Looking passionate while playing makes bad performances good!

[gvans]

Well then. At least you weren't SHOUTING as much, as earlier, in your rant. So, if this particular experiment is so ludicrous, and all science in general is suspect, how do you explain the increase in female musicians in orchestras since screened auditions were introduced in the 70's and 80's?

https://www.nber.org/papers/w5903

[dima_76557]

Well then. At least you weren't SHOUTING as much, as earlier, in your rant. So, if this particular experiment is so ludicrous, and all science in general is suspect, how do you explain the increase in female musicians in orchestras since screened auditions were introduced in the 70's and 80's?

https://www.nber.org/papers/w5903

That's an easy one. Before, women were simply discriminated because they looked like women, and this has NOTHING to do with how well they played or with the listening skills of the judges. It was a "man's business". If you were a woman, you were out, it's as simple as that. Since the candidates started playing behind curtains, the judges could do nothing but listen and decide fairly. If everybody had played 6-second fragments at the audition, however, the judges wouldn't have had a clue as to who to pick.

But still: playing for an orchestra audition or playing for a solo audition are entirely different things. We would simply miss too much in terms of the sound if we held piano competitions behind curtains because all the useful harmonics would be swallowed by the curtains.

Before you ask why women are so rarely first-prize winners in competitions: this has to do with hand size (women are on average 15% smaller, and size matters in this business because it is a lot easier to play the required passages fluently and with enough power if you have the really huge hands the winners usually have). It's not because of the visual aspect, or because the judges are people who hate women. One competition where women have a better chance of getting into the finales is the Chopin competition, but even first prizes are rare there (Argerich comes to mind, but she's super-human; few men can actually beat her when she let's it go).

I never intended to shout. What I wrote was probably shocking, that's why it may have looked like shouting. I'm very sorry.

EDIT: I also said nothing against science itself. I actually love science. It's the ones that abuse science to prove something (not the task of pure science) that deserve to be under very strict scrutiny because they are generally over-privileged and have made a mess of contemporary society.

[kalirren]

This research was set up to PROVE a preconceived opinion, and it's a shame that the findings are not only abused to tell us how the researcher feels about competitions, but it also generalizes its findings for ALL classical piano performance.

1) You know, that is how you do research.  You set up a test to prove or disprove a contentious proposition, and the data speak how they may.  Then, optionally, you adjust your feelings accordingly - but ultimately, the researcher's feelings don't really have to enter into the evaluation of the data at all by disinterested parties like you or me.

2) I totally agree that the implied generalization from competition context to all performance context is unsupported and unfortunate.  Typical high-profile journal rockstar-rhetoric.  

Music is essentially judged with the EARS and NOT with the eyes.

I agree this is how it should be, and I think many individuals live up to this standard, but this study casts my doubt on if groups of people are capable of this. Even groups of experts, whose tastes may differ individually, may only be able to find consensus on visual cues if the competition is close enough.  If one candidate is far and away the best of the field, this is obviously less of a problem.

How inexperienced listeners react to distorted data in a test environment has no significance for how reality works.

The data clearly show otherwise - that is, in fact, exactly how reality works.  The distortion of musical context that was applied does not destroy the signal, and the elimination of video information does destroy the signal.  Unless you are prepared to accuse the author of data fraud, you are thinking wishfully, and I think you realize this, too:

I'd rather remain a happy noble savage, than become an unhappy neurotic wreck, but some "scientists" don't seem to understand such a point of view.

I'm done discussing the paper.  I had thought that perhaps by appealing to our common passion for music, I might be able to elicit an honest discussion from you, but it appears that I was mistaken.  Your musical worldview - the search for the good, beautiful, and divine - is clearly more important to you than the reality exposed by this study.

What I want now to understand is why you believe them to be in conflict.

[dima_76557]

The distortion of musical context that was applied does not destroy the signal, and the elimination of video information does destroy the signal.

What do you mean by "signal"? Ears listen for sound in context, not for sounds as such. As soon as you take away the context, the separate sounds don't mean anything anymore, and you can not guess for the winner of a competition or experience pleasure while listening. In other words: you hear, but you stop listening.

As to the video info, I already explained that, but I will repeat my conclusions based on the findings: Audio without any meaning becomes a DISTURBING factor when you also have to judge with your eyes. It's either, not both. In the beginning of this thread, some people already pointed out that they had to close their eyes to concentrate on the music. A combination of audio + video works DESTRUCTIVE for both. It's an OVERLOAD of info for the brain. In other words: you watch, but you stop seeing, and you hear, but you stop listening. That's why nobody was able to guess anything with the combination of both. In a live performance, however, people often close their eyes and everything is OK - they can judge about whether it is good or not, and as a rule, the public is not far away from what the judges think. On a YouTube clip in context, we usually switch between watching (and actually seeing) and listening (and actually hearing).

Video alone (we watch and see) can give us clues about the confidence of a person, but it says absolutely NOTHING about the performance itself. That's why the result of the guessing was 53%, and not 100%.

[kalirren]

What do you mean by "signal"?

Sorry, that was unclear.  Consider

Process A: Trained jury evaluates entire performances by candidates.

We know that Process A requires multiple performances to render a decision.  That's a lot of information.  Now, we ask the question, how much of this information can you destroy while preserving the signal of the winning candidate?  This study reports that

Process B: Untrained subjects evaluate 6-second video-only snippets of candidates.

is capable of reproducing the winning candidate with fidelity significantly higher than chance.  This is Experiment 2.

Even if the rest of the paper is completely bunk, (which it isn't,) this finding alone would demand explanation.

After going through three more experiments with untrained and trained people, they were able to eliminate even most of the image information.  It turns out that

Process C: Untrained subjects evaluate 6-second moving black-and-white outlines of candidates

still preserved enough signal for the subjects to do better than chance.  This is experiment 6.

Okay.  So now we know that motion signals are important.  How are they interpreted?

Experiment 7 asked participants to select the most "passionate," "involved," "motivated," "creative," "unique," and "confident" candidates. Participants' perceptions of these qualities in the actual winners were more associated with the visual component of their performance than with the audio, with the sole exception of confidence.  "Confidence" was the only category where those who listened to audio-only footage identified the actual winners more often than those who watched the videos, and even so not by a statistically significant margin.

So your baseless assertion here:

Video alone can give us clues about the confidence of a person, but it says absolutely NOTHING about the performance itself.

is in fact exactly backwards. If anything it is audio that gives better information about confidence, and video provides all the rest of the information about artistic showmanship. (Go read the supplemental information.  I just did.)

[dima_76557]

So your baseless assertion here:is in fact exactly backwards. If anything it is audio that gives better information about confidence, and video provides all the rest of the information about artistic showmanship. (Go read the supplemental information.  I just did.)

I think this is a matter of word choice and terminology: I probably did not use the word "confidence" in the way the research paper did. What I meant was the total impression people get when they first see you. I probably misnamed that as "confidence" because I remember that from other research about job applicants. It is well-known that the six seconds play a crucial role to get that first total impression, that's also why the researcher uses six seconds, and not seven or eight. This is not guarantee, however, for how the rest of the application process will be judged.

Still, we are left with a discrepancy because it is basically guess work for money (8$ for each "correct" guess), not actual judging. I don't know how inexperienced listeners define and combine all the terms you mentioned with the distorted info they were given, but a pro can easily sit down, compare two audio discs in context, and determine EVERYTHING needed to take a "winner". If he/she is given a video, he/she will most probably first watch (to see while hearing, not listening) a couple of seconds, and then switch to listening (focus on both simultaneously is practically impossible). If something strikes him/her as a particular effect, he/she will again switch to watching (winding back maybe) to see how it was accomplished, etc., and then go back to listening mode.

EDIT:
About the importance of 6 seconds in guessing about what is going to happen. It wouldn't have been enough to witness this epic fail:

[kalirren]

Still, we are left with a discrepancy because it is basically guess work for money (8$ for each "correct" guess), not actual judging.

It very much is actual judging - it's just that the judgments are made on presumably irrelevant bases, which makes it all the more striking that these bogus judgments are more accurate than chance at predicting competition winners.  They shouldn't be better than guessing, and yet they are.

I don't know how inexperienced listeners define and combine all the terms you mentioned with the distorted info they were given,

I don't know either, and I don't know if anyone knows, except maybe theater people, whose job is to know.  The study leaves it as a black box, and does not discuss further.

but a pro can easily sit down, compare two audio discs in context, and determine EVERYTHING needed to take a "winner".

A pity they didn't extend the trials to include entire pieces.  Still, even with 60 seconds of footage, professionals who listened only to audio came to their own conclusions, (that's my interpretation of the result that their agreement with the actual competition results was worse than chance) whereas professionals who looked only at video came to the same conclusions as the actual competitions did at rates greater than chance.  These are the results of experiments 4 and 5.

I think this says more about competitions than about experts.

If he/she is given a video, he/she will most probably first watch (to see while hearing, not listening) a couple of seconds, and then switch to listening (focus on both simultaneously is practically impossible). If something strikes him/her as a particular effect, he/she will again switch to watching (winding back maybe) to see how it was accomplished, etc., and then go back to listening mode.

This is also how I would pick a winner.  Honestly, I suspect this is how all the professionals in the study picked their winners, and that you just described the very process by which opinions come to diverge from the competition result.

For what it's worth, one way to look at the results of this study is that untrained people with video-only agree with competitions, and both disagree with experts listening to audio only!  So even taking the study at full face value, maybe a new wave of competitions should just be CD-only...that would save the integrity of the classical music competition establishment.

[faulty_damper]

Background information about the 6 second and 60 second clips: this is a common technique in psychology for subjects to evaluate another person.  What has been found is that it doesn't matter how much longer the clip is, 6 seconds is enough time for someone to make an evaluation of another person.  Watching longer doesn't make much of a difference.  This is the reason why the clips were so short.  In fact, we can accurately make judgements of people using less than 3 second video clips.

