Measurements and perceptions of interactions between musicians and cellos

Measurement of physical properties alone has failed to predict how an instrument will be perceived by musicians. Physical properties are only capable of characterizing an instrument as an object. They are not enough to characterize the suitability of the object as an instrument for producing music by a particular musician. To evaluate an instrument, the musician must apply gestures to the instrument and interpret the response of the instrument to those gestures. Two musicians may use different gestures, receive different responses, and thus have a different set of interactions upon which to base their evaluation. This could explain why musicians disagree over instrument evaluations. To study the relationships between gestures, responses, and the perception of interactions in the context of evaluating cellos, we have put in place (1) a motion capture system for measuring the control parameters and (2) a set of piezoelectric sensors to measure the string vibrations of each string. Gestures and string vibrat...