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This research discusses that cognitive processes such as memory, attention and creativity differ in students and professionals, among musicians and non-musicians, dealing with musical performance. The purpose of the study was to evaluate and compare the role of memory, attention and creativity as cognitive processes in musical performance, focusing on the differences between non-musicians and musicians. The sample involved 400 individuals, students and professionals, specialising in music and economics. The research instruments used by the scholars were the Wechsler Memory Scale, the Conners Performance Test, and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Musical students possessed better-developed auditory and short-term memory, while professional musicians had better auditory, visual working and short-term memory. Analysis of attention reveals that music students score better than non-musicians on all four aspects: inattention, impulsivity, sustained attention, and vigilance. For professionals, the key aspects are impulsivity and sustained attention with better results revealed in musicians. Creative thinking was the only factor where the differences were statistically significant in all five scales and the findings proved that creativity was better developed among musicians. This study provides an in-depth analysis and adds new knowledge to existing literature and empirical data on the cognitive processes associated with musical performance, focusing on memory, attention and creativity. By examining the differences between non-musicians and musicians, as well as students and professionals, the study provides insight into how musical performance can be used as a way to develop these cognitive processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the recent advent of research focusing on the body's significance in music, the integration of physiological sensors in the context of empirical methodologies for music has also gained momentum. Given the recognition of covert muscular activity as a strong indicator of musical intentionality and the previously ascertained link between physical effort and various musical aspects, electromyography (EMG)—signals representing muscle activity—has also experienced a noticeable surge. While EMG technologies appear to hold good promise for sensing, capturing, and interpreting the dynamic properties of movement in music, which are considered innately linked to artistic expressive power, they also come with certain challenges, misconceptions, and predispositions. The paper engages in a critical examination regarding the utilisation of muscle force values from EMG sensors as indicators of physical effort and musical activity, particularly focusing on (the intuitively expected link to) sound levels. For this, it resides upon empirical work, namely practical insights drawn from a case study of music performance (Persian instrumental music) in the context of a music class. The findings indicate that muscle force can be explained by a small set of (six) statistically significant acoustic and movement features, the latter captured by a state-of-the-art (full-body inertial) motion capture system. However, no straightforward link to sound levels is evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of multimodal robotic musical performing arts has garnered significant interest due to its innovative potential. Conventional robots face limitations in understanding emotions and artistic expression in musical performances. Therefore, this paper explores the application of multimodal robots that integrate visual and auditory perception to enhance the quality and artistic expression in music performance. Our approach involves integrating GRU (Gated Recurrent Unit) and GoogLeNet models for sentiment analysis. The GRU model processes audio data and captures the temporal dynamics of musical elements, including long-term dependencies, to extract emotional information. The GoogLeNet model excels in image processing, extracting complex visual details and aesthetic features. This synergy deepens the understanding of musical and visual elements, aiming to produce more emotionally resonant and interactive robot performances. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, showing significant improvements in music performance by multimodal robots. These robots, equipped with our method, deliver high-quality, artistic performances that effectively evoke emotional engagement from the audience. Multimodal robots that merge audio-visual perception in music performance enrich the art form and offer diverse human-machine interactions. This research demonstrates the potential of multimodal robots in music performance, promoting the integration of technology and art. It opens new realms in performing arts and human-robot interactions, offering a unique and innovative experience. Our findings provide valuable insights for the development of multimodal robots in the performing arts sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: In the context of evolving societal preferences for deeper emotional connections in art, this paper explores the emergence of multimodal robot music performance art. It investigates the fusion of music and motion in robot performances to enhance expressiveness and emotional impact. The study employs Transformermodels to combine audio and video signals, enabling robots to better understand music's rhythm, melody, and emotional content. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are utilized to create lifelike visual performances synchronized with music, bridging auditory and visual perception. Multimodal reinforcement learning is employed to achieve harmonious alignment between sound and motion. Methods: The study leverages Transformer models to process audio and video signals in robot performances. Generative Adversarial Networks are employed to generate visually appealing performances that align with the musical input. Multimodal reinforcement learning is used to synchronize robot actions with music. Diverse music styles and emotions are considered in the experiments. Performance evaluation metrics include accuracy, recall rate, and F1 score. Results: The proposed approach yields promising results across various music styles and emotional contexts. Performance smoothness scores exceed 94 points, demonstrating the fluidity of robot actions. An accuracy rate of 95% highlights the precision of the system in aligning robot actions with music. Notably, there is a substantial 33% enhancement in performance recall rate compared to baseline modules. The collective improvement in F1 score emphasizes the advantages of the proposed approach in the realm of robot music performance art. Discussion: The study's findings demonstrate the potential of multimodal robot music performance art in achieving heightened emotional impact. By combining audio and visual cues, robots can better interpret and respond to music, resulting in smoother and more precise performances. The substantial improvement in recall rate suggests that the proposed approach enhances the robots' ability to accurately mirror the emotional nuances of the music. These results signify the potential of this approach to transformthe landscape of artistic expression through robotics, opening new avenues for emotionally resonant performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the framework of enactive cognition, musical sense emerges-at least in part-from the movements that people make during musical perception or performance. In cases of social musical practices, movements are coupled both to sonic changes (synchronies with musical metrical structure and form, for example) and to other's people movements. Motor patterns emerge from these person-music and person-person interactions and express the sense-making of the environment. Since the case of the dance is rarely studied by the psychology of music, it was necessary to introduce the anthropology perspective, which considers that dances-at least the folkloric ones-have a structure made by spatiotemporal regularities of the movements. In this article, it is proposed that dance at electronic parties is organized in motor patterns defined by the interaction of each person with the music and the other people. An empirical study was based on the audiovisual record of a tech house party (La Plata city, Argentina), and a microanalysis arms and legs movements of 20 persons at the dance floor, with the aim to identify and describe the motor patterns shared by people and their links with music. Based on this analysis, a dance structure formed by the constant repetition of a motor patterns' set, spatiotemporal defined was identify. The predominant motor patterns of the legs are