Does interpersonal liking lead to interpersonal synchrony in musical contexts?

The causal relationship of interpersonal liking affecting interpersonal synchrony is inconsistently documented. This study tests whether (a) interpersonal liking increases both behavioural and perceived synchrony and (b) people will synchronise with an agreeable partner over a competing musical stimulus. We had college students (N = 25) shake an egg-shaker with an agreeable or disagreeable confederate without music, with music, and with specific instruction to synchronise. Participants reported liking the agreeable confederate more than the disagreeable confederate and rated their relationship more positively; however, both behavioural and perceived synchrony were unaffected by the agreeableness of the confederate. Thus, we failed to replicate previous findings in an auditory only context. Furthermore, participants who believed they were more synchronised with the confederate liked the confederate more and felt more like a team, but the degree of behavioural synchrony was unrelated to these social perceptions. Perception of synchrony appears to be more important for social bonding than behavioural synchrony.

Flexibility of Expressive Timing in Repeated Musical Performances.

Performances by soloists in the Western classical tradition are normally highly prepared, yet must sound fresh and spontaneous. How do musicians manage this? We tested the hypothesis that they achieve the necessary spontaneity by varying the musical gestures that express their interpretation of a piece. We examined the tempo arches produced by final slowing at the ends of phrases in performances of J. S. Bach's No. 6 (Prelude) for solo cello (12 performances) and the Italian Concerto (Presto) for solo piano (eight performances). The performances were given by two experienced concert soloists during a short time period (3½ months for the Prelude, 2 weeks for the Presto) after completing their preparations for public performance. We measured the tempo of each bar or half-bar, and the stability of tempo across performances (difference of the tempo of each bar/half bar from each of the other performances). There were phrase arches for both tempo and stability with slower, less stable tempi at beginnings and ends of phrases and faster, more stable tempi mid-phrase. The effects of practice were complex. Tempo decreased overall with practice, while stability increased in some bars and decreased in others. One effect of practice may be to imbue well-learned, automatic motor sequences with freshness and spontaneity through cognitive control at phrase boundaries where slower tempi and decreased stability provide opportunities for slower cognitive processes to modulate rapid automatic motor sequences.

Recording thoughts while memorizing music: a case study.

Musicians generally believe that memory differs from one person to the next. As a result, memorizing strategies that could be useful to almost everyone are not widely taught. We describe how an 18-years old piano student (Grade 7, ABRSM), learned to memorize by recording her thoughts, a technique inspired by studies of how experienced soloists memorize. The student, who had previously ignored suggestions that she play from memory, decided to learn to memorize, selecting Schumann's "Der Dichter Spricht" for this purpose. Rather than explicitly teaching the student how to memorize, the teacher taught her to record her thoughts while playing by marking them on copies of the score, adapting an approach used previously in research with experienced performers. Over a 6½ week period, the student recorded her thoughts during practice (five times) and while performing from memory for the teacher (three times). The student also video-recorded 3 weeks of practice, three performances, and the reconstruction of the piece from memory after a 9½-weeks break. The thoughts that the student reported were prepared during practice, stable over time, and functioned as memory retrieval cues during reconstruction. This suggests that the student memorized in the same way as the more experienced musicians who have been studied previously and that teaching student musicians to record their thoughts may be an effective way to help them memorize. The speed and durability of her memorization surprised the student, inspiring her to perform in public and to use the same technique for new pieces.

Toward a dynamical theory of body movement in musical performance.

Musicians sway expressively as they play in ways that seem clearly related to the music, but quantifying the relationship has been difficult. We suggest that a complex systems framework and its accompanying tools for analyzing non-linear dynamical systems can help identify the motor synergies involved. Synergies are temporary assemblies of parts that come together to accomplish specific goals. We assume that the goal of the performer is to convey musical structure and expression to the audience and to other performers. We provide examples of how dynamical systems tools, such as recurrence quantification analysis (RQA), can be used to examine performers' movements and relate them to the musical structure and to the musician's expressive intentions. We show how detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) can be used to identify synergies and discover how they are affected by the performer's expressive intentions.

Rocking to the beat: effects of music and partner's movements on spontaneous interpersonal coordination.

People move to music and coordinate their movements with others spontaneously. Does music enhance spontaneous coordination? We compared the influence of visual information (seeing or not seeing another person) and auditory information (hearing movement or music or hearing no sound) on spontaneous coordination. Pairs of participants were seated side by side in rocking chairs, told a cover story, and asked to rock at a comfortable rate. Both seeing and hearing the other person rock elicited spontaneous coordination, and effects of hearing amplified those of seeing. Coupling with the music was weaker than with the partner, and the music competed with the partner's influence, reducing coordination. Music did, however, function as a kind of social glue: participants who synchronized more with the music felt more connected.

Practicing perfection: piano performance as expert memory.

A concert pianist recorded her practice as she learned the third movement, Presto, of J.S. Bach's Italian Concerto. She also described the formal structure of the piece and reported her decisions about basic features (e.g., fingering), interpretive features (e.g., phrasing), and cues to attend to during performance (performance cues). These descriptions were used to identify which locations, features, and cues she practiced most, which caused hesitations when she first played from memory, and which affected her recall 2 years later. Effects of the formal structure and performance cues on all three activities indicated that the pianist used the formal structure as a retrieval scheme and performance cues as retrieval cues. Like expert memorists in other domains, she engaged in extended retrieval practice, going to great lengths to ensure that retrieval was as rapid and automatic from conceptual (declarative) memory as from motor and auditory memory.