Abstract
In this paper, we report on a free-hand motion capture study in which 32 participants ‘traced’ 16 melodic vocal phrases with their hands in the air in two experimental conditions. Melodic contours are often thought of as correlated with vertical movement (up and down) in time, and this was also our initial expectation. We did find an arch shape for most of the tracings, although this did not correspond directly to the melodic contours. Furthermore, representation of pitch in the vertical dimension was but one of a diverse range of movement strategies used to trace the melodies. Six different mapping strategies were observed, and these strategies have been quantified and statistically tested. The conclusion is that metaphorical representation is much more common than a ‘graph-like’ rendering for such a melodic sound-tracing task. Other findings include a clear gender difference for some of the tracing strategies and an unexpected representation of melodies in terms of a small object for some of the Hindustani music examples. The data also show a tendency of participants moving within a shared ‘social box’.
Highlights
How do people think about melodies as shapes? This question comes out of the authors’ general interest in understanding more about how spatiotemporal elements influence the cognition of music
The present study shows that there are consistencies in people’s sound-tracing to the melodic phrases used in the experiment
There is a clear arch shape when looking at the averages of the motion capture data, regardless of the general shape of the melody itself
Summary
How do people think about melodies as shapes? This question comes out of the authors’ general interest in understanding more about how spatiotemporal elements influence the cognition of music.When it comes to the topic of melody and shape, these terms often seem to be interwoven. From the first author’s experience as an improvisational singer, a critical part of learning a new singing culture was the physical representation of melodic content This physical representation includes bodily posture, gestural vocabulary and the use of the body to communicate sung phrases. In improvised music, this includes the way in which one uses the hands to guide the music and the expectation of a familiar audience from the performing body. Melodies display several integral patterns of organization and time-scales, including melodic ornaments, motifs, repeating patterns, themes and variations. These are all devices for organizing melodic patterns and can be found in most musical cultures.
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