Matteazzi Master's Thesis 2009

DIPARTIMENTO DI INGEGNERIA DELL’INFORMAZIONE
CORSO DI LAUREA SPECIALISTICA IN INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA
TESI DI LAUREA
MUSIC PERFORMANCE WITH DELAYED AUDITORY

FEEDBACK: AN EMBODIED PERSPECTIVE
RELATORE: Prof. Giovanni De Poli
CORRELATORE: Prof. Marc Leman (Ghent University)
LAUREANDO: Marco Matteazzi
Padova, 20 ottobre 2009
ANNO ACCADEMICO 2008 – 2009

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© Copyright
by
Marco Matteazzi
2009
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dedicata a mia madre, a mio padre, e ad Elisa

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Noi non abbiamo un corpo, noi siamo un corpo.
We don’t have a body, we are a body.
Pier Paolo Pasolini

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ABSTRACT
Research on music playing with delayed auditory feedback (DAF) shows that timing
asynchronies between action and perception profoundly impair performance, to the
extent that musical execution may be interrupted. New technologies for music pro-
duction are often affected by significant latencies, causing playing music to be diffi-
cult and unsatisfactory. This scenario calls for the search of useful techniques for
playing music in presence of DAF, overcoming the difficulties introduced by the
mismatch between action and perception. In this thesis, I approach this issue from an
ecological, embodied perspective, considering the role of human body as a mediator
between the sonic energy in the environment and the inner world of the performer. I
investigate the effects of DAF on piano performance under three different auditory
conditions (normal auditory feedback, absence of auditory feedback, DAF), focusing
on variations in MIDI parameters and in performers’ body movement, captured
through sensors. Results confirm that DAF significantly impairs music performance
while absence of auditory feedback does not. Moreover, a diminution in body
movement is found in the absence of feedback, whereas under DAF embodied re-
sponses seem to depend strongly on the players’ personal attitude.
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ACKNOLEDGMENTS
First, I’d like to thank my supervisor prof. Giovanni De Poli for giving me the op-
portunity to undertake this extraordinary experience.
I am very grateful to all the people at IPEM. Primarily, I whish to thank prof. Marc
Leman for his great helpfulness and for the continuous stimuli his ideas provide to
me. I especially thank the three people who helped me more during this work, Mi-
chiel Demey, Frank Desmet, and Dirk Steenbrugge. The first for his indispensable
support; the second for the great job he did with the ANOVA analysis of Paragraph
5.1, as well as for having introduced me to the world of statistics (“there are three
kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”); the third for his precious assistance
with regard to pipe organs. I whish to thank the other people at IPEM who kindly
helped me in some occasions: Ivan Schepers, Micheline Lesaffre, Pieter Coussement
and Frederik Styns.
I’d like to thank all the students of the Systematic Musicology class 2008 at Ghent
University for their hospitality and their sympathie. In particular, I’d like to thank the
three special friends with which this project started: Imke De Hert, Renske Wit-
teveen, and Pieter-Jan Maes.
I thank very much all the people who helped in some ways during this work: Jan
Vanlerberghe, Ivo Delaere, Bart Meynckens, Tine Allegaert, Lukas Huisman, Clara
Van der Bremt, Frederic Lamsens, Marianne Van Boxelaere, Anke Steenbeke,
Herman Streulens, Yves Senden, Delphine Grandsart, Kersten Cottyn, Johan
Wijnants, Lize Raes, Giovanni Bruno Vicario, Massimo Grassi, Federico Avanzini,
Enrico Marchetto, Luca Mion.
Finally, I’d like to thank Valentina Munaro who beautifully corrected the thesis, Ni-
cola Barban and Elisabetta De Cao for their improvised statistics assistance at the No
Dal Molin Festival (and not only), Lucie Jurystova for the picture in Figure 1.1, and
Alessio Guzzano for making me know the Pasolini’s quote.
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CONTENTS
Abstract 7
Acknoledgements 9
Chapter 1 - Introduction 15
1.1 Music performance 14
1.1.1 Music performance and sensory feedback 14
1.1.2 Music performance as a timed sequence of motor acts 18
1.2 The role of feedback in movement execution 18
1.2.1 Closed-loop vs open-loop models 18
1.3 Auditory feedback in music performance 19
1.3.1 Feedback deprivation 20
1.3.2 Delayed auditory feedback (DAF) 21
Critical interval vs relative time hypothesis 22
Break-point interval 23
Theoretical implications 24
1.3.3 The role of auditory feedback in musical sequence production 25
1.4 New scenarios for the research on music performance affected by
DAF 26
1.5 An ecological, embodied approach to the study of music perform-
ance with DAF 27
1.6 Thesis organization 30
Chapter 2 – Empirical review of music performance with DAF 31

2.1 Literature survey 31
2.2 Summary 35
2.2.1 Accuracy 36
2.2.2 Timing 36
2.2.3 Dynamics 37
2.2.4 Expressivity 37
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2.2.5 Body movement 37
Chapter 3 - Method 39
3.1 Subjects 40
3.2 Stimulus material 41
3.3 Conditions 44
3.4 Equipment 44
3.5 Procedure 46
Chapter 4 – Data analysis 49

4.1 MIDI data 49
4.2 Movement data 51
4.2.1 Synchronization of MIDI and movement data streams 51
4.2.2 Intensity of movement 52
4.2.3 Head pitch periodicity 53
Chapter 5 – Results 55
5.1 One-way ANOVA of tempo, dynamics, and intensity of movement
against the experimental condition as factor 55
5.1.1 Exploratory data analysis 55
5.1.2 Homogeneity of variances 58
5.1.3 ANOVA table 58
5.1.4 Tamhane's T2 post hoc test 61
5.1.5 Homogeneous subset tables 64
5.1.6 Means plots 65
5.1.7 Summary of the one-way ANOVA results 67
5.2 Correlations 67
5.3 Timing and dynamics profiles 70
5.4 Individual results 72
5.4.1 Tempo and velocity 72
5.4.2 Intensity of movement 76
5.4.3 Periodicity of the head pitch movement 77
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Chapter 6 – Discussion and conclusions 81

6.1 Timing 81
6.2 Dynamics 82
6.3 Expressivity 83
6.4 Body movement 83
6.5 Conclusions 85
Chapter 7 – Reference bibliography 87
Appendix 1 – Individual subjects’ graphics 97

A1.1 Subject 2 98
A1.2 Subject 3 100
A1.3 Subject 4 102
A1.4 Subject 5 104
A1.5 Subject 6 106
A1.6 Subject 7 108
A1.7 Subject 8 110
A1.8 Subject 9 112
A1.9 Subject 10 114
A1.10 Subject 11 116
Appendix 2 – Measurement of the delay times of the church organ of

St. Anna in Ghent 129
A2.1 Method 132
A2.2 Results 135
A2.3 Discussion 138
A2.4 Conclusions 139
A2.5 Reference bibliography 140
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CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION
Music performance is a highly skilled human activity in which action and perception
are tightly coupled. While playing music, if the primary brain area dedicated to mo-
tor control activates, the auditory area activates too, and vice versa. Coupling of ac-
tion and perception permits the musician to feel immersed in the environment, and to
be able of modifying it to his or her taste just moving on the instrument. Such experi-
ence of immersion strongly relies on sensory feedback, which contributes to the per-
ception of the action-relevant values of the physical energies in the environment. In
particular, auditory feedback has an important role in the matching of produced ac-
tions and perceived ones. In fact, as many studies on delayed auditory feedback
(DAF) report, alterations of auditory feedback timing that introduce asynchronies be-
tween action and perception can profoundly impair performance, to the extent that
musical execution may be interrupted: this phenomenon seems due to the need for
congruency between what is produced and what is perceived.
New technologies for music production are often affected by significant DAF, caus-
ing the musical performance to become more difficult and unsatisfactory. Examples
may be suites for network playing, in which the large communication distances pro-
duce unavoidable latencies. This scenario calls for the search of useful techniques for
playing music with DAF, overcoming the difficulties introduced by the mismatch be-
tween action and perception. I will approach this problem from an ecological, em-
bodied perspective, considering the role of human body as a mediator between the
sonic energy in the environment and the inner world of the performer, made of inten-
tions, meanings, and significations.
In this chapter, I introduce music performance as one of the ultimate human motor
skills (Paragraph 1.1), requiring high motor and cognitive capabilities, and strongly
relying on sensory feedback (Subparagraph 1.1.1). Subparagraph 1.1.2 briefly pre-
sents the cognitive view of music performance as a timed sequence of motor acts:
according to this approach, research on feedback results central in understanding
perception-action coupling mechanisms. In Paragraph 1.2, I discuss the role of feed-
back in the execution of motor acts in general: open-loop and closed-loop models of
motor control are presented. In Paragraph 1.3, I focus on the role of auditory feed-
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back in music performance, reporting the results coming from investigations on mu-
sic performance without auditory feedback (Subparagraph 1.3.1) and under DAF
(Subparagraph 1.3.2). Subparagraph 1.3.3 resumes these findings. Paragraph 1.4
shows how latency affects many electronic instruments and interfaces, so that DAF
contexts are frequently found in the field of music production. Paragraph 1.5 presents
the adopted ecological, embodied approach to the study of DAF affected music per-
formance. Lastly, Paragraph 1.6 describes the organization of the next chapters.
1.1 Music performance
Music performance is a highly skilled activity that involves both cognitive and motor
capabilities and demands for a strict connection between them. The ability of skilled
musicians to coordinate fine body movements to produce complex meaningful se-
quences is often considered as one of the ultimate examples of human motor skills
(Bernstein, 1967; Lashley, 1951). Some musicians are capable of carrying into action
extreme tasks, showing impressive abilities in the control of hand and finger move-
ments. Skilled pianists, for example, can produce movements at rates that exceed
visual reaction times (e.g., in the execution of trills; Lashley, 1951), playing up to 30
sequential notes per second for sustained periods (Rumelhart & Norman, 1982).
High-level playing is based on long-term and intensive rehearsal of motor patterns,
that has the aim of forming an inner space of automatic motor trajectories to be re-
called and generated without paying too much conscious attention to them (Leman,
2007). Decades of regular practise are necessary to completely automate the motor
patterns: the hours of training needed can be roughly estimated at 10,000 (Ericsson,
Krampe, & Tesch-Römer, 1993; Howe, Davisdon, & Sloboda, 1998). The acquired
experience permits good players to focus on musicality - the transmission of the ex-
pressive intentions - rather than on movements and technique. Thoughts, emotions,
aesthetic forms and ideas can thus be communicated to the audience through sounds.
1.1.1 Music performance and sensory feedback
In music performance, a strict correspondence between player’s intentions and gen-

erated sound is necessary for the transmission of the correct musical message. There-
fore, musicians continuously monitor their performance through sensory feedback,
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also when they’re playing solo. Some musical activities like group playing (e.g., or-
chestral music) require in addition the player to coordinate with other musicians, so
that visual and auditory feedback plays a more central role (for the interdependency
between musicians during ensemble performances see Rasch, 1979; 1988). In some
playing styles based on group improvisation (e.g., jazz ensembles, see Figure 1.1)
feedback is absolutely necessary: musicians are often called to decide in real-time
what and how to play basing themselves on the information they collect about what
their colleagues are playing at the same time (e.g., in standard jazz improvisation,
“interdependent routines such as call and response, propagating motifs, supporting
and contrasting dialogs, and a higher level of leader/follower dynamics”; Weinberg,
2002, p. 21). These observations point out the necessity of investigations of the role
of feedback in music performance: is feedback always necessary for playing? Is
feedback used for error correction? Are musicians able to cope with distorted sensory
feedback? In the following paragraphs, relying on the results in literature, I will try to
answer these questions limiting to the case of solo music performance, in which
feedback is not used for inter-subjects coordination.
Figure 1.1 A jazz quartet performance. In improvised group music auditory and vis-
ual feedback have a very central role.
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1.1.2 Music performance as a timed sequence of motor acts
A common approach to the study of human serial behaviours like music performance
or speaking implies a focus on the role of feedback. This kind of serial behaviours
can be viewed as examples of timed sequences of motor acts: research on feedback
investigates how such timed sequences are actually produced, which is indicated by
Lashley (1951) as one of the central problems of cognition. The manner in which
perceived consequences of actions influence the production of subsequent ones is
studied, with the aim of clarifying both planning and production mechanisms. In
general, understanding the role of feedback is crucial for the comprehension of the
relationships between action and perception (see Pfordresher, 2006): this two com-
ponents of human behaviour are simultaneously involved in sequence production,
and require a certain degree of congruency to keep the production fluent and correct.
In the last analysis, understanding the role of feedback is important to clarify the
complex relationships between the inner subjective world of human beings, ex-
pressed through action, and the external reality (even if, as we will see, such a strict
subdivision between inner and outer is somewhat outdated).
1.2 The role of feedback in movement execution
1.2.1 Closed-loop vs open-loop models
The control of motor acts such as musicians’ movements can be explained by two
main theoretical models: the closed-loop model, in which, during a movement, feed-
back is used to control if the goal is being achieved, and the open-loop model, in
which feedback is not used for correctness control. In the closed-loop model, sensory
feedback is necessary since movement control is totally depending on the peripheral
information (feedback control hypothesis): the execution and the completion of an
action is guided by a centralized comparison between the intended movement and the
feedback information. Vice versa, in the open-loop model, execution is centrally
leaded by an abstract representation of the motor sequence stored in memory (motor
program), and feedback can have a role in determining or triggering possible re-
sponses, but not in the guidance of the current movement. An early variant of the
open-loop theory is the response-chaining hypothesis (James, 1890), in which
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movement is composed by a chain of muscular contractions, and the feedback from

one contraction (response-produced feedback) serves as a stimulus for the next con-
traction in the chain. In this approach, sensory feedback, as a trigger, is necessary for
the execution of the movement, in contrast with other open-loop theories according
to which feedback doesn’t have a role at all in the execution phase. It may be of in-
terest for the present discussion to notice that the response-chaining hypothesis pro-
vides an account for the timing among the contractions, very important in skilled ac-
tivities like music performance: such timing, called relative timing, would be deter-
mined by the temporal delays in the various sensory processes (i.e., responses propa-
gation).
Each motor control theory relies on some experimental evidences and is opposed by
others. In general, closed-loop theories give the better account for longer duration
movements, such as driving a car, in which the possibility of error correction is evi-
dent, whereas open-loop theories seem more suitable for explaining rapid move-
ments. The hypothesis of the cohabitation of different types of motor control relies
on the limited velocity of feedback transmission. In fact, though some studies
(Bowman & Combs, 1969; Cohen, Goto, Shanzer & Weiss, 1965; Fuchs & Korn-
huber, 1968) have shown that some kinds of very fast responses – 5 to 10 ms – are
possible, the elapsed time between the error detection and the start of the correction
is estimated on average at 200 ms. During the execution of fast movements, a re-
sponse time of 200 ms is too long to permit feedback to have an active role in error
correction, as stated by closed-loop theories: open-loop theories seem therefore
likely, at least for this class of movements.
1.3 Auditory feedback in music performance
In order to investigate the role of feedback in sound production tasks like music and
speech, audition is the most studied feedback channel. In these kind of tasks, in fact,
the output of the system is sound: therefore, though in music performance visual, tac-
tile and proprioceptive feedback are very important (for the importance of vision in
music performance see Sloboda, 1982; Banton, 1995), audition is the only feedback
channel which consents a direct comparison between the produced action (e.g., a
keypress) and the desired goal. Experimenting with auditory feedback is therefore an
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appropriate solution to test whether open-loop or closed-loop systems are involved in

