Making Music Together

This project combines qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore real-time interactions among music learners. Drawing on theories of embodied and interactive cognition that have recently emerged in cognitive science, psychology, philosophy of mind, and neuroscience, I aim to test the foundations of a new approach to music pedagogy that contrasts with classical methods based on imitation, stimulus-response, and one-to-one tuition. My main hypothesis is that a more dynamic paradigm, in which two or more learners interact during practice, can improve the efficiency of music teaching and facilitate the development of the relevant musical skills. To test this hypothesis, two behavioral studies will be conducted. Each one will investigate the benefits of sensorimotor and intersubjective musical learning by comparison with individual tuition. These experiments are designed to assess the extent to which simultaneous mutual interaction with another individual assists in improving the musical performance (in terms of beat synchronisation, expressiveness, and quality of learning experience). The first experiment tests how much faster participants achieve accurate performances by practising in synchrony, imitating or turn-taking with another novice or a machine; the second experiment explores real-time musical interactions through controlling the degree to which each player is aware of the other player. Both experiments will be followed by interviews investigating participants subjective experience of their interactions. The results will add to the emerging body of work on the role of interactive cognition in joint music making, and contribute a new musical perspective to post-cognitivist theory and science, from which it draws inspiration. Within music research, the project will contribute to knowledge about music cognition and music education in individual and collective contexts, enhancing knowledge sharing across a variety of musical disciplines such as music cognition, perception, education, and performance. The proposed research aims to provide a significant step forward from more traditional music pedagogies, highlighting the crucial role of interactions among learners. 1