two: one formed by two steps (44 % of the total time) and the other by four (50.8%). In both cases, people synchronize their steps with the musical beat, which produce a pattern of two beats length and other of four. The predominant motor patterns of the arms are also two, each formed by a direct movement and another in the opposite direction: one pattern's spatial trajectory is horizontal (48.8 %) and the other, sagittal (47.4 %). People synchronize their arms' movements with the metrical structure of music; the pattern's length varies between one (39.7 %), two (46.7 %) and four beats (9 %). People repeat each arm and leg's pattern multiple times before switching to the next. The moment at which each person switches their movements from a pattern to another is not temporarily aligned either with other people change of movements or with significant musical changes. Although motor coordination with metrical structure is a characteristic feature of a huge number of musical genres, the omnipresent synchrony with metrical levels of one, two and four beats of this type of dance is probably promoted by the specific features of electronic music for dance, which is analyzed in the article. The temporality of these dance movements can be described as an emergency from the interaction with the music and therefore reciprocally determined by both the music and the person. Instead, spatial features of motion patterns do not seem to have any relation with music. These features can be described as an emergency from the coordination of spatial trajectories between people at the dance floors of several parties, and therefore determined by the social interactions and the culturally right ways of moving in this context. Thereby, the dance structure at electronic parties emerges from the union of the musical and the other's dance sense making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Assessing violinists' motor and musical performance adaptations to dynamic assistive support (DAS) provided by a passive device, using a force-field adaptation paradigm. Background: Up to 93% of instrumentalists are affected by musculoskeletal injuries and particularly violinists. The repetitive nature of their work may lead to muscle fatigue, an injury risk factor. DAS has been used in occupational settings to minimize muscle activations and limit fatigue accumulation. DAS may however affect motor and musical performance. Method: Fifteen expert violinists were equipped with reflective markers and surface and intramuscular electromyography (EMG) sensors. Movements, muscle activations, and sound were recorded while participants completed three experimental conditions for which they continuously played a 13-s musical excerpt: Control (no DAS), Adaptation (DAS), and Washout (no DAS). DAS was applied at the left elbow (violin-holding side). Conditions were repeated 1 week later. Participants later listened to their own audio recordings playing with and without DAS and blindly assessed their performances. Linear mixed models were used to compare DAS and no-DAS conditions' kinematic, EMG, and musical performance data. Results: DAS perturbed user kinematics but reduced mean activations of left medial deltoid and superior trapezius. Joint kinematic and muscle activation patterns between DAS and no DAS conditions however remained similar. Musical performance was unchanged with DAS. Conclusion: Though DAS modified violinists' upper-limb configurations, resulting kinematics were not detrimental to musical performance. Reduced muscle activations with DAS could contribute to lessening muscle fatigue. Application: Although its effect on muscle fatigue should be further investigated, DAS might be useful in preventing violinists' injuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Touch has a pivotal importance in determining the expressivity of musical performance for a number of musical instruments. However, most digital musical devices provide no interactive force and/or vibratory feedback to the performer, thus depriving the somatosensory channel of a number of cues. Is the lack of haptic feedback only an aesthetic issue, or does it remove cues essential for digital instrument playing? If so, at which level is the interaction objectively impoverished? What are the effects on musical performance? In this survey article we illustrate our recent research about the use of vibrotactile feedback in three digital instrument interfaces, using tools that we developed over several years and made available to the community in open-source form. These interfaces span a wide range of familiarity and gestural opportunities, enabling us to explore the impact of haptic feedback on different types of digital instruments. We conducted experiments with professional musicians to assess the impact of vibratory cues on both the perceived quality of the instrument and the playing experience, as well as on musical performance. Particular attention was paid to scientific rigor and repeatability of the results, so as to serve as a reference for researchers and practitioners of the musical haptics community. Our results suggest a significant role of vibrotactile feedback in shaping the perception of digital musical instruments, although the effects on musical performance varied depending on the interfaces tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Good musical abilities are typically considered to be a consequence of music training, such that they are studied in samples of formally trained individuals. Here, we asked what predicts musical abilities in the absence of music training. Participants with no formal music training (N = 190) completed the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index, measures of personality and cognitive ability, and the Musical Ear Test (MET). The MET is an objective test of musical abilities that provides a Total score and separate scores for its two subtests (Melody and Rhythm), which require listeners to determine whether standard and comparison auditory sequences are identical. MET scores had no associations with personality traits. They correlated positively, however, with informal musical experience and cognitive abilities. Informal musical experience was a better predictor of Melody than of Rhythm scores. Some participants (12%) had Total scores higher than the mean from a sample of musically trained individuals (⩾6 years of formal training), tested previously by Correia et al. Untrained participants with particularly good musical abilities (top 25%, n = 51) scored higher than trained participants on the Rhythm subtest and similarly on the Melody subtest. High-ability untrained participants were also similar to trained ones in cognitive ability, but lower in the personality trait openness-to-experience. These results imply that formal music training is not required to achieve musician-like performance on tests of musical and cognitive abilities. They also suggest that informal music practice and music-related predispositions should be considered in studies of musical expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A musician's spontaneous rate of movement, called spontaneous motor tempo (SMT), can be measured while spontaneously playing a simple melody. Data shows that the SMT influences the musician's tempo and synchronization. In this study we present a model that captures these phenomena. We review the results from three previously-published studies: solo musical performance with a pacing metronome tempo that is different from the SMT, solo musical performance without a metronome at a tempo that is faster or slower than the SMT, and duet musical performance between musicians with matching or mismatching SMTs. These studies showed, respectively, that the asynchrony between the pacing metronome and the musician's tempo grew as a function of the difference between the metronome tempo and the musician's SMT, musicians drifted away from the initial tempo toward the SMT, and the absolute asynchronies were smaller if musicians had matching SMTs. We hypothesize that the SMT constantly acts as a pulling force affecting musical actions at a tempo different from a musician's SMT. To test our hypothesis, we developed a model consisting of a non-linear oscillator with Hebbian tempo learning and a pulling force to the model's spontaneous frequency. While the model's spontaneous frequency emulates the SMT, elastic Hebbian learning allows for frequency learning to match a stimulus' frequency. To test our hypothesis, we first fit model parameters to match the data in the first of the three studies and asked whether this same model would explain the data the remaining two studies without further tuning. Results showed that the model's dynamics allowed it to explain all three experiments with the same set of