Knee flexion of saxophone players anticipates tonal context of music

Abstract

Music performance requires high levels of motor control. Professional musicians use body movements not only to accomplish and help technical efficiency, but to shape expressive interpretation. Here, we recorded motion and audio data of twenty participants performing four musical fragments varying in the degree of technical difficulty to analyze how knee flexion is employed by expert saxophone players. Using a computational model of the auditory periphery, we extracted emergent acoustical properties of sound to inference critical cognitive patterns of music processing and relate them to motion data. Results showed that knee flexion is causally linked to tone expectations and correlated to rhythmical density, suggesting that this gesture is associated with expressive and facilitative purposes. Furthermore, when instructed to play immobile, participants tended to microflex (>1 Hz) more frequently compared to when playing expressively, possibly indicating a natural urge to move to the music. These results underline the robustness of body movement in musical performance, providing valuable insights for the understanding of communicative processes, and development of motor learning cues.

Enhancing human-human musical interaction through kinesthetic haptic feedback using wearable exoskeletons: theoretical foundations, validation scenarios, and limitations

“…The conceptual framework generated a solid body of empirical research that provided evidence for the role of human motor system and body movements in music perception, showing that how we move affects how we interpret and perceive rhythm, and what we hear depends on how we move and vice-versa ( Phillips-Silver and Trainor, 2005 , 2007 ; Maes and Leman, 2013 ; Manning and Schutz, 2013 ; Maes et al, 2014a ). For instance, Maes et al (2014b) showed that music-driven gestures could facilitate music perception and Moura et al (2023) recently showed that the tonal complexity of music tightly couples to knee bending movements of saxophone players performing the music.…”

“…To date, the level of unidirectional interaction can be assessed through the metrics developed in Campo et al (2023), which involves a comparison between movement information captured via a motion capture system with infra-red cameras, based on kinematic features, such as movement smoothness (SPARC, see Balasubramanian et al, 2015) or similarity of the bow gestures of the student relative to the teacher. Additional metrics can rely on angular information of joints provided by the exoskeleton.…”

Ancillary and instrumental body movements during inhalation in clarinetists

“…Congruent movements were also related to key musical moments and specific, musically expressive contents. In saxophone players, knee flexions were identified as ancillary movements with an expressive purpose and were found to be performed in anticipation of specific melodic phrases ( Moura et al, 2023 ). The knee movements were associated with pitch expectations and rhythmic density, suggesting that they are related to expressive and facilitative qualities.…”

“…As these ancillary movements are also associated with certain expressive and communicative aspects, it is difficult to distinguish whether these movements also follow a biomechanical purpose, to position the body in a physiologically supportive posture for optimal inhalation. Experienced performers certainly combine expression with movement, but it is not clear how ancillary movements constitute and support the player’s technical execution ( Moura et al, 2023 ).…”