Anyway, a good example is the X Factor TV reality contest show.  The finalists who get there aren't necessarily the best singers (they aren't) but what they do have is the "X factor", a set of qualities that allows them to be propelled to superstardom (which is another way of saying that these contestants will make the production company money.)  In other words, these people are marketable.  Simon Cowell explicitly states that they are looking for someone whom is marketable.

The 11th Van Cliburn piano competition DVD has a short interview with the judges where they say, and I'm paraphrasing, that they aren't looking for someone who is technically perfect but are looking for someone marketable.  The reason, just as in the X Factor, is that the winners will be touring and managed by the Cliburn organization so someone whom is charismatic and charming on stage sells tickets $$$.  This explains the rather odd choices of winners the past few competitions.

Now, all of this just goes to show that a person's skill isn't as important as their X factor.  They could be the very best at what they do, but if they don't have the X factor, then they won't win.

[dima_76557]

It very much is actual judging - it's just that the judgments are made on presumably irrelevant bases, which makes it all the more striking that these bogus judgments are more accurate than chance at predicting competition winners.  They shouldn't be better than guessing, and yet they are.

I don't know either, and I don't know if anyone knows, except maybe theater people, whose job is to know.  The study leaves it as a black box, and does not discuss further.

We are talking about INEXPERIENCED listeners, kalirren. How are they going to "judge" things that take years to learn how to judge? How important is money as an incentive to "judge" these elements (8$ per "correct" guess, remember). Were these "inexperienced" listeners not people related to the theater world maybe? All elements that STRONGLY bias the experiments.

A pity they didn't extend the trials to include entire pieces.  Still, even with 60 seconds of footage, professionals who listened only to audio came to their own conclusions, (that's my interpretation of the result that their agreement with the actual competition results was worse than chance) whereas professionals who looked only at video came to the same conclusions as the actual competitions did at rates greater than chance.  These are the results of experiments 4 and 5.

Please read my previous posts. I already explained the mechanism of how listening works, and of how video+audio works. What they judged in the video-only was the "FIRST TOTAL VISUAL IMPRESSION" and that is the only correct inference the research paper could and should have drawn. This has NOTHING to do with judging music performance as such where LAST impressions are far more important than first ones.

The other experiments could never have given good results the way they were conducted, and I suspect that's why they were conducted the way they were. The longer the fragments for UNTRAINED listeners to listen to become, the worse their guessing results will become, simply because these people are untrained.
P.S.: I wonder who ordered and sponsored this .

I think this says more about competitions than about experts.

This says nothing about competitions as such, and neither does it say anything about experts. It says something about how you can manipulate data and get the results you want to "prove". The researcher hates competitions; you hate competitions. You have simply found each other, OK, but please keep the arguments clear, because believing the results as they were stated has serious consequences for how you accept YOURSELF as a musician and as a human being. That's how cult brainwashing works. Remember: the results were GENERALIZED into a sweeping conclusion that is supposed to be true for all and in all cases, not only for competitions).

This is also how I would pick a winner.  Honestly, I suspect this is how all the professionals in the study picked their winners, and that you just described the very process by which opinions come to diverge from the competition result.

No, kalirren, you were manipulated into thinking so, and that's not an allegation against you. Competitions and their judges are not as bad and as stupid as you think they are. They're actually very useful because they form the character of the person and prepare him/her for the difficult road an artist has to go through rigid discipline. All greats went through them successfully, and not mainly because of visual aspects.

For what it's worth, one way to look at the results of this study is that untrained people with video-only agree with competitions, and both disagree with experts listening to audio only!  So even taking the study at full face value, maybe a new wave of competitions should just be CD-only...that would save the integrity of the classical music competition establishment.

No. The study tested general human features, knowledge about how our senses work, and which ones dominate in which situations, and it did that on purpose to get the pre-determined results and the preconceived conclusion. The study tested NOTHING that is specific to judging about music performance. In "science" as it has been conducted lately, 2 times 2 is no longer 4; it's just as much as the Overlord wants it to be.

Making competitions CD-only will mean ultimate and total degradation for the whole business of live concerts, because we have few alternatives to start a successful career. Besides, CD-only can be faked, fabricated, engineered, etc. Would you prefer that to the real thing? I certainly wouldn't.

[dima_76557]

Now, all of this just goes to show that a person's skill isn't as important as their X factor.  They could be the very best at what they do, but if they don't have the X factor, then they won't win.

How much money will they make with a "marketable" person who can't entertain critical people in a hall in a musical sense? In the finales, they're ALL "marketable" in the limited sense the research paper suggests. Business people are too clever not to know that first impressions are not necessarily last impressions.

When they say they're not looking for technical perfection, they mean that literally, and they simply confirm what I already said in post #25: they are not looking for people who can get all the notes right. They want people who have something to say at the instrument in an audible sense.

They probably also know that you can pump yourself up to the necessary X factor for that occasion only, but to persistently maintain the peak level you reached at the competition outside the competition environment is an entirely different matter. That's why they want people who are already solid artists, otherwise the enterprise will be a failure in business terms. That's why the elements that are chosen to pick a winner have to do with how you make music (despite the occasional mistakes in what you do), and not with the visual aspect.

