A team of researchers from the University of McMaster, Canada, has discovered a new technique to see how musicians are intuitively coordinating with each other while playing without knowing how to play them.
The findings, carried by Science Science, show new insights into how musicians coordinate their movements to play in exactly the right time as a single block.
For this study, the researchers went to the Griffin Trio musical ensemble, and each player was provided with motion capture technology to monitor their movements while performing happy or sad musical compositions, once with a musical expression and others without it.
Using computational techniques, researchers measured to what extent the movements of each musician predicted the movements of others.
Whether they performed a playful or sad play, the musicians predicted their movements to a great extent when they played in an expressive way, compared to when they played without feelings.
"Our work shows that we can measure the emotional connection between musicians by analyzing their movements in detail and that achieving a common emotional expression as a band requires a lot of communication," says Andrew Chang, lead author of the study.
The new technology can be applied to other situations such as communication between speechless patients and their families or carers, the researchers note.