parameters. Our theory offers a dynamical-systems explanation of how an individual's SMT affects synchronization in realistic music performance settings, and the model also enables predictions about performance settings not yet tested. Author summary: Individuals can keep a musical tempo on their own or timed by another individual or a metronome. Experiments show that individuals show a specific spontaneous rate of periodic action, for example walking, blinking, or singing. Moreover, in a simple metronome synchronization task, an individual's spontaneous rate determines that the individual will tend to anticipate a metronome that is slower, and lag a metronome that is faster. Researchers have hypothesized the mechanisms explaining how spontaneous rates affect synchronization, but no hypothesis can account for all observations yet. Our hypothesis is that individuals rely on adaptive frequency learning during synchronization tasks to adapt the rate of their movements and match another individual's actions or metronome tempo. Adaptive frequency learning also explains why an individual's spontaneous rate persists after carrying out a musical synchronization task. We define a new model with adaptive frequency learning and use it to simulate existing empirical data. Not only can our model explain the empirical data, but it can also make testable predictions. Our results support the theory that the brain's endogenous rhythms give rise to spontaneous rates of movement, and that learning dynamics interact with such brain rhythms to allow for flexible synchronization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The music melody can be used to distinguish the genre style of music and can also be used for retrieving music works. This paper used a deep learning algorithm, the convolutional neural network (CNN), to extract the features of musical melodies and recognize genres. Three-tuple samples were used as training samples in the training process. Orthogonal experiments were conducted on the number of music segments and the type of activation function in the algorithm in the simulation experiments. The CNN algorithm was compared with support vector machine (SVM) and traditional CNN algorithms. The results showed that there were obvious differences in the pitch and melody curves of different genres of music; the recognition performance was best when the number of music segments was six and the activation function was relu; the CNN algorithm trained by three-tuple samples had better recognition accuracy and spent less recognition time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music performance action generation can be applied in multiple real-world scenarios as a research hotspot in computer vision and cross-sequence analysis. However, the current generation methods of music performance actions have consistently ignored the connection between music and performance actions, resulting in a strong sense of separation between visual and auditory content. This paper first analyzes the attention mechanism, Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), and long and short-term RNN. The long and short-term RNN is suitable for sequence data with a strong temporal correlation. Based on this, the current learning method is improved. A new model that combines attention mechanisms and long and short-term RNN is proposed, which can generate performance actions based on music beat sequences. In addition, image description generative models with attention mechanisms are adopted technically. Combined with the RNN abstract structure that does not consider recursion, the abstract network structure of RNN-Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) is optimized. Through music beat recognition and dance movement extraction technology, data resources are allocated and adjusted in the edge server architecture. The metric for experimental results and evaluation is the model loss function value. The superiority of the proposed model is mainly reflected in the high accuracy and low consumption rate of dance movement recognition. The experimental results show that the result of the loss function of the model is at least 0.00026, and the video effect is the best when the number of layers of the LSTM module in the model is 3, the node value is 256, and the Lookback value is 15. The new model can generate harmonious and prosperous performance action sequences based on ensuring the stability of performance action generation compared with the other three models of cross-domain sequence analysis. The new model has an excellent performance in combining music and performance actions. This paper has practical reference value for promoting the application of edge computing technology in intelligent auxiliary systems for music performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: During their career, musicians need to undergo intense periods of training to master musical instruments and become accomplished artists. Dysfunctional practice behaviors and anxiety are often mentioned among the possible risk factors for playing-related injuries in musicians. However, the mechanism through which these might lead to the onset of these injuries is still unclear. The present study aims at overcoming this limitation by investigating the relationship between quantitative measurements of anxiety, practice behaviors and music performance quality. Methods: The experiment consisted in monitoring practice behaviors in 30 pianists practicing a short musical task. Results: Most self-report anxiety measurements were positively correlated with practice time, especially those collected right before the practice sessions. Similar correlations were identified between anxiety and the number of repetitions of the musical task. Physiological markers of anxiety were only weakly related to practice behaviors. Subsequent analyses showed that high levels of anxiety were associated with poor quality of music performances at baseline. Nevertheless, the interaction between participants’ learning rate and anxiety measures showed no association with performance quality scores. Moreover, anxiety and performance quality co-developed during practice sessions, showing that pianists who improved their playing were also less anxious in the latter part of the experiment. Discussion: These findings suggest that anxious musicians are likely at higher risk of developing playing-related injuries related to overuse and repetitive strains. Future directions and clinical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In investigating the influence of body movement in multimodal perception, human motion displays are frequently used as a means of visual standardization and control of external confounders. However, no principle is established regarding the selection of an adequate display for specific study purposes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of adopting 4 visual displays (point-light, stick figure, body mass, skeleton) on the observers' perception of music performances in 2 expressive conditions (immobile, projected expressiveness). Two hundred eleven participants rated 8 audio-visual samples in expressiveness, match between movement and music, and overall evaluation. The results revealed significant isolated main effects of visual display and expressive condition on the observers' ratings (in both, p < 0.001), and interaction effects between the two factors (p < 0.001). Displays closer to a human form (mostly skeleton, sometimes body mass) exponentiated the evaluations of expressiveness and music-movement match in the projected expressiveness condition, and of overall evaluation in the immobile condition; the opposite trend occurred with the simplified motion display (stick figure). Projected expressiveness performances were higher rated than immobile performances. Although the expressive conditions remained distinguishable across displays, the more complex ones potentiated the attribution of subjective qualities. We underline the importance of considering the variable display as an influencing factor in perceptual studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the film "Little Women" directed by Greta Gerwig. Particular focus is given to the performance of Sonata Pathétique in key scenes in Louisa May Alcott's and Gerwig's projects. The author discusses the characters' willingness or unwillingness to perform music and pays attention to the characters' rhetorical strategies and modes of expression.

