Investigating multimodal perception during the musical performance: The case of harpsichord voicing

Abstract

The plectrum/string interaction appears to be the main phase during which harpsichord players control the instrument's sound quality. This is why both harpsichord players and makers commit themselves to the “voicing process,” a necessary work prior to performance, where the plectra are shaped in order to provide the instrument with a good sound quality and homogeneity over the whole tessitura. Part of a project aiming at understanding the makers' gesture, this paper will present the results of a free playing and verbalization task. This experimental protocol allows (a) the musicians to produce evaluations within an ecologically valid situation, and (b) the experimenters to access the strongly multimodal nature of these evaluations. Two sets of plectra were designed by two professional makers, and given to play to 8 professional musicians during a blind test. Each musician freely played successively both plectrum sets while verbally expressing her/his feelings. The psycholinguistic analysis lead to a perce...