[gvans]

@dima:

Re Internet etiquette: use of CAPS = SHOUTING. Most of us over the age of twenty prefer reasoned discourse sans hysterics. Thank you for not shouting.

Re orchestra audition screens distorting sound: modern orchestras, at least in the U.S., use acoustically transparent screens. This is not 1811. Sound is not "swallowed by the curtains." We have the technology.

Unless acoustically transparent screens are used for piano competitions, there can be no resolution to the arguments engendered by the OP's comments. Visual components of competitions must be deemed valuable by those holding them, otherwise screens would be used.

"Brevity is the soul of wit."  The Bard 

[dima_76557]

Unless acoustically transparent screens are used for piano competitions, there can be no resolution to the arguments engendered by the OP's comments. Visual components of competitions must be deemed valuable by those holding them, otherwise screens would be used.

Do you as a musician really believe the unsupported conclusion concerning all judging about music?

Does "screening" mean that there will no longer be attention on TV and YouTube for classical piano competitions? (That's where the visual components are really valuable).

What should be done with the pre-screening stage (the only stage in a competition where videos are used to judge and select the candidates)? Does that also apply to applications for musical institutions where the same procedures are followed?

[kalirren]

We are talking about INEXPERIENCED listeners, kalirren. How are they going to "judge" things that take years to learn how to judge? How important is money as an incentive to "judge" these elements (8$ per "correct" guess, remember). Were these "inexperienced" listeners not people related to the theater world maybe? All elements that STRONGLY bias the experiments.

Experiments 4 and 5 use professional listeners, and if anything, the paper's conclusions become stronger.  The percent of people who agree with the competition results when they listen only to audio drops from the high 20%s (untrained) to the low 20%s (pros), where 33% is chance.

You seem to think that the money matters, that it is some sort of bribe. I don't understand. People are busy. They have better things to do than sit in an experiment room.  The money is there to induce the behavior you want, actual judging, on whatever irrelevant bases they have to them, instead of just pressing through the choice dialogue and choosing randomly, to get out of there faster.  That's very different from inducing the results you want, which would indeed be research fraud.

OK, but please keep the arguments clear, because believing the results as they were stated has serious consequences for how you accept YOURSELF as a musician and as a human being. That's how cult brainwashing works. Remember: the results were GENERALIZED into a sweeping conclusion that is supposed to be true for all and in all cases, not only for competitions).

Dima, are you seriously incapable of drawing your own interpretation from the data?  I have already tried to minimally reference the author's interpretation in our discussion. It is you who are still hung up on that silly sentence in the abstract.  I disregard it as well, but for you it seems to be that because the author's overstated conclusions disagree with your sentiments on a moral level, then the data that was collected must be bunk, and you don't care about the difference between what the author says about reality and what reality is. It's awfully theological of you to dismiss the latter because of the former.

P.S.: I wonder who ordered and sponsored this .

You must not be very used to reading scientific papers, else you would have known where to find this:

This research was supported by Harvard University and the Wyss Foundation.

[Competitions a]re actually very useful because they form the character of the person and prepare him/her for the difficult road an artist has to go through rigid discipline. All greats went through them successfully, and not mainly because of visual aspects.

I understand this quite well.  I participated in a concerto competition when I was in college, and my performance did not deserve to win.  It forced me to become honest with myself, to accept that what I was hearing in my head was not what I was playing for the audience.  Only a few months later, after I had given a different concert, a judge from that competition, one of my earlier coaches, found me and said to me that he was impressed with how much I had progressed since the competition.  I credit the progress I made, and have continued to make since then, to my participation.

[dima_76557]

It's awfully theological of you to dismiss the latter because of the former.

I never take any research papers as scientific evidence, especially research papers with such ridiculous conclusions. Besides, the author insults not only honest competition judges, but everybody who loves classical piano music for the right reasons. If that is "theological", then so be it. In that case, I hope that what I wrote may at least be light in the dark for some who also have trouble believing in what defies all logic.

[kalirren]

I never take any research papers as scientific evidence, especially research papers with such ridiculous conclusions.

Now we are moving off-topic, but I am curious as someone who's interested in science at the science-policy interface, what would you take as scientific evidence, if not research papers?  Only synthesis monographs?  Only books?  Secondary research reports on the science conducted by organizations with a different, practical agenda?

[dima_76557]

Now we are moving off-topic, but I am curious as someone who's interested in science at the science-policy interface, what would you take as scientific evidence, if not research papers?  Only synthesis monographs?  Only books?  Secondary research reports on the science conducted by organizations with a different, practical agenda?

A scientific claim is considered to have been settled when an investigator with the necessary skills and the requisite equipment and facilities is able to reproduce and confirm it. In other words, nothing in good science can even become a theory, let alone a fact, if it hasn't been tested, questioned, and examined first, and compared to real-life experience under real-life conditions.

It is my concern that the incorrect, premature and insufficiently supported conclusions drawn in this research paper will lead to our throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, and to a qualitative worse cultural situation than the one we have now. In reply #61 (my questions to gvans) I already pointed out some of the issues, but it is not difficult to think of other elements.

