From the Body Image to the Body Schema, From the Proximal to the Distal: Embodied Musical Activity Toward Learning Instrumental Musical Skills.

Jin Hyun Kim

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00101

Abstract

A recent paradigm shift in music research has allowed scholars to examine the macro- and micro-processes taking place within musical performance and underlying cognitive processes. Tying in with phenomenological theories of embodied perception and cognition, this paper focuses on bodily musical activity relevant to the acquisition of instrumental musical skills – the process of learning music. Dynamic interaction with musical instruments, accompanied by the interplay of action and passion, involves body image and body schema, whose status oscillates in different phases of the acquisition of instrumental musical skills; this interaction allows humans to direct attention from their bodily states – the proximal – to the quality of musical sounds and a unity of musical experience – the distal. It is thus argued that shaping music by means of playing a musical instrument can be conceived of as an embodied process, of understanding the forms of one’s own experience as related to the musical world that is created by one’s bodily activity.

Highlights

Most acts of playing a musical instrument involve bodily activity based on diverse instrumental techniques; these in turn depend on the affordances and constraints that the musical instrument provides (Reybrouck, 2012; Altavilla et al, 2013; Krueger, 2014), and which the player perceives as such
This paper focuses on the extent to which the bodily activity involved in the acquisition of instrumental skills plays a role in understanding the forms of one’s own experience that are supposed to have a structural analogy to the characteristics of musical sounds that are generated and controlled by one’s bodily activity
The bodily activity involved in the acquisition of instrumental skills was regarded as the process of learning instrumental skills related to a given musical instrument, and that of learning musical skills and experiencing music itself

Summary

Jin Hyun Kim*

Tying in with phenomenological theories of embodied perception and cognition, this paper focuses on bodily musical activity relevant to the acquisition of instrumental musical skills – the process of learning music. Dynamic interaction with musical instruments, accompanied by the interplay of action and passion, involves body image and body schema, whose status oscillates in different phases of the acquisition of instrumental musical skills; this interaction allows humans to direct attention from their bodily states – the proximal – to the quality of musical sounds and a unity of musical experience – the distal. It is argued that shaping music by means of playing a musical instrument can be conceived of as an embodied process, of understanding the forms of one’s own experience as related to the musical world that is created by one’s bodily activity.

INTRODUCTION

DISCOURSES ON CORPOREALITY AND EMBODIMENT

RELATIONS OF BODILY GESTURES TO THE DISTAL

UNDERSTANDING THE FORMS OF OUR OWN EXPERIENCES

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION