COMMUNICATION CHANNELS PERFORMERS AND LISTENERS ...

The inaugural International Conference on Music Communication Science 5-7 December 2007, Sydney, Australia http://marcs.uws.edu.au/links/ICoMusic

COMMUNICATION CHANNELS PERFORMERS AND LISTENERS USE: A SURVEY STUDY Satoshi Kawase1, Toshie Nakamura , Maria Raluca Draguna1, Kenji Katahira1, Shoko Yasuda1, Haruka Shoda2 1

1

Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, Japan 2 School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, Japan

ABSTRACT Performers and listeners (or audience) communicate with each other in music performances. Many researchers that investigated musical communication focused on communication only via musical sound. Further, in many live performances (especially popular music performance) it has been observed empirically that various kinds of inter-performer, performer-listener, or inter-listener communication occur. This has been examined in previous studies, but only for specific channels. However, it is important to clarify the frequency of usage and importance of communication channels, in order to illustrate the whole process of communication in music performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore communication channels extensively. To this end, an investigation was conducted on various performers and listeners based on a communication process model. The results suggested that performers often interact with each other using mainly gaze and breathing channels, not only musical sound, and secondly body movement and facial expression. In addition, transmitted signals and received signals indicated a similar tendency. In performer-listener interaction, transmitted signals and received signals indicated a different pattern. Facial expression and body movement were highly rated, and language was important only as a received signal. It was implied that inter-audience communication rarely occurred, and, even if it exists, a listener only receives signals from other audience, but does not consciously send these signals. This study represents a first step of a broader research that will contribute to the presentation of an overview of communication in music performance.

1.

INTRODUCTION

In music performance, performers and listeners communicate with each other. Hargreaves et al. referred to music as “a fundamental channel of communication”1. Senju et al. suggested that performers' intention can be conveyed to listeners through musical sound2. There are several models of musical communication. Kendall et al. proposed a model that illustrates the way musical signal and related factors are transmitted from composers to listeners via performers3. Juslin suggested a model of musical communication from performer to listener utilizing the Brunswikian lens model4. Additionally, Juslin described the musical communication process as a chain in which composers' expressive intention invoked listeners' affective response through acoustic performance parameters5. These models mainly focus on one-way communication from a performer (or a composer) to the listeners. In

Proceedings of ICoMCS December 2007

contrast with this, Hargreaves et al. proposed a reciprocal feedback model which suggests an interactive communication between performers and listeners1. These models focus on the musical communication. However, in music performance, non-musical information is also of high significance. Davidson et al. pointed out that body movement is an important cue for communication between performers and listeners6. Williamon et al. suggested that gestures, body movement, and eye contact play an important role in piano duo performance7. In addition, Nakamura showed that interactants’ breathing is related during pauses in performances8. Kawase et al. suggested that performers’ face orientation is related to musical structure and differed with the part each performer played (i.e., vocal, guitar, etc.)9. As indicated above, in musical performances, interactions among co-performers, performers and listeners, or listeners can occur through various communication channels. However, the following questions have not been clarified: ‘which communication channels do interactans frequently use?’; ‘how often are these channels used?’; ‘what are the genre-related differences?’; ‘what is the influence of stage positioning during performance?’. In this light, this study aims to explore these questions and to overview the various behaviours that occur during performance. To explore interactants’ communication processes, we presume the communication model consists of four elements10 and twelve signals (Figure 1) representing performers and audience, inter-performer and inter-audience interactions. This model basically follows the Shannon et al.’s schematic diagram of a general communication system in which interactants transmit (or encode) and receive (or decode) their message 11. Transmitted signal Received signal

Performers Performer

Co-performers

Listeners Listener

Other listeners

Figure 1: Communication process model in music performance. This model separates transmitted and received signals which interactants regard as often-used/often-received or important.

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The inaugural International Conference on Music Communication Science 5-7 December 2007, Sydney, Australia http://marcs.uws.edu.au/links/ICoMusic

2.

METHOD

2.1 Participants Participants consisted of performers and listeners. The 85 performers (29 male and 56 female), mean age = 20.2 years, had an average of 12.1 years of performing experience. Almost all participants were amateur performers. The instruments they play are shown in Table 1. 149 listeners (62 male and 87 female), mean age 19.0 years, participated. piano

21

guitar

8

vocal

7

trombone

6

flute

6

drums

6

trumpet

6

keyboard

5

oboe

4

clarinet

4

horn

3

violin

3

electric bass

3

saxophone

3

chorus

3

percussion

2

bassoon

2

synthesizer

2

cello

2

viola

2

harp

1

Electone

1

keyboard harmonica

1

DJ

1

tuba

1

vocal (in band)

1

bass drum

1

piccolo

1

glockenspiel

1

Table 1: Performers’ parts in ensembles and their respective number.

co-performers); gaze (G; e.g., look at co-performers); body movement (BM; e.g., hand signals, jumping); posture (P; e.g., slouching); touching (T; e.g., touch co-performers); interpersonal distance (ID); language (L); clothing (C; this item was added later, and therefore was evaluated only by 41 performers and 125 listeners); breathing (B); musical sound (MS). In addition, performers selected the music genre(s) they usually perform. Participants who selected ‘pops’, ‘rock’ and ‘jazz’ and did not select ‘classic’ were considered popular music performers, and those who selected only ‘classic’ were considered classic music performers. There were 28 popular music performers and 24 classic music performers. Participants drew simple charts which illustrated their stage positioning for both practice sessions and live performances.

