title: Mapping musical thought to musical performance.
abstract: Expressive timing methods are described that map pianists' musical thoughts to sounded performance. In Experiment 1, 6 pianists performed the same musical excerpt on a computer-monitored keyboard. Each performance contained 3 expressive timing patterns: chord asynchronies, rubato patterns, and overlaps (staccato and legato). Each pattern was strongest in experienced pianists' performances and decreased when pianists attempted to play unmusically. In Experiment 2 pianists performed another musical excerpt and notated their musical intentions on an unedited score. The notated interpretations correlated with the presence of the 3 methods: The notated melody preceded other events in chords (chord asynchrony); events notated as phase boundaries showed greatest tempo changes (rubato); and the notated melody showed most consistent amount of overlap between adjacent events (staccato and legato). These results suggest that the mapping of musical thought to musical action is rule-governed, and the same rules produce different interpretations.
authors.affiliation: Cornell University.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Palmer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D009048:Motor Skills; D009146:Music; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012718:Set, Psychology; D013850:Thinking; D013998:Time Perception