I repeat: the visual elements play the most important role 1) for the spectator at home and 2) in pre-screening, where they create a positive bias because of the close distance you watch the media, a distance that cannot be compared to competition conditions in a hall.

[kalirren]

A scientific claim is considered to have been settled when an investigator with the necessary skills and the requisite equipment and facilities is able to reproduce and confirm it. In other words, nothing in good science can even become a theory, let alone a fact, if it hasn't been tested, questioned, and examined first, and compared to real-life experience under real-life conditions.

Interesting.  That's not a line I've come to recognize as one that should separate validity from non-validity in scientific inquiry, but I understand why it could constitute a higher standard of proof, and one that could be required for application of scientific results outside the native field.

Reproduction is often done when it's feasible for a reviewer to do it.  I know it's common in chemistry, for example, for a professor to give to their graduate student as a mini-project the task of reproducing the findings of a paper they've been asked to review.

But what of historical sciences?  For instance, in ecology or environmental science, often one simply reports a long-term data set and draw conclusions from it.  The costs of replicating such an experiment are often very high, and consistency is often not guaranteed due to factors outside an experimenter's control.  Or, as an even more extreme example, in paleontology, there are just fossils - there is no possibility of replication.  The claims being made in that discipline are not of natural law, but of natural history.  In your mind, does that excuse them from the requirement to replicate?  Or are they just bogus disciplines?

In this case, which is fundamentally about perception psychology, feasibility of replication is not an issue; if a second paper comes out two years from now, replicating the findings of this study, possibly even using longer audio segments that provided substantial context as we suggested, would you be convinced?  Or are you going to move the goalpost again?

[dima_76557]

In this case, which is fundamentally about perception psychology, feasibility of replication is not an issue

Isn't it? Suppose you divide how the Art of Live Piano Playing is "judged" in only two categories: Audio and Visual, and you put an audio-transparent screen between the artist and the audience, what are you going to do with the rest that makes the essence of what a good artist is?

1) A good artist comes up to the piano, bows and looks at the farthest balcony. "That's where my softest whispers have to go", and believe me: that works! With an audio-transparent screen, you take away that haptic element.
2) A good artist bows before the public and his eyes cross the eyes of some in the public: "I'll play especially for you; you, please spread the fire". With an audio-transparent screen, you take away that telepathic element.
3) A good artist interacts with the public on an energetic level. He lifts them up, they give him something back and charge his batteries. With an audio-transparent screen, you take away that energetic element.
4) A good artist strikes a bond with the public against the jury. If they go into a trance, they may start clapping where it is not appropriate. You are super if you can even make the jury clap where it is not appropriate. With an audio-transparent screen, you take away that telepathic element.

Take all that magic away and you get a bunch of people in a hall on one side checking the homework of one person on the other side. You castrate the few artists among the candidates and you essentially deprive the public of what makes a good performance. I can guess that this is not very significant for scientists who don't even believe that beautiful touch exists (also "proven", although everybody knows that it exists), but the approach kills both art and spirituality.

"Theologocially" yours.

[j_menz]

"Theologocially" yours.

As in "like an illiterate theologian"?

Theologically my own,

J

[dima_76557]

As in "like an illiterate theologian"?

Theologically my own,

J

My adding too much fire to the discussion was called "awfully theological", but in the research paper, we see a case of pathological science, the "science of things that are not so". The "brilliant" researcher who is also said to have been a "brilliant" pianist (why she's not playing anymore has not been examined scientifically) simply takes revenge for what she was never able to accomplish herself, taking everybody with her in her spiritual fall. If people ever wonder why the live concert was so much better than the video clips/audio material of this or that artist, then the answer is in my previous post. Judging quality in Art is NOT a scientific exercise.

Amen. (as in "So be it")

[dima_76557]

To give my writing a little more solidity, I'll just add some other info (the science-based illustration of what I just wrote can be found in the references on that page): Emotional contagion.

There is more, of course. That's why you may have "friends" in Skype that in real life turn you off at first sight; what you imagined to have seen in your video/audio communication becomes a great disappointment. Some elements in visual media are transmitted through video (which is basically a distorted kind of info), but most are not. The closer you watch someone through video media, the more you will be deceived into trusting that person (positive visual bias of trust). With audio, people tend not to believe their ears, and will not trust you so easily and so quickly. A legitimate question regarding the outcome of this test is therefore: what do the video/audio and video-only experiments really reveal? You cannot have yourself taken away to God-knows-where (as is the case in the art appreciation process) by someone you don't trust.

In a real live concert, however, the visual perception works differently because you know it's real and it's from a distance, so you cannot pick up so many cues anyway. You will close your eyes and listen, or look away into nowhere if the artist is good. Simply watch "Horowitz in Moscow" and see how people experience the event: closed eyes, with tears rolling down their faces. Call that mass-hysterics or whatever you want; it exists and it is one of the major factors in picking a winner in a competition.

