Inclusive improvisation: exploring the line between listening and playing music

The field of Accessible Digital Musical Instruments (ADMIs) is growing rapidly, with instrument designers recognising that adaptations to existing Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) can foster inclusive music making. ADMIs offer opportunities to engage with a wider range of sounds than acoustic instruments. Furthermore, gestural ADMIs free the music maker from relying on screen, keyboard, and mouse-based interfaces for engaging with these sounds. This brings greater opportunities for exploration, improvisation, empowerment, and flow through music making for people with disability and the communities of practice they are part of. This article argues that developing ADMIs from existing DMIs can speed up the process and allow for more immediate access for those with diverse needs. It presents three case studies of a gestural DMI, originally designed by the first author for his own creative practice, played by people with disability in diverse contexts. The article shows that system-based considerations that enabled an expert percussionist to achieve virtuoso performances with the instrument required minimal hardware and software changes to facilitate greater inclusivity. Understanding the needs of players and customising the system-based movement to sound mappings was of far greater importance in making the instrument accessible

Problem-Solving Pedagogy: A Foundation for Restructuring, Updating, and Improving Undergraduate Theory and Musicianship Curricula

The goal of this thesis is to provide the ideological and practical foundation for an improved approach to undergraduate theory and musicianship pedagogy. I will discuss the structure of conventional theory programs and explore problems inherent to traditional curriculum design. Problem-solving pedagogy, an approach rooted in creative composition and improvisation, will be presented as a complement to traditional theory pedagogy. Balancing problem-solving pedagogy with a more traditional pedagogical approach will provide a practical foundation for improving undergraduate theory and musicianship curricula

Creativity in interaction:The dynamics of teacher-student interactions during a musical composition task

In music and arts education, a central question is how teachers can best facilitate the creativity of their students, Most research on primary school students’ creativity, however, focuses on creativity at the level of the person or product rather than at the level of the creative process. Precisely this knowledge on how creativity emerges in interaction between teacher and student(s) is needed to answer this question. Therefore, we combined detailed quantitative and qualitative analyses of teacher and student actions and reactions to understand emergent creativity during a musical composition task. Five music teacher – student dyads participated in this study. Student turns were coded in terms of levels of novelty and appropriateness while teacher turns were labeled as convergent (aimed at instructing, providing information and evaluation) divergent (aimed at idea generation) or neutral. We found that the levels of novelty and appropriateness of student turns had highly skewed distributions, with high levels of novelty and low levels of appropriateness being especially rare. With sequential analyses, we found for all five dyads that convergent turns often lead immediately to student turns with no novelty and rarely to highly novel turns. However, we saw no immediate relationship between divergent turns and student levels of novelty. In qualitative analyses of longer interactional patterns, we saw how novel ideas can emerge from interactions where the teacher alternates between convergent and divergent behavior, but also how a teacher and student can become ‘stuck’ in exchanges with no novelty and repeated convergent turns

Music in the brain

Music is ubiquitous across human cultures — as a source of affective and pleasurable experience, moving us both physically and emotionally — and learning to play music shapes both brain structure and brain function. Music processing in the brain — namely, the perception of melody, harmony and rhythm — has traditionally been studied as an auditory phenomenon using passive listening paradigms. However, when listening to music, we actively generate predictions about what is likely to happen next. This enactive aspect has led to a more comprehensive understanding of music processing involving brain structures implicated in action, emotion and learning. Here we review the cognitive neuroscience literature of music perception. We show that music perception, action, emotion and learning all rest on the human brain’s fundamental capacity for prediction — as formulated by the predictive coding of music model. This Review elucidates how this formulation of music perception and expertise in individuals can be extended to account for the dynamics and underlying brain mechanisms of collective music making. This in turn has important implications for human creativity as evinced by music improvisation. These recent advances shed new light on what makes music meaningful from a neuroscientific perspective

Musical Instruments for Novices: Comparing NIME, HCI and Crowdfunding Approaches

Designing musical instruments to make performance accessible to novice musicians is a goal which long predates digital technology. However, just in the space of the past 6 years, dozens of instrument designs have been introduced in various academic venues and in commercial crowdfunding campaigns. In this paper, we draw comparisons in design, evaluation and marketing across four domains: crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo; the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference; conferences in human-computer interaction (HCI); and researchers creating accessible instruments for children and adults with disabilities. We observe striking differences in approach between commercial and academic projects, with less pronounced differences between each of the academic communities. The paper concludes with general reflections on the identity and purpose of instruments for novice musicians, with suggestions for future exploration

Acute Exercise and Creativity: Embodied Cognition Approaches

This dissertation manuscript is the culmination of three years of research examining several unique, exercise-induced mechanisms underlying creativity. This collection of work addresses historical and current empirical concepts of creativity in a narrative review, providing recommendations for future research. Several reviews follow this introduction, highlighting the proposed effects of exercise on creativity, putative mechanisms for creativity, and the effects of exercise and embodied manipulations on creative behavior. Multiple experiments utilizing moderate-intensity exercise as a theoretical stimulus for higher-order cognitions were conducted to investigate associations between exercise and creativity, which lead to the final dissertation experiment. The dissertation experiment was the first to provide statistically significant evidence for acute, moderate-intensity treadmill exercise coupled with anagram problem-solving to prime subsequent RAT completion compared to a non-exercise, priming only condition. We emphasize that the additive effects of exercise plus priming may be a viable strategy for enhancing verbal convergent creativity. Future research is warranted to explore a variety of priming effects on the relationship between exercise, embodied interventions, and creativityThis dissertation manuscript is the culmination of three years of research examining several unique, exercise-induced mechanisms underlying creativity. This collection of work addresses historical and current empirical concepts of creativity in a narrative review, providing recommendations for future research. Several reviews follow this introduction, highlighting the proposed effects of exercise on creativity, putative mechanisms for creativity, and the effects of exercise and embodied manipulations on creative behavior. Multiple experiments utilizing moderate-intensity exercise as a theoretical stimulus for higher-order cognitions were conducted to investigate associations between exercise and creativity, which lead to the final dissertation experiment. The dissertation experiment was the first to provide statistically significant evidence for acute, moderate-intensity treadmill exercise coupled with anagram problem-solving to prime subsequent RAT completion compared to a non-exercise, priming only condition. We emphasize that the additive effects of exercise plus priming may be a viable strategy for enhancing verbal convergent creativity. Future research is warranted to explore a variety of priming effects on the relationship between exercise, embodied interventions, and creativit

The Effects of the Arts Curriculum on the At-Risk Student Population: An Examination of Music and Drama with Regard to Specific Risk Factors

Development of musical and dramatic arts skills strengthens psychological wellness within the at-risk population. The ability of the arts curriculum to promote psychological wellness is documented repeatedly in the premier research surveyed by two overarching compendia, Champions of Change and Critical Links. It is postulated that music and drama, specifically, promote positive behavioral change by enhancing or altering neurological pathways. Twelve developmental issues are examined in two broad categories: concepts of self and socialization. Each developmental issue is analyzed according to the aforementioned premier research. Musical and dramatic therapeutic responses, reflecting the conclusions reached by numerous researchers, are suggested for each targeted issue. A summary of the neurological support for these therapeutic responses concludes both the concepts of self\u27 and socialization sections. Contemporary research supports the assertion that arts education makes a difference. Future research focused on these neurological hypotheses is recommended, in addition to the suggestions from the sources cited