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On the One Hand or on the Other: Trade-Off in Timing Precision in Bimanual Musical Scale Playing

Music performance requires simultaneously producing challenging movement sequences with the left and right hand. A key question in bimanual motor control research is whether bimanual movements are produced by combining unimanual controllers or through a dedicated bimanual controller. Here, 34 expert...

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Autores principales: van Vugt, Floris Tijmen, Altenmüller, Eckart
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6737297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32190132
http://dx.doi.org/10.5709/acp-0271-5
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author van Vugt, Floris Tijmen
Altenmüller, Eckart
author_facet van Vugt, Floris Tijmen
Altenmüller, Eckart
author_sort van Vugt, Floris Tijmen
collection PubMed
description Music performance requires simultaneously producing challenging movement sequences with the left and right hand. A key question in bimanual motor control research is whether bimanual movements are produced by combining unimanual controllers or through a dedicated bimanual controller. Here, 34 expert pianists performed musical scale playing movements with the left or right hand alone and with both hands simultaneously. We found that for the left hand, scale playing was more variable when playing with both hands simultaneously rather than with one hand at a time, but for the right hand, performance was identical. This indicates that when task constraints are high, musicians prioritize timing accuracy in the right hand at the cost of detriment of performance in the left hand. We also found that individual differences in timing substantially overlap between the unimanual and bimanual condition, suggesting control policies are similar but not identical when playing with two hands or one. In the bimanual condition, the left-hand keystrokes tended to occur before right-hand ones, and more so when the hands were further apart. Performance of the two hands was furthermore coupled so that they tended to be early and late together, especially in the beginning and end of each scale. This suggests that experts are able to achieve tightly coupled timing of scale playing movements between the hands. Taken together, these findings show evidence for partially overlapping and partially separate controllers for bimanual and unimanual movements in piano playing.
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spelling pubmed-67372972020-03-18 On the One Hand or on the Other: Trade-Off in Timing Precision in Bimanual Musical Scale Playing van Vugt, Floris Tijmen Altenmüller, Eckart Adv Cogn Psychol Research Articles Music performance requires simultaneously producing challenging movement sequences with the left and right hand. A key question in bimanual motor control research is whether bimanual movements are produced by combining unimanual controllers or through a dedicated bimanual controller. Here, 34 expert pianists performed musical scale playing movements with the left or right hand alone and with both hands simultaneously. We found that for the left hand, scale playing was more variable when playing with both hands simultaneously rather than with one hand at a time, but for the right hand, performance was identical. This indicates that when task constraints are high, musicians prioritize timing accuracy in the right hand at the cost of detriment of performance in the left hand. We also found that individual differences in timing substantially overlap between the unimanual and bimanual condition, suggesting control policies are similar but not identical when playing with two hands or one. In the bimanual condition, the left-hand keystrokes tended to occur before right-hand ones, and more so when the hands were further apart. Performance of the two hands was furthermore coupled so that they tended to be early and late together, especially in the beginning and end of each scale. This suggests that experts are able to achieve tightly coupled timing of scale playing movements between the hands. Taken together, these findings show evidence for partially overlapping and partially separate controllers for bimanual and unimanual movements in piano playing. University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw 2019-09-03 /pmc/articles/PMC6737297/ /pubmed/32190132 http://dx.doi.org/10.5709/acp-0271-5 Text en Copyright: © 2019 University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
spellingShingle Research Articles
van Vugt, Floris Tijmen
Altenmüller, Eckart
On the One Hand or on the Other: Trade-Off in Timing Precision in Bimanual Musical Scale Playing
title On the One Hand or on the Other: Trade-Off in Timing Precision in Bimanual Musical Scale Playing
title_full On the One Hand or on the Other: Trade-Off in Timing Precision in Bimanual Musical Scale Playing
title_fullStr On the One Hand or on the Other: Trade-Off in Timing Precision in Bimanual Musical Scale Playing
title_full_unstemmed On the One Hand or on the Other: Trade-Off in Timing Precision in Bimanual Musical Scale Playing
title_short On the One Hand or on the Other: Trade-Off in Timing Precision in Bimanual Musical Scale Playing
title_sort on the one hand or on the other: trade-off in timing precision in bimanual musical scale playing
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6737297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32190132
http://dx.doi.org/10.5709/acp-0271-5
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