Journal article
The Effect of Nonverbal Conductor Lip Rounding and Eyebrow Lifting on Singers' Lip and Eyebrow Postures: A Motion Capture Study
International journal of research in choral singing, Vol.4(1), p.36
10/01/2012
Abstract
This investigation, the first to use 3-D infrared motion capture technology to measure singer responses to nonverbal conductor behaviors, sought to determine whether changes occurred in participants’ (N = 47) lip and eyebrow postures when following a conductor who exhibited varied lip and eyebrow positions. Participants sang the first phrase melody of Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus” while watching a video screen under two sets of circumstances: point light preand posttest conditions without a visible conductor; and while viewing a videotaped conductor who displayed four counterbalanced sets of behaviors, presented in random order. The conductor exhibited a traditional conducting pattern throughout in combination with the following lip and eyebrow behaviors: (a) eyebrow raise first half of the sung phrase and modeled /u/ vowels second half, (b) neutral eyebrows first half and modeled /u/ vowels second half, (c) eyebrow raise first half and neutral lips second half, and (d) neutral eyebrows first half and neutral lips second half of the sung phrase. Among primary results: (a) participants rounded their lips significantly more during conductor lip rounding, (b) participants raised their eyebrows significantly more during the second occurrence of the conductor raised eyebrow condition compared to the second occurrence of the conductor neutral eyebrow condition, (c) participants rounded their lips more in posttest conductorless singing compared to a pretest, and (d) most participants did not notice changes in conductor eyebrow lifting, but did notice changes in conductor lip postures. These results were discussed in terms of possible mimicking behaviors of choristers, conductor nonverbal facial behaviors in choral rehearsals, limitations of the study, and suggestions for further research.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The Effect of Nonverbal Conductor Lip Rounding and Eyebrow Lifting on Singers' Lip and Eyebrow Postures: A Motion Capture Study
- Creators
- Jeremy Manternach
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- International journal of research in choral singing, Vol.4(1), p.36
- Publisher
- American Choral Directors Association
- eISSN
- 1532-5644
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/01/2012
- Academic Unit
- Music; Teaching and Learning
- Record Identifier
- 9984374223902771
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