[kalirren]

1) A good artist comes up to the piano, bows and looks at the farthest balcony. "That's where my softest whispers have to go", and believe me: that works! With an audio-transparent screen, you take away that haptic element.
2) A good artist bows before the public and his eyes cross the eyes of some in the public: "I'll play especially for you; you, please spread the fire". With an audio-transparent screen, you take away that telepathic element.
3) A good artist interacts with the public on an energetic level. He lifts them up, they give him something back and charge his batteries. With an audio-transparent screen, you take away that energetic element.
4) A good artist strikes a bond with the public against the jury. If they go into a trance, they may start clapping where it is not appropriate. You are super if you can even make the jury clap where it is not appropriate. With an audio-transparent screen, you take away that telepathic element.

In a real live concert, however, the visual perception works differently because you know it's real and it's from a distance, so you cannot pick up so many cues anyway. You will close your eyes and listen, or look away into nowhere if the artist is good. Simply watch "Horowitz in Moscow" and see how people experience the event: closed eyes, with tears rolling down their faces. Call that mass-hysterics or whatever you want; it exists and it is one of the major factors in picking a winner in a competition.

I do not disagree with any of this - why do you think that I have denied it? Any halfway-decent artist is well aware that they are capable of affecting audiences through means that are in addition, but supplementary, to the primary product of their art. This is what showmanship is for, this is what program notes are for. This is why we train both in music programs, in addition to technique and interpretation.

Instead, I pose to you the question - what makes you think that such rapport between audience and performer cannot be induced by the music alone?  It is harder to do, but I certainly believe it can be done. Otherwise no one would ever react to a recording. You're the one who's being unreasonably pessimistic here when you claim this:

Take all that magic away and you get a bunch of people in a hall on one side checking the homework of one person on the other side. You castrate the few artists among the candidates and you essentially deprive the public of what makes a good performance.

My adding too much fire to the discussion was called "awfully theological"

No. You misrepresent my accusation. What I called theological was your seemingly intentional conflation of four elements that can and should be evaluated separately:

a) the methodology of the study
b) the results reported by the study produced by the methodology in a)
c) the interpretations offered by the study of the results in b) , and
d) the possible motivations behind the study.

This would typically be just either dishonest or unskillful, which is what I accused earlier, but it has since emerged that this matter is, both for you and for me, personally spiritual, and for you at least, also concerned with your concept of the divine.  Hence, "theological."

You seem to be happy about my having identified the basis of your objection, too, so I feel more correct in my accusation.

Now, as I understand your position,

a) you think the methodology is flawed - fine, but you have not affirmed any alternative methodology you would consider more sound that would actually test the hypothesis of the study.
b) garbage in garbage out
c) garbage in garbage out
d) you think the author had an axe to grind and was motivated to design a poor study on purpose.

My entire point is that d) is irrelevant to the soundness of a), b) and c).  Plenty of people with axes to grind against institutions yet produce correct results against them.  It does not matter that the author is a pianist who has failed to win recognition through competitions (I don't even know if the author sought it.)

[dima_76557]

@ kalirren

I'll make it as concise as possible:

1) Scientists can measure only what can actually be measured, and they are the Owners of the Data and of the parameters of Measurement. I refuse to be the critique-less servant of those data owners if their findings contradict experience common to all mankind, however well and correctly they gathered their data formally.

2) The data in the research paper misrepresent how communication in musical performance actually works, and they threaten to take away from us one of the only forms of communication we have left that is not filled with lies and deception.

3) Anything that cannot be measured reliably and that cannot be described in reliable scientific language in correspondence with how life really works is not the territory of science, and they should stay out of it.

P.S.: Sound-only will not do, no, for many, many reasons. I challenge you to think for yourself about how that could deprive us of truthful communication with a true artist (unless you assume, of course, that all contestants in a competition are by definition artists).

[kevin69]

...unless you assume, of course, that all contestants in a competition are by definition artists.

I don't understand this.
What is your definition of an artist?
What (for you) does a pianist need to do a be an artist?

For me, any pianist is an artist (just not necessarily a good one).

[stevenarmstrong]

You are describing Lang-Lang lol. How do you think he became so popular? Not because of raw talent. It's like that Andre Reiu (or whatever)...there is nothing special about his playing at all...it's the show! I wanna slap that smug look off his face!!   

[dima_76557]

I don't understand this.
What is your definition of an artist?
What (for you) does a pianist need to do a be an artist?

For me, any pianist is an artist (just not necessarily a good one).

An artist is a person who has something to say. He wants to communicate, and not simply show us how well he can play something according to some aural norm that was suggested to him by his teacher/coach to win the competition.

Communication through music, however, is not only something of the ears. It is something that happens on the level wild animals communicate with each other. It works both ways (the audience communicates back!), and it is therefore not a one-way kind of communication. Take away one element and you get deception and artificial measuring. What was supposed to go to the heart goes to the head/intellect of both "givers" and "takers". In such a process, you kill the real artists because your limited perception will lead you to make the wrong choice. Analyze CDs/video clips of live concerts by Sokolov, Katsaris, etc. and compare them to what really happens in a live concert and you will understand.

Why do people use their eyes in live performance/competitions?

- Because seeing is believing. This has partly to do with trust, and both the artist and the public need the visual element to be able to trust each other in what is communicated. It enhances performance conditions, but it is not the essence of what happens in a hall. If the artist is good, the eyes will go into standby mode and the (interested!) listeners start listening. If there is no artist at the instrument, people will keep watching and disable the ears not to be irritated by the empty sounds they actually don't want to hear in an artificially prepared performance according to "the norm".

