Wednesday 21 August 2013

Visual over sound

My favorite Youtube video that I watch over and over again is Chopin's Revolutionary Etude played by Sviatoslav Richter. Last time, I was pretty sure that what I like about it was the sound of piano that Richter produced but after I read "Sight dominates sound in music competition judging" on BBC News, I realize it is not just a sound that I like.


The article reports about new scientific research on visual impact on music judgement which, through an experiment that let people judge a music competition by looking only silent video, it is found that  people decision is based on sight rather than sound, since they can make a better guess who is the winner when watching silent video and worse when watching video with sound.

I think of Richter's video again and try to think about what impressive about that clip. I don't remember much about sound except it is confident and firm which is a nature of this song. However, I can describe that Richter sit on a piano chair with his arrogant look, then he bangs the first note on the piano, his body bends back and forth, left and right and his fingers move so smoothly which make me feel like it does not move at all. Revolutionary Etude is my favorite Chopin song and I watched it played by many people. Probably Richter version is not perfect but, no one can erase his serious face and shaky body out of my mind. 

When I took piano lesson many years ago, my piano teacher didn't only teach me how to play piano, but taught me what the distance between a piano and a chair should be, where our butt should be place on a chair, how to lift our hands, how to move our body while playing piano, and even how to bow after finish playing. When I play piano, I used to struggle with all those rules because my back always bend and my body were usually hard like a piece of wood and I always fail piano test. Now I understand why teacher are so strict. Good posture could benefit me significantly if I have to play in front of people like in a concert and i would not fail so many test. Also, in other situation in life, visual appearance are very important such as how we dress at work or how we arrange a plate of food. 

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Reference
Sight dominates sound in music competition judging. (2013, August 20). BBC News Science & Environment. Retrieved August 21, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23717228

2 comments:

  1. I think My has given us lots of things to think about on the topics of images and imagination.

    And that reminds me of the related word form, imagery.

    Perhaps this also explains why I like watching performances great music rather than just listening. I like to see what the musicians and singers are doing to turn the marks on the score, whether from Chopin, Mozart or whoever, into the right sequence of sounds.

    And like My's piano teacher, my flute teacher used to worry about my awful posture. I rather wish now that I'd tried a bit harder; instead, I gave it up.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not time for much response writing this morning - I was a bit busy checking work and preparing for today's classes.

    How much time did you have for a couple of quick comments?

    ReplyDelete

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