3.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

All results were averaged for each purpose. Part of the results, such as those for importance, genres, stage positioning, impossibility to send or receive certain signals, and their corresponding statistical analyses were omitted due to limitations of space. Only a brief overview was presented.

3.1 Inter-performer communication Figure 1 shows the mean score of performers’ answer. Signals that performers transmit to co-performers and signals that performers receive from co-performers show similar tendency for the practice session and the live performance. This suggests that almost all signals are received between co-performers, at least at a consciousness level, and that performers interact with each other using similar cues.

2.2 Procedure Participants were required to fill out questionnaires which consisted of items regarding communication channels employed in the signals involved in music performance. Thus, performers rated (a) signals they transmit to co-performers (i.e., “How often do you transmit the following cues to co-performers and how important are these cues?”); (b) signals they receive from co-performers (i.e., “How often do you receive the following cues from co-performers and how important are they?”); (c) signals they transmit to listeners; (d) signals they receive from listeners. They were also asked to illustrate their stage positioning during performance. Similarly, listeners rated signals they transmit to performers; signals they receive from performers; signals they transmit to other listeners; signals they receive from other listeners. Participants were given sufficient time to complete the questionnaires.

2.3 Measures Participants rated frequency and importance of each item on 4 point scales from ‘never / not important at all (‘0’ in Figure 2, 3 and 4)’, to ‘very frequently / very important (‘3’ in Figure 2, 3 and 4)’. The participants had to specify if they could not actually use/receive a particular signal. The scales were created based on Daibo’s categorization of communication channels12. We added ‘breathing (suggested as important by Nakamura8)’ and ‘musical sound’. The rated items were as follows: facial expression (FE; e.g., smile at


Figure 2: Usage frequency for performers. The highest rated channel was musical sound. This is rather an expected result, since it is a music performance situation. The second-highest rated channels were gaze and breathing. Gaze direction is used in numerous social interactions, and frequently used to signal turn-taking13. It was also suggested that face orientation relates to musical structure. In addition, it has been demonstrated that performers’ breathing synchronizes with that of co-performers and listeners at pauses during performance. Regarding the highly rated breathing item, this result may be also influenced by the existence of a very commonly used Japanese

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The inaugural International Conference on Music Communication Science 5-7 December 2007, Sydney, Australia http://marcs.uws.edu.au/links/ICoMusic idiom, iki ga au (i.e., the timing of breathing matches between interactants in communication, which is a very important concept in the Japanese culture). The participants may have recalled this idiom when they were asked about the frequency of breathing usage in their interactions with co-performers, and therefore they may have rated breathing higher than they actually use it. The high evaluation of the two channels mentioned above, gaze and breathing, may reflect the inter-performer timing coordination, and performers probably use them consciously. In what regards body movement, our results support previous studies which suggested that it is important for performers. Facial expression also was highly rated. Further, language was rated higher for practice sessions rather than live performance (the ANOVA tests revealed significant main effect of situation: F(1, 232) = 23.554, p < .001). Language during practice showed similar importance as body movement and facial expression. Many participants rated touching and interpersonal distance as unusable (the averaged score for two channels and four signals was 0.34). This suggests that there are some constraints in a music performance situation. Classic music performers rated much more channels as unusable than popular music performers. This result specifically proves the empirically-observed fact that popular music performers act more freely as compared to classic music performers. In addition, popular music performers transmit body movement signals more frequently but use breathing less than classic music performers during practice sessions. This might be related to the different stage positioning (and body orientation) in the two performance types - in the case of classical music, most performers face one direction and have less freedom of movement, while in popular music, almost all performers practice facing each other.

3.2 Performer - listener communication Figure 3 shows the mean scores for the frequency of performers’ and listeners’ answers about performer-listener interaction. Most transmitted signal from performer to listeners was the musical sound. This result is to be expected in a music performance situation. The second-highest rated channel performers use was facial expression. This result implies that performers transmit affective emotion through facial expression. Additionally, performers also selected clothing and body movement, this possibly reflecting the performers’ social ‘role’ (e.g., formal/colorful dress, or showy performance). Frequency of the gaze channel was relatively lower than that of facial expression and body movement, unlike inter-performer communication. This implies that performers mainly use channels related to temporal coordination in the inter-performer communication, but use channels related to affect in their interaction with the listeners.


