An Introduction to Musical Interactions

The article presents a contextual survey of eight contributions in the special issue Musical Interactions (Volume I) in Multimodal Technologies and Interaction. The presentation includes (1) a critical examination of what it means to be musical, to devise the concept of music proper to MTI as well as multicultural proximity, and (2) a conceptual framework for instrumentation, design, and assessment of musical interaction research through five enabling dimensions: Affordance; Design Alignment; Adaptive Learning; Second-Order Feedback; Temporal Integration. Each dimension is discussed and applied in the survey. The results demonstrate how the framework provides an interdisciplinary scope required for musical interaction, and how this approach may offer a coherent way to describe and assess approaches to research and design as well as implementations of interactive musical systems. Musical interaction stipulates musical liveness for experiencing both music and technologies. While music may be considered ontologically incomplete without a listener, musical interaction is defined as ontological completion of a state of music and listening through a listener’s active engagement with musical resources in multimodal information flow.

Timing in Palaran: Coordination, Control, and Excitement in Javanese Collaborative Vocal Accompaniment

Palaran are elements within gamelan repertoire that are derived from the melodies used to recite texts written in Javanese poetic metres. When used as palaran within gamelan performance (rather than in their original form as poetic recitation, or macapat), these melodies are supported and constrained by a metrically fixed structure of core instrumental notes and surrounded by a web of spontaneous melodic accompaniment, involving multiple musicians. This chapter explores the complex ways in which musicians control, negotiate, and coordinate timing in this flexible yet precise form of musical interaction. It examines the rules of ideal cohesive performance, the transmission of strategies for successfully learning how to achieve this, and what can be learnt from occasions when palaran go wrong and the coordination of timing goes awry. It then argues that the sense of risk involved in managing timing in these ways is a significant part of what makes palaran one of the most popular elements within the gamelan repertoire.

Music therapy methods, strategies and techniques for engaging children in meaningful music therapy encounters in hospital play therapy settings

<p>This qualitative study examines a music therapy student’s practice on a paediatric ward in a general hospital in New Zealand. The study arose after I experienced challenges engaging and interacting with patients in a hospital play therapy setting, where patients stay was short-term. The research identified the music therapy methods, techniques and strategies I used to initiate and sustain musical interaction with them. Findings were generated from secondary analysis of two months’ worth of clinical documentation and reflection. Both inductive and deductive thematic analysis was used to analyse the clinical data and reflection. The literature on paediatric music therapy, musical play and play therapy were reviewed. Findings are presented in two parts. The first section highlights the predominant music therapy methods I used: range of instruments, singing, use of props, listening, use of discussion and musical games; and the overlaps of strategies and techniques within. The second section identifies four main categories of music therapy goals to illustrate the unique and subtle differences of music therapy methods, strategies and techniques in relation to the goals. Subsequently, in the discussion section, findings are considered in the light of the literature, and limitations of the research are addressed.</p>

Music therapy methods, strategies and techniques for engaging children in meaningful music therapy encounters in hospital play therapy settings

<p>This qualitative study examines a music therapy student’s practice on a paediatric ward in a general hospital in New Zealand. The study arose after I experienced challenges engaging and interacting with patients in a hospital play therapy setting, where patients stay was short-term. The research identified the music therapy methods, techniques and strategies I used to initiate and sustain musical interaction with them. Findings were generated from secondary analysis of two months’ worth of clinical documentation and reflection. Both inductive and deductive thematic analysis was used to analyse the clinical data and reflection. The literature on paediatric music therapy, musical play and play therapy were reviewed. Findings are presented in two parts. The first section highlights the predominant music therapy methods I used: range of instruments, singing, use of props, listening, use of discussion and musical games; and the overlaps of strategies and techniques within. The second section identifies four main categories of music therapy goals to illustrate the unique and subtle differences of music therapy methods, strategies and techniques in relation to the goals. Subsequently, in the discussion section, findings are considered in the light of the literature, and limitations of the research are addressed.</p>

Improvising Inside a House of Cards: New performance and music-making through a collective networked instrument

This article presents experiences and reflections related to performing improvised, live processed electroacoustic music within a context of networked music performance. The musical interaction is performed through a new collective networked instrument, and we report how the ensemble ‘Magnify the Sound’, consisting of two of the authors of this article, meets the instrument in different networked performance situations, and how this is related to the affordance of the instrument. In our performances the network is inherent to our artistic practice, and we experience a phenomenological and somatic transformation in our roles as musicians, from individual instrumentality to shared instrumentality. The instrument invites new forms of music-making and contributes in fundamental ways to the ensemble’s musical communication and artistic expression. In the present article we outline our methods of working artistically with the networked instrument, and we point at some artistic results. We then discuss how the collective instrument has facilitated new performance and musical practice within the network.