- Some, who are not interested in Art at all, sit with chronometers to measure the time some contestant finishes this or that knucklebuster. They are not interested at all in anyone communicating anything to them. Luckily for us, they are not the ones that will determine the outcome of the competition.

[dima_76557]

You are describing Lang-Lang lol. How do you think he became so popular? Not because of raw talent. [...]...there is nothing special about his playing at all...it's the show! I wanna slap that smug look off his face!!  

Have you ever been to a live concert by said pianist? Are you a member of the Thought Police to determine what his "fans" should search and find in his performances? Do you really believe that anyone on the last row of the farthest balcony in a big hall can actually see the look on his face?

P.S.: I have heard the same many times about Valentina Lisitsa too: people were bored by her YouTube performances, but in live peformance they were close to shocked with how good she actually is as a communicator. Nothing really showy about her. Some people simply need interaction with the public to be able to go to great heights. If we don't like what they do, that does not mean that others are "fooled" because they happen to like it.

[dima_76557]

What is your definition of an artist?
What (for you) does a pianist need to do a be an artist?

Coming back to your question, I'll use clear "pictures" instead of words and abstract concepts to explain my point. If you feel like laughing - laugh. If you feel like crying - cry.

Suppose you want to say something to a Beloved One, but in this world of Science and Technology where we seem to have lost the art of real-life communication, words don't come easy, so you decide to say what you want to say through music.

What is the best way to get your message across in the most sincere way?
1) Give him/her an audio-CD;
2) Give him/her a DVD with audio/video;
3) Give him/her a DVD with video only (no sound);
4) Play live, but send him/her to the kitchen to listen from there in order not to be distracted by your presence;
5) Play live and have him/her sit in the same room so he/she can even touch the instrument or YOU, and thank you for making yourself so vulnerable to say what you wanted to say.

What is the best way to convey what you want to say?
1) show that you can play some piece he/she likes up to the expected standard;
2) fan the flame with artificial movements that are supposed to express passion;
3) do exactly what has to be done to tell him/her what you really want to say.

If the enterprise succeeds, you are his/her artist and nobody can deny either of you the right to be "right" about what you feel, even if your performance is not up to international standards.

If you are his/her artist, though, does that mean that you are capable of communicating with most of the crowd in a hall and do the same? That remains to be seen. Competitions are organized to find the people that can do just that. That's my view of what an artist is.

[kevin69]

4) Play live, but send him/her to the kitchen to listen from there in order not to be distracted by your presence;

Oddly enough, i generally play in the dining room so that my partner can see and hear me
from the kitchen while i play.

But if, as you say, the quality of a live musical performance is not best judged purely on
an audio basis, then why are you so against saying the visual is important? And if the other
other sense isn't visual then what is it?

I haven't read the paper in question, but from the description it seems to say that untrained viewers arrived at similar conclusions to well-trained judges. I interpret this as supporting
your idea that a great performance has visual and auditory parts, and that people have a natural ability to recognise a performance with great depth of feeling over a superficial
performance that is merely technically superbe.

I really don't understand why you seem to feel so threatened by this paper.
It supports your idea that the audio is only part of a great performance, and that
even the untrained can recognize a great performance without hearing it.

[dima_76557]

But if, as you say, the quality of a live musical performance is not best judged purely on an audio basis, then why are you so against saying the visual is important? And if the other sense isn't visual then what is it?

This will sound pathetic, but it's telepathic, it's haptic, and it works on a metaphysical level, but it needs the whole context to work, including the visual. I told you why the visual is important - it creates the required trust to allow yourself to go deeper, to allow yourself to get carried away (in a good sense) to places that cannot be measured by science or controlled by technology. The research, however, explains the visual in a distorted fashion, and hints at removing it completely to make the inherently subjective more objective (!). In this way, the "judging" about whether it's good or not becomes an intellectual exercise and ceases to be the emotionally uplifting experience it is supposed to be when you encounter a real artist. Since it is the mission of any artist or artist-to-be to seek truth, I have no choice but to detest such an approach and share my concerns with you all.

I am concerned about humanity losing one of its purest non-verbal forms of communication, the same way as we are now "enjoying" artificial verbal communication while many are not even capable of a true-life relationship, because some "scientists" have "proven" that "men want your body only" and "women want your wallet only", and "the rest is a pack of lies and imagination". That's why everybody is too afraid to communicate and prefers the substitute to the real thing. That's why society is such a mess. This research points at a sure way of losing one of the last REAL things.

[stevenarmstrong]

Have you ever been to a live concert by said pianist? Are you a member of the Thought Police to determine what his "fans" should search and find in his performances? Do you really believe that anyone on the last row of the farthest balcony in a big hall can actually see the look on his face?

you talk a lot of...gavno.

[dima_76557]

you talk a lot of...sh*t.

Can't help it, sorry: I get the runs from people who envy famous people.

