Motion Capture and Analysis of Music Performance

Motion capture allows us to study the detailed and informative movements of those engaged with music. This tool is increasingly used in studies of music psychology and neuroscience, and reveals how performers and dancers embody music and their interpretation of it. In this workshop, we will collect and analyze motion capture data to carry out a music psychology study using the Neuromusic lab’s motion capture system.

Currently we plan to examine spontaneous gestures while singing, an understudied area in musician’s motions using this tool. You will learn techniques for analyzing motion capture data, including characterizing motion on small and large timescales. We will also engage in reading and discussing recent motion studies of performers, reviewing what the field has discovered thus far about musician’s creative processes as expressed through motion. The course will use MATLAB as our data analysis platform; programming experience is recommended but not required.