Visual Representations and Guitar Skill 37 Music Perception VOLUME 30, ISSUE 1, PP. 37–47. ISSN 0730-7829, ELECTRONIC ISSN 1533-8312. © 2012 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PLEASE DIRECT ALL REQUESTS FOR PERMISSION TO PHOTOCOPY OR REPRODUCE ARTICLE CONTENT THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS’ S RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS WEBSITE, HTTP:// WWW. UCPRESSJOURNALS. COM/ REPRINTINFO. ASP.DOI: 10.1525/ MP.2012.30.1.37 MATTHEW J. C. CRUMP Brooklyn College of CUNY GORDON D. L OGAN, & J ERRY KIMBROUGH Vanderbilt University WE INVESTIGATE A ROLE FOR VISION IN SKILLED GUITAR playing, focusing on visual contributions to the representation of basic first-position root chords (C, A, G, E, D). Experiment 1 involved naming or playing guitar chords displayed in different visual formats (letter, photograph, chart) and orientations. Experiment 2 employed a Stroop-like design, involving identification of the visual or auditory dimension for congruent or incongruent pairs of chord photographs and sounds. Our results demonstrate that visual represen- tations of guitar chords are orientation sensitive and associated with their corresponding actions and sounds. We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding the multimodal nature of musical skill, and consider how the format of visual information can impact acquisition of musical skill. Received August 11, 2010, accepted October 4, 2011. Key words: guitar, Stroop, orientation, vision, association M USICAL PERFORMANCE IS A BROAD CLASS OF SKILLS involving sight-reading, playing from memory, playing by ear, and improvisation (McPherson, 1994). All of these skills rely on several component processes mediating perceptual, cognitive, and motor aspects of musical structure. The present experiments are aimed specifically at the role of vision in representations of musical structure, a topic that has not received extensive treatment in the literature. Prior research has focused primarily on skill sets common among formally trained musicians, particularly pianists (Palmer, 1997). For example, the role of vision has been investigated most extensively in terms of sight-reading skills (Sloboda, 1976; Wolf, 1976; for a review see Lehmann & McArthur, 2002), and to a lesser extent in terms of how visual feedback guides action during sight-reading (Banton, 1995; Lehmann & Ericsson, 1996; Ronkainen & Kussi, 2009). We are interested in the role that vision may play in developing representations of musical structure derived from watching oneself and others play an instrument. We investigated these issues in skilled guitarists, a group that we assumed would rely strongly on visual input during performance, and during acquisition of their skill. Our interest in visual aspects of guitar skill stems from two intuitions derived from our own experience as guitar players. First, we assume the guitar itself encourages reliance on visual information. The guitar allows the same note to be played in different positions on different strings. For example, the Gibson Les Paul Junior guitar we used in our experiments has a range of 46 semitones spread across six strings and 22 frets (132 fretboard positions). Because of this ambiguity, guitar chords and scales are represented in print using chord charts (dots on a grid depicting a portion of the fretboard) or tablature (numbers indicating fret position placed on a grid specifying individual strings), specifying the to-be fretted positions. We assume that visual attention to these spatial patterns, both in print form and by visual inspection of the guitar during performance, allows guitarists to specify note and finger positions to choose the next note or chord quickly and efficiently. Indeed, guitar players often watch their hands when they play. Second, we assume that formal and informal music training emphasize different aspects of visual knowledge. In formal training with instruments in the Western classical music tradition, musicians learn to sight-read musical notation, which could de-emphasize visual information from the instrument and the effectors used to play it. By contrast, as with learning of instruments in most non-Western cultures, many guitarists are trained informally; they learn to play by ear, many never learn to read music, and few rely on music notation while they play. Playing by ear frees attention from a musical score and encourages attention to visual aspects of the guitar (the fretboard and the strings) and the hands (finger placements in scales and chords). We assume that musical skill development in this context will encourage represen- tation of musical structures in terms of their visual expressions on the guitar. Thus, in addition to representing musical structures in terms of auditory or kinesthetic events, we propose that guitarists represent notes, chords, K EEPING AN E YE ON G UITAR S KILL : V ISUAL R EPRESENTATIONS OF G UITAR C HORDS