Musicians often report orofacial pain (OFP) and performance-related psychological distress related to occupational neuromuscular overuse, but to date, no study has been performed in Asian musicians to assess these factors. This study evaluated OFP, psychological distress, coping behaviors, and disability among Asian musical performers. A total of 201 participants in Singaporean music ensembles were surveyed from which 159 met the inclusion criteria for vocalists or instrumentalist musicians (mean age 20.26 ± 2.20 years). Self-administered questionnaires assessed musical practices, jaw/neck pre-conditioning exercises, pain-related temporomandibular disorders (TMD), OFP descriptors, pain chronicity and disability, coping behaviors and psychological distress. Univariate and multi-variate analyses were carried out. OFP, while performing, was more than two-fold higher in instrumentalists when compared to vocalists (41.4–48% vs. 17.2%, p = 0.002). A similar trend occurred for OFP that progresses while playing (p = 0.035) and for persistent OFP that reduces playing (p = 0.001). There were no differences in psychological distress, pain coping and disability between groups. Vocalists were found to practice jaw/neck pre-conditioning exercises more frequently (75% vs. 4–12.9% in instrumentalists, p < 0.0001). While performing, Asian vocalists reported less OFP when compared to instrumentalists. Future prospective studies are needed to confirm if pre-conditioning exercises play a protective role against OFP in vocalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music performance anxiety (MPA) is a prevalent phenomenon with potentially serious consequences to a musician's wellbeing and professional career. Yet, MPA does not always affect performance quality. It is hypothesized that trait anxiety, situational stress, and task mastery can exacerbate the effects of MPA and affect performance quality. Furthermore, it is unclear whether these effects are noticeable to both listeners and performing musicians.We measure performance quality as the expressiveness scores assigned by musicians and listeners to a set of pre-recorded performances. We selected three pianists with low, mid, and high MPA. Each pianist performed two pieces of their choice, familiar and unfamiliar, which were performed in rehearsal and recital conditions. The performances were videoed and edited into shorter clips for being presented to the performing pianists and to a set of online raters. Listeners and pianists will be asked to rate the expressiveness of all clips. We will determine the difference between the listeners' perceived expressiveness and the pianists' own expressiveness scores to estimate how well did listeners understand the pianists' expressive intentions. We investigate (1) what is the effect of trait anxiety, situational stress, and task mastery on the listener's perception of expressiveness and (2) what is the effect of these same variables on the listeners' understanding of expressiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Playing a musical instrument includes reading music scores, playing, and listening in parallel. It is unclear which of these activities are responsible for an increase in cerebral blood flow. We investigated the factors increasing middle cerebral artery velocity (MCAv) during musical performance, and examined whether playing and reading music affects cognitive function. Seventeen musicians played an instrument with reading music, played music from memory, and read music scores in a randomized order, for 10 min each. The MCAv was continuously recorded from 5 min before to 10 min after the performance. A Stroop test was performed before and after performance. The MCAv increased significantly with reading music, playing from memory, and reading music. Stroop test scores increased significantly after music reading. These findings suggest that both music reading and playing an instrument are involved in the increase in MCAv during music performance. Cognitive function was transiently improved by playing musical instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital musical instruments have become increasingly prevalent in musical creation and production. Optimizing their usability and, particularly, their expressiveness, has become essential to their study and practice. The absence of multimodal feedback, present in traditional acoustic instruments, has been identified as an obstacle to complete performer–instrument interaction in particular due to the lack of embodied control. Mobile-based digital musical instruments present a particular case by natively providing the possibility of enriching basic auditory feedback with additional multimodal feedback. In the experiment presented in this article, we focused on using visual and haptic feedback to support and enrich auditory content to evaluate the impact on basic musical tasks (i.e., note pitch tuning accuracy and time). The experiment implemented a protocol based on presenting several musical note examples to participants and asking them to reproduce them, with their performance being compared between different multimodal feedback combinations. Collected results show that additional visual feedback was found to reduce user hesitation in pitch tuning, allowing users to reach the proximity of desired notes in less time. Nonetheless, neither visual nor haptic feedback was found to significantly impact pitch tuning time and accuracy compared to auditory-only feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to study the role of generative adversarial network (GAN) in music generation, this article creates a convolutional GAN-based Midinet as a baseline model through the music generation process and creative psychological education and GAN principle. Additionally, it proposes a music generation model based on music theory rules and a chord-constrained GAN dual-track music generation model. Based on this model, a deep chord gated recurrent neural generative adversarial network (DCG_GAN) is proposed. The generated melodies are evaluated in both subjective and objective directions. The results show that the three evaluation indicators of DCG_GAN have the highest scores in the subjective evaluation. The average score given by ordinary listeners reaches 3.76 points, and the professional score reaches 3.58 points, which are 0.69 and 1.31 points higher than the baseline model, respectively. In the objective evaluation, DCG_GAN is improved by 8.075% in empty bars rate (EBR). The UPC (num_chroma_used) evaluation index value of the DCG_GAN model is improved by 0.52 compared with the baseline model. The qualified note ratio (QNR) evaluation index value is improved by up to 4.46% among the five audio tracks. The proposed overall style-based music generation model has superior performance in music generation. Both subjective and objective evaluations show that the generated music is more favored by the audience, indicating that the combination of deep learning and GAN has a great effect on music generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timbre is an integral dimension of musical sound quality, and people accumulate knowledge about timbre of sounds generated by various musical instruments throughout their life. Recent studies have proposed the possibility that musical sound is crossmodally integrated with visual information related to the sound. However, little is known about the influence of visual information on musical timbre perception. The present study investigated the automaticity of crossmodal integration between musical timbre and visual image of hands playing musical instruments. In the experiment, an image of hands playing piano or violin, or a control scrambled image was presented to participants unconsciously. Simultaneously, participants heard intermediate sounds synthesised by morphing piano and violin sounds with the same note. The participants answered whether the musical tone sounded like piano or violin. The results revealed that participants were more likely to perceive violin sound when an image of a violin was presented unconsciously than when playing piano was presented. This finding indicates that timbral perception of musical sound is influenced by visual information of musical performance without conscious awareness, supporting the automaticity of crossmodal integration in musical timbre perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pandemic of COVID-19 led to restrictions in all kinds of music activities. Airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 requires risk assessment of wind instrument playing in various situations. Previous studies focused on short-range transmission, whereas long-range transmission risk has not been assessed. The latter requires knowledge of aerosol emission rates from wind instrument playing. We measured aerosol concentrations in a hermetically closed chamber of 20 m3 in an operating theatre as resulting from 20 min standardized wind instrument playing (19 flute, 11 oboe, 1 clarinet, 1 trumpet players). We calculated aerosol emission rates showing uniform distribution