music production.
The role of auditory feedback in sound sequence production has been investigated
mainly through two experimental approaches. The first one implies a study of the ef-
fects of feedback removal: an impairment of production, in the absence of feedback,
would indicate the necessity of auditory feedback, at least for a correct realization of
the production aspects disrupted by such absence. A second approach consists in
studying the effects of feedback alteration: each sound resulting from a produced ac-
tion is altered, so that the coordination of the auditory feedback with actions is modi-
fied. This experimental paradigm is known as altered auditory feedback (AAF). Al-
terations can occur in the dimensions of time and pitch, where timing alterations in-
troduce an asynchrony between the onset of a produced action and the onset of the
corresponding feedback, whereas in pitch alterations the pitch associated with a pro-
duced action is not the pitch that is normally associated with that action. Both kinds
of alteration can be simultaneously present, giving rise to a combination of onset
asynchrony and unexpected feedback content. The AAF paradigm means to investi-
gate the relationships between action and perception, and, in particular, to answer the
questions about how action and perception are bounded together.
1.3.1 Feedback deprivation
Studies on feedback deprivation seem to show that auditory feedback is not strictly
necessary in music sequence production. In fact, though auditory feedback is shown
to be important in the learning phase (Finney & Palmer, 2003; Highben & Palmer,
2004), other researches indicate that its absence doesn’t significantly impair the pro-
duction of learned sequences (Gates & Bradshaw, 1974; Banton, 1995; Finney, 1997;
Repp, 1999), even for untrained performers (Pfordresher, 2005). However, auditory
feedback may still be necessary in some kinds of fine control, since Repp (1999) re-
ported small effects of its absence on expressive parameters of production. The fact
that auditory feedback doesn’t appear to be necessary in music performance supports
Lashley’s open-loop theory (Lashley, 1951), that, based on the trilling speed of con-
cert pianists, argued for the impossibility of a role of feedback in motor control dur-
ing very fast movements (see also Keele, 1968). However, in the above mentioned
studies on auditory feedback deprivation, the remaining feedback channels were not
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inhibited, so that it could be argued that visual, tactile and proprioceptive feedback
can still guide players’ movement for a correct execution. Nevertheless, feedback
does not have much time to affect execution, which testifies against this hypothesis,
as well as the fact that some kind of activities seem to be executable in absence of
kinesthetic feedback (Keele & Summers, 1976; Lashley, 1951).
To sum up, relying on the results in literature, it seems likely that motor acts in music
performance are memorized through sensing during training, to form an inner space
of motor trajectories (Leman, 2007). These trajectories can be recalled without the
aid of auditory feedback, even if, in this case, a small degradation of fine perform-
ance parameters is possible. For what concerns motor control, a motor program
(open-loop) model is adopted, at least for fast movements: comparison between
feedback and intended results may be used to adapt subsequent actions, but not to
guide the current. On the other hand, closed-loop models can be applied to slower
movements, for which error correction is possible.
1.3.2 Delayed auditory feedback (DAF)
The most extensively studied AAF paradigm consists of introducing a certain delay
between the onset of a produced action and the onset of the corresponding feedback:
this experimental condition is called delayed auditory feedback (DAF). It is well in-
vestigated how DAF strongly disrupts sequence production in many tasks including
music performance, speech, and rhythmic tapping. Two early studies on DAF speech
(Lee, 1950; Black, 1951) reported significant slowing of production rate, increased
sound level, and increased articulatory errors, with a predominance of insertions and
repetitions. Many studies confirmed these and other negative effects of DAF on the
various kind of sequence production tasks. A review of the studies on music per-
formance under DAF is given in Chapter 2.
The introduction of a delay between note onsets and feedback onsets may lead to
three different situations, depending on the relationship between the amount of delay
(delay length) and the inter-onset-intervals (IOIs) duration. First, when the delay
length is shorter than the IOIs duration, the feedback onset of a produced event i oc-
curs before the produced event i  1 : in this case, only the timing of production is
altered. The second case occurs when the delay length is equal to the IOIs duration,
so that the feedback onset of a produced event i is simultaneous to the produced
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event i  1 : in such situation, only the pitch contents are altered. The third case oc-
curs when the delay length is longer than the IOIs duration, and the feedback onset of
a produced event i succeeds the produced event i  1 : in this case, both timing and
pitch alterations are present.
In general, DAF disrupts both temporal relationships between note onsets (timing)
and notes correctness (accuracy). Recently, Pfordresher (2003) showed that altera-
tions of feedback timing disrupt the timing of sequencing more than the accuracy,
whereas alterations of feedback content without asynchrony (e.g., pitch alterations
that occur with DAF when the delay time is equal to the IOIs duration) disrupt accu-
racy but do not influence much timing. These findings suggest that a strict connec-
tion exists between the disrupted aspects of the performance (i.e., timing or accuracy)
and the kind of feedback alteration (i.e., timing or pitch alterations).
Critical interval vs relative time hypothesis
A frequently discussed topic regarding DAF disruption is the kind of dependency

from the amount of delay, and, in particular, the amount of delay that causes maxi-
mal disruption. In the early studies, disruption caused by DAF was found to increase
with the amount of delay up to a certain point, called critical (delay) interval, or de-
lay of maximal impairment, and then to reach asymptote (e.g., in music, Gates, Brad-
shaw, & Nettleton, 1974, found an asymptote around 270 ms,) or to decrease (e.g., in
speech, Fairbanks & Guttman, 1958). These findings have given credit to the so
called absolute time hypothesis, according to which the delay of maximal impairment
occurs when the absolute temporal separation between a produced action ant its
feedback onset falls within a certain temporal window, regardless of the production
rate. Anyway, all experiments on music performance supporting this view have been
using fixed delay lengths, so that, in case of tempo variations or of non-isochronous
pieces, the phase relationships between the timing of produced actions and their rela-
tive feedback onsets would not be constant. Moreover, production rate was usually
not controlled. Recently, Pfordresher & Benitez (2007), using a kind of delay called
adjustable delay, which roughly preserve the phase relationships between actions and
feedback onsets, found that disruption is best predicted by the relative phase location
rather than by the absolute position of feedback onsets. This result gives support to
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the relative time hypothesis, which states that perception and action are coordinated
according to the rhythmic cycles formed by IOIs (cf. Jones, 1976; Robinson, 1972).
Break-point interval
Another discussed issue concerning DAF is which is the minimum delay length
which causes auditory feedback to be actually perceived as delayed and DAF disrup-
tion to become significant. This topic is related to the investigation of temporal
thresholds in perception and cognition. In a classical study on vision, Card, Moran &
Newell (1983) showed that, if two events are connected by an immediate causality
relationship and the perception of the second is progressively delayed, degradation of
immediate causality starts for some subjects as early as 50 ms. Moreover, they found
that, while the perception of immediate causality ends around 100 ms, perception of
delayed causality begins at 50 ms, reaches a peak around 100 ms, and terminates
around 160 ms, threshold after which the events are recognized as independent. Re-
search on the temporal ordering of two distinct stimuli showed that the events re-
quired a minimum of 30 ms to be perceived as successive, regardless of sensory mo-
dality (Poppel, 1997). In the field of music perception, Rasch (1979) observed that
listeners often judge ensemble performance as synchronous despite asynchronies of
30-50 ms.
For what concerns playing an instrument under DAF, Finney (1997) reported that
professional pianists may perceive delay lengths of under 10ms, so that this threshold
is often suggested as the maximum latency for a music controller (Finney, 1997;
Freed, Chaudhary, & Davila, 1997). However, a certain degree of tolerance to higher
latencies is well-documented. Dahl & Bresin (2001), in a study on synchronization
under DAF, individuated between 40 and 55 ms a possible break-point at which DAF
begins to make the performance increasingly difficult. Mäki-Patola & Hämäläinen
(2004), testing the threshold of latency tolerance of subjects playing a theremin (a
continuous sound instrument without tactile feedback), reported that latency started
to be perceived at 30 ms, when comparing to a reference with zero latency. With this
delay length, subjects perceived latency with a high degree of uncertainty; conscious
detection was found to start at 60 ms.
Other studies addressed the break-point interval problem for network duet perform-
ances. In this situation, differently from solo playing, inter-subjects coordination is
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required, so that the effect of DAF is supposed to be even stronger. However, results
do not differ from what found as for solo playing. Chew, Sawchuk & colleagues
(Sawchuk et al., 2003; Chew et al., 2004) found latency tolerance in network playing
to be dependent on both the piece and the instrument played. In general, in such
situations, they suggested a general threshold for latency tolerance at 50 ms. Chafe,
Gurevich, Leslie, & Tyan (2004), quantifying the effects of latency on rhythmic
clapping network performance, showed that the performance is at its best when the
round-trip bi-directional latency is comprised between 20 and 30 ms, and degrades
with higher latencies.
Basing on these empirical results, the interval of delay lengths in the range of 30-60
ms seems therefore to be a plausible break-point for the correct execution of music
performance under DAF. A certain variability is to be taken into account, mostly due
to the kind of instrument and the piece played.
Theoretical implications
In a recent review, Pfordersher (2006) resumed the empirical results on music per-
formance under AAF, and DAF in particular, discussing their theoretical implica-
tions. What clearly emerges from studies on DAF is that, despite the fact that audi-
tory feedback is not necessary for musical sequence production, a certain match be-
tween auditory feedback and produced actions is required when feedback is present.
In other words, congruency between action and perception is needed: miscoordina-
tion between them causes disruption of performance. In particular, it seems that high
impairment from DAF is due to the fact that the feedback sequence is equal in struc-
ture to the planned events sequence, but it is also in conflict with it, since each feed-
back onset occurs simultaneously to the production of events with a different posi-
tion in the planned sequence. In other words, it is likely that DAF disrupts production
by virtue of the interfering effect of perception of events planned for the past on the
current activation of subsequent events for production. This view is strengthened by
research on AAF paradigms different from DAF: manipulations of feedback contents
resulting in a sequence of events highly dissimilar to the planned sequence (extrane-
ous feedback) do not disrupt performance as much as DAF does (Gates & Bradshaw,
1974; Finney, 1997; see Finney 1999 for a review of similar results in speech pro-
duction). Further support comes from the reduced disruption reported by Finney
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(1997) and Pfordresher (2003) for combined alterations of timing and pitch: instead
of a summation of the different effects of asynchrony and changed contents, overall
impairment decreased, suggesting that combined alterations cause the feedback se-
quence to be perceived as unrelated to the planned sequence.
Given these findings, Pfordresher (2006) hypothesizes a new theoretical framework
in which action and perception share a common representation of sequence structure
in memory guiding both the planning of actions and the interpreting of the perceived
consequences of those actions. This theory is consistent with neurophysiological evi-
dence for the so-called mirror neurons, that respond in the same way when humans
or monkeys execute an action and when they perceive the same action executed by
another individual (Rizzolatti, Fogassi & Gallese, 2001; see Leman, 2007, pp. 95-96,
for a brief summary on this topic). Moreover, Pfordresher’s model assumes a basic
functional separation between timing and sequencing (see also Krampe, Mayr &
Kliegl, 2005; MacKay, 1987), thus accounting for the fact that different kinds of
feedback alteration cause different kinds of disruption.
Similarly to the research on feedback deprivation, studies on AAF provide evidence
against the feedback control theories. In fact, if feedback was used for error correc-
tion, any kind of feedback alteration would signal that an error has occurred, thus
causing disruption of performance. Instead, as said, not all alterations of pitch con-
tents strongly affect production. In Pfordresher’s opinion (Pfordresher, 2006), the
problem with classical closed-loop theories is that they focused on the relationships
between feedback and planning limiting the field to individual events, whereas it is
plausible that these relationships involve sequences of actions and concurrent feed-
back sequences.
1.3.3 The role of auditory feedback in musical sequence production
To conclude, research on music performance shows that, in general, auditory feed-

back does not function as a “feedback”, since it is not strictly necessary for musical
sequence production; rather, it is a “recurrent auditory information” (Howell, 2004)
that facilitates learning (Finney & Palmer, 2003) and control of fine nuances of per-
formance (Repp, 1999). However, studies on DAF show that a congruence between
auditory feedback and actions is needed. Citing Pfordresher (2006, p. 195), this con-
gruence perhaps reflects “a more general sensitivity to statistical regularities in the
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environment, including the relationships between actions and correlated perceptual

events”. In fact, according to motor program theories, an internal model of move-
ment trajectories guides the execution of actions, relying on the expected conse-
quences of these actions: incongruences between perceived and planned conse-
quences of actions disrupt production, presumably because of the shared representa-
tion of action and perception in memory. In conclusion, “the way in which people
coordinate perception and action during music performance builds on a general ten-
dency for people to relate action plans to perceptual information” (Pfordresher, 2006,
p. 195).
1.4 New scenarios for the research on music performance affected by

DAF
Normally, as for traditional acoustic instruments, feedback onsets are perceived as

simultaneous with the actions generating them: the sound is directly produced by the
player’s movements, without time-consuming technological mediations, and it is
generated close to the player, at distances on the order of few decimetres or few me-
tres. One remarkable exception is given by church organ, in which mechanical fac-
tors may cause considerable delays – sometimes of hundreds ms (see Appendix 2) -
between the player’s actions and the diffusion of sound. An example of source of la-
tency in the mechanics of church organs is the pressure transmission from the key-
board to the pipes, especially in the organs in which such transmission is pneumatic,
rather than mechanical or electronic.
Recent developments in digital technologies have opened new prospects in which a
DAF condition may be inevitable. In the last two decades, a proliferation of music
instruments and interfaces in which the auditory content is processed, or transmitted
over a network, has forced musicians, instrument makers and developers to cope
with significant latencies: as with church organs, amount of DAF may be on the or-
der of hundreds ms (e.g., in the field of vocal controllers, Hämäläinen, Mäki-Patola,
Pulkki, & Airas, 2004). An important and promising context in which latency is nec-
essarily present is that regarding systems for collaborative network playing such as
duet at a distance (Sawchuk et al., 2003; Chew et al., 2004; Chafe, Gurevich, Leslie,
& Tyan, 2004; Bartlette et al., 2006; Kapur, Wang, Davidson, & Cook, 2005; for re-
27
views see Barbosa, 2003; Follmer, 2002; Weinberg, 2002). Other examples of la-
tency-affected systems for music production may be physical models instruments,
gestures-driven systems for sound generation and control, handheld devices wire-
lessly linked to the Internet and audio services (see Smith, 2001), vocal controllers
for edutainment (Hämäläinen, Mäki-Patola, Pulkki, & Airas, 2004) or sound synthe-
sis (Smith, 2001; Janeer, 2008). In such systems, the introduction of delays is mainly
due to two kinds of constraint (cf. Smith, 2001): first, physical constraints limit the
speed of signal transmission through the various media; second, practical limits af-
fect the speed of signal processing. In suites for network playing, transmission con-
straints are often predominant over processing limits, due to the long distances and to
the fact that round-trip latency also has to be taken into account (Kapur, Wang,
Davidson, & Cook, 2005). Instead, in other latency-affected systems like those cited
above, computation time is usually predominant (e.g., see Smith, 2001). The total la-
tency of a system is given by the sum of all the delays from the source to the user.
Sources of latency are numerous: examples are delays due to conversions (e.g., ana-
logue to digital), features extraction (e.g., pitch detection from an audio stream),
buffering (e.g., of input samples in audio drivers and APIs), internal latencies of sub-
parts of the system (e.g., of applications or sensors), operating systems activities
(e.g., context switching, inter-thread communication). The total latency of a system
may be variable in time, especially in the case of systems for network playing, for the
reason that “long-distance networks with Internet Protocol (IP) routing often result in
asymmetry, jitter and packet loss” (Chafe, Gurevich, Leslie, & Tyan, 2004, p. 4).
1.5 An ecological, embodied approach to the study of music per-

