Abstract

We suggest that studies on active touch psychophysics are needed to inform the design of haptic musical interfaces and better understand the relevance of haptic cues in musical performance. Following a review of the previous literature on vibrotactile perception in musical performance, two recent experiments are reported. The first experiment investigated how active finger-pressing forces affect vibration perception, finding significant effects of vibration type and force level on perceptual thresholds. Moreover, the measured thresholds were considerably lower than those reported in the literature, possibly due to the concurrent effect of large (unconstrained) finger contact areas, active pressing forces, and long-duration stimuli. The second experiment assessed the validity of these findings in a real musical context by studying the detection of vibrotactile cues at the keyboard of a grand and an upright piano. Sensitivity to key vibrations in fact not only was highest at the lower octaves and gradually decreased toward higher pitches; it was also significant for stimuli having spectral peaks of acceleration similar to those of the first experiment, i.e., below the standard sensitivity thresholds measured for sinusoidal vibrations under passive touch conditions.

Highlights

  • Vibrations at the piano keyboard were measured with an accelerometer for the conditions used in the experiment: While their intensity was generally lower than the standard thresholds for passive touch, a comparison with the thresholds obtained in Experiment 1 provided a solid explanation to how pianists detected vibrations across the keyboard. These findings suggest that studies on active touch psychophysics are required to better understand the relevance of haptic cues in musical performance and, to inform the development of future haptic musical interfaces

  • Results of participants detected with the highest sensitivity (part A) are presented at the top of Fig. 4.3: Sensitivity was highest in the lower range and decreased toward higher pitches

  • To discuss the possible links between music performance tasks and basic active touch psychophysics, we presented two experiments, one in a controlled and one in an ecological setting, showing evidence that pianists perceive keyboard vibrations with sensitivity values resembling those obtained under controlled active touch conditions

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Summary

Introduction

One solution for measuring their activity precisely is to keep those tissues free from any kinematic perturbation Such experiments—in which subjects were typically stimulated with vibrations at selected areas of their skin while remaining still—have set the roots of the psychophysics of passive touch. As Gibson observed in 1962, “passive touch involves only the excitation of receptors in the skin and its underlying tissue,” while “active touch involves the concomitant excitation of receptors in the joints and tendons along with new and changing patterns in the skin” [24] This observation suggests that the psychophysics of active touch may exhibit relevant differences from the passive case. The surrounding skin regions, which contribute to tactile sensations, are dynamically affected by such changes and by the patterns of vibrations propagating across them [49]

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