for both instrument groups. Aerosol emission from wind instrument playing ranged from 11 ± 288 particles/second (P/s) up to 2535 ± 195 P/s, expectation value ± uncertainty standard deviation. The analysis of aerosol particle size distributions shows that 70–80% of emitted particles had a size of 0.25–0.8 µm and thus are alveolar. Masking the bell with a surgical mask did not reduce aerosol emission. Aerosol emission rates were higher from wind instrument playing than from speaking or breathing. Differences between instrumental groups could not be found but high interindividual variance, as expressed by uniform distribution of aerosol emission rates. Our findings indicate that aerosol emission depends on physiological factors and playing techniques rather than on the type of instrument, in contrast to some previous studies. Based on our results, we present transmission risk calculations for long-range transmission of COVID-19 for three typical woodwind playing situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music performance anxiety (MPA) affects musicians at various stages of a performance, from its preparation until the aftermath of its delivery. Given the commonality and potentially grave consequences of MPA, it is understandable that much attention has been paid to the musician experiencing it. Consequently, we have learned a great deal about the intrapersonal level of MPA: how to measure it, treatments, experimental manipulations, and subjective experiences. However, MPA may also manifest at an interpersonal level by influencing how the performance is perceived. Yet, this has not yet been measured. This exploratory online study focuses on the listener's perception of anxiety and compares it to the musician's actual experienced anxiety. Forty-eight participants rated the amount of perceived anxiety of a pianist performing two pieces of contrasting difficulty in online-recital and practice conditions. Participants were presented with two stimulus modality conditions of the performance: audiovisual and audio-only. The listener's perception of anxiety and its similarity to the musician's experienced anxiety varies depending on variables such as the piece performed, the stimulus modality, as well as interactions between these variables and the listener's musical background. We discuss the implications for performance and future research on the interpersonal level of MPA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direction of arrival (DOA) is one of the essential topics in array signal processing that has many applications in communications, smart antennas, seismology, acoustics, radars, and many more. As the applications of DOA estimation are broadened, the challenges in implementing a DOA algorithm arise. Different environments require different modifications to the existing methods. This paper reviews the DOA algorithms in the literature. It evaluates and compares the performance of the three well known algorithms, including MUSIC, ESPRIT, and Eigenvalue Decomposition (EVD), with and without using adaptive directional time–frequency distributions (ADTFD) at the preprocessing stage. We simulated a case with four sources and three receivers. The sources were well separated. Signals were received at each sensor with an SNR value of −5 dB, 0 dB, 5 dB, and 10 dB. The angles of the sources were 15, 30, 45, and 60 degrees. The simulation results show that the ADTFD algorithm significantly improved the performance of MUSIC, while it did not provide similar results for the ESPRIT and EVD methods. As expected, the computation time of the algorithms was increased by implementing the ADTFD algorithm as a preprocessing step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an ambitious and original book that should inspire historians, musicologists, and other scholars who are interested in learning more about music's contribution to the Early Modern field of knowledge and how it altered the way that people think. Because it resists classification Bank suggests that the musical dialogue might best be defined through aesthetic tradition rather than through codified musical structure. This interdisciplinary book presents a new way of conceptualizing Early Modern English multi-voiced music, and convincingly demonstrates the relationship between making music and the development of metaphysical thought in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. [Extracted from the article]

This study sought to determine if hues overlayed on a video recording of a piano performance would systematically influence perception of its emotional arousal level. The hues were artificially added to a series of four short video excerpts of different performances using video editing software. Over two experiments 106 participants were sorted into 4 conditions, with each viewing different combinations of musical excerpts (two excerpts with nominally high arousal and two excerpts with nominally low arousal) and hue (red or blue) combinations. Participants rated the emotional arousal depicted by each excerpt. Results indicated that the overall arousal ratings were consistent with the nominal arousal of the selected excerpts. However, hues added to video produced no significant effect on arousal ratings, contrary to predictions. This could be due to the domination of the combined effects of other channels of information (e.g., the music and player movement) over the emotional effects of the hypothesized influence of hue on perceived performance (red expected to enhance and blue to reduce arousal of the performance). To our knowledge this is the first study to investigate the impact of these hues upon perceived arousal of music performance, and has implications for musical performers and stage lighting. Further research that investigates reactions during live performance and manipulation of a wider range of lighting hues, saturation and brightness levels, and editing techniques, is recommended to further scrutinize the veracity of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the primary role of the auditory cortical areas is to process actual sounds, these areas are also activated by tasks that process imagined music, suggesting that the auditory cortical areas are involved in the processes underlying musical imagery. However, the mechanism by which these areas are involved in such processes is unknown. To elucidate this feature of the auditory cortical areas, we analyzed their functional networks during imagined music performance in comparison with those in the resting condition. While imagined music performance does not produce any musical sounds, the participants heard the same actual sounds from the MRI equipment in both experimental conditions. Therefore, if the functional connectivity between these conditions differs significantly, one can infer that the auditory cortical areas are actively involved in imagined music performance. Our functional connectivity analysis revealed a significant enhancement in the auditory network during imagined music performance relative to the resting condition. The reconfiguration profile of the auditory network showed a clear right-lateralized increase in the connectivity of the auditory cortical areas with brain regions associated with cognitive, memory, and emotional information processing. On the basis of these results, we hypothesize that auditory cortical areas and their networks are actively involved in imagined music performance through the integration of auditory imagery into mental imagery associated with music performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We addressed how circadian rhythms influence daily musical activities of performing musicians, who exhibit fine temporal control. Music performances often occur in the evening and late at night; evidence suggests that composing musicians tend to be later chronotypes than non-composing musicians. However, chronotype and daily music-making in performing musicians have yet to be investigated. The current study examined chronotype in actively practicing and/or performing musicians and non-musicians, and whether it was related to the daily timing of music performance. To test influences of daily changes due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, disruptions to musical, athletic, social, and sleep habits were also measured. Performing musicians, active (practicing but non-performing) musicians, inactive musicians, and non-musicians, residing in Canada, completed a 7-day online daily activity and sleep diary in Summer 2020. There were more evening chronotypes than morning chronotypes in the sample. Active/performing musicians tended to be earlier chronotypes than all other groups. Musicians' chronotype, but not nightly sleep timing, predicted the time of day that musicians made music: Late chronotypes made music later in the day and early chronotypes made music earlier in the day. Music performance and practice amount decreased during the COVID-19 period, but the daily timing of these activities did not change. All participants reported later sleep onset during the COVID-19 period; the amount of social interaction decreased during the COVID-19 period, while exercise increased for some and decreased for others. No changes in the daily timing of exercise, social interaction, or morning wake-up were reported. These findings suggest that performing musicians may be slightly earlier chronotypes than non-performing musicians and non-musicians, despite music performances often occurring in the evening. Chronotype was related to the time of day of music-making independent of nightly sleep timing, suggesting that times of day for making music reflect an individual's circadian rhythm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the pursuit of developing a fundamental understanding of terms, phenomena, rules and meanings in music, vital to the performance and interpretation of a musical work, it is necessary to apply a methodologically grounded system to the reading of a score that efficiently establishes a basis for understanding the musical content and contributes to the development of musical abilities and musicality more broadly. In the musical-pedagogical process, as part of the wider set of music disciplines (harmony, counterpoint, music forms, knowledge of music styles), the most crucial are the methods and systems of work which allow the reading of musical notation and the understanding of a musical piece to be generated and profiled. The system of models and modelling is a form of work about the perception and reception of a musical work composed on a musical model and the process of working with that model, i.e. modelling. The complexity of the system is reflected in the two sub-elements of modelling: the development of associative abilities by recalling the sound of the model, and gaining an automatic response to sound. Until now, work on models and modelling has been treated using a musical-pedagogical approach. In this study it is defined as a system which is applicable to the process of reading and interpreting a musical text, without being predicated on musical style or the tonal bases of music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precisely timed production of dexterous actions is often destabilized in anxiogenic situations. Previous studies demonstrated that cognitive functions such as attention and working memory as well as autonomic nervous functions are susceptible to psychological stress in skillful performance while playing sports or musical instruments. However, it is not known whether the degradation of sensorimotor functions underlies such a compromise of skillful performance due to psychophysiological distress. Here, we addressed this issue through a set of behavioral experiments. After artificially delaying the timing of tone production while playing the piano, the local tempo was abnormally disrupted only under pressure. The results suggest that psychological stress degraded the temporal stability of movement control due to an abnormal increase in feedback gain. A learning experiment further demonstrated that the temporal instability of auditory-motor control under pressure was alleviated after practicing piano while ignoring delayed auditory feedback but not after practicing while compensating for the delayed feedback. Together, these findings suggest an abnormal transition from feedforward to feedback control in expert piano performance with psychological stress, which can be mitigated through specialized sensorimotor training that involves piano practice while volitionally ignoring the artificially delayed provision of auditory feedback. In order to establish if the degradation of sensorimotor functions underlies the stress-associated disruption of skilful performance, Furuya et al examined participants undergoing a piano playing task under stress. Their data suggests the occurrence of a stress-induced transition from feedforward to feedback control, which can be mitigated through sensorimotor training involving piano practice while volitionally ignoring the artificially delayed provision of auditory feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we examine the effects of experience and culture on choral teachers' description of choral tone across a range of genres. What does a "good" choral music performance sound like? Is there an objective standard of performance excellence, or is beauty in the eye of the beholder? In teacher preparation programs, choral directors in the United States have been taught to identify and teach particular, culturally-bounded standards of choral tone in their students. Choral directors evaluate their students' voices along two dimensions: health and appropriateness. They discern and describe whether the student's musical instrument—their voice—is producing sound in a healthy and non-damaging way. They also judge whether the style of their sound is appropriate for the music they are singing. However, teacher preparation programs do not provide common standards or lexicon for describing tone. This may increase implicit bias of individual directors, and inadvertently exacerbate ethnocentrism and harm students' self-perception. Using a computational text analysis approach, we evaluate the content of open-ended survey responses from teachers, finding that the language used to describe and rate choral performance varies by experience, and by the choral selection (e.g., whether it is a traditional Western or non-Western song). We suggest that regularizing the terminology and providing common training through professional organizations can minimize potential bias and generate more systematic, precise use of qualitative descriptors of health and appropriateness, which will benefit students and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of music performance system is to control the light change by identifying the emotional elements of music. Therefore, once the identification error occurs, it will not be able to create a good stage effect. Therefore, a multimodal music emotion recognition method based on image sequence is studied. The emotional characteristics of music are analyzed, including acoustic characteristics, melody characteristics, and audio characteristics, and the feature vector is constructed. The recognition and classification model based on neural network is trained, the weight and threshold of each layer are adjusted, and then the feature vector is input into the trained model to realize the intelligent recognition and classification of multimodal music emotion. The threshold of the starting point range of a specific humming note is given by the center clipping method, which is used to eliminate the low amplitude part of the humming note signal, extract the short-time spectral structure features and envelope features of the pitch, and complete the multimodal music emotion recognition. The results show that the calculated kappa coefficient k is greater than 0.75, which shows that the recognition and classification results are in good agreement with the actual results, and the classification and recognition accuracy is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Epistemus. Journal of Music, Cognition & Culture Research is the property of Facultad de Psicologia Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Musical practice may benefit not only domain-specific abilities, such as pitch discrimination and music performance, but also domain-general abilities, like executive functioning and memory. Behavioral and neural changes in visual processing have been associated with music-reading experience. However, it is still unclear whether there is a domain-specific visual ability to process musical notation. This study investigates the specificity of the visual skills relevant to simple decisions about musical notation. Ninety-six participants varying in music-reading experience answered a short survey to quantify experience with musical notation and completed a test battery that assessed musical notation reading fluency and accuracy at the level of individual note or note sequence. To characterize how this ability may relate to domain-general abilities, we also estimated general intelligence (as measured with the Raven's Progressive Matrices) and general object-recognition ability (as measure by a recently proposed construct o). We obtained reliable measurements on our various tasks and found evidence for a domain-specific ability of the perception of musical notation. This music-reading ability and domain-general abilities were found to contribute to performance on specific tasks differently, depending on the level of experience reading music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the musical haptic wearables for audiences (MHWAs), a class of wearable devices for musical applications targeting audiences of live music performances. MHWAs are characterized by embedded intelligence, wireless connectivity to local and remote networks, a system to deliver haptic stimuli, and tracking of gestures and/or physiological parameters. They aim to enrich musical experiences by leveraging the sense of touch as well as providing new capabilities for creative participation. The embedded intelligence enables the communication with other external devices, processes input data, and generates music-related haptic stimuli. We validate our vision with two concert-experiments. The first experiment involved a duo of electronic music performers and twenty audience members. Half of the audience used an armband-based prototype of MHWA delivering vibro-tactile feedback in response to performers' actions on their digital musical instruments, and the other half was used as a control group. In the second experiment, a smart mandolin performer played live for twelve audience members wearing a gilet-based MHWA, which provided vibro-tactile sensations in response to the performed music. Overall, results from both experiments suggest that MHWAs have the potential to enrich the experience of listening to live music in terms of arousal, valence, enjoyment, and engagement. Nevertheless, results showed that the audio-haptic experience was not homogeneous across participants, who could be grouped as those appreciative of the vibrations and those less appreciative of them. The causes for a lack of appreciation of the haptic experience were mainly identified as the sensation of unpleasantness caused by the vibrations in certain parts of the body and the lack of the comprehension of the relation between what was felt and what was heard. Based on the reported results, we offer suggestions for practitioners interested in designing wearables for enriching the musical experience of audiences of live music via the sense of touch. Such suggestions point towards the need of mechanisms of personalization, systems able to minimize the latency between the sound and the vibrations, and a time of adaptation to the vibrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music performance can be cognitively and physically demanding. These demands vary across the course of a performance as the content of the music changes. More demanding passages require performers to focus their attention more intensity, or expend greater "mental effort." To date, it remains unclear what effect different cognitive-motor demands have on performers' mental effort. It is likewise unclear how fluctuations in mental effort compare between performers and perceivers of the same music. We used pupillometry to examine the effects of different cognitive-motor demands on the mental effort used by performers and perceivers of classical string quartet music. We collected pupillometry, motion capture, and audio-video recordings of a string quartet as they performed a rehearsal and concert (for live audience) in our lab. We then collected pupillometry data from a remote sample of musically-trained listeners, who heard the audio recordings (without video) that we captured during the concert. We used a modelling approach to assess the effects of performers' bodily effort (head and arm motion; sound level; performers' ratings of technical difficulty), musical complexity (performers' ratings of harmonic complexity; a score-based measure of harmonic tension), and expressive difficulty (performers' ratings of expressive difficulty) on performers' and listeners' pupil diameters. Our results show stimulating effects of bodily effort and expressive difficulty on performers' pupil diameters, and stimulating effects of expressive difficulty on listeners' pupil diameters. We also observed negative effects of musical complexity on both performers and listeners, and negative effects of performers' bodily effort on listeners, which we suggest may reflect the complex relationships that these features share with other aspects of musical structure. Looking across the concert, we found that both of the quartet violinists (who exchanged places halfway through the concert) showed more dilated pupils during their turns as 1st violinist than when playing as 2nd violinist, suggesting that they experienced greater arousal when "leading" the quartet in the 1st violin role. This study shows how eye tracking and motion capture technologies can be used in combination in an ecological setting to investigate cognitive processing in music performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals typically produce auditory sequences, such as speech or music, at a consistent spontaneous rate or tempo. We addressed whether spontaneous rates would show patterns of convergence across the domains of music and language production when the same participants spoke sentences and performed melodic phrases on a piano. Although timing plays a critical role in both domains, different communicative and motor constraints apply in each case and so it is not clear whether music and speech would display similar timing mechanisms. We report the results of two experiments in which adult participants produced sequences from memory at a comfortable spontaneous (uncued) rate. In Experiment 1, monolingual pianists in Buffalo, New York engaged in three production tasks: speaking sentences from memory, performing short melodies from memory, and tapping isochronously. In Experiment 2, English-French bilingual pianists in Montréal, Canada produced melodies on a piano as in Experiment 1, and spoke short rhythmically-structured phrases repeatedly. Both experiments led to the same pattern of results. Participants exhibited consistent spontaneous rates within each task. People who produced one spoken phrase rapidly were likely to produce another spoken phrase rapidly. This consistency across stimuli was also found for performance of different musical melodies. In general, spontaneous rates across speech and music tasks were not correlated, whereas rates of tapping and music were correlated. Speech rates (for syllables) were faster than music rates (for tones) and speech showed a smaller range of spontaneous rates across individuals than did music or tapping rates. Taken together, these results suggest that spontaneous rate reflects cumulative influences of endogenous rhythms (in consistent self-generated rates within domain), peripheral motor constraints (in finger movements across tapping and music), and communicative goals based on the cultural transmission of auditory information (slower rates for to-be-synchronized music than for speech). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in musical performance studies has generated a healthy scepticism of the importance of large‐scale structure to performance (in terms of both interpretation and perception): on the one hand, it might well be hardwired into notation; on the other, prioritising it risks simply repeating outworn maxims that neglect the performer's musical contributions. Recently some scholars have begun to rethink the potential structural relevance of performance rather than necessarily determining structure on the basis of the musical score alone. In this article I consolidate some of this thinking and draw out its implications for performers' handling of large‐scale structure; in doing so, I suggest that we consider moving away from conventional large‐scale score‐based forms as structural mandates or certainties. I support this through a case study of Johannes Brahms's Intermezzo in E minor, Op. 119 No. 2, in which I analyse recorded performances by Wilhelm Backhaus, Maria Yudina and Ilona Eibenschütz. I conclude by arguing that the inclusion and prioritisation of any particular musical material – whether the score, performance, or other – requires serious consideration and reflection in any analytical act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of different musical performances on the communication of emotions. Our hypothesis was that the perception of emotions in musical excerpts would be influenced by the performers' interpretive choices (such as tempo, dynamics, and timbre) and compositional parameters (such as mode and musical genre). Brazilian musicians and listeners participated in a 2-stage experiment. In the encoding stage, a composer created 10 musical excerpts through guitar of approximately 40 s each. A total of 9 excerpts were made with the intention of communicating emotions, whereas the last one was created to communicate no emotion. The emotional scale used was inspired by the Geneva Emotional Music