scholarly journals Unraveling mysteries of personal performance style; biomechanics of left-hand position changes (shifting) in violin performance

PeerJ ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e1299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Visentin ◽  
Shiming Li ◽  
Guillaume Tardif ◽  
Gongbing Shan
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Case Series ◽  
Hand Position ◽  
Performance Style ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Violin Performance ◽  
Personal Performance ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Teaching Learning

Instrumental music performance ranks among the most complex of learned human behaviors, requiring development of highly nuanced powers of sensory and neural discrimination, intricate motor skills, and adaptive abilities in a temporal activity. Teaching, learning and performing on the violin generally occur within musico-cultural parameters most often transmitted through aural traditions that include both verbal instruction and performance modeling. In most parts of the world, violin is taught in a manner virtually indistinguishable from that used 200 years ago. The current study uses methods from movement science to examine the “how” and “what” of left-hand position changes (shifting), a movement skill essential during violin performance. In doing so, it begins a discussion of artistic individualization in terms of anthropometry, the performer-instrument interface, and the strategic use of motor behaviors. Results based on 540 shifting samples, a case series of 6 professional-level violinists, showed that some elements of the skill were individualized in surprising ways while others were explainable by anthropometry, ergonomics and entrainment. Remarkably, results demonstrated each violinist to have developed an individualized pacing for shifts, a feature that should influence timing effects and prove foundational to aesthetic outcomes during performance. Such results underpin the potential for scientific methodologies to unravel mysteries of performance that are associated with a performer’s personal artistic style.

scholarly journals Unraveling mysteries of personal performance style; biomechanics of left-hand position changes (shifting) in violin performance

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Visentin ◽  
Shiming Li ◽  
Guillaume Tardif ◽  
Gongbing Shan
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Case Series ◽  
Hand Position ◽  
Performance Style ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Violin Performance ◽  
Personal Performance ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Teaching Learning

Instrumental music performance ranks among the most complex of learned human behaviors, requiring development of highly nuanced powers of sensory and neural discrimination, intricate motor skills, and adaptive abilities in a temporal activity. Teaching, learning and performing on the violin generally occur within musico-cultural parameters most often transmitted through aural traditions that include both verbal instruction and performance modeling. In most parts of the world, violin is taught in a manner virtually indistinguishable from that used 200 years ago. The current study uses methods from movement science to examine the “how” and “what” of left-hand position changes (shifting), a movement skill essential during violin performance. In doing so, it begins a discussion of artistic individualization in terms of anthropometry, the performer-instrument interface, and the strategic use of motor behaviors. Results based on 540 shifting samples, a case series of 6 professional-level violinists, showed that some elements of the skill were individualized in surprising ways while others were explainable by anthropometry, ergonomics and entrainment. Remarkably, results demonstrated each violinist to have developed an individualized pacing for shifts, a feature that should influence timing effects and prove foundational to aesthetic outcomes during performance. Such results underpin the potential for scientific methodologies to unravel mysteries of performance that are associated with a performer’s personal artistic style.

scholarly journals Unraveling mysteries of personal performance style; biomechanics of left-hand position changes (shifting) in violin performance

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Visentin ◽  
Shiming Li ◽  
Guillaume Tardif ◽  
Gongbing Shan
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Case Series ◽  
Hand Position ◽  
Performance Style ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Violin Performance ◽  
Personal Performance ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Teaching Learning

Instrumental music performance ranks among the most complex of learned human behaviors, requiring development of highly nuanced powers of sensory and neural discrimination, intricate motor skills, and adaptive abilities in a temporal activity. Teaching, learning and performing on the violin generally occur within musico-cultural parameters most often transmitted through aural traditions that include both verbal instruction and performance modeling. In most parts of the world, violin is taught in a manner virtually indistinguishable from that used 200 years ago. The current study uses methods from movement science to examine the “how” and “what” of left-hand position changes (shifting), a movement skill essential during violin performance. In doing so, it begins a discussion of artistic individualization in terms of anthropometry, the performer-instrument interface, and the strategic use of motor behaviors. Results based on 540 shifting samples, a case series of 6 professional-level violinists, showed that some elements of the skill were individualized in surprising ways while others were explainable by anthropometry, ergonomics and entrainment. Remarkably, results demonstrated each violinist to have developed an individualized pacing for shifts, a feature that should influence timing effects and prove foundational to aesthetic outcomes during performance. Such results underpin the potential for scientific methodologies to unravel mysteries of performance that are associated with a performer’s personal artistic style.

