Expressiveness of a marimba player’s body movements

• Musicians often make gestures and move their bodies expressing their musical intention. This visual information provides a separate channel of communication to the listener. In order to explore to what extent emotional intentions can be conveyed through musicians’ movements, video recordings were made of a marimba player performing the same piece with four different intentions, Happy, Sad, Angry and Fearful. Twenty subjects were asked to rate the silent video clips with respect to perceived emotional content and movement qualities. The video clips were presented in different viewing conditions, showing different parts of the player. The results showed that the intentions Happiness, Sadness and Anger were well communicated, while Fear was not. The identification of the intended emotion was only slightly influenced by viewing condition. The movement ratings indicated that there were cues that the observers used to distinguish between intentions, similar to cues found for audio signals in music performance.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Speech and Music Communication

Tal- och musikkommunikation

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

art (subject category)