Playing with delayed auditory feedback

Abstract

This paper presents a study where the effect of a delayed acoustic feedback is researched with 10 professional musicians performing four different pieces of piano music. The influence of a delayed auditory feedback on the performance is quantified using both MIDI information and the measurement of the movement of the upper body of the pianists. Four conditions were examined namely: a normal piano performance, a performance without acoustic feedback and two conditions with a delayed acoustic feedback of 300ms and 200ms respectively. The analysis of the MIDI data shows a significant increase in both the velocity of the keystrokes and the duration of the performance in the delayed conditions. An asynchrony measure of notes, notated on the same time point in the score, shows this same effect for three out of four musical pieces. We observed a large movement of the head of the performers comparable to the movement of the elbows but larger than the neck, shoulders and hip. This head movement shows a significant increase in the delayed conditions in three of the pieces played. Both for the MIDI and the movement analysis there is no difference between the normal performance and the one without any acoustic feedback. In short we can say that the role of body movement becomes more prominent in situations where an alteration in the delay of the acoustic feedback is most disturbing.