Improvising musicians' looking behaviours: Duration constants in the attention patterns of duo performers

Abstract

The study focuses on the communication processes in improvised music performance by duos, exploring the relationship of musical communication to movement in spontaneous, everyday human social interaction. The study presented here examined improvising instrumentalist musicians’ looking behaviours (their ostensive direction of attention as presented by the face). Original video recordings of North Indian classical instrumental duo performances, and video material of oral music traditions harvested from a video streaming website were analysed. The material included traditional, jazz, and folk music duos. Excerpts were analysed to identify the onset and duration of the looking behaviours, which were identified by the way in which the musicians’ faces were presented (towards the audience; towards their duo partner; or towards their own hands/lap). The results show that these looking behaviours occur with fairly consistent durations in the region of one to four seconds. The duration of these behaviours does not appear to co-vary with aspects of musical structure including tempo, or with the social context of performance (such as the familiarity of the musicians, or whether the context of the musical interaction is a rehearsal or public performance). The results suggest evidence of underlying timing mechanisms that may support social interaction processes, facilitating interpersonal communication..