Music, movement and marimba : an investigation of the role of movement and gesture in communicating music expression to an audience

![CDATA[Research in many fields has demonstrated the perceptual advantages of experiencing the world through multiple sensory modalities for accurate and effective communication. The aim of the current study was to test the assumption that visual perception of movement plays a role in communicating a musically expressive performance. In the live, concert music setting, performers have increased opportunities for engaging audience attention and guiding awareness to musical content, by presenting information simultaneously via multiple modalities. Nonverbal behaviours and gestures are natural and integral components in interpersonal communication. This study is concerned with investigating the interaction of auditory and visual information in communicating musical expression to an audience. This study is of particular relevance to the marimba (a tuned, wood instrument in the percussion family) because of its relatively restricted range of expressive capabilities such as articulation and duration. It was hypothesised that multi-modal (audio-visual) perception, where the visual features are expressive and reinforce the performer’s expressive musical intention (aural features), would enhance the observer’s level of interest and perceived expressivity relative to auditory only perception. Musically expert and novice observers rated digitised presentations of solo marimba excerpts (projected or deadpan performance manners) on rating scales under two conditions: audio alone and combined audio-visual. The experimental design consisted of three factors each with two levels: modality (auditory alone; combined auditory and visual conditions), stimulus (projected performance manner; deadpan performance manner) and expertise of observer (musically trained; non-musically trained) with the first two variables as repeated measures. The dependent variables were observers’ ratings of interest and perceived expressivity indicated on two separate sevenpoint Likert scales. The marimba was used as the instrument to create digital stimulus materials as the movements required to play it are visible and its inherent expressive capabilities are relatively limited. The stimulus material comprised sets of thirty-two 20-25 second excerpts of 20th century solo marimba repertoire of fast and slow tempi and varying levels of difficulty and musical style, performed by two professional marimbists, one male and one female. Results support the assumed perceptual advantage of experiencing a musical performance through complementary multiple sensory modalities. Observers could discriminate between expressive and inexpressive performances in both an audio only and audio-visual condition. Observers could most effectively differentiate between an expressive and an inexpressive performance when the presentation was audio-visual. Musically trained participants recorded higher ratings than their nonmusically trained counterparts.]]