How to Build an Embodied Music Analysis Lab

What is an Embodied Music Analysis Lab?

This is an umbrella term to describe any lab with biometric or biofeedback equipment that deepens the participant’s understanding of music making. Think of these applications as either studying what a musician does and produces or changing their behavior based on what they see or feel. Its utility for your community may be as simple as to measure change over time like we would any athlete in training, as useful as offering realtime feedback about respiration or phonation, or as complex as permitting serious student and faculty research.

A lab can greatly augment active and experiential learning as your students seek to understand how it is musicians’ bodies work and how they work their instruments. Yes, a lab can serve as a resource for more advanced research projects leading toward the creation and dissemination of knowledge through public presentations and publications. However, as much of the pedagogy community presents scientific studies as the evidence that underpins the practical application, an analysis lab offers students the chance to re-create seminal studies, deepen their appreciation for how challenging good research can be, and offers them tools to push beyond the conclusions of the studies that they read.

Many modern pedagogy teachers, especially in voice departments, feel the pressure to offer access to this sort of technology as a supplement to the scientific material they feel the pressure to teach. How one plans to spend money on this sort of equipment matters. It is possible to waste money on gear that guarantees problematic results in the effort to get something going as quickly as possible. My experience will prevent you from spending money unwisely and will ensure that students may explore their voices without compromising on quality.

I have a significant experience selecting and implementing a wide variety of non-invasive music performance analysis and biofeedback technologies. These include: 

  • Calibrated acoustic signal capture, processing, and analysis, including all elements of the audio signal chain and best practices for capturing clean and useable signals

  • Labs exploring acoustic registers and resonance strategies of singers, labs exploring perception of the singing voice, and practical introductions to both the harmonic and transient theories of voice production

  • Labs exploring respiration and acoustic output of instrumentalists

  • The use of Praat (including the Phonanium Clinical Voice Lab and a simple introduction to Praat scripting), VoceVista Video Pro, and the Tolvan Suite

  • Calibrated use of the RespTrack respiration measurement system, including use of the hardware and both recording and analysis apps.

  • Use of and best practices for the Glottal Enterprises Electroglottograph and the Glottal Enterprises MS-110 Aeroview system, including protocols for phonation threshold pressure, nasalance, flow and pressure measurements, and inverse filtering

  • Use of both Windows and MacOS computers