Embodying Failure: Music Performance, Risk and Authenticity

Somatechnics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Imogene Newland
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Charles Ives ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Interdisciplinary Practice ◽  
Musical Gesture ◽  
And Performance ◽  
A Site

Certain trends in the recital of Western art music composition and performance have embraced indeterminacy through an emerging sonic aesthetic that seeks to redefine the notion of failure. From Charles Ives' adoption of bi-tonality in the early twentieth century to the ‘glitch’ movement in contemporary computer music, this article traces ways in which musicians have sought to embrace the risk for failure in performance with special attention to virtuosic instrumental music ( Cascone 2006 ; Rodgers 2003 ; Godlovitch 1998 ; Rosen 2002 ). Drawing upon the author's recent interdisciplinary practice-led research ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ (2010) and adopting a choreographic approach to the re-appropriation of musical gesture, the author explores how the risk for failure contributes to live musical experience. This discussion is then extended to the process of corporeal acquisition necessary in rehearsing and performing a piece of music which, the author suggests, results in a degree of gestural self-simulation. In this way, the performer's personal authenticity is discussed as a potential locus of failure in which the physical manifestation of emotional expression helps to determine empathetic identification between performer, spectator and instrument ( Kivy 1995 ). Drawing upon Steven Baker's notion of ‘botched taxidermy’ (2000), the author suggests that this empathetic identification creates a space in which the potential risk for failure might be considered intrinsic to conceptions of corporeality in music performance. In this way, live musical experience is posited a site of risk in which the performer, as a desiring subject, emerges as the embodiment of failure. A short excerpt of the case study ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ may be viewed at: http://www.imogene-newland.co.uk/perf_women_md.php

scholarly journals We are not a female band, we are a band!”: Female performance as a model of gender transgression in Serbian popular music

Muzikologija ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 135-156
Author(s):  
Iva Nenic
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Instrumental Performance ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Female Performance ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Late Socialism

Instrumental performance, leadership, and authorship by women in music has historically been subjected to various repressive regimes, while many of the prejudices and restrictions regarding female musicking can still be discerned in contemporary popular music practices in Serbia. These mechanisms have been transferred into contemporary music with different ideological and stylistic inclination, such as indie music cohorts and folk- or tradition-based genres and scenes. The structural preconditions that articulate the subject position of female instrumentalists, regardless of genre or the scene they belong to are the lack of history of female playing and the requirement that they reach the supposedly higher standards of male musicians. This article starts with a brief genealogy of female instrumental music performance from late socialism to the diversity of contemporary popular music in its present neo-liberal context. Against that background it interprets the disciplining mechanisms restricting female musical creativity and performance, addressing the issues of identity and power through female agency in music.

Judgmental Standard Setting: The Development of Objective Content and Performance Standards for Secondary-Level Solo Instrumental Music Assessment

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian C. Wesolowski ◽  
Myriam I. Athanas ◽  
Jovan S. Burton ◽  
Andrew S. Edwards ◽  
Kinsey E. Edwards ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Performance Standards ◽  
Secondary Level ◽  
Standard Setting ◽  
Partial Credit Model ◽  
Performance Levels ◽  
Performance Achievement ◽  
And Performance

The purpose of this study was to describe the development of content and performance standards for a rubric to evaluate secondary-level solo instrumental music performance using a modified bookmark standard setting procedure. The research questions that guided this study include (1) What are the psychometric qualities of a rubric to evaluate secondary-level solo instrumental music performance? (2) What is the quality of ratings obtained for the standard-setting panel of subject matter expert judges? (3) What cut scores best categorize secondary-level solo instrumental performances into four performance levels across the latent performance achievement variable? and (4) What content mastery of items best categorizes achievement in secondary-level solo music performance at each of the four performance levels? A panel of eight subject matter experts participated in the study. A 30-item rubric was used to collect the judging panel’s observed responses. The collected responses were transformed to linear measures using the multifaceted Rasch partial credit model. The bookmark procedure resulted in the setting of three cut points representing minimum pass levels on a latent continuum differentiating between four performance achievement levels (rudimentary, emerging, proficient, and exemplary) with clearly defined content standards. Implications for opportunity to learn are discussed.

“Little Trio” for clarinet, bassoon and piano

2018 ◽  
pp. 75-79
Author(s):  
N. Yakovchuk
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Instrumental Ensemble ◽  
Interesting Phenomenon ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Classical Traditions ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Instrumental Ensembles ◽  
Written Compositions ◽  
First Time

The chamber-instrumental ensemble music in the Ukrainian musical culture of the last third of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries occupies one of the leading places and is characterized by powerful processes in its development. Such circumstances caused the Ukrainian musicologist interests to the problems of chamber-instrumental music creativity and performance. There are appeared researches in the field of theory, history and performance problems covering the most important questions like chamber music definitions, specific genre issues, the growing function of piano in the Ukrainian chamber music, the increasing questions of technique and timbre importance of modern instrumental ensembles. In the significant multifaceted creative work of contemporary Ukrainian composer, Oleksandr Yakovchuk, the genre of chamber instrumental ensemble music represents a complex and interesting phenomenon. Original and skillfully written compositions reflect artistic world of the composer of postmodern time and gained recognition in music life of Ukraine and beyond. These works are highly appreciated in performing practice of our days. The purpose of the article is to analyze the work — “Little Trio” for clarinet, bassoon and piano (1980), which has the signs of neoclassical tendency in the composer’s style. The methodological basis of this research is a comprehensive approach in theoretical understanding of the subject of research (the methods of textology, source study as well as the method of interviewing the author were used). The scientific novelty of this article is in the priority of its main provisions, since the “Little Trio” entered the scientific circulation for the first time. The three-movement “Little Trio” (1980) is notable for the light feeling of timbre colours and the shape clarity. The Ist movement — Allegretto giocoso — is written in a sonata form following all classical traditions. Quite interesting are the two monologues of clarinet and bassoon from the IInd movement, they represent very modern line in Ukrainian chamber music — the possibility of sincere confession which comes through the solo cadence. In the IIIrd movement, the composer took advantage from the folk Ukrainian dance “hopak” using the rhythm of it and creating dance character of the Final.

