Spatial perception of pitch and playing an instrument: Any studies about it?
A keyboardist plays left to right (lower to higher notes). A violinist, the higher the notes, the fingers go nearer the body. A Double-bassist, the higher the notes, the fingers go towards the floor. Guitarist: higher notes, the fingers at an angle down towards right but on left-hand-side.
I'm highlighting the point that different instrumentalists produce different pitches in different parts of space. I'm saying that a violinist will produce the same pitch in a different space than a guitarist and their perception will be different. Maybe even giving a guitarist a certain point in space they will perceive a certain pitch.
The synaesthasia phenomena might be related.
Wondering if there is any studies, research or musicology into this?
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Maybe the term you are looking for is body mapping?
Body Mapping
Body Mapping is the conscious correcting and refining of one’s body map to produce efficient, graceful, and coordinated movement. The body map is one’s self-representation in one’s own brain, one’s assumptions or conception of what one’s body is like, in whole or part. If our representation is accurate, movement is good. If our representation is faulty, movement suffers. When our map is corrected, the movement improves. Progress can be very rapid and a musician can, over time, learn to play like a natural.
Our body maps are like directions to a gig. If the directions are good, you will arrive easily and in plenty of time. But if the directions are incomplete or wrong, you might end up being late or not arriving at all!
Body maps need not be conscious. Many performers, often seen as “naturals,” exhibit fine, free body use. By experience and effective modeling during their development, they have managed to maintain complete and accurate maps unconsciously. Musicians who do not move efficiently may benefit from correcting or enhancing their body maps by observing and imitating the natural movers whose body maps are good.
About body mapping: How Body Mapping and the Alexander Technique Will Improve Your Playing
I don‘t think that a bassist has a very different spatial perception than a violinist. He won‘t think he is playing upwards because his hands move up when he plays downscale.
The Role of Haptic Cues in Musical Instrument Quality Perception
Any studies about it?
If you are searching for spatial perception look up these links:
The Spatial Properties of Music Perception: Differences in Visuo-spatial Ability According to Musicianship and Interference of Musical Structure
Seeing music: The perception of melodic 'ups and downs' modulates the spatial processing of visual stimuli
Sensory Evaluation of Sound by Nick Zacharov [book]
Spatial Perception and Physical Location as Factors in Music
or this one here:
Spatial vision is superior in musicians when memory plays a role
Abstract:
Musicians' perceptual advantage in the acoustic domain is well established. Recent studies show that musicians' verbal working memory is also superior. Additionally, some studies report that musicians' visuospatial skills are enhanced although others failed to find this enhancement. We now examined whether musicians' spatial vision is superior, and if so, whether this superiority reflects refined visual skills or a general superiority of working memory. We examined spatial frequency discrimination among musicians and nonmusician university students using two presentation conditions: simultaneous (spatial forced choice) and sequential (temporal forced choice). Musicians' performance was similar to that of nonmusicians in the simultaneous condition. However, their performance in the sequential condition was superior, suggesting an advantage only when stimuli need to be retained, i.e., working memory. Moreover, the two groups showed a different pattern of correlations: Musicians' visual thresholds were correlated, and neither was correlated with their verbal memory. By contrast, among nonmusicians, the visual thresholds were not correlated, but sequential thresholds were correlated with verbal memory scores, suggesting that a general working memory component limits their performance in this condition. We propose that musicians' superiority in spatial frequency discrimination reflects an advantage in a domain-general aspect of working memory rather than a general enhancement in spatial-visual skills.
This is purely anecdotal, so take it as such.
I played single-reeds for many years, and when I switched to 'cello I was concerned exactly about this: that all of a sudden moving my hands far away from my head would produce higher, not lower pitches. As it turned out , again in my case, it was exactly zero problem at all.
OTOH, if someone suddenly gave me an "upside down" cello, or a piano with reversed keyboard, then most certainly I'd go crazy. I think most musicians set their "body map" for a given instrument or class of instruments, even if the mapping differs between classes.
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