Anticipatory motion in piano performance
Werner Goebl, Caroline Palmėr · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2006
Recent motor control studies of piano performance address the anticipatory movements of pianists fingers. The reported study investigated anticipatory motion under manipulations of performance rate or tempo. It was tested whether faster tempi require larger anticipatory preparation, as suggested in piano pedagogy literature. Sixteen skilled pianists repeatedly performed short isochronous melodies from memory at four different tempi (from 500 to 143 ms inter-onset intervals). A passive 3-D motion capture system tracked the movements of 40 markers on the hand, fingers, and the piano keys. The melodies manipulated both the repositioning of certain fingers (thumb and pinkie finger) on the keyboard and the distance between repeating finger movements (three or six tones). Functional data analysis techniques were applied to the analysis of motion trajectories. Data analyses are presented that indicate that the repositioning movement of a finger toward its next goal (keypress) begins sooner at faster tempi than at slower tempi in the x plane (sideways motion on the keyboard). Applications to piano practice will be discussed. [Work supported by the Austrian Science Fund, NSERC, and the Canada Research Chairs program.]