Volunteer 1 - Nina
This first testing session underscored important improvements to be made to the testing procedure. For example, when asked to move according to lyrics, Nina asked “do I make my own interpretation of this, do I move according to what they mean or the flow of the feelings?” Her observation highlights the importance of emphasizing that she should consider lyrics and mood as part of the same category and that the Volunteer has freedom to interpret it as they wish. After the first round of performance, I opened the prepared questions round by asking Volunteer 1 “how do you feel?”. I believe this open-ended question invited the volunteer to check in and share freely about her experience, which is conducive to a more honest and open discussion of her experiences in the following questions. Hence, I included this in my future testing sessions. Additionally, when giving directions regarding moving along to dynamics, I did not specify that she should follow the dynamics of what she sings and not of what she hears in her mind. In hindsight, I believe the data I collected would be stronger if the instructions I gave singers could have been limited to asking them to move along to elements produced by their singing only.
After Nina experimented with moving related to dynamics at minute 14.47, I noted that she looked the most comfortable so far moving along to this element. When I asked her about it, Nina replied “it feels more natural I think, I do that more myself, maybe that’s what makes it more authentic, I’m more used to it” I replied “it’s your default way of moving?” “I think yes, it felt more natural”. Most other volunteers would also confirm that they experience more vocal freedom and expressiveness when moving along to their “default” way of moving.
When asked how do you feel your emotional expressiveness and vocal freedom changed throughout the entire test, Nina shared “I felt looser more at the end”. The word “loose” would be later used by other volunteers, which suggests this set of exercises can have an effect of physical relaxation. This may be one of the reasons why their emotional expressiveness tends to increase as they carry out the experiment. Indeed, when I asked her what she learnt through the experiment, Volunteer 1 shared that “ it’s also kind of a lesson, a challenge for me personally because I know I can do a bit more expressively [big arm movements as she discusses this at minute 23.36] . But I really notice the difference vocally, daring just to do it a bit”. This is the first instance that pointed at the effectiveness of reflecting and gaining awareness of movements as a necessary part of gaining expressiveness and vocal freedom from moving, which became more and more apparent as I carried out more tests.
F. Part 3 - Test the Model
So far in the research, I have analyzed the movements I made during my own performance and identified four key musical elements that they relate to. Then I conducted four interviews, where I collected further data on my previous findings, and modified the test exercises and evaluation questions. Lastly, I tested the method on six volunteers and collected data on their experiences. For the full text of their reported experiences, please refer to the Appendix.
Considering the research question, - How can focusing on the connection between body movements and the key musical elements of rhythm, lyrics/mood, pitch and dynamics positively affect the expressiveness and vocal freedom of jazz / pop vocalists - I will now analyze the following selection of insights collected from the tests. Each individual session is discussed in chronological order from first test to last:
Volunteer 2 - Merel
When asked about her musical creativity whilst moving along to the rhythm during the third round, Merel noted that “there was more room for different things than what you’re told by the lyrics [...] it’s less straightforward because lyrics tell you what to do, but the rhythm doesn’t tell you exactly, you can focus on different aspects of it”. I found this to be an eye-opening experience that shows the benefit of experimenting with a focus on rhythm, rather than lyrics/mood, which is probably the most common focus that pedagogists instruct their students to carry out, as mentioned in the literature review and in the previous interviews.
Indeed, although Merel reported moving along to the dynamics to be the most expressive and vocally free as “your body is doing the same thing as your voice, or it supports it”, she chose the rhythm round as her favorite, along with the last round of performing for the imaginary audience. She supported her choice by stating again that “there was a lot of different options and the rhythm gets into your body easier than lyrics”. Indeed, Merel’s preference of moving along rhythm would not be surprising to Dalcroze, as his method focuses on “harnessing the inherent rhythm of the body”, as he suggests that “human gesture and its orchestration conform to elementary principles of nature – dynamic, rhythmic, and agogic” (Seitz 423).
Volunteer 3 - HyeJung
For Volunteer 3, moving along to rhythm was also her favorite out of the first three rounds. She rated herself as 80% authentic during this round, compared to 40% authentic during the performance round and 50% during the lyrics round. However, HyeJung also noted that “when I just follow the rhythm with my body, most of my movements don’t have any reason and meaning, (was it distracting you?) Not really but when I work with my vocal technique teacher, they always ask me what does it mean? This time I couldn't say anything because there is no reason. (other than rhythmic echos?) Of course this really works for me, technically things also followed”. The participant reiterates what was observed in Example 3 of my own performance and what other volunteers also observed in themselves: when our movements relate to only one musical element, they are not as convincing nor informative as they could be if connected to more than one element. Volunteer 3 later notes, “if I mix the focus in the rhythm and in the dynamics, the movement would help me even more”. Hence, this participant instinctually tested the hypothesis of how moving along to multiple key musical elements simultaneously rather than focusing only on one element can greatly enrich the movement.
