Groups of interacting individuals often coordinate in service of abstract goals, such as the alignment of mental representations in conversation, or the generation of new ideas in group brainstorming sessions. What are the mechanisms and dynamics of abstract coordination? This study examines coordination in a sophisticated paragon domain: collaboratively improvising jazz musicians. Remarkably, freely improvising jazz ensembles collectively produce coherent tonal structure (i.e. melody and harmony) in real time performance without previously established harmonic forms. We investigate how tonal structure emerges out of interacting musicians, and how this structure is constrained by underlying patterns of coordination. Dyads of professional jazz pianists were recorded improvising in two conditions of interaction: a ‘coupled’ condition in which they could mutually adapt to one another, and an ‘overdubbed’ condition which precluded mutual adaptation. Using a computational model of musical tonality, we show that this manipulation effected the directed flow of tonal information amongst pianists, who could mutually adapt to one another’s notes in coupled trials, but not in overdubbed trials. Consequently, musicians were better able to harmonize with one another in coupled trials, and this ability increased throughout the course of improvised performance. We present these results and discuss their implications for music technology and joint action research more generally.
Quantifying Emergent, Dynamic Tonal Coordination in Collaborative Musical Improvisation
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