Scale. A total of 4 performers (composer included) interpreted these compositions with the intention of communicating the same emotions proposed by the composer. In the decoding stage, 108 participants listened to each of the excerpts and provided emotional responses. Results suggested that some emotions were more difficult to be communicated than others. Moreover, the emotional communication was influenced by compositional and interpretive decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EFFECTIVE AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT WITH MUSICAL performance involves social, cognitive and affective elements. We investigate the influence of observers' musical expertise and instrumental motor expertise on their affective and cognitive responses to complex and unfamiliar classical piano performances of works by Scriabin and Hanson presented in audio and audio-visual formats. Observers gave their felt affect (arousal and valence) and their action understanding responses continuously while observing the performances. Liking and familiarity were rated after each excerpt. As hypothesized: visual information enhanced observers' action understanding and liking ratings; observers with music training rated their action understanding, liking and familiarity higher than did nonmusicians; observers' felt affect did not vary according to their musical or motor expertise. Contrary to our hypotheses: visual information had only a slight effect on observers' arousal felt affect responses and none on valence; musicians' specific instrumental motor expertise did not influence action understanding responses. We also observed a significant negative relationship between action understanding and felt affect responses. Ideas of empathy in musical interactions motivated the research; the empathy framework in relation to musical performance is discussed. Nonmusician audiences might be sensitized to challenging musical performances through multimodal strategies to build the performer-observer connection and increase understanding of performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since communication and expression are central aspects of music performance it is important to develop a systematic pedagogy of teaching children and teenagers expressiveness. Although research has been growing in this area a comprehensive literature review that unifies the different approaches to teaching young musicians expressiveness has been lacking. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide an overview of literature related to teaching and learning of expressiveness from music psychology and music education research in order to build a new theoretical framework for teaching and learning expressive music performance in instrumental music lessons with children and teenagers. The article will start with a brief discussion of interpretation and expression in music performance, before providing an overview of studies that investigated teaching and learning of performance expression in instrumental music education with adults and children. On the foundation of this research a theoretical framework for dialogic teaching and learning of expressive music performance will be proposed and the rationale explained. Dialogic teaching can be useful for scaffolding young musicians' learning of expressivity as open questions can stimulate thinking about the interpretation and may serve to connect musical ideas to the embodied experience of the learner. A "toolkit" for teaching and learning of expressiveness will be presented for practical application in music lessons. In addition, a theoretical model will be proposed to further our understanding of teaching and learning of expressive music performance as a multifaceted and interactive process that is embedded in the context of tutors' and learners' experiences and environment. Finally, implications of this framework and suggestions for future research will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This tribute to the music of Hannes Taljaard, more specifically his Setudes for piano, takes sensory cognition as its point of departure. The performer's immediate embodiment of the music and the intuitive auditory awareness of the listening experience facilitate two different ways of perceiving and understanding a kind of music that is not aligned with traditional tonal structures and processes. Insight into the composer's craft as a vehicle for artistic expression represents a third route towards understanding. Allowing for diverse overlapping of actions, the kinetic-tactile connection with music during performance and unmediated experience that allows music to speak directly to the listener's consciousness recreate the composition, thereby completing Ernst Gombrich's 'magic circle of creation'. Sensory experience is linked with the idea of craftmanship in the service of the art by finally considering the composer's shaping of music in time and space. This essay deals with the fourdimensional concept of space-time in the discussion of Taljaard's Setudes in order to show how the static idea of the moment is transformed into the dynamic idea of becoming in musical perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This has been the fi rst summer without festivals. For some it has been an economic debacle. For others, a dry season in their live music consumption habits. The few festivals that have managed to be held are precisely those that had a reasonable size and could be readjusted to the new measures. It is a clue that forces us to think if those events of superhuman dimensions make any sense. It is time to consider the pros and cons of this big events and, perhaps, propose models of musical consumption where festivals gradually lose the excessive prominence they have obtained in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating cues that underpin perceptual judgments of interpersonal coordination has important implications for understanding sociocognitive evaluations of the quality of human interactions. With a focus on musical interpersonal coordination, we conducted 2 experiments investigating the impact of music style, modality of stimulus presentation, rater expertise, and audio/visual stimulus features on ratings of perceived synchrony in improvised duo performances. In the first experiment, participants made synchrony ratings following 10-s excerpts of musical performances, whereas in the second experiment, participants rated longer (up to 1 min) excerpts continuously as the music unfolded. Several consistent results emerged across the 2 experiments, including that participants perceived standard jazz improvisations featuring a regular beat as significantly more synchronous than free improvisations that aimed to eschew the induction of such a beat. However, ratings of perceived synchrony were more similar across these 2 styles when only the visual information from the performance was available, suggesting that performers' bodily cues functioned similarly to communicate and coordinate musical intentions. Computational analysis of the audio and visual aspects of the performances indicated that synchrony ratings increased with increases in audio event density and when coperformers engaged in periodic movements at similar frequencies, whereas the salience of visual information increased when synchrony ratings were made continuously over longer timescales. These studies reveal new insights about the correspondence between objective and subjective measures of synchrony and contribute methodological advances indicating both parallels and divergences between the results obtained in paradigms utilizing global versus continuous ratings of musical synchrony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic music composition could dramatically decrease music production costs, lower the threshold for the non-professionals to compose as well as improve the efficiency of music creation. In this paper, we proposed an intelligent music composition neutral network to automatically generate a specific style of music. The advantage of our model is the innovative structure: we obtained the music sequence through an actor's long short term memory, then fixed the probability of sequence by a reward-based procedure which serves as feedback to improve the performance of music composition. The music theoretical rule is introduced to constrain the style of generated music. We also utilized a subjective validation in experiment to guarantee the superiority of our model compared with state-of-the-art works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Brasileira de Prescrição e Fisiologia do Exercício is the property of Instituto Brasileiro de Pesquisa e Ensino em Fisiologia do Exercicio and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)