Refining musical performance through overlap

Abstract

Whilst the focus of attention in an instrumental music lesson is refinement of the student’s musical performance, conversation plays an essential role; not just as a way to analyse the student’s musical contributions, but to organise them within the lesson flow. Participants may respond to talk through performance and vice versa, or even spend periods of time exchanging purely musical contributions. The short musical fragments exchanged by the participants are managed within lesson dialogue in ways analogous to conversational turn-taking. Problems in the student’s performance are refined through both student self-initiated and tutor other-initiated repair, initiated by embodied action and play. A fundamental part of turn-taking is managing the transition to a new speaker. The presence of musical contributions allows for additional types of transition, for example from a turn at talk, to a musical contribution. In conversation, there is generally a preference for a short pause at the transition to a new speaker, and overlap tends to be minimised when it occurs. Through detailed qualitative video analysis of a one-to-one clarinet lesson, we find differences in the preferences regarding overlap when purely musical contributions are being exchanged, and that the duration of overlap during these exchanges of fragments of music are significant.