After the pitch round, HyeJung pointed out that moving along to the pitches was the most comfortable for her, explaining “I use my hand like a horn part instrument, like when I sing a high note, my hand goes up”, noting that her vocal technique was really good and she is used to following the pitch with her body. It appears that the volunteer uses the movements as a tool to gain control over vocal technique rather than as an expressive tool, like she had previously done in the rhythmic round. These types of gestures would be categorized as Musical or Sensation related movements by Nafisi, gestures often used in vocal pedagogy (Nafisi), and were also mentioned by Manon Heijne during the interview conducted (Heijne).
After the dynamics round, when asked whether the movement aided or hindered her vocal technique, Volunteer 3 noted that “when I was sure with my movements, it was really helpful”, and at minute 16.22 she physically recalled the part she was referring to. Additionally, HyeJung mentioned that she knew what to do with the dynamics because she knew what to do with the movement, an insight which points to the bidirectionality assumption as mentioned by Koch in the literature review. After the final performance focused round, which she reported to be her favorite performance, the participant concluded that “when I think of my movements whilst singing, it always disturbs my singing and singing technique, even the emotional things”, hence this type of exercises may not serve as a helpful tool for unlock her vocal freedom and expressiveness.
Volunteer 4 - Anonymous
After the first round of moving along to the rhythm, Volunteer 4 notes that she felt “curiosity” because she is “following movements, but it's a simultaneous movement within the melody and within the movement itself, they're kind of linked”. This is a clear example of the concept of bidirectionality mentioned in the literature review, pointing to the expressiveness that can be brought to light in the voice through movement.
After the first round of movement-focused exercise on rhythm, the participant stated that she felt “more authentic this time because even I didn't know where it's going to go”, conveying the feelings of playfulness and explorative-ness that I hoped this exercise would bring about in singers. During the testing session, the participant also noted that closing her eyes helped her focus on the movement instruction given to her. She also mentioned that although she had made movement experiments before, she had never done so with an audience and that the experiment allows her to try these movement focuses only once. These limitations mentioned could be a great foundation for a potential future research, where singers practice the same focus of movement in the privacy of their everyday practice for a month, both with eyes open and eyes closed to experience the difference, allowing data to be collected over a longer period of time. For a fuller exploration of limitations and future steps for this research, please read Chapter G.
When asked how moving along with the lyrics affected her vocal technique, Volunteer 4 reports “it does help to kind of feel this flow or relief”, which, I believe, is brought about by this feeling of embodiment. Similarly to what Volunteer 3 experienced in the dynamics round as mentioned above, Volunteer 4 expressed during the dynamics round, that “having a direction in the movement helps to have a direction in the voice, it leads somewhere and there’s more flow. There's a moment where these two things come together, I'm more open in the movement and also vocally more open”. As also mentioned by Volunteer 3, Volunteer 4 expressed that she “never focused on these different aspects so systematically, usually I’ve explored them simultaneously, fluctuating between different aspects”. For that reason, this systematic exercise may be a helpful tool for this participant to explore her connectedness to her body and the resulting expressiveness and vocal freedom brought about by that heightened awareness.
Volunteer 5 - Alise
When asked to rate her emotional expressiveness from 1 to 5 after doing the first round of moving along to rhythm, Volunteer 5 explained that although she wasn’t conscious of her body, she thinks that maybe some emotional expressiveness still came out as “I am the emotion, I am the song”. This instance highlighted that reflecting on these sets of exercises can reveal singers’ beliefs regarding their singing and how they relate to what they sing. Indeed, through her experience of moving to the dynamics, she learnt that her understanding of the lyrics/mood is deeply connected to dynamics, as “to be able to use dynamics, I had to think about where it would make more sense to be more softer or louder, so I had to think about lyrics”. She found herself “finally thinking about the song, and singing lyrics”.
Volunteer 5 Alise found moving to pitches to be the “most interesting and helpful”, as “moving with pitches was new, but I knew what to do naturally”. Conversely, moving along to pitches was the hardest for Merel as “I don’t have it in my head completely what it looks like, I know what it sounds like, but it’s more like the average”. Remembering Merel’s experience a few weeks prior, I asked Alise if she felt like she was able to move along to pitches because she could see them in her mind. Alise answered “yes I think so, I'm really seeing the pitches, I'm just following them”. These instances may suggest that the way we visually imagine pitches in our mind is correlated with our ability to express them in our movements. However, this is a topic to be investigated in another research.
Additionally, when asked to examine if and how her dynamics related movements interfered with her vocal technique, Volunteer 5 described that the few movements she made, helped her and that “the fact that I was thinking about it [movement] helped most”. This perspective reminds me of the Alexander Technique concept of constructive thinking, which can be explained as organizing your attention towards easier coordination (Tree). For a clearer, more in-depth explanation of this concept as it applies to musical performances, please read this article.
When asked about their favorite performance and why, most volunteers chose their final performance round, which had no specific focus on movement, or their most familiar category of movement. Instead, Alise chose dynamics as her favorite round, which was her least familiar category of movement. She motivated her choice by stating it is “not something I think about a lot, so it was nice to do that and it helped me somehow”. Volunteer 5 added that her least favorite round was “moving along to rhythm [...] it distracted me the most as I was really thinking about moving and not about the song, but generally other ones helped”, which something experienced by most volunteers at some point during their testing, where their focus on producing the movements sometimes distracted them from delivering an optimal vocal performance.
