New Research Suggests Sight Matters More Than Sound for even Classical Musicians

Science in Musical Performance

After 20 years of competitions and performing as a professional concert pianist, psychologist Tsay connected some very interesting elements of sight and sound and how they combine in the best players.

She performed several different experiments, with both novice and experienced listeners, and determined that it was easier for all involved to identify competition winners/best players by pure sight alone. That's right - video, without sound.

But wait, you say...it's MUSIC. Isn't that purely - by definition - a sound quality? Why on earth would sight matter?

Turns out that accessing music with our eyes better conveys the elements of passion, motivation and creativity - the benchmarks of outstanding performances.

You can read the full article above for more specific details, but this truly strikes something within me. I'm not sure it's a nerve, but I'm not sure it's a good one either.

Obviously passion, motivation and creativity are incredibly important in all areas of life and music is no exception, but I'm confused as to why this comes through visually rather than through sound. Everything we teach students - even visual aspects such as posture - is used solely to ensure the best possible sound quality. That's what we tell them. That's what we've always been told. Music is worth nothing if it doesn't sound right. But this article seems to prove that in our society, once again, it doesn't matter what a person does, as long as they look right doing it.

(This can be argued quite effectively, however, by taking any well-trained musician to a movie where one of the main Hollywood stars is meant to be a famous violinist, or cellist, or pianist, or trumpeter or whatever have you. We can always tell when the person really has no idea what they're doing. If you have doubts and want some laughs - check out this tumblr whose posts revolve around actual "professional" photos of people pretending to know what to do when a violin is put in their hands: http://stockphotosofviolinists.tumblr.com/)

How does this change how we teach our students to perform their music? Should it change how we teach students? Should the focus now become on how to make playing "look good" instead?

This reminds me of Joshua Bell, famous violinist, who traded the stage lights for florescent ones in the subway - and NO ONE NOTICED.

But there's also the flip side. What of someone who performs every single note with perfect precision and emotion, and yet uses minimum movement such as would not have been noticed whatsoever by any of the people in this experiment, or the competition judges? What do we tell that student? That his perfect music isn't good enough? That we need to actually SEE her heart on her sleeve? How can we punish them for doing something completely right - and yet so utterly wrong?

How can we reconcile quality of sound with what the world notices?