Geometry and Effort in Gestural Renderings of Musical Sound

Abstract

As may be seen at concerts and in various everyday listening situa- tions, people often make spontaneous gestures when listening to music. We believe these gestures are interesting to study because they may reveal important features of musical experience. In particular, hand movements may give us information on what features are perceived as salient by listeners. Based on various current ideas on embodied cognition, the aim of this paper is to argue that gestures are integral to music perception, and to present research in support of this. A conceptual model of separating geometry and effort is presented in order to better understand the variety of music-related gestures we may observe, lead- ing up to some ideas on how to apply this conceptual model in present and future research.

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