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Skill Development and Stabilisation of Expertise for Electronic Music Performance

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Music, Mind, and Embodiment (CMMR 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9617))

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Abstract

Skill development, the stabilisation of expertise through practise, and processes of bodily as well as neural sharing in the context of gesture-based electronic music performance are the topic of this article. The key questions centre around the affective, embodied but also neurological aspects of these processes. The types of awareness on a corporeal level and the neural processes that occur within the musician and the listener-viewer are investigated, since in music performance the perceptions of musician and audience depend on shared embodiment and cognitive processes. The aim is to show that ‘enactive’, embodied concepts merely provide a different perspective of the same complex matter than what the cognitive neurosciences propose. A concrete musical piece is used as an example that shows a gestural practice using sensor-based instruments and digital sound processing in order to expose the critical relationships between musician, instrument, technology and the audience. The insights arising from blending the two complementary perspectives in this context can be productive both for artistic practice as well as systematic research in music.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “This is how I have defined it. It is quite simple. To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance. That means not only to perform but also to listen, to provide material for performance (what we call composing), to prepare for a performance (what we call practising or rehearsing), or to take part in any activity that can affect the nature of that style of human encounter which is a musical performance.” [54, p. 12, original italics].

  2. 2.

    The obvious exception could be the singers, of course. But even here, the ‘voice’ and its techniques are considered as instruments in a more independent manner [34], than dancers consider the body.

  3. 3.

    Videos can be found online (URL accessed 05/2015):

    http://steim.org/2009/10/remembering-mw/.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1L-mVGqug4.

  4. 4.

    For a collection of videos documenting the evolution of this piece please see: http://www.jasch.ch/island.html (URL accessed 01/2016).

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Acknowledgments

This investigation originates from the ‘Motion Gesture Music’ project at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology of the Zurich University of the Arts, and is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation Grant No. 100016_149345.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology, Zurich University of the Arts, Zürich, Switzerland

    Jan C. Schacher & Patrick Neff

  2. Royal Conservatoire, AP Hogeschool, Antwerp, Belgium

    Jan C. Schacher

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Patrick Neff

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  1. Jan C. Schacher
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Correspondence to Jan C. Schacher .

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  1. CNRS - LMA, Marseille Cedex 20, France

    Richard Kronland-Martinet

  2. CNRS - LMA, Marseille, France

    Mitsuko Aramaki

  3. CNRS - LMA, Marseille, France

    Sølvi Ystad

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Schacher, J.C., Neff, P. (2016). Skill Development and Stabilisation of Expertise for Electronic Music Performance. In: Kronland-Martinet, R., Aramaki, M., Ystad, S. (eds) Music, Mind, and Embodiment. CMMR 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9617. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46282-0_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46282-0_7

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