Figure 3: Frequency of channel usage in performer-listener interaction. In performer – listener communication, touching and interpersonal distance were rated as unusable. However, the degree of importance of using these channels was not also low, although other channels indicated a similar tendency between frequency and degree of importance. This suggests that touching and interpersonal distance present considerable importance for participants, in the cases in which they are able to use them. Language was less frequently rated and less important for performers as a signal they transmit, but rather important for listeners as a signal to receive. This means that this channel is not equally utilized by performers and listeners in their interaction. This tendency was also similar for the body movement channel. This implies that the audience receives more cues from performers than these are aware they send. Popular music performers, as compared to classic music performers, rated higher interpersonal distance and language as transmitted signals, and language as received signal. Verbal communication which often occurs in popular music live performances may be rather important for performers of this genre, who often move towards and interact verbally with the audience. Another difference dependent on genre was the rating of facial expressions and body movement of listeners - popular music performers had higher ratings than classic music performers.

3.3 Inter-listener communication Figure 4 shows the mean scores for the frequency of listeners’ answers. All values were relatively low. Values for received signals were higher than those for transmitted signals. Therefore, it is suggested that listeners do not communicate much with each other, and, even if they do, they are more aware of signals others send, rather than of the signals they send themselves.

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The inaugural International Conference on Music Communication Science 5-7 December 2007, Sydney, Australia http://marcs.uws.edu.au/links/ICoMusic actual performances is necessary); (c) specific behaviours on each channel; (d) relationship between these channels. This study contributes to the presentation of a broad overview of communication in music performance.

5.

AUTHOR NOTE

This research was partially funded by the Fieldwork Support Project, Osaka University.

6.

REFERENCES

1. Hargreaves, D.J., MacDonald, R., and Miell, D., How do people communicate using music?. In Miell, D., MacDonald, R., and Hargreaves, D.J. (Eds.), Musical Communication (1-25), Oxford University Press, New York, 2005.

Figure 4: Frequency of channel usage in inter-listener communication.

4.

CONCLUSION

Results in this study indicate that performers and listeners interact by transmitting and receiving various musical and non-musical signals. However, the frequency of usage and importance of each channel is wide-ranging and dependent on their stance or genre. Figure 5 summarizes the results obtained in this work. For some relationships between elements in this model, communication is achieved through similar channels; however, in the case of other elements, channels which senders use differ from those receivers employ. This suggests that channels considered important differ depending on stance within performance. Performers Gaze, breathing, body movement, facial expression, (only during practice) language Performer

Co-performers Musical sound

Facial expression, body movement Language

Facial expression, language

Gaze, body movement

Listener

Other listeners

All channels (slightly) Listeners

Figure 5: Communication processes in music performance (general overview). Further, we have to clarify the following problems: (a) influence of performer’s part (i.e., guitar, piano, etc.) on their behaviour during performance; (b) artifacts of self-rating studies (i.e., analysis of


2. Senju, M., and Ohgushi, K. “How are the player's ideas conveyed to the audience?”, Music Perception, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 311-323, 1987. 3. Kendall, R.A., and Carterette, E. C. “The communication of musical expression”, Music Perception, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 129-163, 1990. 4. Juslin, P.N., Communicating emotion in music performance: a review and theoretical framework. In Juslin, P. N., Sloboda, J. A. (Eds.), Music and emotion; theory and research (309-337), Oxford University Press, New York, 2001. 5. Juslin, P.N., From mimesis to catharsis: expression, perception, and induction of emotion in music. In Miell, D., MacDonald, R., and Hargreaves, D.J. (Eds.), Musical Communication (85-115), Oxford University Press, New York, 2005. 6. Davidson, J.W. and Correia, J.S., Body Movement: In Parncutt, R., and McPherson, G. E. (Eds.), The Science & Psychology of Music Performance (237-250), Oxford University Press, New York, 2002. 7. Williamon, A. and Davidson, J.W. “Exploring co-performer communication”, Musicae Scientiae, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 53-72, 2002. 8. Nakamura, T. “Performed time duration for a note with a remarkably long time value at the end of a phrase; the relation with time perception for an interval”, Proceedings of the 1st ICMPC, 241-244, 1989. 9. Kawase, S., Nakamura, T., et al. “Analysis of gaze interaction between performers in live performance”, Proceedings of the 71st Annual Convention of Japanese Psychological Association, September, 2007. (in press, in Japanese) 10. Davidson, J.W., The social in musical performance. In Hargreaves, D.J., and North, A. C. (Eds.), The social Psychology of Music (209-228), Oxford University Press, New York, 1997. 11. Shannon, C.E. and Weaver, W., The mathematical theory of communication, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1962. 12. Daibo, I., Bodily Communication: How do people communicate their closeness each other?, Science Publisher, Tokyo, 1998. (in Japanese) 13. Kendon, A. “Some function of gaze direction in social interaction”, Acta Psychologica, Vol. 26, pp. 22-63, 1967.

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