CMPCP/IMR Performance Research Seminars are sponsored by the AHRC Research
Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice and the Institute of
Musical Research. For further information see www.cmpcp.ac.uk/imr2013.html.
Rhythmic improvisation solo and duo: how two minds get together
Renee Timmers (University of Sheffield)
25 February 2013
17.00 - 18.30
Room 104, Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1
Recent research has shown an increasing interest in the psychology of joint
behaviour, investigating how joint and solo behaviour are similar to, or an
extension of, each other. Translating this to creative processes in music
performance, we compared solo and duo rhythmic improvisation, investigating
the rhythmic conceptual space that participants explored while performing
alone or jointly with others. Our research questions were - in what ways
does joint improvisation constrain or facilitate improvisation? In what ways
do the performers accomplish integration of their rhythmic improvisation?
What are similarities and differences between improvising together and
alone? Rhythmic improvisations are characterised by the distribution of
onsets across metrical positions, by the distribution of rhythmic durations
and by its combination: the distribution of rhythmic durations starting at
downbeats and upbeats. A clustering analysis is used to define a hierarchy
of frequently occurring rhythms. This rhythm space is then used to
characterise participants' rhythmic explorations.
Renee Timmers is Lecturer in Psychology of Music and director of the onsite
and distance learning MAs in Psychology of Music at the University of
Sheffield. She is editor with Nicola Dibben of Empirical Musicology Review
and associate editor of Psychomusicology: Music, Mind & Brain. She was
educated in the Netherlands in musicology (MA from the University of
Amsterdam) and psychology (PhD from the Radboud University Nijmegen), and as
a performer. Before joining the Department of Music in Sheffield in 2009,
she was a research fellow at a number of institutes, including the AHRC
Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM) at
King's College London, the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial
Intelligence in Vienna and the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and
Behaviour in Nijmegen. Her work is strongly interdisciplinary, combining
theory and computer modelling with empirical testing and exploration. Her
research focuses on expressive performance of music, emotion and meaning in
music, and influences of emotion on music perception and cognition.
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