Toward Piano Teaching Evaluation Based on Neural Network

With the rise of piano teaching in recent years, many people participated in the team of learning steel playing. However, expensive piano teaching fees and its unique one-to-one teaching model have caused piano education resources to be very short, so learning piano performance has become a very extravagant event. The factors affecting music performance are varying, and there are many types of their evaluation such as rhythm, expressiveness, music, and style grasp. The computer is used to simulate this evaluation process to essentially identify the mathematical relationship between factors affecting music performance and evaluation indicators. The use of computer multimedia software for piano teaching has become a feasible way to alleviate the contradiction. This paper discusses the implementation method of piano teaching software, the issues of computer piano teaching, the computer teaching as one-way knowledge, and the lack of interaction. The neural network (NN) model is used to evaluate the piano performance and simulate teachers to guide students through their exercise. The performance of the proposed system is tested for the piano music of “Ode to Joy,” which is different from the collection of NN training samples, and is delivered ten times by another piano teacher, student A (piano level 6), and student B (piano level 5).

Neural Advantages of Older Musicians Involve the Cerebellum: Implications for Healthy Aging Through Lifelong Musical Instrument Training

This study compared 30 older musicians and 30 age-matched non-musicians to investigate the association between lifelong musical instrument training and age-related cognitive decline and brain atrophy (musicians: mean age 70.8 years, musical experience 52.7 years; non-musicians: mean age 71.4 years, no or less than 3 years of musical experience). Although previous research has demonstrated that young musicians have larger gray matter volume (GMV) in the auditory-motor cortices and cerebellum than non-musicians, little is known about older musicians. Music imagery in young musicians is also known to share a neural underpinning [the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and cerebellum] with music performance. Thus, we hypothesized that older musicians would show superiority to non-musicians in some of the abovementioned brain regions. Behavioral performance, GMV, and brain activity, including functional connectivity (FC) during melodic working memory (MWM) tasks, were evaluated in both groups. Behaviorally, musicians exhibited a much higher tapping speed than non-musicians, and tapping speed was correlated with executive function in musicians. Structural analyses revealed larger GMVs in both sides of the cerebellum of musicians, and importantly, this was maintained until very old age. Task-related FC analyses revealed that musicians possessed greater cerebellar-hippocampal FC, which was correlated with tapping speed. Furthermore, musicians showed higher activation in the SMG during MWM tasks; this was correlated with earlier commencement of instrumental training. These results indicate advantages or heightened coupling in brain regions associated with music performance and imagery in musicians. We suggest that lifelong instrumental training highly predicts the structural maintenance of the cerebellum and related cognitive maintenance in old age.

Conference report: Doctors in performance, Tallinn, 1-3 September 2021

This report chronicles the author’s participation in the Doctors in Performance (DiP) Festival Conference, September 2021, at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Tallinn. It is the fourth edition of DiP since its inauguration in 2014 at the Sibelius Academy, Uniarts Helsinki. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe in early 2020, most conferenceshave been either postponed, cancelled or held online. This Conference is one of the first to be held as an in-person event as Europe starts to move towards a post-pandemic period. Some participants gathered in person (including the author), while parallel online participation was also enabled as a hybrid event. This report records the conference events as DiP enters into maturity with a focus on artistic research and music performance. It also describes the author’s impressions regarding issues of ‘liveness’ in varied categories, including spoken presentations, music performances, their online equivalents, live or prerecorded presentations and online or live participations.

A nostalgic return to the past or sound searching? On the use of contemporary harpsichords in early music performance

The article is based on the materials used for the author’s doctoral dissertation entitled Contemporary performance of 17th century German harpsichord toccatas in the context of instrument selection. Its main part is an analysis of the changes which occured in the harpsichord builiding before the end of the 19th century and the change in approach to early music at the beginning of the 20th century. The article is an attempt to answer the question to which extent instrument selection determines our today’s performance. Is it only a harpsichord being an exact copy of historical instruments that allows us to deliver an authentic and fresh interpretation? While listening to 20th century harpsichordists playing 20th century instruments (i.e., using contemporary models, not historically-based), we discover a different world of early music, which may even be more experimental than today’s performance sound-wise. It seems that the openness towards contemporary harpsichords while preserving historical practices at the same time may help discover new sound qualities in early music pieces.

