Friday, July 27, 2007

The science of guitar face

When vocalists reach for that high note, they often have a facial expression to match -- and players of musical instruments do something very similar, especially when they play "singing" melodic lines. See: B.B. King.

How precise is the connection between the sight and the sound? Very, according to an forthcoming article in the September issue of Psychological Science. In an experiment conducted at the University of Toronto, 17 students whose musical training ranged from nada to substantial watched soundless video recordings of three singers trying to hit pitch intervals of various sizes: thirds, fifths, octaves, and so on.

The performers weren't told the purpose of the experiment, so they were un-self-conscious about their faces were doing (or as un-self-conscious as you can be while singing in a lab). But, to a surprising extent, the students who watched the videos could accurately gauge the size of the interval from the singers' expressions alone. (To take account of the lack of musical training, participants simply rated the size of the interval on a scale of one to seven.)

The authors, psychologists William Forde Thompson and Frank A. Russo, don't try to sort out to what extent the singers' expressions amount to actorly efforts to "signal" the interval to a crowd, serve as memory aids for the performers themselves, or are simply the involuntary result of physical effort. They just note the striking correlation.

Since Thompson and Russo do mention the King of the Blues, they probably should have added that with guitarists it's got to be either option one or two. Trust me: It just isn't that hard to bend a string.

Posted by Christopher Shea at 03:31 PM

Print | E-mail to a friend | Permalink | Subscribe via rss