Musical interaction, social communication, and wellbeing

Music plays a prominent role in human interaction, and is thought to have broad impact on social, emotional, and intellectual competencies, and on personal wellbeing. In order to better understand how, why, and under what conditions music affects wellbeing, this chapter summarizes recent work that demonstrates specific aspects of wellbeing that are positively affected by joint engagement in music. In particular, the chapter focuses on the role of synchrony experience in enhancing social-emotional attitudes and behaviors. The chapter introduces a working model that aims to explain the processes by which synchrony during joint music-making may help to develop and refine social-emotional competencies, suggesting the potential for enhanced wellbeing. The case is made for a future multi-disciplinary approach to researching direct links between synchrony experience and wellbeing, as well as to understanding the most effective ways to use musical interaction to enhance wellbeing.

Musical Interaction Reveals Music as Embodied Language

Life and social sciences often focus on the social nature of music (and language alike). In biology, for example, the three main evolutionary hypotheses about music (i.e., sexual selection, parent-infant bond, and group cohesion) stress its intrinsically social character (Honing et al., 2015). Neurobiology thereby has investigated the neuronal and hormonal underpinnings of musicality for more than two decades (Chanda and Levitin, 2013; Salimpoor et al., 2015; Mehr et al., 2019). In line with these approaches, the present paper aims to suggest that the proper way to capture the social interactive nature of music (and, before it, musicality), is to conceive of it as an embodied language, rooted in culturally adapted brain structures (Clarke et al., 2015; D’Ausilio et al., 2015). This proposal heeds Ian Cross’ call for an investigation of music as an “interactive communicative process” rather than “a manifestation of patterns in sound” (Cross, 2014), with an emphasis on its embodied and predictive (coding) aspects (Clark, 2016; Leman, 2016; Koelsch et al., 2019). In the present paper our goal is: (i) to propose a framework of music as embodied language based on a review of the major concepts that define joint musical action, with a particular emphasis on embodied music cognition and predictive processing, along with some relevant neural underpinnings; (ii) to summarize three experiments conducted in our laboratories (and recently published), which provide evidence for, and can be interpreted according to, the new conceptual framework. In doing so, we draw on both cognitive musicology and neuroscience to outline a comprehensive framework of musical interaction, exploring several aspects of making music in dyads, from a very basic proto-musical action, like tapping, to more sophisticated contexts, like playing a jazz standard and singing a hocket melody. Our framework combines embodied and predictive features, revolving around the concept of joint agency (Pacherie, 2012; Keller et al., 2016; Bolt and Loehr, 2017). If social interaction is the “default mode” by which human brains communicate with their environment (Hari et al., 2015), music and musicality conceived of as an embodied language may arguably provide a route toward its navigation.

Advocating for The Sustainability of Semai Indigenous Music Through The Collaborative Creation of New Traditional Music: A Participatory Action Research (PAR) Methodology

This article provides a critical reflection on the participatory approach methodology and the collaborative creation approach used in an advocacy project to sustain the musical heritage of the indigenous Semai community in Malaysia. These approaches were examined through the medium of an advocacy project that aimed to stimulate the interest of Semai youth in traditional music through relevance, engagement, and connection with their current musical interest and skills. The intention of the project was to also co-create new traditional music with the Semai youth through live musical interaction, improvisation and jam sessions with the research team. This article explored the research team’s use of the “Participatory Action Research” (PAR) method, which involved planning, action, observation, reflection, and revision during the initial stages of our advocacy project. Our findings suggest a narrative style in discussing advocacy processes because they occur in a lateral than the linear or cyclical format used in current action research models. Findings also reveal that any attempts to advocate change in the community would firstly require an established relationship of trust, respect, and belief in the research team. The research team would have to have had prior involvement, commitment, and dedication to the community before members of the team could influence change among the community. A self-review of the research team’s effort to co-create new traditional music with Semai youth led to the conclusion that co-creation between musicians of different musical training would require a “new” compositional method that negotiates Western musical composition techniques with the oral tradition of creating music.

Impact of Lockdown Measures on Joint Music Making: Playing Online and Physically Together

A wide range of countries decided to go into lockdown to contain the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic of 2020, a setting separating people and restricting their movements. We investigated how musicians dealt with this sudden restriction in mobility. Responses of 234 people were collected. The majority of respondents (95%) resided in Belgium or the Netherlands. Results indicated a decrease of 79% of live music making in social settings during lockdown compared with before lockdown. In contrast, an increase of 264% was demonstrated for online joint music making. However, results showed that most respondents were largely or even completely unaccustomed with specialized platforms for online joint music making (e.g., JamKazam, Jamulus). Respondents reported to mostly use well-known video-conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Skype when playing together virtually. However, when such video-conferencing platforms were used, they were often not employed for synchronized playing and were generally reported to insufficiently deal with latency issues. Furthermore, respondents depending on music making as their main source of income explored online real-time methods significantly more than those relying on other income sources. Results also demonstrated an increase of 93% in the use of alternative remote joint music-making methods (e.g., recording parts separately and subsequently circulating these digital recordings). All in all, results of this study provide a more in-depth view on joint music making during the first weeks of lockdown induced by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, and demonstrate users’ perceptions of performance and usability of online real-time platforms as well as alternative methods for musical interaction.