Continuous Self-report of Engagement to Live Solo Marimba Performance Mary Broughton, *1 Catherine Stevens *1 , Emery Schubert, #2 * MARCS Auditory Laboratories, University of Western Sydney, Australia # School of English, Media and Performing Arts, University of New South Wales, Australia 1 m.broughton@uws.edu.au ABSTRACT Laboratory-controlled experiments have demonstrated that expressive bodily movement (or lack thereof) can contribute positively (or negatively) to assessments of marimba performance. The experiment reported here investigates audience continuous self-report engagement responses gathered via the portable Audience Response Facility (pARF). The stimulus material was a solo marimba piece performed in a live concert. A female musician performed two musically similar sections within the piece in two different performance manners (deadpan and projected). The second-order standard deviation threshold method analysed signal reliability. As hypothesised, mean engagement responses were greater in the projected sample than the deadpan sample. Reliable signal was only observed in the projected sample. Difference between deadpan and projected sample mean engagement responses may be due to expressive bodily movement from the performance manner manipulation; alternatively, an order effect may be responsible. Experimentation in ecologically valid settings enables understanding of audience perception of music performance as it unfolds in time. I. INTRODUCTION The experiment reported in here builds on the results of a multi-modal experiment (Broughton & Stevens, in press) where, under controlled laboratory conditions, performance manner - projected or deadpan – was manipulated systematically. The associated expressive (or inexpressive) bodily movement was shown to enhance (or diminish) judgements of expressiveness of excerpts of contemporary solo marimba performance. As hypothesised, higher ratings of expressiveness and interest were given to projected performances, and lower ratings were given to deadpan performances, when the presentation was audio-visual in comparison to audio-only. Given these findings obtained in laboratory conditions, an investigation was mounted to discover whether they would generalise to an ecologically valid setting. The majority of research that has investigated bodily movement in the perception of music performance has been conducted in laboratory conditions using pre-recorded performances (e.g. Dahl & Friberg, 2007; Davidson, 1993, 1994, 1995, 2002; McClaren, 1988; Schutz & Lipscomb, 2007; Thompson, Graham & Russo, 2005; Vines, Krumhansl, Wanderley & Levitin, 2006; Wanderley, Vines, Middleton, McKay & Hatch, 2005). Perceptual responses to performed music are often global judgments collected at the conclusion of a performance (e.g. Broughton & Stevens, in press; Dahl & Friberg, 2007; Davidson, 1993, 1994, 1995, 2002; McClaren, 1988; Schutz & Lipscomb, 2007). Few investigations have sought to understand how audience members’ perceptual judgements evolve over time within the context of significant portions of musical works (Schubert, 2001; Vines, Krumhansl, Wanderley & Levitin, 2006; Wanderley, Vines, Middleton, McKay & Hatch, 2005). Though these published studies have been conducted using recordings of music performance, they pave the way for exploration of audience perceptual responses to music performed in its own environment. Research that has been conducted in a naturalistic setting has tended to be qualitative, focussing on affective and evaluative responses to live concert attendance (Thompson, 2006, 2007). Such research involved audience members answering questionnaires before a concert, or during an interval. There is a need to understand how audience members respond to a concert as the music unfolds in time. Of interest to the current experiment was whether expressive bodily movement, resulting from the performance of musical material in a projected, manner would provide a means of connecting with and engaging audience members. Engagement was selected as the dependent-variable measurement to reflect audience members’ attention, interest, cognitive and behavioural responses throughout the marimba performance. Engagement has been used widely in educational studies as a term involving cognitive, behavioural and affective elements, and is closely related to motivation (e.g. Reeve, Jang, Carrell, Jeon, & Barch, 2004). According to Furrer and Skinner (2003), “Engagement refers to active, goal-directed, flexible, constructive, persistent, focused interactions with the social and physical environments.” (p. 149). Thompson (2007) asserts that engagement, involving the audience member’s connection with the music and the musicians through the performers’ ability to hold their attention, is the most important component that contributes to audience enjoyment of a performance. The broad goal of this investigation is to conduct a partially-controlled experiment measuring audience engagement responses continuously throughout a live, marimba performance. A. Analysing Continuous Response Data To identify significant or reliable signal in the continuous response data, the second-order standard deviation threshold method of analysis will be implemented (Schubert, 2007). Schubert (2007) summarised the disadvantages and advantages in using this method for analysing time-series data. Using post-hoc criterion as the basis for decisions of significance, a percentage of responses will be assessed as significant, and a percentage of responses will be judged as insignificant, regardless of reliability of samples. Therefore, this analytical system may be considered as a ranking of significance. The second-order standard deviation threshold is not set using any particular criteria at this point in time. Further work is required to discover the value of different second-order standard deviation thresholds for identifying relative significance. An ISBN: 978-4-9904208-0-2  2008 ICMPC 10 Proceedings of the 10 th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC 10). Sapporo, Japan. Ken’ichi Miyazaki, Yuzuru Hiraga, Mayumi Adachi, Yoshitaka Nakajima, and Minoru Tsuzaki (Editors) 366