Limitations
When considering the findings collected, it is important to acknowledge their limitations. Firstly, the data is purely of qualitative nature, as the testing pool is too small to draw any valid statistical conclusions. I did not take into account the following elements of the data pool, which might have influenced the data: their level of expertise with singing, moving in general and with singing and moving, their ease with performing and with being filmed while moving and singing, if the singer is warmed up or not, the level of proprio perception, how they warmed up and the absence of male participants. Regarding the data collected in Part 3, it is important to note that the questions sought to gather data on the emotional expressiveness and freedom as perceived by the participants themselves during testing, not as observed by an external audience. Hence, before beginning the testing, I believe all volunteers would have benefitted from being led through the physical and vocal warm up I did with Volunteers 5 and 6. This applies especially if the volunteers are shy / less experienced with connecting with their body. 

During the testing, I did not control and standardize the following elements which might have also affected the data: following a strict script of questions, whether or not participants kept their eyes closed, or whether they used or not a backing track. Moving with eyes closed and having no accompanying music can both strongly affect the singer, as eliminating a sensory channel - in this case sight or extra auditory stimuli - can heighten the sensibility of the other channels. It's also important to note that, as stated by Volunteer 4, “there are so many elements that could have affected the delivery, not just the movement” (see Appendix for full text). Additionally, when giving instructions regarding what movements they should make, I often did not specify that movements should be guided by vocal choices and not the other way around. However, I speculate that this is not of great influence as these approaches are quite symbiotic in nature, as discussed previously by Koch in the literature review.

Another element that affected the data is the order effect, whereby the participants felt a bit nervous in the first go-arounds of movement instructions. To try to circumvent this, I opted to randomize the order of movement instructions for each volunteer. However, after the first few rounds of the exercises, the participants knew what questions I would ask next, and some participants even mentioned they were already anticipating the questions during their singing, which affected how they performed.

As I carried out tests, I realized participants benefited from having a bit more preparation before the testing began, and hence I added a short vocal warm up and physical warm up that I guided right before testing. By carrying out a standardized physical warm up, where I invited the volunteers to dance along to music, this gave participants a chance to already be more in touch with their body but also to begin from a more equal baseline level of warming up. 

Topics excluded

There are many related topics and areas of interest that I chose to exclude from this research for a number of reasons. Firstly, due to the limited time frame and in order to keep my research focused on the specific topic, I chose to omit collecting data on how an external observer perceives a performer’s expressiveness and freedom after practicing this set of exercises. Hence, the data I collected was only in relation to how this model affects the self perception of the performers' expressiveness and freedom. 

I also chose not to investigate conscious movement on stage like choreography. Furthermore, I did not consider how movements are affected by the line-up and stage setup, as these topics are not relevant to the improvised movements carried out with a specific musical focus in mind. I also chose to not extensively compare the practice of expressiveness through body movements between non-classical and classical singers, although I found interesting articles on the topic, as I wanted to investigate the less explored field of jazz and pop singers. I avoided including observations on the interaction between on stage movements and an audience, as it touches on many different aspects, including how the audience perceives a movement, and how singers may adapt their movements according to the reactions they perceive from an audience. Additionally, since psychology is not my main area of expertise, the research also does not consider the relationship between a singer’s psychology and their movements, including for example the neurological perspective on the effect of focus on the voice, the psychological effect of movement on the voice, how emotional/mental blocks can affect movements. Lastly, although this research has been greatly inspired by Alexander Technique¹¹, as well as mindfulness technique and breathing techniques, I chose to refrain from investigating these practices directly also due to my lack of expertise in them.

Further research

Considering the above limitations and excluded topics, there are many potential steps and investigations that could be carried out in the future, as they need more elaboration than this research allows. These themes involve carrying out improved testing considering the limitations listed above and also having participants review their own movements by watching their videos. After the test while watching the video, participants could fill out a form containing questions regarding their felt experiences of singing while moving before, during and after the testing, as well as questions regarding their impressions of the test itself, so I may continue to improve it. It would also be interesting to ask participants to analyze their movements from the perspective of an audience, considering which movements aided/hindered their performance the most and the least, etc. Additionally, it would be interesting to apply this same process to instrumentalists to observe if moving along to four key musical elements while playing their instruments has any positive effects on their musical expressiveness and freedom. 

Another natural next step would be to investigate the impact of these music related movements on the lay audiences, which could either be done through live or online performances with this specific focus or by carrying out the individual testing procedure in front of an audience of non musicians. Similarly, the same model could be applied with singers whilst in a small group setting, where participants can experience practicing this exercise in front of an audience and can also observe others doing the same exercise. In this group setting, it would be possible to carry out the experiment with multiple singers at the same time, as groups of singers could be instructed to sing the same song at the same time while focusing on moving along to one element. In fact, I initially aimed to present the results of my research through an interactive, personalized workshop based on my four categories of movements. I plan to eventually carry out group workshops, as I believe it would allow me to collect further data on the usefulness of the set of exercises and to strengthen how to present them in a way that is most useful. See the appendix for a preliminary version of the process I would carry out for the group sessions.