Is bone kinesthetic adaptation of bone innervation plastically developed in fingers and correlated joints of violist and pianist after long term practice?

Bone cells might be considered in response to the distribution of nerves in the periosteum, epiphysis and bone marrow.The sensory and sympathetic neurotransmitters have trophic effects critically on normal osteogenic differentiation and bone metabolism in bone development and regeneration. It could modulate bone regeneration, bone remodeling, and articular cartilage homeostasis to their classic neurological actions. With touching and hearing mediated osseoperception, sensation can be adapted from the mechanical stimulation of a bone-anchored prosthesis. Investigations of the influence of music on the human brain showed structural and functional cerebro-neuroplasticity emerge as a result of long-term musical practice, which may cause cognitive differences between non-musicians and musicians. Meanwhile, the physical mechanical hits and touch strings and keys of instruments hypothetically were considered to cause adaptability for professional musicians in their peripheral tissues, especially bone sensation of fingers and correlated joints. Music practice is bone-strengthening activity. We hypothesis that it produces sensation adaptation in the fingers and correlated joints of instrument players, especially musicians after tremendous training and practice. Both the bone, correlated joint and its innervation are adapted by neuroplasticity for something part of “hardware constructing” to accomplish music performance. We thought that neuroplasticity occurred both in central nervous system and peripheral nervous system. Besides of developed in soft tissues of subcutaneous, connective tissue, muscle, inter-tissue coordination through neuro-network may occur in bone innervation coupled with correlated joint for specialized music-practice-oriented neuroplasticity. Soft tissues, such as muscle and tendon cannot directly hit instrument with stiffness to generate sound and rhythmic. Functionally, innervated-bone as bio-mechanical device becomes sensory musical target bone.

The effect of mindfulness meditation on the vocal proficiencies of music education students

Mindfulness meditation (MM) has been found to positively affect various aspects related to music performance, yet very few studies have investigated its impact on music performance quality. This study examined whether short-term MM activity would improve vocal skills in regard to pitch intonation, dynamics transmission, and vocal resonation. Experiment and control groups comprising music education students ( N = 55) made pre- and post-intervention recordings of a specially designed solo vocal music excerpt. Intervention consisted of a short-term online MM course covering the main elements exercised in mindfulness practice. Performance evaluation employed novel methods based on both automatic assessment strategies and expert judgments. Statistical analysis failed to indicate a significant effect. However, trends were detected for improvement in dynamics transmission and vocal resonation. Results might attest to MM praxis’ limited influence on music performance quality. The observed trends could, however, evince to the shortcomings of the treatment design. The implications regarding MM’s effect on music performance quality are discussed.

Music Performance

Music performance involves precise motor control that is coordinated with higher order planning to convey complex structural information. In addition, music performance usually involves motor tasks that are not learned spontaneously (as in the use of the vocal apparatus), the reproduction of preestablished sequences (notated or from memory), and synchronized joint performance with one or more other musicians. Music performance also relies on a rich repertoire of musical knowledge that can be used for purposes of expressive variation and improvisation. As such, the study of music performance provides a way to explore learning, motor control, memory, and interpersonal coordination in the context of a real-world behavior. Music performance skills vary considerably in the population and reflect interactions between genetic predispositions and the effect of intensive practice. At the same time, research suggests that most individuals have the capacity to perform music through singing or learning an instrument, and in this sense music performance taps into a universal human propensity for communication and coordination with conspecifics.

Constraint-Based Sound-Motion Objects in Music Performance

The aim of this paper is to present principles of constraint-based sound-motion objects in music performance. Sound-motion objects are multimodal fragments of combined sound and sound-producing body motion, usually in the duration range of just a few seconds, and conceived, produced, and perceived as intrinsically coherent units. Sound-motion objects have a privileged role as building blocks in music because of their duration, coherence, and salient features and emerge from combined instrumental, biomechanical, and motor control constraints at work in performance. Exploring these constraints and the crucial role of the sound-motion objects can enhance our understanding of generative processes in music and have practical applications in performance, improvisation, and composition.