains of human body motion, but so far not so much in music, so the main aim of this paper is to provide a background for how we can explore coarticulation in music. The contention is that coarticulation in music should be understood as based on a number of physical, biomechanical and cognitive constraints, and that it is an essential shaping factor for several perceptually salient features of music.
A musical texture, be that of an ensemble or of a solo instrumentalist, may be perceived as combi... more A musical texture, be that of an ensemble or of a solo instrumentalist, may be perceived as combinations of both simultaneous and sequential sound events. However, we believe that also sensations of the corresponding soundproducing events (e.g. hitting, stroking, bowing, blowing) contribute to our perceptions of musical textures. Musical textures could thus be understood as multimodal, with features of both sound and motion, hence the idea here of sound-motion textures in music. The study of such multimodal sound-motion textures will necessitate collecting and analyzing data of both the produced sound and of the sound-producing body motion, thus entailing a number of methodological challenges. In our current work on soundmotion textures in music, we focus on short and idiomatic figures for different instruments (e.g. ornaments on various instruments), and in this paper, we present some ideas, challenges, and findings on typical sound-motion textures in drum set performance. Drum set...
People tend to perceive many and also salient similarities between musical sound and body motion ... more People tend to perceive many and also salient similarities between musical sound and body motion in musical experience, as can be seen in countless situations of music performance or listening to music, and as has been documented by a number of studies in the past couple of decades. The so-called motor theory of perception has claimed that these similarity relationships are deeply rooted in human cognitive faculties, and that people perceive and make sense of what they hear by mentally simulating the body motion thought to be involved in the making of sound. In this paper, we survey some basic theories of sound-motion similarity in music, and in particular the motor theory perspective. We also present findings regarding sound-motion similarity in musical performance, in dance, in so-called sound-tracing (the spontaneous body motions people produce in tandem with musical sound), and in sonification, all in view of providing a broad basis for understanding sound-motion similarity in music.
We experience and understand the world, including music, through body movement?when we hear somet... more We experience and understand the world, including music, through body movement?when we hear something, we are able to make sense of it by relating it to our body movements, or form an image in our minds of body movements. Musical Gestures is a collection of essays that explore the relationship between sound and movement. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to the fundamental issues of this subject, drawing on ideas, theories and methods from disciplines such as musicology, music perception, human movement science, cognitive psychology, and computer science.
We have seen important advances in musical acoustics, psychoacoustics, and more recently in embod... more We have seen important advances in musical acoustics, psychoacoustics, and more recently in embodied music cognition, but we still seem to lack a good conceptual apparatus for speaking about subjectively experienced sonic features in music. Inspired by the seminal work of Pierre Schaeffer and coworkers half a century ago, one of our long-term goals is trying to bridge the gap between subjectively experienced sonic features expressed in various tactile and/or kinematic metaphors such as rough, smooth, narrow, open, thick, thin, etc., and corresponding sound signal features. Such tactile-kinematic metaphors can be collectively called 'sound shapes', and could also be useful for musical aesthetics as a conceptual apparatus for speaking about subjectively experienced sonic features.
... Gestures and the Timbre of Plucked Stringed Instruments Obviously, there is a great variety b... more ... Gestures and the Timbre of Plucked Stringed Instruments Obviously, there is a great variety both of playing techniques and of the resultant timbral features among guitars and other plucked instruments within different styles of music, including classical guitar, rock, pop, jazz, etc. ...
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