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The Role of Visual Feedback and Creative Exploration for the Improvement of Timing Accuracy in Performing Musical Ornaments

This article is one of several reporting on behavioural experiments that tested the effectiveness of the provision of real-time visual feedback on the performance of music to facilitate practicing and improving music performance. In this article, a novel paradigm is trialled that asks participants to explore the performance of a musical excerpt in as many ways as possible and examines whether this exploration training helps to improve performance in a test that is done before and after training. Using this set up, visual feedback can be used to improve flexibility and diversity in performance rather than reinforcing particular ways of performing. Still, it is argued and tested, precision and reliability can be enhanced using this exploration technique.

Providing automated visual feedback on performance is technically feasible if existing analysis software is integrated in a functional package (combining e.g. score-following and -matching procedures with analysis of performance features). Nevertheless, defining an optimal context for learning needs improved understanding of fundamental issues related to perception, procedural learning, cognitive processing, and sensory-motor integration. Building on existing knowledge about performance as is done in this article facilitates implementation of an intelligent system, but makes the system highly specialised. In continuations of this work, Timmers has investigated use of, demands and expectations for automated feedback among music performers and compared this with the functionality of existing systems (chapter forthcoming in the edited volume on Expressiveness in Music Performance, co-authored by Makiko Sadakata). Timmers has also started to explore ways to generalise analysis procedures to make them applicable to a diversity of contexts (presented at AHRC Workshop: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Expressive Performance, co-authored by Simon Tucker).

Timmers was the main contributor to this paper. Makiko Sadakata assisted in data collection and made some of the figures. Peter Desain was involved in design of the experiment.