[kalirren]

I haven't read the paper in question, but from the description it seems to say that untrained viewers arrived at similar conclusions to well-trained judges. I interpret this as supporting your idea that a great performance has visual and auditory parts, and that people have a natural ability to recognise a performance with great depth of feeling over a superficial performance that is merely technically superb.

Ah, but if you had read the paper, you would know that the paper further claims to show that untrained viewers arrive at similar conclusions to the judgments of well-trained judges by means of the visual elements of the performances, and not the aural elements.  The question then becomes, what is it that makes a superb performer superb?  Are visual elements necessary to convey great depth of feeling?

That's why the thread is 60 posts long, instead of 5... :-P

[faulty_damper]

Ah, but if you had read the paper, ...

Ah, so you've come to the same conclusion as I have. 

[kalirren]

Ah, so you've come to the same conclusion as I have.

No, I really haven't.  I think making the product and selling it are two separate, but related skills.  I think a bad interpretation (having no product) is sufficient for a bad performance, and good showmanship (selling the product well) is necessary for a good one.  Selling a bad product doesn't make the whole experience good.  That's how you get into what marketing people call "brand hell".

You need both to win a competition.  But if you want to be a low-profile recording artist, you only need one.

[j_menz]

You need both to win a competition. 

Odd that you think of this as the ultimate measure of a good performance. I personally find that, all too often, competitions are where art goes to die.

[kalirren]

Looking at music as a consumer of media, when a competition manages to identify a winner that has the most to gain from the prize, they're good for each other.  It validates the competitions' role as a gateway event - win this, enter a bigger league.  And the artist gets some recognition.

That said, I know what you mean - I get the feeling that most competitions are awarding prizes only because they have a prize to award and it has to go somewhere, not because any of the candidates are truly stellar.  Full disclosure - I've participated in only two competitions, only watched three more, and I've never been a judge myself. 

[stevenarmstrong]

Can't help it, sorry: I get the runs from people who envy famous people.

haha ok. I'm quite certain to be envious you have to actually want whatever the object is.

[lostinidlewonder]

dima_76557is p2u is a multiple account user. Dima is just another one of p2u's personality, he closed down his p2u account after being shown how moronic he was. Now we have to believe that this dima is a student of p2u studying from Russia.. lol cool

[dima_76557]

Ah, but if you had read the paper, you would know that the paper further claims to show that untrained viewers arrive at similar conclusions to the judgments of well-trained judges by means of the visual elements of the performances, and not the aural elements.  The question then becomes, what is it that makes a superb performer superb?  Are visual elements necessary to convey great depth of feeling?

If you look at the research paper and you realize that the conditions are distorted, you get a probability between yes or no, which is 50% (exactly the outcome of the test), just like with tossing a coin. The fact that there is overlap with reality doesn't mean a thing for reality itself.

Let's say that you distort a woman's scent in a pick-a-partner experiment and the other choice is "build of a certain body part". You may then get the preconceived "conclusion" that women generally pick partners because of average build alone and sell your [...] enlargement pills. How difficult is that to understand for people who call themselves scientists?

It is very depressing to see that people actually believe the bull in this research paper about professional, educated people that make choices about things they care about. Only someone who doesn't know how the business works and who actually hates the business and the people in it could have come up with the insane conclusions stated in this paper. In real life, professional people don't make choices out of context.

[dima_76557]

Odd that you think of this as the ultimate measure of a good performance. I personally find that, all too often, competitions are where art goes to die.

Everybody, including the jury, actually hates the selection procedure, but we have to understand that both the public and the jury are actually waiting for those few artists among the candidates to appear. It's the rest of the contestants that don't understand what the real requirements are that give us that negative impression about competitions. Most of the jury members deserve a monument for the patience with which they bear all that violence against their ears.

[j_menz]

Most of the jury members deserve a monument for the patience with which they bear all that violence against their ears.

Given the CVs of many of them, and the way they approach their jobs, I'd suggest the monument would often be better inserted than erected.

[faulty_damper]

Did you know that the jury members often have their students in the competition?  "I'll vote for your student if you vote for mine."  The atrocity if a student doesn't make it to the finals.  What would that say about the teacher!

[dima_76557]

Given the CVs of many of them, and the way they approach their jobs, I'd suggest the monument would often be better inserted than erected.

Whatever we think of them, it's a very hard job.

Regarding the research paper results: both the public and the jury recognize the winners practially immediately from their first appearance in the pre-rounds at a rate that is close to 100%, and this has, of course, not so much to do with the visual aspect of their performances. The rest is show because the formal procedures have to be followed. A jury cannot generally decide something that is too remote from what the public thinks, otherwise there will be a scandal.

[dima_76557]

Did you know that the jury members often have their students in the competition?  "I'll vote for your student if you vote for mine."  The atrocity if a student doesn't make it to the finals.  What would that say about the teacher!

And then they ultimately agree on who looks more passionate and give that one the prize? Yeah, right.

[j_menz]

A jury cannot generally decide something that is too remote from what the public thinks, otherwise there will be a scandal.

No, there will be a lot of grumbling. There often is. It's so common that "scandal" is impossible, unless there is evidence of rigging.