Motor Imagery in Perception and Performance of Sound and Music

Abstract

Jan Schacher asks what it is to imagine and initiate an action on a musical instrument. For Schacher, the body is the central element of listening and sound perception, and thus the body, in an embodied and enactive sense, becomes the focus for musicking with both conventional instruments and digital instruments, where, in the latter case, bodily schemata are replaced by metaphors and instrumental representations. This last theme provides a significant topic of enquiry in the chapter, and it is explored from a number of angles, chief among which is a focus (through the lenses of motor imagery and imagination in music) on relations between inner and outer aspects of our ways and means of listening to and performing both music and sound. Ultimately, Schacher identifies a tension underlying digital musical performance brought about by the fracturing of the “action-sound” bond, a bond that is the basis for our sonic perception not only of the natural world but also of the world of culturally defined musical performance.