Volunteer 6 - Carolina
After the first round of moving along to an element (rhythm) at minute 14.00, Volunteer 6 shares that she feels she “could do so much more” (twirling around as she stated this) “but I'm kind of avoiding myself going there, but there were some moments where I felt more free [...] I sang it very beautifully in those moments, as I felt very connected with my body”. This instance shows that reflection is an active part of experiencing this set of exercises, as it allows participants to practice proprioception and also consider testing or even going beyond their own creative limits. This is further supported by the following instance, when Carolina mentions “I could have been more creative if I would have started dancing or something like that, or expanding myself, but I just thought about that now, I didn't think about that in the moment”.
Regarding her movements as they echoed the dynamics, the participant expressed how “it was interesting to see how much I grow in some parts and then suddenly I'm so small. That was beautiful because it also helped my dynamics become larger”, which again is another example of the concept of bidirectionality (Koch), as mentioned in the literature review. Carolina also discusses “I would have destroyed the song If I moved more” due to her running out of breath from the movements, which can be another adverse effect of focusing so much on big movements at the expense of vocal performance, which was also pointed out as a potential pitfall of this exercise by Heijne during our interview
In the second to last round, where Carolina moved along to the lyrics (34.33), I asked if this is take was similar or different to how she usually sings it, to which she replied “completely different, I felt like every word now had a meaning, and it was connected to my body, I felt it from the first two words. It changed the tempo, how I sing it, the dynamics and I let myself suffer” as the lyrics discuss a painful topic. Hence, through her answer, she reflected on the changes in the expressive quality of her performance and I realized this would have been a useful question to ask each volunteer after every round.
go back to Part 2
Critical Discussion
When focusing on the overall trends in the data, I found there are significant similarities among the experiences of the participants. It was clear that each singer has their key musical element that they prefer moving along to. All singers were able to recognize which one it is for themselves, as it feels “natural” and “comfortable”. When asked how their movements affected their vocal technique, most volunteers reported at some point that because they were focusing on moving, they were not thinking of vocal technique as much. It is important to note that for most volunteers, the last round (without any specific movement focus) was their preferred one, they reported to be moving much more than the first performance round and some reported that they were connecting the previous movement-focuses together. Hence, as suggested by my hypothesis, I speculate that the reason why they preferred the last take is that their movements were connected to multiple key musical elements.
In some aspects, however, there was a great disparity among the findings. Most notably, each participant related to the key musical elements differently, and it was interesting to note how that relationship affects their movements. For example, volunteer 4 expressed that when exploring moving along to the lyrics, she “needed more time to get into the lyrics so at first, I felt a bit hesitant and not so open as much” compared to other rounds. Additionally, some singers were able to rate their vocal ease and freedom much more easily and with more detail than others. This variety of results could have been partly caused by the variety in the levels of experience focusing on movement and singing. For some volunteers, it was a wholly new experience, for some it was sort of familiar, whilst a few others had already deeply investigated this subject. Singers with previous experience were able to commit to the movement instructions with confidence, and when answering questions, they gave a nuanced retelling of their experience with the exercise. For Volunteer 1 and 2, who are less experienced singers, they reportedly experienced most vocal freedom during the dynamics round. Additionally, singers with less experience with focusing on moving while singing gave less detailed responses yet reported they felt “looser” as the testing went on, maybe because they felt more at ease with committing more fully to the movement instructions and the contents of the excercise. Each volunteer had different levels of proprioception, so it could be interesting to identify their level of proprioception before carrying out the movement test. Assuming there is a positive correlation between their experience with the set of exercises and their level of proprioception, this information would be considered when analyzing the data.
Additionally, the testing tended to yield more insights and positive effects on expressiveness for more advanced singers, which points to the effects of the mastery of their instrument on their focus. As discussed by Williams, “cognitive demands gradually decrease as the task becomes more automatic. The person’s attention is at first often on controlling the movements by breaking them up into parts. Later the parts are joined, and there is more room for attention to details or to the overall musical and expressive goals as the movements themselves are controlled more automatically (Wulf, 2007)”. Wulf & Mornell dig deeper into this topic in their review of current research regarding practice from the perspective of motor learning: “an internal focus of attention is counterproductive and might hinder the successful execution of the task [...] In fact, neuroscientists assume that mental representations of advanced performers are linked to abstract concepts of the musical work, and far removed from concrete hand and finger movements (Jäncke, 2006)”. Hence, this explains why advanced singers who don’t need to focus on technicalities can benefit from focusing on moving their body according to the musical elements.
After carrying out the experiments, I sent each volunteer their video, asking as well permission to include it in my research. One volunteer informally noted that her movement did not translate on video the same way she imagined it would, and it didn’t look the same way she experienced it. This points to a potential next step in the research process, which could be to have singers review their video footage and gather data on their observations, as well as having external observers analyze their movements. These ideas are further discussed in the next chapter, where I will present conclusions and future next steps.
go to Conclusion ⇒