formance with DAF
We saw in Paragraphs 1.3.2 and 1.3.3 that studies on DAF give support to the hy-
pothesis according to which perception and action share a common representation in
memory. This hypothesis merges into the more general notion of coupling of percep-
tion and action, on the basis of which perception it is not merely the sensing of the
physical properties of reality (distal stimuli) through the effect of these properties on
sensory input (proximal stimuli; Brunswik, 1956); instead, perception is considered
as a simulated action, because aspects of the outer world are directly captured in
28
terms of their action-relevant value (called affordance; Gibson, 1979). Duality be-
tween an individual and its environment is therefore overcome by the fact that the
individual can have a direct access (i.e., not mediated by inference and judgement) to
the energies in the environment. This view relies on the observation according to
which knowledge of the outer world itself does not emerge from passive perception,
“but from the need to act in an environment” (Leman, 2007, p.43; this point is well
illustrated by a classic study on kittens by Held & Hein, 1963). The ability to relate
sensory features with the cause that generated them is therefore due to the fact that
perception and action in individuals are not only linked, but they evolved together:
“cognitive structures emerge from the kinds of recurrent sensorimotor pattern that
enable action to be perceptually guided” (Varela, Thompson & Rosch, 1991, p.176).
Many experimental results are giving support to the idea that perception and action
are inseparable in lived cognition, to the extent that they share a common neuronal
events code (cf. Hommel, Müsseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001). Research areas
go from observations on imitation in newborn infants to the discovery of the mirror-
neurons in human and monkeys (for a brief review of results in these fields, see
Leman, 2007, pp. 89-91). In particular, a tight coupling of perception and action is
observed in brain activity during music performance: when the primary motor area is
activated, the primary auditory area activates too, and vice versa (Lotze et al., 2003;
Kristeva et al., 2003; Langheim, Chakarov, Schulte-Mönting, & Spreer, 2002;
Hickok, Buchsbaum, Humphries, & Muftuler, 2003; Haslinger et al., 2005). Playing
music seems therefore “embedded in a goal-directed ontology of involvement with
music” (Leman, 2007, p. 96). Research on DAF, as we showed, brings further argu-
ments in favour of these views.
Given that cognition of human beings is determined by the need to act in an envi-
ronment, with bodies gifted with sensorimotor capabilities and subjected to social
and cultural constraints, Varela, Thompson & Rosch (1991) suggested that the study
of cognition should concern not the recovery or projection of physical features, but
the embodied action. This theoretical approach, called embodied cognition paradigm,
overcomes the classic cognitive tradition, “criticized for its neglect of the action
component in the subject’s involvement with the environment” (Leman, 2007, p. 43).
For what concerns the study of music, Leman (2007) transferred the embodied ap-
proach of Varela, Maturana, and others, to the systematic musicology methods, giv-
29
ing born to the paradigm called embodied music cognition. In embodied music cogni-
tion, individuals engage with music thanks to the fact that, while perceiving sonic
energy, they simulate or imitate moving sonic forms and corporeal articulations:
these evoked bodily gestures have a meaning for the listener “due to his or her per-
sonal history as an active participant within a cultural environment” (Keller & Janata,
2009, p. 289). The aspects of the outer world, music included, are captured in terms
of embodied resynthesis. Thus embodied music cognition focused on the relation-
ships between subjects and their cultural and physical environment, and can be there-
fore considered an ecological approach to music research.
As the term “embodied” underlines, human body has a central role in this paradigm:
physical body is considered as a mediator between the mind, which sees music in
terms of intentions, meanings, and significations, and the energies in the environ-
ment, sonic and not. The possibility of a direct perception of the affordances in the
environment through body gestures causes musical involvement to be based on cor-
poreal articulations. Thereby, the study of all musical activities is centred on the role
of body movement. Among the aims of the embodied approach to musicology is the
search for a mediation technology that links bidirectionally musical energies to ges-
tures. The search is motivated by new digital technologies, in particular real-time in-
teractive music systems (e.g., sensor-based instruments) and information retrieval
techniques.
In light of what is said above, I will approach the study of music performance under
DAF from an embodied perspective: namely, I will investigate the role of body
movement in DAF affected music performance, in particular in helping the musician
to keep the desired timing profile. The hypothesis is that under DAF musician will
attempt to accentuate the feedback modalities important for performance which are
not altered, i.e. visual, tactile and kinesthetic. Stressing movements, concentrating on
the notation, increasing playing intensity may be useful strategies to give less impor-
tance to the auditory channel, through which the misleading information is received.
I will check for possible changes in the periodicity of body movement, in order to in-
vestigate the effect of DAF on this aspect of corporeal articulation. Moreover, I will
verify whether there are individuals capable of playing fluently under DAF, and, in
case, which strategies they adopt. For this reason, some of the participants in the ex-
periment were chosen among expert church organists, who are used to play with
30
relevant amount of DAF. The underlying motivation for this research is that embod-
ied strategies may be an important aid to all the musicians who encountered signifi-
cant DAF while performing on latency-affected electronic interfaces and instru-
ments, such as those mentioned in Paragraph 1.4.
1.6 Thesis organization
The organization of this thesis is the following: Chapter 2 summarizes the existing
empirical results on music performance under DAF. Chapter 3 describes the experi-
mental method followed. In Chapter 4, the extraction of the parameters to analyze is
explained. Chapter 5 provides the experimental results, while Chapter 6 discusses
them and draws some conclusions. Chapter 7 reports the reference bibliography. Two
appendices conclude the thesis: Appendix 1 reports graphics concerning the experi-
mental results of the single subjects, while Appendix 2 describes the measurements
of the amount of DAF of St. Anna church organ, in the city of Gent, Belgium.
31
CHAPTER 2 – EMPIRICAL REVIEW OF MUSIC

PERFORMANCE WITH DAF
In this Chapter, I summarize the experimental results concerning music performance

with DAF. Paragraph 2.1 provides a survey of the existing studies, briefly indicating
the performance parameters studied, the stimulus materials, the experimental condi-
tions, the relevant points about the procedures, and the salient results. In the survey,
only the studies in which the stimulus is a musical piece or a melody are considered:
single-note or tapping performances are not taken into account. In Paragraph 2.2 a
summary of the results is given, considering each of the following aspects of music
performance: accuracy, timing, dynamics, expressivity, body movement.
Before proceeding, I will provide some clarifications about the glossary adopted in
the following sections and in the rest of the thesis. With normal condition, I refer to
an experimental condition in which the auditory feedback is not altered, in contrast
with altered auditory feedback paradigms such as DAF or extraneous auditory feed-
back (cf. Paragraph 1.3). Analogously, silent condition refers to an experimental
condition of feedback deprivation, whereas delayed condition to a DAF paradigm.
Lastly, key velocity (or simply velocity) indicates the MIDI parameter that represents
the force with which a keyboard key is pressed, thus providing a measure of the play-
ing dynamics.
2.1 Literature survey
The first studies on the effect of DAF on music performance were carried out by
Kalmus, Denes & Fry (1955) in a research on clapping under DAF. In their work,
they reported that “exploratory experiments showed that whistling and the playing of
musical instruments were, in fact, strongly influenced by delayed acoustic feed-
back”. The first research explicitly designed to investigate this issue was accom-
plished by Havlicek (1968), who tested the effect of DAF on the number of errors
during sight-reading of unfamiliar musical compositions, as well as the difference in
susceptibility among woodwind, strings, brass and piano performers. With a delay
time of approximately 200 ms, performance under DAF was found to be louder than
32
in a normal condition, it showed increased IOIs, and included more errors. Perform-
ance was disrupted for all instruments used.
Gates, Bradshaw and colleagues have performed a number of studies concerning
DAF and music playing. As reported by Finney (1999) in his review, in their ex-
periments subjects were asked to play “as fast as possible” a practiced piece from no-
tation. The dependent variable was the total elapsed time necessary to perform the
piece. In a study focused on the left-right differences between ears, Bradshaw, Net-
tleton & Geffen (1971) tested the effects of different delays on a piano performance
combining normal auditory feedback with DAF. 200 ms delay was found to be more
disruptive than 400, 550, 750 and 1100 ms delays. Gates & Bradshaw (1974), study-
ing subjects performing an etude on an electronic organ, found that a performance
under 180 ms DAF took longer than a performance with normal feedback. Another
aim of this study was to find out whether a difference between genders subsist in
auditory perception, with the result that no significant difference was found. Gates,
Bradshaw and Nettleton (1974) compared the effect on keyboard performance of 12
different delay times, equally spaced between 100 and 1000 ms, in a task combining
normal auditory feedback with DAF. They found that disruption in total elapsed time
increased with delay length and reached asymptote at 270 ms. In this regard, it is im-
portant to point out that the individual rate of playing was not controlled, though a
post-hoc analysis suggested that the slower and the faster players were similarly af-
fected. Another result was the reported tendency to repeat individual notes or to in-
sert an extra note that, for instance, extended a scale passage one note beyond its cor-
rect conclusion. Insertions and repetitions never comprised more than a single note.
This fact can be correlated with the increased total elapsed time, insofar as insertions
and repetitions can be viewed as two of the factors which cause the performance to
be completed in a longer period of time.
Finney (1997) examined performances of Bach pieces by trained pianists under 250
ms DAF condition. Individual subjects were asked to play at their preferred tempo
“without expressive variations”. Performances were significantly disrupted by DAF
in different ways including note errors, total elapsed time, key velocity and interhand
coordination: more errors were made, production rate was slower, and key velocity
was higher. Approximately 60% of the total note errors under the DAF condition
were insertions. Finney also studied the case of DAF mixed with random pitch al-
33
terations, finding a reduced impairment in comparison with the simple DAF condi-
tion.
Pfordresher and colleagues have performed a number of studies on the coordination
of perception and action in music performance, providing different auditory feed-
backs to subjects playing on an electronic keyboard. In contrast with the methods of
the previous research, which used real piano pieces as stimulus material, they chose
simple isochronous melodies of 8 or 12 quarter notes to be performed with the right
hand only, appositely “designed to be easy to produce and repeatable without
changes in hand position”. The musicians were asked to play the melodies in a “flat”
way (mechanically), so that possible increased timing variability could be considered
as an evidence of disruption.
Pfordresher & Palmer (2002) focused on the effect of DAF on the timing of music
performance, and in particular on the phase relationships between produced onsets
and auditory feedback. In Experiment 1, they had pianists performing melodies at
two production rates (600 ms and 500 ms IoIs) with different amounts of DAF (0,
100, 150, 200, 250, 300 and 350 ms). Timing variability of performances was meas-
ured through the coefficient of variation, CV (standard deviation of IOIs/mean IOI).
The results show a general increase in timing variability with the amount of delay,
with a relatively reduced timing variability for .5 phase ratio (twice the amount of
DAF) for the 500 ms IOIs production rate (but not for the 600 ms). In Experiment 2,
pianists had to choose the preferred tempo with 200, 250, 300 and 350 ms delays.
Performers chose slower rates for larger delays, with the preferred rate approximated
twice the amount of DAF (.5 phase ratio). In Experiment 3, Pfordresher & Palmer
tested whether instructions to mentally subdivide produced events in two or three dif-
ferent blocks lead to a reduced disruption. The experiment included four delay condi-
tions (none, 200, 300 and 400 ms) at the 600 ms IOIs production rate. As in Experi-
ment 1, they found that temporal variability increased with DAF. A second relevant
finding was that a deliberate subdividing reduced the timing variability with longer
feedback delays. Finally, they failed to demonstrate a reduction of DAF disruption
when feedback onsets coincided with planned subdivisions, in contrast with the re-
sult of reduced disruption for .5 phase found in Experiment 1.
Pfordresher (2003) used a new kind of delay, named phase shift (or adjustable de-
lay), that adjusted to produced timing so that feedback onsets maintained a roughly
34
consistent relative phase position within produced IOIs. In Experiment 1, phase

shifted tones occurred after their associated keystrokes but before the subsequent
ones. The phase shifts used were of .33, .50 and .66, with respect to the expected
IOIs. Results showed that, in comparison with a normal feedback performance, phase
shifts increased timing variability and slowed production rate, while error rates were
only marginally increased. However, error rates did increase with the amount of
phase shift, with most errors occurring with a .66 phase shift. In Experiment 2, audi-
tory feedback onsets and produced keystrokes were synchronous, but feedback
pitches were altered to match pitches associated with earlier keystrokes by a lag of
one, two or three events (serial shift). Alterations of feedback pitch without asyn-
chrony were found to increase errors but not to influence produced timing. Experi-
ment 3 incorporated combined phase and serial shifts, which caused a moderate dis-
ruption of timing and accuracy and revealed interactive effects of serial and phase
shifts on production.
Pfordresher & Palmer (2006) explored the effects of serial shifts on music perform-
ance in case of pitches matching events intended both for the past (delays) and for
the future (prelays). The trials tested the feedback distance of 1 to 3 events in both
feedback directions (past and future). All alterations disrupted the accuracy of the
performance more than timing. Overall disruption was not influenced by feedback
distance or by whether feedback events originated from past or future events. The
specific kind of errors, anticipatory or perseveratory, was found to depend on feed-
back direction: future feedback increased perseveratory errors, while past feedback
increased anticipatory errors.
Pfordresher & Benitez (2007) investigated whether disruption from DAF reflects the
phase location of feedback onset or the absolute temporal separation between actions
and sounds. Non skilled participants had to play simple isochronous melodies or to
tap an isochronous beat at the production rates of 330, 500 and 660 ms IOIs. In Ex-
periment 1 fixed delays of 330, 500 and 660 ms and adjustable delays of 66%, 100%
and 132% of the produced IOIs were used. Experiment 2 presented the same condi-
tions as Experiment 1, except for shorter delays, appositely “designed to form a dis-
tribution around lengths that should cause maximal disruption according to the abso-
lute time hypothesis” (see Paragraph 1.3.2): 165, 250 and 330 ms for fixed delays
and 33%, 50% and 66% of produced IOIs for adjustable delays. For both delay types,
35
results showed that disruption was best predicted by the phase location of feedback
onsets, and it decreased when feedback onsets formed harmonic phase ratios (phase
synchrony). In contrast with a finding of Pfordresher & Palmer (2002, Experiment
2), no relative advantage was found for .5 phase ratio. Finally, different movement
tasks (melody production versus tapping) led to slightly different patterns of disrup-
tion across phase.
Moelants, Demey and Leman (2009), in a research for which the present study was a
preliminary investigation, had 10 professional musicians performing four different
pieces of piano music on an digital piano, with DAF of 200 and 300 ms. The pieces
were “Für Elise” by L. van Beethoven, “Sonatina op.36/1” by M. Clementi, “Bulgar-
ian Rhythm (Microcosmos 113)” by B. Bartok, and “Sarabande in g-minor” by G. F.
Händel. The analyzed aspects were dynamics, tempo per measure, amount of asyn-
chrony (between notes notated on the same point in the score), errors (order errors,
deletions, wrong notes, insertions), and upper body movements. In all pieces they
reported a significant increase, with the DAF conditions, in both key velocity and
measures duration. In three pieces out of four, other significant differences with re-
spect to the normal condition were observed: increased measures duration variability,
increased amount of asynchrony, with a larger asynchrony in the 300 ms delay, and
increased errors (insertions in particular). In the slowest piece, the Händel Sarabande,
no significant effects of DAF on these parameters were found. Head movements
showed a significant increase in the delayed condition in three of the pieces played,
with exception of the piece by Clementi.
2.2 Summary
All the studies evidenced that DAF profoundly disrupts performance, “to the extent
that a skilled performer sounds like a beginner” (Pfordresher 2006). I will now sum-
marize the reported effects of DAF on some specific aspects of music performance -
keyboard performance in particular - in comparison to normal auditory feedback per-
formances. These aspects include accuracy, timing, dynamics, and performer’s body
movement.
36
2.2.1 Accuracy
Many studies in which fixed delays and real musical pieces were used (Havlicek,
1968; Gates, Bradshaw & Nettleton, 1974; Finney, 1997; Moelants, Demey &
Leman, 2009) reported an increased number of pitch errors in performance under
DAF, with a preponderance of insertions/repetitions. Other kinds of pitch errors ac-
centuated by DAF are deletions, wrong notes, order errors (Moelants, Demey &
Leman, 2009). It seems therefore proved that DAF disrupts the accuracy of music
performance. Despite that, Pfordresher (2003, Experiment 1) showed that the number
of errors in an performance increased only marginally with .33, .50 and .66 phase
shifts. A likely explanation for this apparent contradiction is that Pfordresher used
adjustable delays instead of fixed ones, as well as simple isochronous melodies in-
stead of real pieces, reaching thus a rough control over the phase location of the
feedback onset, otherwise difficult to guarantee. It seems indeed that error rates in-
crease with phase shift from the expected feedback onset (Pfordresher 2003, Experi-
ment 1), and that significantly higher error rates are found when feedback onsets are
synchronous with subsequent produced events (serial shifts, see Pfordresher, 2003).
Therefore, the position of feedback onsets relative to produced time intervals influ-
ences the number of errors more than their absolute temporal position (cfr.
Pfordresher & Benitez, 2007; the dependence of error rates on the piece-delay length
combination in Moelants, Demey, & Leman, 2009, seems to give further support to
this thesis).
2.2.2 Timing
All previous studies reported that DAF disrupts timing aspects of music perform-
ance. In particular, a striking and well-documented effect of the DAF condition on
instrument playing is the slowing of the production rate (Havlicek, 1968; Gates &
Bradshaw, 1974; Gates, Bradshaw & Nettleton, 1974; Finney 1997; Moelants, De-
mey & Leman, 2009). Another relevant effect is the increase in timing variability
(Pfordresher & Palmer, 2002; Pfordresher, 2003; Moelants, Demey & Leman, 2009).
As noticed in the previous paragraph, in some studies timing disruption and increase
in error rates may be correlated since repetitions and insertions would cause longer
performances. Nevertheless, researches in which error affected performances are re-
37
moved from the analysis show that timing aspects of the performance are disrupted
anyway (Pfordresher & Palmer, 2002; Pfordresher, 2003; Pfordresher & Benitez,
2007). For what concerns the dependence of timing disruption on the amount of de-
lay, once again the relative position of feedback onsets with respect to produced IOIs
predicts disruption better than their absolute position (Pfordresher & Benitez, 2007).
In general, timing disruption increases with the temporal separation of feedback on-
sets from produced actions, it reaches its maximum when feedback onsets approach
the time of the subsequent produced action, and significantly decreases when feed-
back onsets and produced actions are in phase synchrony. Pfordresher & Palmer
(2002) indicated a reduced impairment also for .5 phase ratio (anti-phase coordina-
tion), but this result was not confirmed by other experiments (Pfordresher, 2003;
Pfordresher & Benitez, 2007).
2.2.3 Dynamics
All research on DAF and music playing which considered dynamics aspects of per-
formance (Havlicek, 1968; Finney, 1997; Moelants, Demey & Leman, 2009) re-
ported significant increase in the playing intensity.
2.2.4 Expressivity
At the current state of the art, no research has explicitly focused on the effects of
DAF on expressivity. However, it can be argued that expressiveness is also debili-
tated by DAF, at least because it can be considered as a sum of timing and dynamics
deviations from a “flat” performance (constant tempo and intensity), and both timing
and dynamics are shown to be disrupted by DAF.
2.2.5 Body movement
The only study focusing on body movement (Moelants, Demey & Leman, 2009) re-
ports a significant increase in head movement in three out of four of the tested musi-
cal pieces.
38
39
CHAPTER 3 - METHOD
In this Chapter, I present the experimental method followed in the investigation. 16

keyboard players were asked to play a piece on an electronic piano under three dif-
ferent auditory conditions: first under a normal auditory feedback condition, then
without any auditory feedback, in the end with a feedback delay of 300 ms. Execu-
tions were recorded in MIDI format. Body movement was recorded with two sen-
sors, one positioned on the forehead and the other on the chest of the subjects. All the
experiments took place at IPEM in Ghent, Belgium. Figure 3.1 shows a participant
during the experiment.
Figure 3.1 A screenshot from the video recording of the experiment.

40
3.1 Subjects
16 adult musicians, numbered from 1 to 16, took part in the experiment. They were
given some University Cinema tickets as an incentive. The data from subject 1 were
discarded because MIDI and sensors data relative to his performances were not accu-
rately synchronized. Therefore, only the data of subjects from 2 to 16 were exam-
ined. 8 subjects were male, 7 were female. The average age was 30.6 years, ranging
from 18 to 71. It is possible to divide participants into two subgroups, depending on
whether they played the organ or not. A first group of eight participants (subjects
from 2 to 9) was composed of pianists recruited at the Conservatory and at the Uni-
versity of Ghent, Belgium. None of them had experience with organ playing. The
remaining seven participants (subjects from 10 to 16) were organists from the Ghent
and the Antwerp communities. For three subjects of this second group, organ was not
the only keyboard instrument played: subject 13 and 15 were also pianists, and sub-
ject 16 was also a harpsichord player. Only three subjects, within this group, had a
long-lasting experience with organ: subject 10, 11 and 12. Instead, subjects from 13
to 16 had studied the organ for less than three years. The average years of keyboard
studying among all the 15 subjects, regardless of the kind of keyboard instrument
played, was 18.1 years, ranging from 2 to 60. These data are represented in Table
3.1.
41
Subject Age Sex Piano Pipe Harpsicord Keyboard

Organ Instruments
Years Years Years Years
2 35 M 28 28
3 19 F 10 10
4 22 M 9 9
5 20 M 12 12
6 26 F 16 16
7 23 F 15 15
8 31 M 11 11
9 23 F 12 12
10 51 M 25 25
11 71 M 60 60
12 43 M 31 31
13 18 F 7 1 7
14 27 M 2 2
15 28 F 20 2 20
16 22 F 2 13 13
Mean 30.6 18.1
St. Dev. 14.5 14.1
Table 3.1 Subjects’ ID, age, sex, and years of keyboard instruments studying.
3.2 Stimulus material
An excerpt of the well-known “Sarabande”, from the “Harpsichord Suite IV in D

Minor HWV 437” by George Friedrich Händel, served as stimulus material. The
sarabandes are slow and grand Baroque stylized dances in triple meter, very popular
in the European courts of the 17th and 18th century. They were characterized by ac-
cents on the second beat of each measure. The second and the third beats were often
tied, giving the dance a distinctive rhythm of quarter and halves notes in alternations.
Händel’s “Sarabande” was written around 1703-06 and was first published in 1733.
Originally composed for harpsichord, it can be played on the piano with excellent re-
sults, and transcriptions for organ are common too. The excerpt used as stimulus was
constituted by the first 16 measures of the piece, a period made of two parallel
phrases: the first phrase ends with a half cadence, while the second ends with a per-
fect authentic cadence. Every phrase can be divided in 4 sub-phrases of 2 measures
42
each, with a rhythm typical of the sarabandes of Händel’s early years (cf. Burrows,
1997): . The piece was notated in the key of D minor and featured a 3/2
meter. It had to be performed with both hands. The score given to the musician is
showed in Figure 3.2. The chosen tempo of the execution, 56 bpm per half note, was
also indicated.
Figure 3.2 The excerpt of the “Sarabande” by Händel used as stimulus material.
The total number of notes to play was 165, the total number of IOI 64. The maxi-
mum IOIs values were found in connection with quarter notes: in this cases, the
nominal IOI value at 56 bpm was 536 ms. 
The piece was chosen after a pilot experiment in which a skilled pianist executed
three pieces with different characteristics: besides the “Sarabande”, “Für Elise” and
“33 Veräderungen uber einen Walzer von A. Diabelli” by Ludwig van Beethoven.
“Sarabande” was chosen for various reasons. First, it is a Baroque piece for harpsi-
chord (sustain pedal is not needed), but commonly played on organ and piano too.
Therefore, every keyboard player can perform it regardless of the specific instrument
studied. The second reason is that the “Sarabande” is an easy piece to play, within
the capacity of every fairly skilled keyboard player. Third reason, from the analysis
of the pilot study “Sarabande” was found to be easier to analyze than the other
pieces. In fact, it is a slow and majestic piece, in which different chords and notes are
clearly detectable, so that it is straightforward to divide the piece in different sub-
units, referring to the score. For the same reason, note errors are less frequent and, if
present, easy to find. The fourth and last advantage of using the “Sarabande” is that
43
at the chosen tempo of 56 bpm the maximum nominal IOI is of 536 ms: considering
a delay time of 300 ms for the DAF condition (the delay time actually used), IOIs are
always longer than the delay time. Therefore, every feedback onset associated with a
produced event i is asynchronous with i but precedes the produced event i  1 (see
Figure 3.3). This fact is important because the opposite situation, namely the feed-
back onset of a produced event i following the produced event i  1 (IOIs shorter than
delay time), would have caused feedback to be altered not only in phase but also in
pitch. Pfordresher (2003, cf. Paragraph 1.3.2) demonstrated that DAF disruption in
the case of pitch shifts is different from disruption in case of phase shifts: while the
first primarily disrupts sequencing, the second primarily disrupts timing. If a faster
piece like “Für Elise” had been chosen, both kind of alterations would have been pre-
sent. In such circumstances disruption may reflect both feedback timing and pitch, in
this way complicating the analysis of the influencing factors. The choice of the slow
“Sarabande” as stimulus material permitted us to avoid this problem.
1071 1607 536 Planned IOIs
300 871 300 1407 300 236

Produced Onsets /
Feedback Onsets
Intervals
    Feedback Onsets
     Produced Onsets

1071 1607 536
0 536
(=) Time (ms)
Figure 3.3 Relationships between produced onsets and feedback onsets within the
main rhythmic figure of the “Sarabande”, assuming a 56 bpm tempo
44
3.3 Conditions
Each subject performed the chosen piece under three different auditory condition:
normal feedback, silent feedback and delayed feedback (DAF). Under the DAF con-
dition, the sound of each keystroke was heard at a fixed delay time of 300 ms after
the absolute time of the event production. Being the piece not isochronous, the rela-
tionships between IOIs and delay time are variable (see Figure 3.3): at the chosen
tempo of 56 bpm, delay time corresponded to 56% of quarter notes IOIs, to 28% of
half notes IOIs, and to 19% of dotted half notes IOIs. The delay time was chosen af-
ter a basic statistical analysis of the data of the pilot experiment (cf. Paragraph 3.2),
in which the pianist tested the pieces with 8 different delay times: 90, 140, 190, 240,
290, 340, 490, and 890 ms. From the data analysis values around 300 ms (290, 340
ms) resulted to work well with the slow “Sarabande”. In fact, lower values had less
influence on the performance, whereas higher values caused the problem of the over-
lapping of phase shifts and pitch shifts discussed in the previous paragraph.
3.4 Equipment
The subjects performed the piece on a Yamaha P60 weighted-key digital keyboard,
which simulates the feel of an acoustic piano. The keyboard was connected to a per-
sonal computer via a M-Audio MIDI USB Interface. The computer used was a Fu-
jitsu Siemens laptop endowed with a AMD Sempron 3000+ processor clocked at 798
MHz and 992 MB of RAM. The audio card was an external Creative Sound Blaster
Audigy 2 NX. An electronic Korg MA-30 metronome was used to suggest subjects
the performance tempo. No sustain pedal was used. Under normal conditions, the
subjects heard the auditory feedback directly from the piano speakers. Under this cir-
cumstance, the selected sound patch was Grand Piano 1, a preset patch simulating a
standard acoustic piano timbre. The sound intensity was kept at the same level with
all the subjects. The silent condition was obtained just lowering the volume control
to zero (the feedback due to the physical key noise from the keyboard wasn’t taken
into consideration). The DAF condition was obtained writing a Pure Data patch (see
Figure 3.4) which synthesized the incoming MIDI notes after a settable time interval.
To set up the system and create such condition, the interval was first set equal to
45
zero: in this way it was possible to measure the intrinsic delay of the system formed
by piano, MIDI interface and computer audio card. Then, appropriate values were
added to this intrinsic delay, in order to obtain the desired delay times. The notes
synthesized by the audio card were played by two speakers positioned over the key-
board ones. The synthesizer sound timbre was chosen and balanced in order to be as
similar as possible to the Yamaha P60 Grand Piano 1. The volume was kept ap-
proximately equal to the volume of the piano speakers under normal conditions.
Keystroke MIDI data were collected using the same Pure Data patch used to generate
the delayed auditory feedback condition (Figure 3.4).
Figure 3.4 The Pure Data patch used to record MIDI data and to add the delay time
Movement data were detected through two MT Xsens sensors capable of calculating
the Tait–Bryan angles yaw, pitch and roll in real time, as well as outputting cali-
brated 3D linear acceleration; one sensor was positioned on the forehead of the sub-
46
jects, the other one on the chest. In Figure 3.5 a representation of the Tait-Bryan an-
gles relative to the human head movements is shown.
Figure 3.5 The Tait–Bryan angles yaw, pitch and roll relative to the human head
movements.
One more sensor was used to synchronize MIDI and sensors data. Data extraction
was performed with Matlab R2007b, whereas data analysis was performed with
Matlab R2007b and SPSS 15.0. All the experiments were recorded with a JVC MG-
30 digital camera.
3.5 Procedure
After the selection, each subject was given a few days to learn the score of the ex-
cerpt (Figure 3.2). At that moment no explanation was given about the specific ex-
periment to be conducted. Subjects were then tested individually. First, they were
given a pre-questionnaire to examine their musical training and background. Sensors
were then positioned on forehead and chest of the players using elastic bands. Before
starting the measurements, each player had the possibility of training some minutes,
with the musical notation present. Only in this training phase, a metronome beat in-
dicated the players the suggested tempo of 56 bpm. They weren’t asked to strictly
47
keep the tempo during the execution, but to use it just as a starting reference, and
then add all the timing expressiveness (accelerando, rallentando) they considered ap-
propriate. They were also told to avoid the use of non-written ornaments such as trills
or passing notes. Another indication given was not to stop in case of errors, but to
continue the execution until the end of the piece, trying to keep the desired execution
rate. After the training phase, the metronome was stopped, while the notation was
left available on the note-holder. The three auditory conditions (normal, silent and
delayed feedback) were executed in succession, with short breaks in between to con-
sent the necessary changing in the experimental apparatus. Each condition was de-
scribed to the subjects just before the start of the respective recordings. For each
condition, the start of the recordings was given pressing sharply the A0 key of the pi-
ano with a sensor. This action had the specific function of consenting the subsequent
finding of a temporal relationship between the MIDI and the sensors data streams:
during the data extraction phase, the A0 keystroke time recorded by the MIDI was
bound to the time of the vertical acceleration peak recorded by the sensor, thus ob-
taining a sufficiently precise temporal coordination between the two streams. In the
continuation of the thesis, I will refer to the sensor used to strike the A0 key as to the
coordination sensor. If a player stopped in the middle of a recording, the execution
under that condition was restarted from the beginning, and, in case, restarted again,
until a complete execution was recorded for each condition. After the measurements
phase, a post-questionnaire was given to subjects, to express their subjective impres-
sions about the experienced conditions. In particular, questions were asked about the
difficulty of the tasks, the emotions felt in the various conditions, the degree of ex-
pressiveness added to the piece, and the strategies adopted to cope with the delay.
48
49
CHAPTER 4 – DATA ANALYSIS
In this chapter, I describe the techniques adopted to extract the parameters to be ana-
lyzed, starting from the recorded data. A Matlab script was written for this purpose.
Such script first imported both MIDI and movement data, respectively from the .txt
files outputted by the Pure Data patch and from the .log files outputted by the MT
software. MIDI and movement data where then synchronized following the method
described in Subparagraph 4.2.1. Working on the imported data, the Matlab script
extracted all the parameters of relevance for the subsequent analysis. Some of these
parameters are calculated with reference to musical measures: such parameters are
tempo, average key velocity, and average intensity of movement (IoM) of head and
chest. The calculation of tempo and average key velocity is described in Paragraph
4.1, whereas calculation of IoM is explained in Subparagraph 4.2.2. For what con-
cerns the periodicity of the movement, the Fourier spectra of the head pitch signals
were calculated. The focus was placed on the spectral magnitude of three particularly
relevant frequencies: the frequencies corresponding to 1-beat, 1-measure, and 2-
measures periodicities. These spectral values are of interest because possible peaks in
correspondence to them would signify regular movements of the head in relation to
the metrical subdivision of the piece. The Fourier analysis is described more in detail
in Subparagraph 4.2.3.
4.1 MIDI data
The Matlab script automatically extracts from the MIDI data the first note of each
measure, to obtain a subdivision per measure of all the notes of the performance (see
Figure 4.1). For each measure, the first note was chosen as the first note played be-
tween the notes belonging to the nominal first chord of the measure. Subdivision per
measure was then checked manually, to correct the errors due to missing or wrong
notes.
50
Figure 4.1 MIDI piano-roll view of an execution of the Händel’s “Sarabande”. The
vertical dotted lines indicate the starting point of each measure.
Starting from such subdivision, average tempo (in bpm) and key velocity were calcu-
lated for each measure. Given a measure k, the average tempo for this measure was
calculated with the following formula, where sp (k ) indicates the starting point (in s)
of the k-th measure relative to the start of the performance, and QPM indicates the
number of quarters per measure (in our case, QPM is constant and equal to 3):
1
tempo(k )   60 . (4.1)
sp (k  1)  sp (k ) 
QPM
The average key velocity of each measure was calculated as the average of the key
velocity of all the notes belonging to the measure.
51
4.2 Movement data
4.2.1 Synchronization of MIDI and movement data streams
As written in Paragraph 3.5, before every performance a striking of the A0 key with
the coordination sensor was used to relate MIDI data with movement data streams.
The timing of the peak in the vertical acceleration of the coordination sensor (Figure
4.2), approximately indicating the moment of contact between the key and the key-
bed (cf. Goebl & Palmer, 2008, case of pressed touch), was taken as starting point
for the movement recording, and bound together with the timing of the correspond-
ing keystroke recorded by the MIDI.
Figure 4.2 The peak in the vertical acceleration of the coordination sensor due to the
striking of the A0 key.
Having established in this way a temporal relationship between movement and MIDI
data, the starting points of each measure, extracted from the MIDI, were bound with
52
the corresponding samples in the movement data stream, so that a subdivision per
measure of the movement data was obtained (Figure 4.3).
Figure 4.3 Subdivision per measure of the head angles data stream. Dotted vertical
lines indicate the starting point of each measure.
4.2.2 Intensity of movement
Moving from the 3D linear acceleration data stream, the absolute value of the jerk
(i.e., the temporal derivative of the acceleration) was taken into consideration as a
measure of the intensity of the movement, IoM:
 da 2 2 2
 da x   da y   da z 
IoM  j    
  
   , (4.2)
dt  dt   dt   dt 

where j is the jerk. IoM values were then averaged over each measure.
53
4.2.3 Head pitch periodicity
For what concerns the movement angles, only the pitch of the head has been taken
into consideration during the analysis. The reason for this choice is that normally up-
down movements (pitch) of the player’s head are more related to the time-keeping
process and to the transmission of expressivity than left-right head movements (yaw)
and lateral head oscillations (roll). This point was experimentally confirmed by the
fact that head pitch shows much clear periodicities than yaw and roll, and that these
periodicities are more related to the subdivision of the music in measures and beats
(e.g., see Figure 4.3, in which pitch exhibits a periodicity related to measures). For
analogue reasons, chest angles were not considered. Before proceeding with the Fou-
rier analysis, some manipulations were done on the original head pitch signals. First,
head pitch data were resampled with linear interpolation so that each measure of each
performance contained the same number of samples. Second, signals were averaged
to zero, to cancel the 0 Hz components of their Fourier spectra. Third, signals were
zero-padded using a zero-padding factor (zpf) of 4, which was found to be the mini-
mum zpf needed to obtain spectral values in the three frequencies of interest for our
investigation. It has to be noticed that, thanks to the precise subdivision per measure
operated on each performance (cf. Paragraph 4.1), as well as to the fact that after the
resampling each measure has the same number of head pitch samples, calculated fre-
quencies for 1-measure and 2-measures are directly proportional to the actual meas-
ure frequency of performances. On the other hand, beat frequency is calculated di-
viding the 1-measure frequency for QPM, therefore resulting in an approximation of
the actual beat frequency in the performances. 4-zero-padding resampled head pitch
signals were then transformed with a FFT algorithm. The magnitude of the Fourier
transforms was normalized so that the sum of all the samples of each transform was
one. For the three relevant frequencies, a weight w was calculated as the ratio be-
tween the spectral magnitude for that frequency and the overall standard deviation of
the spectrum. An example of the resulting Fourier spectrum is shown in Figure 4.4.
54
Figure 4.4 Normalized FFT of the resampled head pitch signal of Figure 4.3. The
highest peak is in correspondence to the 1-measure frequency. The weight (w) of the
relevant frequencies indicates the ratio between the signal magnitude for such fre-
quencies and the overall standard deviation.
55
CHAPTER 5 – RESULTS
In the present chapter, I will proceed with the statistical analysis of the effect of si-
lent and delayed auditory feedback on the extracted parameters, first considering, for
each experimental condition and each parameter, the data from all the subjects as a
single distribution. Although there are individual differences between pianists, and it
can be expected that the capability to cope with delay will depend on personal factors
(e.g. skills or education), it is assumed that most pianist will respond in a similar way
depending on the condition. The technique chosen to investigate this hypothesis is a
one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). In Paragraph 5.1, the one-way ANOVA
will be performed on those parameters for which we extracted values per measure
(cf. Chapter 4): tempo, average key velocity, average head and chest IoM. In Para-
graph 5.2, for each of the expressive parameters of the performance (tempo and aver-
age velocity), the correlations between the various conditions will be calculated, to
check how similar these parameters result in each pair of corresponding measures. In
this way, we intend to investigate possible dissimilarities in the expressive content of
the performances in the different conditions. Another way to look for different ex-
pressive contents is to compare the average timing and dynamics profiles: this will be
done in Paragraph 5.3, only with a descriptive purpose, due to the small sizes of the
considered distributions. Finally, in Paragraph 5.4, individual results will be summer-
ized. Subparagraph 5.4.1 will focus on tempo and velocity, Subparagraph 5.4.2 on
the intensity of movement, while Subparagraph 5.4.3 will report the results of the pe-
riodicity analysis.
5.1 One-way ANOVA of tempo, dynamics, and intensity of move-

ment against the experimental condition as factor
5.1.1 Exploratory data analysis
In Figure 5.1, the boxplots of tempo, average key velocity, head and chest IoM by
experimental condition are shown. The graphics indicate that, in the case of tempo,
velocity, and chest IoM, the normality of the distributions can be accepted, although
56
with some uncertainty. This is not the case, however, of the movement of the head:
especially in the delayed case, a large amount of extreme values and outliers is pre-
sent. After an inspection of the individual sequence plots, it was found that there are
3 participants (subjects 8, 11 and 12) who moved a lot more their head in the delayed
case, in comparison with the other participants (Figure 5.2). The effect of these 3
subjects on the distributions can be seen when they are excluded from the analysis
(Figure 5.3).
a b
c d
Figure 5.1 Boxplots of tempo (a), average velocity (b), head IoM (c) and chest IoM
(d) by experimental condition (from left to right: normal, silent delayed).
57
Figure 5.2 Example of difference in the head movement (left subject 5, right subject
8).
a b
c d
Figure 5.3 Boxplots of tempo (a), average velocity (b), head IoM (c) and chest IoM
(d) by experimental condition (from left to right: normal, silent delayed), without
subjects 8, 11 and 12.
In the following sections, a one-way ANOVA is used to look for effects of the ex-
perimental condition on the measured variables. In order to have an idea about the
58
impact of subject 8, 11 and 12, the ANOVA is performed on the whole dataset and
on the dataset excluding subjects 8, 11 and 12.
5.1.2 Homogeneity of variances
In order to choose the correct settings for the analysis, a Levene's test of homogene-
ity of variances is performed (see Table 5.1). All significances are lower than 0.05
for both analyses. This means that homogeneity of variance cannot be assumed.
Therefore, a Tamhane's T2 post hoc test instead of a Tukey test is used in the
ANOVA analysis (the Tamhane’s test uses the Welch procedure for determining de-
grees of freedom for the standard error of the contrast; this test is based on the Stu-
dent’s t distribution and the Sidak procedure is applied to find the alpha level).
Test of Homogeneity of Variances - All Cases
Levene Statistic df1 df2 Sig.
Tempo 6,528 2 672 ,002
Average velocity 4,855 2 672 ,008
HD_Iom 42,367 2 672 ,000
CH_Iom 12,334 2 672 ,000
Test of Homogeneity of Variances - 8, 11 and 12 excluded
Levene Statistic df1 df2 Sig.
Tempo 4,366 2 537 ,013
Average velocity 8,778 2 537 ,000
HD_Iom 3,563 2 537 ,029
CH_Iom 9,847 2 537 ,000
Table 5.1 Levene’s tests.
5.1.3 ANOVA table
Table 5.2 and 5.3 are respectively the ANOVA tables for the all cases and for the se-
lected cases (subject 8, 11 and 12 excluded). The low significance values provide
evidence of significant differences between the experiments for both analyses.
59
Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Tempo Between Groups 5818,287 2 2909,143 48,256 ,000
Within Groups 40511,627 672 60,285
Total 46329,914 674
Average velocity Between Groups 11524,866 2 5762,433 49,700 ,000
Within Groups 77915,005 672 115,945
Total 89439,871 674
Head_Iom Between Groups 1,178 2 ,589 52,971 ,000
Within Groups 7,473 672 ,011
Total 8,651 674
Chest_Iom Between Groups ,259 2 ,130 25,652 ,000
Total 3,657 674
Table 5.2 Anova table comprising all cases.
Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Tempo Between Groups 5943,931 2 2971,966 44,601 ,000
Within Groups 35782,539 537 66,634
Total 41726,470 539
Average velocity Between Groups 6736,527 2 3368,264 34,066 ,000
Within Groups 53095,874 537 98,875
Total 59832,401 539
Head_Iom Between Groups ,131 2 ,066 13,279 ,000
Total 2,783 539
Chest_Iom Between Groups ,122 2 ,061 14,060 ,000
Total 2,444 539
Table 5.3 Anova Table for the selected data (subject 8, 11 and 12 excluded).
60
Some explanations will be now given about the values present in the tables. The total
sum of squares ( SS tot ) is defined as the sum of the squares between groups ( SS bg )
and the sum of the squares within groups ( SS wg ):
SS tot  SSbg  SS wg , (5.1)
from which
k ni k k ni
 y ij  y    ni  yi  y     yij  yi  ,
2 2 2
(5.2)
i 1 j 1 i 1 i 1 j 1
with k the number of trials (or conditions), here 3, and ni the number of measure-
ments for condition i, here 15  15  225 for all the conditions. The degrees of free-
dom (df) for a total number of measurements N are calculated as follows:
df tot  N  1 (here 675  1 ), (5.3)
df bg  k  1 (here 3  1 ), (5.4)
df wg  N  k (here 675  3 ). (5.5)
The mean square (MS) values are calculated as the sum of squares divided by the
corresponding df, and are a measure of the variance. For example, in the case of
tempo and considering the all subjects (Table 5.2), we can see that the largest amount
of variance is explained by the condition. The F  value is then the ratio between the
mean square between groups and the mean square within groups:
F  value  MSbg MS wg . (5.6)
Again considering the case of tempo and all data, by way of example, the F  value
is 2909.1 60.3  48.3 . In this case, the critical F  value Fcrit at   0.05 , with
df (2,672) , is equal to 3: F  Fcrit , therefore the null hypothesis that the variance is
due to chance is rejected in favour of the hypothesis that there is a difference among
the means in the 3 conditions.
The ANOVA tables provide evidence for an effect of condition on the mean values
of the investigated variables. In the next subparagraph, in order to explain which
conditions differ from others, post-hoc tests are used.
61
5.1.4 Tamhane's T2 post hoc test
Table 5.4 shows the results of the Tamhane’s post hoc test for the all data. In the case
of tempo, the table shows that the effect of delay is negative, meaning that delay
causes most players to decrease in tempo. The velocity, on the contrary, reveals a
positive effect: due to the delay a higher average velocity occurs. The intensity of
movement variables shows significant differences between all 3 experiments.
62
Dependent Mean Difference 95% Conf. Interval

Variable (I) Experim. (J) Experim. (I-J) Std. Error Sig. Low. Bound Up. Bound
Tempo Normal No audio -,72280 ,68454 ,645 -2,3638 ,9182

*
Delayed 5,83511 ,71823 ,000 4,1131 7,5571
No audio Normal ,72280 ,68454 ,645 -,9182 2,3638

*
Delayed 6,55791 ,78940 ,000 4,6659 8,4499
Delayed Normal -5,83511* ,71823 ,000 -7,5571 -4,1131

*
No audio -6,55791 ,78940 ,000 -8,4499 -4,6659
Average Normal No audio -1,32733 1,04678 ,498 -3,8363 1,1816

velocity Delayed -9,35338
*
1,02917 ,000 -11,8202 -6,8866
No audio Normal 1,32733 1,04678 ,498 -1,1816 3,8363
Delayed -8,02604* ,96795 ,000 -10,3459 -5,7062
Delayed Normal 9,35338* 1,02917 ,000 6,8866 11,8202
No audio 8,02604* ,96795 ,000 5,7062 10,3459
HD_Iom Normal No audio ,027238* ,006643 ,000 ,01132 ,04316
Delayed -,071808* ,011396 ,000 -,09916 -,04446
No audio Normal -,027238* ,006643 ,000 -,04316 -,01132
Delayed -,099046* ,011070 ,000 -,12563 -,07247
Delayed Normal ,071808* ,011396 ,000 ,04446 ,09916
No audio ,099046* ,011070 ,000 ,07247 ,12563
CH_Iom Normal No audio ,020980* ,006103 ,002 ,00635 ,03561
Delayed -,026916* ,007373 ,001 -,04459 -,00924

*
No audio Normal -,020980 ,006103 ,002 -,03561 -,00635
*
Delayed -,047895 ,006574 ,000 -,06366 -,03213
Delayed Normal ,026916* ,007373 ,001 ,00924 ,04459

*
No audio ,047895 ,006574 ,000 ,03213 ,06366
*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.
Table 5.4 Tamhane's T2 post-hoc test, all data.
When excluding subjects 8, 11 and 12, the conclusions for tempo and average veloci-
ties remain the same. On the other hand, it is found that the intensity of movement is
different in the case of no feedback (the subjects move less in the absence of feed-
63
back) and that there is no significant difference between the normal and delayed con-
dition.
Dependent Mean Difference 95% Confidence Interval

Variable (I) Experim. (J) Experim. (I-J) Std. Error Sig. Low. Bound Up. Bound
Tempo Normal No audio -,70022 ,80969 ,771 -2,6432 1,2427

*
Delayed 6,66167 ,83962 ,000 4,6466 8,6767
No audio Normal ,70022 ,80969 ,771 -1,2427 2,6432

*
Delayed 7,36189 ,92767 ,000 5,1364 9,5874
Delayed Normal -6,66167* ,83962 ,000 -8,6767 -4,6466

*
No audio -7,36189 ,92767 ,000 -9,5874 -5,1364
Average Normal No audio -1,61622 1,10948 ,377 -4,2782 1,0457

velocity Delayed -8,16872
*
1,06624 ,000 -10,7274 -5,6100
No audio Normal 1,61622 1,10948 ,377 -1,0457 4,2782

*
Delayed -6,55250 ,96334 ,000 -8,8636 -4,2414
*
Delayed Normal 8,16872 1,06624 ,000 5,6100 10,7274
*
No audio 6,55250 ,96334 ,000 4,2414 8,8636
*
HD_Iom Normal No audio ,027049 ,007446 ,001 ,00918 ,04491
Delayed -,009802 ,007763 ,502 -,02843 ,00882

*
No audio Normal -,027049 ,007446 ,001 -,04491 -,00918
*
Delayed -,036852 ,006993 ,000 -,05363 -,02007
Delayed Normal ,009802 ,007763 ,502 -,00882 ,02843

*
No audio ,036852 ,006993 ,000 ,02007 ,05363
*
CH_Iom Normal No audio ,023426 ,006276 ,001 ,00836 ,03849
Delayed -,012821 ,007641 ,257 -,03115 ,00551

*
No audio Normal -,023426 ,006276 ,001 -,03849 -,00836
*
Delayed -,036246 ,006811 ,000 -,05260 -,01989
Delayed Normal ,012821 ,007641 ,257 -,00551 ,03115

*
No audio ,036246 ,006811 ,000 ,01989 ,05260
*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.
Table 5.5 Tamhane’s posthoc test, selected data (subjects 8, 11 and 12 excluded).
64
5.1.5 Homogeneous subset tables
The homogeneous subset tables enable to divide factors into subsets, resulting in an
alternative way to look for differences or equalities between factors. By way of ex-
ample, for what concerns tempo and all data, it can be seen that the delayed condition
differs from the normal and the silent, which instead belong to the same subset. The
conclusions which can be drawn from these tables correspond, as expected, with
those of the Tamhane’s table.
Tempo Average Velocity
Subset for alpha = 0.05 Subset for alpha = 0.05

Experiment N 1 2 Experiment N 1 2
Delayed 225 56,7759 Normal 225 58,4158
Normal 225 62,6110 No audio 225 59,7431
No audio 225 63,3338 Delayed 225 67,7692
Sig. 1,000 ,585 Sig. ,391 1,000
Head_Intensity of movement Chest Intensity of movement
Subset for alpha = 0.05 Subset for alpha = 0.05

Experiment N 1 2 3 Experiment N 1 2 3
No audio 225 ,16033 No audio 225 ,18425
Normal 225 ,18757 Normal 225 ,20523
Delayed 225 ,25938 Delayed 225 ,23214
Sig. 1,000 1,000 1,000 Sig. 1,000 1,000 1,000
Table 5.6 Homogeneous subset table, all data.

65
Tempo Average velocity
Subset for alpha = Subset for alpha =

0.05 0.05
Delayed 180 56,3690 Normal 180 58,7731
Normal 180 63,0307 No audio 180 60,3893
No audio 180 63,7309 Delayed 180 66,9418
Sig. 1,000 ,695 Sig. ,272 1,000
Head Intensity of Movement Chest Intensity of movement
Subset for alpha = Subset for alpha =

0.05 0.05
No audio 180 ,16548 No audio 180 ,19105
Normal 180 ,19253 Normal 180 ,21447
Delayed 180 ,20233 Delayed 180 ,22729
Sig. 1,000 ,383 Sig. 1,000 ,155
Table 5.7 Homogeneous subset table, selected data (subjects 8, 11 and 12 excluded).
5.1.6 Means plots
The means plots visualize the results of the analysis showing the effects of the 3 fac-
tors on the 4 variables.
66
Figure 5.4 Marginal means plots, all data. Top left: tempo; top right: velocity; bot-
tom left: head IoM; bottom right: chest IoM.
67
Figure 5.5 Marginal means plots, selected data (subjects 8, 11 and 12 excluded). Top
left: tempo; top right: velocity; bottom left: head IoM; bottom right: chest IoM.
5.1.7 Summary of the one-way ANOVA results
1) The ANOVA reveals that there is a significant effect on tempo and average ve-
locity as a result of the effect of delay, considering all participants’ data. In par-
ticular, delay decreases the tempo and increases the average velocity.
2) The intensity of movement is more complex: 3 of the 15 participants have a
different behavior and move more intensively in the delayed context.
5.2 Correlations
Now, the Pearson’s correlation coefficients r between the values of the expressive
parameters of the performance, tempo and average velocity per measure, in the three
experimental conditions, will be calculated. As in the previous paragraph, the data of
all the subjects, for a given parameter and a certain condition, are considered as a sin-
68
gle distribution: we saw in Subparagraph 5.1.1 that for such distributions normality
can be accepted. Results are shown in Table 5.8 and 5.9.
Correlations - Tempo
Tmp_N Tmp_S Tmp_D

Tmp_N Pearson Correlation 1 ,848(**) ,621(**)
Sig. (2-tailed) ,000 ,000
N 225 225 225
Tmp_S Pearson Correlation ,848(**) 1 ,574(**)
Sig. (2-tailed) ,000 ,000
N 225 225 225
Tmp_D Pearson Correlation ,621(**) ,574(**) 1
Sig. (2-tailed) ,000 ,000
N 225 225 225
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Table 5.8 Correlations between the values of tempo in the three experimental condi-
tions (N = normal, S = silent, D = delayed).
Correlations – Average Velocity
Avel_N Avel_S Avel_D

Avel_N Pearson Correlation 1 ,851(**) ,689(**)
Sig. (2-tailed) ,000 ,000
N 225 225 225
Avel_S Pearson Correlation ,851(**) 1 ,743(**)
Sig. (2-tailed) ,000 ,000
N 225 225 225
Avel_D Pearson Correlation ,689(**) ,743(**) 1
Sig. (2-tailed) ,000 ,000
N 225 225 225
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Table 5.9 Correlations between the values of average velocity in the three experi-
mental conditions (N = normal, S = silent, D = delayed).
Although all the parameters are significantly correlated ( Sig  0.01 ), we can see that
the correlations between the values in the normal and the delayed conditions (tempo:
r  0.621 ; velocity: r  0.689 ) are lower than the correlations between the values in
the normal and the silent (tempo: r  0.848 ; velocity: r  0.851 ). Another way to
look at this differences is to draw the overlay scatter plots (Figure 5.6 and 5.7).
69
Figure 5.6 The relationships between tempo per measure in the normal and silent
conditions (green) vs the relationships between tempo per measure in the normal and
delayed conditions (blue), with best-fit lines. Normal condition values are repre-
sented by the abscissas.
70
Figure 5.7 The relationships between average velocity per measure in the normal
and silent conditions (green) vs the relationships between average velocity per meas-
ure in the normal and delayed conditions (blue), with best-fit lines. Normal condition
values are represented by the abscissas.
5.3 Timing and dynamics profiles
Now, the average timing and dynamics profiles in the three experimental conditions
will be considered. With timing profile we refer to the variation in tempo as a func-
tion of measure, whereas with dynamics profile we refer to the variation in average
velocity as a function of measure. For a given condition, the profiles are calculated
averaging each measure data over all the subjects. Before proceeding, it must be
taken into account that, in our case, the number of samples for each measure-
condition pair is low (15). Therefore, these statistics will have only descriptive pur-
poses. In Figure 5.8 the average timing and dynamics profiles are shown.
71
Figure 5.8 The average timing (left) and dynamics (right) profiles, in the three con-
ditions.
The results show that, while the average profiles of the normal condition are kept in
the silent condition, they are disrupted in the delayed condition. In particular, a pro-
gressive slowing of production rate is evident in the timing profile, causing a re-
markable deterioration in the timing shape of the performance. For what concerns the
key velocity, although the dynamics shape results similar in all the three conditions,
in the delayed it is higher than in the others by a noteworthy constant factor. In Fig-
ure 5.9, the differences between the profiles in the normal and delayed conditions are
shown with error bars indicating the 95% confidence intervals. It can be noticed how,
in the last four measures of the timing profile, the error bars of the two conditions are
not overlapping. In the dynamics profile, instead, the error bars do not overlap only
in one measure (the 9th).
72
Figure 5.9 The average timing (left) and dynamics (right) profiles, in the normal
(blue) and delayed (green) conditions. Error bars indicate the 95% confidence inter-
vals.
5.4 Individual results
Now, some individual subjects results will be provided. As for the timing and dy-
namics profiles, the amounts of considered samples are low (15), therefore these sta-
tistics have only a descriptive aim. The complete dataset for each subject can be
found in graphical form in Appendix 1.
5.4.1 Tempo and velocity
Table 5.10 presents the individual subjects means and standard deviations for the ex-
pressive parameters (tempo and velocity) in the three conditions. Moreover, the Pear-
son’s correlation coefficients r between such parameters are shown for the two pairs
of conditions, normal-silent and normal-delayed. In Figure 5.10, 5.11, and 5.12, the
values of Table 5.10 are presented in graphical form.
73
Subject Condition TEMPO VELOCITY

Mean Std. Dev. r Mean Std. Dev. r
Normal 55,64 2,48 53,05 13,65
2 Silent 55,04 1,66 ,705 59,74 9,21 ,821
Delay 50,52 2,64 -,078 69,75 5,13 ,643
Normal 62,04 2,26 46,67 5,58
3 Silent 65,12 2,09 ,719 46,36 5,48 ,881
Delay 60,10 4,06 ,160 54,70 5,34 ,671
Normal 61,75 1,91 64,02 8,56
4 Silent 66,03 1,27 ,027 59,24 7,94 ,660
Delay 47,78 6,21 ,716 72,01 6,79 ,668
Normal 64,13 3,79 43,97 7,02
5 Silent 67,25 3,34 ,868 51,13 6,84 ,867
Delay 63,64 2,42 ,265 63,56 8,03 ,848
Normal 64,79 2,67 55,14 7,02
6 Silent 69,88 3,17 ,580 63,52 5,44 ,738
Delay 62,90 6,75 ,230 77,53 3,43 ,631
Normal 63,50 1,90 49,72 4,67
7 Silent 66,49 1,70 ,500 54,79 3,76 ,788
Delay 57,56 2,53 -,078 54,98 3,66 ,749
Normal 65,65 3,41 58,48 7,01
8 Silent 68,33 3,42 ,827 53,34 5,52 ,799
Delay 58,33 4,21 ,130 71,60 2,23 ,171
Normal 67,27 3,79 54,14 4,64
9 Silent 70,89 4,67 ,511 50,76 5,21 ,683
Delay 54,79 7,29 ,566 59,33 4,83 ,532
Normal 69,76 3,18 76,48 2,75
10 Silent 67,27 2,83 ,639 74,36 2,95 -,125
Delay 62,89 4,07 ,744 76,51 2,21 ,074
Normal 57,47 3,04 69,35 9,07
11 Silent 58,41 2,91 ,833 72,43 9,04 ,806
Delay 51,23 2,14 ,303 86,28 7,91 ,893
Normal 59,68 2,09 43,12 4,87
12 Silent 58,50 1,79 -,019 45,71 5,58 ,766
Delay 65,65 3,91 ,375 55,36 6,09 ,753
Normal 73,12 3,06 69,08 2,71
13 Silent 74,77 2,37 ,626 66,73 2,68 ,292
Delay 65,77 5,94 ,082 72,09 3,39 ,260
Normal 49,43 3,31 66,47 4,20
14 Silent 44,99 6,87 ,042 70,63 2,09 ,063
Delay 37,24 6,47 -,030 66,38 5,18 ,431
Normal 66,08 4,19 62,73 5,86
15 Silent 61,21 3,72 ,803 63,47 3,58 ,752
Delay 56,62 2,31 -,068 68,23 3,73 ,315
Normal 58,86 1,82 63,81 4,32
16 Silent 55,82 2,19 ,765 63,95 3,35 ,536
Delay 56,62 2,31 ,244 68,23 3,73 ,031
Table 5.10 Individual subjects means and standard deviations of tempo and velocity
in the thee experimental conditions. In the r-labelled column, the Pearson’s correla-
tion coefficients r between such parameters are reported for the normal-silent (Silent-
74
labbelled row) and normal-delayed (Delay-labelled row) condition pairs. The high-
lights evidence the results in the delayed condition, in comparison with the normal
one: blue highlights indicate similarity between the values or high correlations, red
highlights remark bad matches or low correlations, whereas yellow highlights refer
to peculiar results.
Figure 5.10 Tempo: individual subjects means (left) and standard deviations (right)
in the three experimental conditions.
Considering the means of tempo in Figure 5.10, it can be noticed that some subjects
(3, 5, 6, 16) were able to keep approximately the same means in the normal and in
the delayed conditions. The difference between their means in the two conditions is
lower than 3 bmp. In general, however, most of the subjects show lower means val-
ues in the delayed condition, with the extreme cases of subjects 4, 9, and 14, for
which the difference between the means is higher than 10 bmp. A remarkable excep-
tion is given by subject 12, who is the only one who played faster in the delayed con-
dition. For what concerns the standard deviations, individual results are separable in
two groups, with subjects 2, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 16 keeping similar values both under
the normal and in the delayed conditions, whereas subjects 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, 13, 14, and
15 show higher values in the delayed case. In particular, extreme cases in the two
groups are subjects 2, 7, 8, 10, and 11 (difference lower than 1) for the first, and sub-
jects 4, 6, 9, and 14 (difference higher than 3) for the second.
75
Figure 5.11 Average velocity: individual subjects means (left) and standard devia-
tions (right) in the three experimental conditions.
The individual mean values of key velocity (Figure 5.11 left) show that almost each
individual played louder with DAF than in the normal condition, with the exceptions
of subjects 10 and 14. For six subjects (2, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12), the difference between the
two conditions was really marked (more than 10 points). For what concerns the stan-
dard deviations, three subjects (2, 6, 8) show a much lower variability in the delayed
condition in comparison to the normal (the difference in standard deviations is higher
than 3). It is peculiar the case of subject 2, who had a very high dynamics variability
in the normal performance, much lower in the delayed condition (13.6 versus 5.1).
On the other hand, five subjects (3, 9, 10, 13, 14) have almost identical dynamics
variability (difference in standard deviation less than 1).
76
Figure 5.12 Individual subjects correlations (blue: normal-silent; green: normal-

delayed) for tempo (left) and velocity (right).
For what concerns the correlations in tempo between the normal and the delayed
cases (Figure 5.12 left green), only three subjects (4, 9, 10) show values higher than
0.5. The other subjects present low correlations values, with four subjects (2, 7, 14,
15) having negative correlations. Considering now the correlations between the nor-
mal and the delayed case, as for velocity (Figure 5.12 right green), the individual re-
sults are higher than those for tempo, with nine subjects having values superior to
0.5. Two of them (subjects 5 and 11), in particular, present correlations higher than
0.8.
5.4.2 Intensity of movement
In Figure 5.13, the means of head and chest IoM per subject are shown. The high in-
crease in the head movement for subject 8 and 12 in the delayed condition can be no-
ticed (left).
77
Figure 5.13 Individual subjects means of head (left) and chest (right) IoM in the
three experimental conditions.
5.4.3 Periodicity of the head pitch movement
For what concerns the periodicity of the head pitch, the calculated weights w for the
three frequencies of interest are reported in Table 5.11. The red highlights indicate
very significant peaks ( w  20 ), whereas the yellow highlights indicate medium
range values ( 10  w  20 ). All individual subjects head pitch graphics can be seen
in Appendix 1, together with the plots of the corresponding resampled signals FFTs.
78
Subject Period. Subject Period.

Normal Silent Delay Normal Silent Delay
2-bars 14,6 20,4 7,9 2-bars 14,1 20,6 8,2
2 1-bar 3,7 7,3 25,3 10 1-bar 12,2 21,4 18,1
1-beat 0,3 0,2 2,1 1-beat 1,0 1,0 1,6
2-bars 4,5 5,5 12,9 2-bars 8,0 4,2 7,8
3 1-bar 7,5 6,4 13,6 11 1-bar 24,6 25,3 28,2
1-beat 3,2 1,6 3,3 1-beat 2,0 1,8 4,1
2-bars 9,7 18,5 8,8 2-bars 15,0 4,2 3,7
4 1-bar 3,6 5,8 9,9 12 1-bar 31,5 22,0 9,2
1-beat 0,5 0,7 0,9 1-beat 2,1 11,0 34,1
2-bars 13,9 16,8 9,2 2-bars 16,5 10,8 13,4
5 1-bar 19,2 20,3 6,0 13 1-bar 23,2 15,9 6,4
1-beat 1,6 0,8 4,3 1-beat 5,2 3,2 3,3
2-bars 20,9 12,8 21,6 2-bars 8,4 0,3 14,1
6 1-bar 27,0 21,4 6,9 14 1-bar 28,1 26,8 27,0
1-beat 3,8 2,7 2,9 1-beat 5,4 4,7 4,6
2-bars 15,2 11,7 11,3 2-bars 9,3 14,7 12,5
7 1-bar 15,0 11,3 6,2 15 1-bar 22,3 13,8 19,8
1-beat 9,8 11,2 11,4 1-beat 1,7 1,1 2,2
2-bars 21,9 24,7 17,8 2-bars 28,6 12,8 15,1
8 1-bar 28,3 27,5 24,5 16 1-bar 9,8 8,5 6,9
1-beat 0,9 1,8 1,2 1-beat 1,0 0,5 1,8
2-bars 17,8 25,7 17,4
9 1-bar 18,2 14,0 17,9
1-beat 1,0 0,4 1,1
Table 5.11 Weights w of the spectral magnitude for the frequencies related to 2-
measures, 1-measure, and 1-beat. Red highlights indicate the very relevant peaks
( w  20 ), whereas yellow highlights indicate medium range values ( 10  w  20 ).
A consideration of the weights in Table 5.11 and of the graphics of Appendix 1

makes clear that most subjects changed qualitatively or quantitatively the periodicity
of their head pitch in the different conditions. The Table 5.12 tries to point out these
changes when comparing the delayed case with the normal.
79
Body as a reference
Subject Periodicity
under DAF
2-bars 1-bar 1-beat (questionnaires)
3 x
4 = x
5 x
6 = x
7 = x
8 x
9 = =
10
11 =
12 x
13 x (trunk)
14 = =
15
16
Table 5.12 The changes in the individual head pitch periodicities when passing from
the normal condition to the delayed one. Vertical arrows indicate diminu-
tions/increases in the corresponding weights, horizontal arrows indicate changes in
the main peaks, whereas equal signs signal stationary situations. Thick arrows indi-
cate drastic changes. Cells are left blank when both conditions show no periodicity
for the correspondent frequency. On the right column, subjects who reported the use
of the body as a reference under DAF are marked.
Although the results show a great variability due to individual differences, two trends
seem to emerge in the delayed case: a tendency to reduce the relation between the
80
head pitch periodicity and the musical structures (subjects 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, and 16), and
a tendency to relate more with higher frequencies than with low ones, in comparison
to the normal condition (subjects 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, and 12 ). Only three subjects (3,
14, 15) showed behaviours in opposition to these tendencies. Noteworthy is the be-
haviour of subjects 2 and 12, who drastically changed their periodicity in the delayed
case: subject 2 switched from very low-frequency movements (see Figure A1.2 in
Appendix 1) to a well-defined 1-measure periodicity (1-measure w passed from 3.7
in the normal case to 25.3 in the delayed), whereas subject 12 switched from a very
prominent 1-measure periodicity (31.5 in the normal case) to a equally prominent 1-
beat periodicity (34.1 in the delayed case). According to the questionnaires results,
subject 2 did not deliberately choose to change his movement under DAF, while
subject 12 did.
81
CHAPTER 6 – DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
In this Chapter, the experimental results will be discussed, with regards to each of the
considered aspects of music performance. Paragraph 6.1 will focus on timing, Para-
graph 6.2 on dynamics, Paragraph 6.3 on expressivity, and Paragraph 6.4 on body
movement. In Paragraph 6.5, some final conclusions will be drawn.
6.1 Timing
The ANOVA analysis of tempo confirmed the results found in literature. The ab-
sence of feedback does not have a significant effect on the distribution of the tempo
values, in comparison to normal conditions (the means are 62.6 bpm in the normal
condition and 63.3 bmp in the silent). This is in line with what found in previous
studies by Gates & Bradshaw (1974), Finney (1997), Repp (1999), Moelants, Demey
& Leman (2009). On the contrary, DAF has a strong effect on tempo, causing players
to significantly slow their production rate (the mean in the delayed case is 56.8 bmp).
This slowing effect of DAF, extensively studied with regard to speech tasks, has
been previously reported in music performance by Havlicek (1968), Gates & Brad-
shaw (1974), Gates, Bradshaw & Nettleton (1974), Finney (1997), and Moelants,
Demey & Leman (2009). Considering the analysis of the all subjects’ correlations
and timing profiles, performances under DAF resulted much more dissimilar with re-
spect to normal ones rather than performances in the absence of feedback. In particu-
lar, DAF performances tended to slow in tempo with the advance of the measures, to
the extent that, in the last four measures of the piece, the error bars of the normal and
delayed condition timing profiles do not overlap (cf. Figure 5.9) . This finding seems
to indicate an additive effect of timing disruption by DAF, so that the decrease in
tempo depends on the metrical positions. In other words, the players’ confusion
caused by DAF seems to increase measure after measure. However, the individual
timing profiles in Appendix 1 suggest that this effect may depend strongly on the in-
dividuals’ personal capabilities: although most subjects slowed down during the per-
formance, with subjects 4, 8 and 9 as extreme cases, other subjects (5, 10, 11, 15, 16)
did not show this tendency at all. In general, personal abilities seem to play an impor-
82
tant role in determining the effect of DAF on timing. While some subjects (5, 10, 11,
16) were capable of keeping the various aspects of timing almost at the same level
as in a normal performance, most of the performances degraded in one or more tim-
ing aspects. To conclude, noteworthy is the case of subject 12, who is the only one
who played faster in the DAF condition. As we will see in the Paragraph 6.4, this can
be interpreted as a consequence of a deliberately adopted embodied strategy.
6.2 Dynamics
The ANOVA analysis on the average key velocities provide further support to the lit-
erature results. The auditory feedback deprivation did not seriously affect the dynam-
ics of the performances (the mean in the silent condition is 59.7, against the 58.4
value in the normal condition), as previously reported by Finney (1997) and Repp
(1999). The DAF, instead, caused a significant increase in loudness (the mean value
in this case is 67.8), in accordance with the findings of Havlicek (1968), Finney
(1997), and Moelants, Demey & Leman (2009). A possible explanation for this fact
is that, under DAF conditions, the players attempted to rely more upon tactile feed-
back, which was not altered. Another possible account for this effect is that players,
having the impression that the notes were not “coming out”, tried to “force” them
playing louder. The all subjects’ correlations and dynamics profile show that DAF-
affected performances were less similar in the expressive dynamics to the normal
conditions performances as opposed to the silent condition ones. In particular, a
comparison of the dynamics profiles in the delayed and in the normal condition
shows that, although the average dynamics shapes were very similar, an almost con-
stant increase in loudness affected the values of each measure in the delayed case.
The individual subjects’ correlations between the normal and the delayed condition
were better than those regarding tempo, which may give support to the hypothesis
that the dynamics shapes suffer DAF less than the timing shapes (cf. Figure 5.8). As
in the case of tempo, however, a great individual variability seems to emerge.
83
6.3 Expressivity
The expressivity of the performances was more impaired in the case of DAF than in
the absence of auditory feedback. As for all subjects’ data, this is shown by the lower
correlations coefficients in the normal-delayed pair (Paragraph 5.2), as well as, in a
less significant but more impressive way, by the timing and the dynamics profiles
(Figure 5.9). The specific effects of DAF on the single parameters that shape an ex-
pressive piano performance, i.e. the expressive timing and the expressive dynamics,
are discussed in the previous paragraphs. An important support to the hypothesis that
DAF significantly disrupts the expressivity of the musical performance comes from
the analysis of the questionnaires. 13 subjects out of 15 affirmed they played expres-
sively in the normal condition. Considering the silent condition, 7 subjects stated
they could add the performance the same expressivity with respect to normal condi-
tions, 3 subjects reported they added more, and 5 subjects affirmed they could not
add the same expressivity. Under DAF, only 2 subjects (10 and 14) reported they
could play as expressively as in the normal condition, while the other 13 affirmed
they could not.
6.4 Body movement
The ANOVA analysis of the intensity of movement provide two results. First, the ab-
sence of auditory feedback caused subjects to move significantly less than in a nor-
mal condition. Second, in the DAF condition three subjects (8, 11, and 12, cf. Figure
5.13 left) moved their head much more than in the normal condition, causing the all
subjects’ values of the head IoM to deviate from normality: when they are excluded
from the analysis, the ANOVA reports no significant differences between the normal
and the delayed conditions, for both head and chest IoM. These results are in partial
contrast with the findings of Moelants, Demey & Leman, (2009), who, in a similar
study with 10 subjects, reported no differences in the amount of movement between
the normal and the silent condition in all the four pieces played, and a significant in-
crease of the head movement in the delayed condition in three out of four pieces. The
importance of the individual inclinations, pointed out in this study by the ANOVA,
may account for these different outcomes. The results concerning the periodicity of
84
the head pitch (Paragraph 5.4) seem to confirm the great variability in individual be-
haviours. However, although the dataset size does not permit to draw general conclu-
sions in this regard, the periodic movement of the players seems to be strongly influ-
enced by DAF. First, a tendency to reduce the periodicity components linked to the
musical structure seems to emerge. This fact can be interpreted as a disrupted effect
of DAF on body movement, in so far some subjects (5, 7, 8, and 13, cf. Table 5.12)
manifested such a tendency despite a deliberate attempt to use the body as a refer-
ence. The second noticeable tendency is that of relating more on high-frequencies
than on low, comparing with the normal condition. Two explanations may be taken
into account for these results. The first explanation relies upon the observation that,
under DAF, the expressiveness of the playing is highly impaired, as seen in the pre-
vious paragraph. In the DAF condition, most players found it difficult, if not even
impossible, to express the emotional contents of the music. In the “Sarabande”, as
seen in Paragraph 3.2, the musical sentences are based on sub-phrases of 2 measures
each, which may explain why, in the normal condition, players often moved with pe-
riodicities of this length. In the DAF condition, on the contrary, this natural link be-
tween body movement and expressivity seems to fail, resulting in a diminution in the
weights of the low-frequency periodicities. The second explanation relies upon the
fact that, under DAF, 8 subjects out of 15 explicitly tried to use their body as a refer-
ence (cf. Table 5.12), in order to contrast its disruptive effect on timing. This embod-
ied strategy may therefore account for the relative increase in the weight of the high-
frequency periodicities, more related to the beats. Noteworthingly, this embodied
strategy to cope with DAF was adopted by some subjects (2, 10, 11) who did not re-
port it as a conscious deliberation. Lastly, we focus on the behaviour of subject 12,
who, as we saw in Subparagraph 5.4.3, explicitly tried to keep the correct tempo
moving regularly his head at every beat (see Figure A1.22). This fact may account
for two results underlined before: his drastically increased IoM in the delayed condi-
tion (cf. Figure 5.13), and the fact that he is the only subject who played faster in the
delayed condition (cf. Figure 5.10). In conclusion, DAF seems to influence the pe-
riodicity of body movement both in relation to its disruptive effect on the expressiv-
ity and because it triggers embodied responses, conscious or not, that are functional
in contrasting its disruptive effects on timing.
85
6.5 Conclusions
Embodied strategies, such as using the head movement as a reference, seem to have a
strong potential for alleviating timing disruption caused by DAF. The relatively good
results obtained by some subjects who adopted such strategies provide clues in this
regard. Also experience with DAF may contribute to reduce its negative effects on
music performance, as the results of the three long-lasting experienced organists
seem to suggest. For what concerns the hypothesis that musicians would accentuate
the feedback modalities which are not altered, this is shown to be true for the tactile
feedback, whereas individual differences prevent from drawing general conclusions
about body movement.
In general, this study confirms that music playing is a matter of direct involvement
with music, in the sense of “corporeal immersion in sound energy, which is a direct
way of feeling musical reality” (Leman, 2007, p. 4). Indeed, the lack of congruency
between action and perception provoked by DAF impedes the experience of behav-
ioural resonance with the physical energies in the environment, fundamental to per-
mit the players to convey expressive intentions through music. As a consequence,
musical performance under DAF results to be impaired in all its expressive parame-
ters. On the contrary, the absence of auditory feedback does not significantly impair
performance. In this case, in fact, no misleading information is received through sen-
sory feedback, and the auditory imagery may replace the missing information basing
on previously built up statistics. Also in the absence of feedback, however, the nor-
mal behavioural resonance with the external energies is impeded: this fact results in
some negative effects of auditory feedback deprivation on the expressive nuances of
the performance (Repp, 1999).
According to the embodied music cognition, the mediator between the physical ener-
gies in the environment and the inner space of the players is body movement. There-
fore, it is not surprising that changes in the auditory feedback condition reflect on the
players’ movement. In the case of DAF, the incongruence between action and per-
ception introduced by the auditory feedback provokes embodied responses that seem
to differ according to individual variability. Further investigations should attempt to
clarify these relationships. In the case of auditory feedback deprivation, on the other
hand, the lack of sound waves causes a significant decrease in the intensity of
86
movement. Once again, this fact may be explained with the impossibility of a normal
resonance with the energies in the environment.
87
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96
97
APPENDIX 1 – INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTS’ GRAPHICS
In next pages, all the graphics concerning the experimental results of the individual
subjects are reported.
98
A1.1 Subject 2
2 - Tempo (bpm) per Measure
80
70
60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
30 Delay
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
2 - Average MIDI Key Velocity per Measure
100
90
80
70
60 Normal
50 No Audio
40 Delay
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
2 - Average Head IoM (m/s^3) per Measure
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
0,5
No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
2 - Average Chest IoM (m/s^3) per Measure
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
0,5
No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Figure A1.1 Subject 2: tempo, average velocity, head and chest intensity of move-
ment in the three experimental conditions.
99
Figure A1.2 Subject 2: head pitch and normalized FFT of the 4-zero-padded resam-
pled head pitch in the three experimental conditions.
100
A1.2 Subject 3
80
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10
0
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90
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20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
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Normal
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Delay
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0
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Normal
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Delay
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0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
101
102
A1.3 Subject 4
80
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60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
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20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
100
90
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60 Normal
50 No Audio
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0
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Delay
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
103
104
A1.4 Subject 5
5 - Tempo (bmp) per Measure
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60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
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20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
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90
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20
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0
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No Audio
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0
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105
106
A1.5 Subject 6
80
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60
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10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
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90
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50 No Audio
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0
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Normal
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No Audio
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107
Figure A1.10 Subject 6: head pitch and normalized FFT of the 4-zero-padded re-
sampled head pitch in the three experimental conditions.
108
A1.6 Subject 7
80
70
60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
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20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
100
90
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70
60 Normal
50 No Audio
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20
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0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
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0,8
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Normal
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Delay
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0
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Normal
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No Audio
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Delay
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0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
109
110
A1.7 Subject 8
80
70
60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
30 Delay
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
100
90
80
70
60 Normal
50 No Audio
40 Delay
30
20
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0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
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Normal
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Delay
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0
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Normal
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No Audio
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Delay
0,3
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0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
111
112
A1.8 Subject 9
80
70
60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
30 Delay
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10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
100
90
80
70
60 Normal
50 No Audio
40 Delay
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
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Normal
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No Audio
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Delay
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0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
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Normal
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No Audio
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Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
113
114
A1.9 Subject 10
80
70
60
Normal
50 No Audio
Delay
40
30
20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
100
90
80
70
60 Normal
50 No Audio
40 Delay
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
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0,8
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Normal
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Delay
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0
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Normal
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No Audio
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Delay
0,3
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0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
115
116
A1.10 Subject 11
80
70
60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
30 Delay
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
100
90
80
70
60 Normal
50 No Audio
40 Delay
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
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No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
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Normal
0,5
No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
117
118
A1.11 Subject 12
12 - Tempo (bmp) per Measure
80
70
60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
30 Delay
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
100
90
80
70
60 Normal
50 No Audio
40 Delay
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
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No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
0,5
No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
119
120
A1.12 Subject 13
80
70
60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
30 Delay
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
90
80
70
60
Normal
50
No Audio
40
Delay
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
0,5
No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
0,5
No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
121
122
A1.13 Subject 14
80
70
60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
30 Delay
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
100
90
80
70
60 Normal
50 No Audio
40 Delay
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
0,5
No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
0,5
No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
123
124
A1.14 Subject 15
80
70
60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
30 Delay
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
100
90
80
70
60 Normal
50 No Audio
40 Delay
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
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No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
0,5
No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
125
126
A1.15 Subject 16
80
70
60
50 Normal
40 No Audio
30 Delay
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
100
90
80
70
60 Normal
50 No Audio
40 Delay
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
0,5
No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Normal
0,5
No Audio
0,4
Delay
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
127
128
129
APPENDIX 2 – MEASUREMENT OF THE DELAY TIMES OF

THE CHURCH ORGAN OF ST. ANNA IN GHENT
In this section, I will present a report on an experiment that took place in St. Anna
church in Ghent, Belgium. Aim of the experiment was to measure the temporal inter-
vals that elapse between the keystrokes and the feedback perception when playing
the organ of the church (Figure A2.1).
Figure A2.1 Prospect of the St. Anna church organ.

130
The peculiarity of the St. Anna organ is the tubular-pneumatic key action (here the
term action means system of moving part; key action is the system which allows the
wind to blow into a pipe): the opening of the pipe valves is due to pressure changes
caused by the moving of small puffs of air through the tiny tubes which link the keys
to the windchests. The mechanism is well described by Figure A2.2 and Figure A2.3,
that show the effect of a keystroke on the air inside the organ. When the key is
pressed, a puff of air moves into the tube, reaching the end close to the pipes, where
the tube is mechanically connected to the back pressure channel situated below the
pipe toe-holes and the stop channels (see Figure A2.2). The back pressure channel,
full of compressed air, is separated from the stop channels and the pipe toe-holes by
a membrane which is kept pressed on by the air. The puff pressure in the tube causes
the back pressure channel to deflate, so that the membranes under the pipes deflate
too (Figure A2.3). The compressed air in the stop channels is therefore allowed to
flow into the back pressure channel, and consequently into the pipes, producing the
sound.
Figure A2.2 A membrane drawer of the organ with the key action in rest position
(adapted from Steenbrugge, 2005).
131
Figure A2.3 A membrane drawer of the organ when the key is pressed (adapted from
Steenbrugge, 2005).
The tubular-pneumatic action is a major source of delay in sound production. An im-

portant role, in particular, is played by the transmission of the key pressure through
the tubes. Steenbrugge (personal communication) estimated the time needed for the
tubular transmission in the St. Anna organ at approximately 30 ms. This estimate is
based on the fact that the tubes are approximately 10 metres long, a distance that
pressure waves cover in about 30 ms, considering a velocity of propagation in the air
at normal temperature of 340 m/s. A longer transmission time is needed for a group
of stops, such as the Principal 8’, whose pipes are positioned some metres farther
than the others from the keyboards. Other amounts of delay are due to the time
needed for the deflation of the back pressure channel and the membranes. Lastly, an
amount of delay should be proportional to the pipes dimensions.
The experiment consisted in the measurement of the time that elapses between key-
strokes and sound perception, for three different keys (a low, a middle, and a high-
frequency note) and seven different stop combinations.
132
A2.1 Method
Essentially, measurement of the delays was performed calculating the difference be-
tween the moment in which the keys were pressed and the onset of the corresponding
notes. A contact microphone was positioned over the key to be tested (see Figure
A2.4), to record the noise due to the keystrokes, whereas a Shure microphone was
positioned close to the organ pipes (see Figure A2.5), to record the produced sound.
The positioning of the Shure microphone close to the pipes, instead of close to the
console, was chosen to facilitate the signal analysis: the consequent introduction of
an additional amount of delay will be neglected in this study, due to considerations
about its order of magnitude. The two microphones were synchronized and recorded
via a Max/MSP patch.
Figure A2.4 A contact microphone is positioned over the key to be tested, to record
the noise due to the keystrokes.
133
Figure A2.5 A Shure microphone is positioned close to the pipes, to record the organ
sound.
For what concerns the keystrokes noise, I took as production moments the onsets of
the waveforms recorded by the contact microphone (Figure A2.6), which correspond
to the start of the keystrokes. Considering the fact that the pneumatic transmission
pulse starts as soon as a key is approximately 1 mm down (Steenbrugge, personal
communication), that is when the key has covered about 15% of its trajectory, taking
the onsets as the start instants introduces a certain error in the measurement. To mini-
mize such error, keypressing movements were executed quickly. On average, key-
stroke movement from the upper position to the lower one lasts around 10 ms: the re-
sulting error is so therefore approximately around 1-2 ms for each measurement. For
what concerns the sound of the organ recorded by the Shure microphone, the mo-
ments of sound production were extracted via onset detection on the corresponding
waveforms (Figure A2.7). Onset detection was performed manually with the help of
Sonic Visualiser and Audacity software.
134
Figure A2.6 Waveform of the noise generated by a keystroke. The vertical marker
indicates the onset moment.
Figure A2.7 Waveform of a Bourdon 8’ g3 recording. The vertical marker indicates

the onset moment.
Tested keys were the lowest pitch key of the keyboard, a C, the higher pitch one, a G,
and the middle C. I will refer to these keys with the notation adopted in Steenbrugge
(2005): C for the lowest C, c1 for the middle C, and g3 for the higher G. The pitch of
the corresponding notes depends on the kind of stop: for 8’ stops, C, c1 and g3 keys
correspond respectively to C2, C4 and G6 notes in the scientific pitch notation; for 4’
stops, which sound an octave above, they correspond to C3, C5 and G7. The keys no-
135
tation and their relative pitches for 8’ and 4’ stops are presented schematically in Ta-
ble A2.1 and A2.2, together with the theoretical open-pipe lengths (calculated with
the formula length  172 frequency , where frequency refers to the fundamental fre-
quency; Steenbrugge, personal communication).
Key Pitch (scientific notation) Frequency (Hz) Theoretical pipe length (m)
C C2 65.406 2.630
c1 C4 261.63 0.657
g3 G6 1568.0 0.110
Table A2.1 Notation, pitch, fundamental frequency and theoretical open-pipe length
of the tested keys in the case of 8’ stops.
Key Pitch (scientific notation) Frequency (Hz) Theoretical pipe length (m)
C C3 130.81 1.315
c1 C5 523.25 0.329
g3 G7 3136.0 0.055
Table A2.2 Notation, pitch, fundamental frequency and theoretical open-pipe length
of the tested keys in the case of 4’ stops.
Tested stops were the single stops Montre 8’, Bourdon 8’, Gamba 8’, Prestant 4’, and
Principal 8’, plus the two stop combinations Montre 8’ plus Prestant 4’ and Montre
8’ plus Prestant 4’ plus Gamba 8’ plus Bourdon 8’. In total, the different stop combi-
nations tested were 7. For each key-stop combination, three delay measurements
were performed, giving a total of 63 measurements (3 measurements  3 keys  7
stop combinations).
A2.2 Results
Results are reported in Table A2.3 and graphically shown in Figure A2.8, Figure
A2.9, and Figure A2.10. Figure A2.8 shows average values and standard deviations
136
of the delay measurements for the 5 single stops, whereas Figures A2.9 and A2.10
show a comparison between the average values and the standard deviations for the
two stop combinations and the single stops composing them.
Stops Average Delay per key St. Deviation per key

C c1 g3 C c1 G3
Montre 8’ 0,141 0,106 0,085 0,004 0,005 0,005
Prestant 4’ 0,152 0,105 0,065 0,004 0,004 0,003
Principal 8’ 0,139 0,134 0,132 0,004 0,004 0,004
Bourdon 8’ 0,145 0,101 0,080 0,005 0,004 0,005
Gamba 8’ 0,124 0,102 0,065 0,006 0,004 0,004
Montre+Prestant 0,147 0,112 0,067 0,011 0,006 0,004
Montre+Prestant+Gamba+Bourdon 0,147 0,104 0,092 0,006 0,010 0,006
Table A2.3 Average values and standard deviations of all the delay measurements.
Figure A2.8 Mean values and standard deviations of the delay measurements for the
5 tested single stops. Each error bar is two standard deviations long.
137
Figure A2.9 Mean values and standard deviations of the delay measurements for the
Montre, Prestant, and Montre plus Prestant stops. Each error bar is two standard de-
viations long.
Figure A2.10 Mean values and standard deviations of the delay measurements for
the Montre, Prestant, Bourdon, Gamba, and Montre plus Prestant plus Bourdon plus
Gamba stops. Each error bar is two standard deviations long.
138
A2.3 Discussion
Results show that delay values vary in the range of 60-160 ms, with higher values for
the low-frequency key (C) and lower values for the high-frequency key (g3). The in-
vestigation regarding the precise nature of the dependency of the delay on the key
and the stop is beyond the scope of this experiment. Indeed, in order to clarify this
relationships, more keys should have been studied, as well as more information about
the pneumatic mechanisms and the pipes dimensions collected. However, some ob-
servations can be made. First, a dependency of the delay on the played keys is evi-
dent for all stops but the Principal 8’, for which the differences between the keys are
very small. Second, a dependency of the delay on the different stops is also clear. In
particular, considering the single stops, Principal 8’ differs from the other stops in the
high-frequency and in the middle-frequency keys, in which case it is affected by de-
lays around 135 and 130 ms, whereas the other stops show delays inferior to 115 ms
(Montre 8’ and Bourdon 8’) or 90 ms (Prestant 4’ and Gamba 8’). Gamba 8’ presents
a shorter delay than the other stops in the low-frequency key, while for the high-
frequency key Gamba 8’ and Prestant 4’ both present values lower than the others.
Montre 8’ and Bourdon 8’ are the only two stops that show a very similar behaviour
over all the three keys. For what concerns the stop combinations, somehow unex-
pected is the fact that the two combinations show opposite behaviours: delay values
for the Montre plus Prestant combination are similar to the lower between the values
of the single stops composing it, whereas delay values for the Montre plus Prestant
plus Bourdon plus Gamba are similar to the higher. The third observation is that a
constant amount of delay seems to be present over all the measurements, arguably
due to the transmission time.
Again, an investigation of the reasons underlying the dependency of the delay on
keys and stops is beyond the scope of the present study. In general, a kind of propor-
tionality between the delay and the diameter of the pipes (see Figure A2.11) should
be expected. This relation, anyway, should be not straightforward, as the measure-
ments seem to confirm. In particular, a striking difference has been registered be-
tween the delay values of the Montre 8’ and the Principal 8’, which have almost
identical pipe dimensions. A partial explanation for this difference lies in the fact that
the Principal pipes are positioned farther than the other pipes, therefore they need a
139
longer transmission time. Nevertheless, this fact does not account for the apparently
very different asymptotical behaviours.
Figure A2.11 External diameters of the pipes for Montre 8’, Prestant 4’, Principal 8’
and Gamba 8’ (values from Steenbrugge, 2005).
A2.4 Conclusions
The experiment shows that the amounts of delays in the St. Anna pneumatic organ
are prominently high. Referring to the discussion in Subparagraph 1.3.2, all meas-
ured delays are beyond the break-point interval, individuated as the delay length for
which auditory feedback starts to be perceived as delayed and DAF disruption be-
comes significant. In particular, delay values for the low-frequency notes are very
close to the 170-200 ms window which was found to be very damaging in many
studies on music performance (Havlicek, 1968; Bradshaw, Nettleton & Geffen, 1971;
Gates & Bradshaw, 1974; Pfordresher & Benitez, 2007; Moelants, Demey & Leman,
2009), and often considered as the critical interval in speech (Black, 1951; Fairbanks,
1955; Butler & Galloway, 1957; Fairbanks & Guttman, 1958; MacKay, 1968; How-
ell, Powell, & Khan, 1983; Fabbro & Darò, 1995). Moreover, when playing the or-
gan, two more factors contribute to make performance very difficult. First, attack
140
times have also to be taken into account: for low-frequency notes, attack phase can
last more than 100 ms (e.g., for the Bourdon 8’ stop), so that the overall time needed
for a clear pitch recognition may reach 250 ms or more. Second, the strong rever-
beration of the sound waves in the church further complicate the relationships be-
tween played notes and their perception. Playing St. Anna’s organ therefore consti-
tutes a very challenging task, at least for players who don’t have experience under
analogous conditions, and pneumatic organs such as St. Anna’s one can be taken into
consideration as appropriate instruments for ecological experiments on music per-
formance under DAF.
A2.5 Reference bibliography
Bello, J. L., Daudet, L., Abdallah, S. A., Duxbury, C., Davies, M. E., & Sandler, M.
B. (2005). A Tutorial on Onset Detection in Music Signals. IEEE Transactions
on Speech and Audio Processing, 13, 1035-1047.
Black, J. W. (1951). The effect of delayed side-tone upon vocal rate and intensity.
Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 16, 56-60.
Bradshaw, J. L., Nettleton, N. C., & Geffen, G. (1971). Ear differences and delayed
auditory feedback: Effects on a speech and a music task. Journal of Experimen-
tal Psychology, 91, 85-92.
Butler, R. A., & Galloway, F. T. (1957). Factoral analysis of the delayed speech
feedback phenomenon. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 29, 632-
635.
Fabbro, F., & Darò, V. (1995). Delayed auditory feedback in polyglot simultaneous
interpreters. Brain and Language, 48, 309-319.
Fairbanks, G. (1955). Selective vocal effects of delayed auditory feedback. Journal

of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 20, 333-346.
141
Fairbanks, G., & Guttman, N. (1958). Effects of delayed auditory feedback upon ar-
ticulation. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 1, 333-346.
Gates, A., & Bradshaw, J. L. (1974). Effects of auditory feedback on a musical per-
formance task. Perception and Psychophysics, 16, 105-109.
Havlicek, L. L. (1968). Effects of delayed auditory feedback on musical perform-

ance. Journal of Research in Music Education, 16, 308-318.
Howell, P., Powell, D. J., & Khan, I. (1983). Amplitude contour of the delayed signal
and interference in delayed auditory feedback tasks. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 9, 772-784.
MacKay, D. G. (1968). Metamorphosis of a critical interval: Age-linked changes in

the delay in auditory feedback that produces maximal disruption of speech.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 43, 811-821.
Michels, U. (1994). Atlante di Musica. Milan: Sperling & Kupfer.
Moelants, D., Demey, M., & Leman, M. (2009). Performing music with delayed
auditory feedback. In Proceedings of the 2009 European Society for the Cogni-
tive Sciences of Music Conference (ESCOM). Jyväskylä, Finland.
Pfordresher, P. Q., & Benitez, B. (2007). Temporal coordination between actions and
sound during sequence production. Human Movement Science, 26, 742-756.
Shannon, J. R. (2009). Understanding the Pipe Organ: A guide for Students, Teach-
ers, and Lovers of the Instrument. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
Steenbrugge, D. (2005). Het Pierre Schyven orgel in de Gentse Sint-Annakerk. Or-

gelkunst, 111.
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DIPARTIMENTO DI INGEGNERIA DELL’INFORMAZIONE

CORSO DI LAUREA SPECIALISTICA IN INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA

MUSIC PERFORMANCE WITH DELAYED AUDITORY

RELATORE: Prof. Giovanni De Poli

CORRELATORE: Prof. Marc Leman (Ghent University)

LAUREANDO: Marco Matteazzi

Padova, 20 ottobre 2009

ANNO ACCADEMICO 2008 – 2009

dedicata a mia madre, a mio padre, e ad Elisa

Noi non abbiamo un corpo, noi siamo un corpo.

We don’t have a body, we are a body.

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Chapter 2 – Empirical review of music performance with DAF 31

2.2.5 Body movement 37

Chapter 4 – Data analysis 49

Chapter 6 – Discussion and conclusions 81

Chapter 7 – Reference bibliography 87

Appendix 1 – Individual subjects’ graphics 97

Appendix 2 – Measurement of the delay times of the church organ of

1.1 Music performance

1.1.1 Music performance and sensory feedback

In music performance, a strict correspondence between player’s intentions and gen-

1.1.2 Music performance as a timed sequence of motor acts

1.2 The role of feedback in movement execution

1.2.1 Closed-loop vs open-loop models

movement is composed by a chain of muscular contractions, and the feedback from

1.3 Auditory feedback in music performance

appropriate solution to test whether open-loop or closed-loop systems are involved in

1.3.1 Feedback deprivation

1.3.2 Delayed auditory feedback (DAF)

Critical interval vs relative time hypothesis

A frequently discussed topic regarding DAF disruption is the kind of dependency

1.3.3 The role of auditory feedback in musical sequence production

To conclude, research on music performance shows that, in general, auditory feed-

environment, including the relationships between actions and correlated perceptual

1.4 New scenarios for the research on music performance affected by

Normally, as for traditional acoustic instruments, feedback onsets are perceived as

1.5 An ecological, embodied approach to the study of music per-

1.6 Thesis organization

CHAPTER 2 – EMPIRICAL REVIEW OF MUSIC

In this Chapter, I summarize the experimental results concerning music performance

2.1 Literature survey

consistent relative phase position within produced IOIs. In Experiment 1, phase

2.2.5 Body movement

In this Chapter, I present the experimental method followed in the investigation. 16

Figure 3.1 A screenshot from the video recording of the experiment.

Subject Age Sex Piano Pipe Harpsicord Keyboard

3.2 Stimulus material

An excerpt of the well-known “Sarabande”, from the “Harpsichord Suite IV in D

1071 1607 536 Planned IOIs

300 871 300 1407 300 236

    Feedback Onsets

     Produced Onsets

CHAPTER 4 – DATA ANALYSIS

4.1 MIDI data

4.2 Movement data

4.2.1 Synchronization of MIDI and movement data streams

4.2.2 Intensity of movement

4.2.3 Head pitch periodicity

5.1 One-way ANOVA of tempo, dynamics, and intensity of move-

5.1.1 Exploratory data analysis

5.1.2 Homogeneity of variances

Test of Homogeneity of Variances - All Cases

Levene Statistic df1 df2 Sig.

Matteazzi Master's Thesis 2009

Matteazzi Master's Thesis 2009