ABSTRACT

This chapter considers how postures and motion shape musical experience helps to understand the coexistence of continuity and discontinuity in music. It looks at the ecological constraints on music-making. The chapter describes some elements of motor cognition and considerations of different timescales of sound and motion in music. In a motor theory perspective, the perceived musical sound is then spontaneously associated with assumed sound-producing body motion, also in cases where there are no performers to be seen. Music-related body motion is centered on postures at salient moments in time. This is based on human motion-control research that points to the hierarchical and goal-directed nature of human body motion for a lucid. The chapter demonstrates applications in music analysis, music classification, and music information retrieval of how various styles, genres, and modes of musical interaction correlate with distinct music-related postures and body motion pattern.