scholarly journals Hand Preference and Performance in Basketball Tasks

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (22) ◽  
pp. 4336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuela Gualdi-Russo ◽  
Natascia Rinaldo ◽  
Alba Pasini ◽  
Luciana Zaccagni
Keyword(s):  
Professional Training ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Hand Preference ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Basketball Players ◽  
Confirmatory Factor Analyses ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Confirmatory Factor ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Right

The aims of this study were to develop and validate an instrument to quantitatively assess the handedness of basketballers in basketball tasks (Basketball Handedness Inventory, BaHI) and to compare it with their handedness in daily activities by the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (EHI). The participants were 111 basketballers and 40 controls. All subjects completed the EHI and only basketballers filled in the BaHI. To validate the BaHI, a voluntary subsample of basketballers repeated the BaHI. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a two-factor model. Our results show that: (i) Handedness score (R) in daily actions did not differ between basketball players (R by EHI = 69.3 ± 44.6) and the control group (R by EHI = 64.5 ± 58.6); (ii) basketballers more frequently favored performing certain sport tasks with the left hand or mixed hands (as highlighted by R by BaHI = 50.1 ± 47.1), although their choice was primarily the right hand in everyday gestures; and (iii) this preference was especially true for athletes at the highest levels of performance (R by BaHI of A1 league = 38.6 ± 58.3) and for those playing in selected roles (point guard’s R = 29.4 ± 67.4). Our findings suggest that professional training induces handedness changes in basketball tasks. The BaHI provides a valid and reliable measure of the skilled hand in basketball. This will allow coaches to assess mastery of the ball according to the hand used by the athlete in the different tasks and roles.

scholarly journals Return to Sport After Hip Resurfacing Arthroplasty

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 232596712110035
Author(s):  
Kyle W. Morse ◽  
Ajay Premkumar ◽  
Andrew Zhu ◽  
Rachelle Morgenstern ◽  
Edwin P. Su
Keyword(s):  
Case Series ◽  
Hip Resurfacing ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Professional Athletes ◽  
Hip Resurfacing Arthroplasty ◽  
Resurfacing Arthroplasty ◽  
Elite Level ◽  
Performance Statistics ◽  
And Performance ◽  
End Stage

Background: Femoroacetabular impingement and degenerative hip osteoarthritis (OA) affect athletes across a wide variety of sports. Hip resurfacing arthroplasty (HRA) has emerged as a surgical treatment for active individuals with end-stage hip OA to provide pain relief and allow return to high-impact activities. Return to professional sports after HRA has not been well characterized. Purpose/Hypothesis: The aim of this study was to report on a series of elite athletes in a variety of sports who underwent HRA. We hypothesized that professional and elite-level athletes would be able to return to sports after HRA for end-stage hip OA. Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: A retrospective case series was conducted on professional athletes who underwent HRA at a single institution between 2007 and 2017. All surgeries were performed by a single surgeon using the posterolateral approach. Athletes’ return to play and sport-specific performance statistics were obtained using self-reported and publicly available data sources. Athletes were matched to an age- and performance-based cohort to determine changes in performance-based metrics. Results: Eight professional athletes were identified, including 2 baseball pitchers, 1 ice hockey defenseman, 1 foil fencer, 1 men’s doubles tennis player, 1 basketball player, 1 ultramarathoner, and 1 Ironman triathlete. All 8 patients returned to sports; 6 of 8 (75%) patients were able to return for at least 1 full season at a professional level after surgery. There were no significant differences between performance statistics for athletes who returned to play and their preoperative performance measures for the years leading up to surgery or the age- and performance-matched cohort. Conclusion: HRA remains a surgical alternative for end-stage hip OA in young, high-impact, active patients. While the primary goals of surgery are pain control and quality of life improvement, it is possible to return to elite-level sporting activity after HRA.

Musical training improves memory for instrumental music, but not vocal music or words

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-159
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. P. Wilbiks ◽  
Sean Hutchins
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Verbal Material ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Facilitative Effect ◽  
Musical Excerpts ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Brain

In previous research, there exists some debate about the effects of musical training on memory for verbal material. The current research examines this relationship, while also considering musical training effects on memory for musical excerpts. Twenty individuals with musical training were tested and their results were compared to 20 age-matched individuals with no musical experience. Musically trained individuals demonstrated a higher level of memory for classical musical excerpts, with no significant differences for popular musical excerpts or for words. These findings are in support of previous research showing that while music and words overlap in terms of their processing in the brain, there is not necessarily a facilitative effect between training in one domain and performance in the other.

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