Musical performance as multimodal communication: drummers, musical collaborators, and listeners

Abstract

Musical performance provides an interesting domain for understanding and investigating multimodal communication. Although the primary modality of music is auditory, musicians make considerable use of the visual channel as well. This talk examines musical performance as multimodal, focusing on drumming in one style of popular music (funk or soul music). The way drummers interact with, and communicate with, their musical collaborators and with listeners are examined, in terms of the structure of different musical parts; processes of mutual coordination, entrainment, and turn-taking (complementarity) are highlighted. Both pre-determined (composed) and spontaneous (improvised) behaviors are considered. The way in which digital drumsets function as complexly structured human interfaces to sound synthesis systems is examined as well.