All that jazz

A bulletin from the Psychonomics Society 50th annual meeting in Boston, MA.


The Psychonomics Society conference is pretty big and covers many topics relating to human and animal cognition. Almost every year something fairly novel catches my eye. This year, it was a talk by Michael Schober and Michelle Levine (presented by the former), concerning the relationship between onstage coordination and improvisational quality in jazz musicians.

Now, this brief account is necessarily sketchy as I didn't manage to note every single detail, but I think the basic finding here is very interesting. In jazz, the improviser has to make a series of musical choices in relation to what the other players are doing. There is apparently a whole lore about coordination in jazz, with an emphasis on the necessity to coordinate section changes, but also the need for players to focus and concentrate whilst improvising a solo.

The study reported here recruited 30 experienced jazz and saxophone duos, and asked them to play a specially composed piece which included two improvised solos of 20 bars each. After an opportunity to rehearse the duos played in one of three conditions: (a) together - the face-to-face condition, (b) in separate spaces but with a video and audio connection, and (c) in separate spaces with only an audio connection. Audio recordings of their performances were rated on several criteria by three professional performing musicians, each with over thirty years' playing experience and previous experience of sitting on musical juries.

On a post-performance questionnaire, the face-to-face players reported being better able to concentrate than did the players in the other conditions. However, their improvisations were given the lowest ratings by the judges (who, remember, were blind to the conditions). The most highly-rated performances were those in the audio condition.

Among the other findings was that the sax players improved with practice whereas the pianists did not. However, the performance of the saxophonists was highly dependent on the pianists, who clearly laid the foundation that enabled the sax players to shine.