More music / movement links to follow...

Matthew Roger at Belfast University:
http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/~mrodger/Academic/
"I am interested in exploring the role(s) of ancillary body movement in music performance and how this develops over the course of skill acquisition.

Ancillary body movements made by musicians during performance (such as swaying, nodding, hand gestures, foot-tapping, etc.) do not seem necessary to create sounds, yet can communicate expressive or emotional intentions, relate to musical structure or facilitate co-ordination with other musicians. My research is into the origin and development of these movements during musical skill acquisition. This research project consists of three aims:

> Exploration of the development of ancillary body movement in musical skill acquisition
> Development of a theoretical framework of embodied music cognition
> Development of an appropriate human-computer interface to exploit characteristics of musicians' ancillary movements as augmented feedback in skill acquisition"

Frustration / inspiration

I've been writing this post and it basically comes down to me wanting to go back to study full-time somewhere, also that I think frustration and inspiration are different sides of the same coin. There you go - you can skip the rest now. If you're daft or bored enough... read on.

***********************
I've hit a huge unhappy block of frustration. Not sure why exactly - I can feel this wall, can't see how high it is or how wide, or how I'm going to get over it - yet. Mostly it's to do with desperately wanting to get on with making some expressive/varied/intense/interesting music and taking it out somewhere and feeling like I don't have the people / finger skills / inspiration - whatever.

Does everyone involved in a creative process have points where they go mad from their own internal pressures? Where what they want to achieve seems so far away from their current point that they can't even begin to think where to go next? I expect so. Somehow though I've noted that it's often in extremis that I come up with something new - that difficulties push me into a corner and so I visit unexplored areas because I can't explore the normal ones.

Whenever I hit a wodge like this it's often because of something to do with my hand, though I'm realising that probably isn't accurate anymore other than needing to take time to build up my playing to a level I am happy with. Bizarrely I think this really will happen - not that my playing is in anyway perfect (or ever will be) but I'll get a set of songs and tunes together and be able to feel like they're hitting neough of the mark that I should take them out here. I think my benchmark is that I have to really enjoy them. Actually my plan is find the right kind of people who can judge that for me and push me off in the right direction!

Even though it has taken me several years just to get this far I feel so strongly that this is my instrument - I can't quite imagine gelling with another instrument so completely - even down to the fact that it's fantastically inspiring and wonderfully tactile but also ridiculously awkward to play on almost every level. And to play it properly is incredibly geeky.

I'm not entirely sure what possessed me to go down this path of trying to make a living from playing a few years ago - I wish I'd had the common sense to pick something else that I could do part-time and carry on studying along side it (hang on... I did... but oh yes it was another financially insecure but interesting job. Whoops). I'm feeling like I'd really like time off from this financial pressure, time just to play and learn and play and learn. Also that I'd really like musical input for me, inspiration for me. Time to listen and watch.

I feel like life is a series of crises and that you don't get prompted to sort things out in a way that will take you to the next stage until you hit that wall of frustration. I guess it's a good thing, even if right now I feel like breaking things. I just have to focus on the next goal more or less within target. Keep on finding the next solution and look for people who can help you along the way.

Movements / mirroring / social glue

I've been developing my ideas about how our bodies relate to music, how it is passed on. Central to this is the fact that when we see a movement performed, the part of our brain that controls movement copies it - as far as our brain is concerned we might as well be doing the movement. This is one way that we absorb new physical movements, also how we read emotions. We see someone else's expression, copy it, and then that posture tells us how they feel.

Also, our brains synchronise with any rhythm that they hear. I wonder if this is a separate device or an extension of our ability to mirror movement. As I've mentioned before this doing things in unison within a group promotes a sense of loyalty to that group. Music is social glue.