Our new paper entitled “Trade-offs in Coordination Strategies for Duet Jazz Performances Subject to Network Delay and Jitter” has just been published in Music Perception. This paper arises from work completed by Huw Cheston during the early stages of his PhD at the CMS, and was funded by an award from Cambridge Digital Humanities.
As musicians turned to online platforms like Zoom to continue performing during the pandemic, many found that the delays in sound transmission introduced by these platforms impacted their ability to play together successfully. Using a new software platform, we studied five professional jazz duos in order to understand the different strategies that they would use when coordinating an online music performance. What appear to be two alternatives involve: 1) one musician being led by the other; or 2) both musicians accommodating to each other. Both strategies favor different sides of a tradeoff, respectively, between musical synchronization and stability; whereas, in the absence of a network, both achieve similar outcomes. Our research highlights how networking presents new complexities to successful music-making, and how these challenges can best be addressed.
For information, check out our paper, linked below:
Cheston, H., Cross, I., & Harrison, P. M. C. (2024). Trade-offs in Coordination Strategies for Duet Jazz Performances Subject to Network Delay and Jitter. Music Perception,42(1), 48–72. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2024.42.1.48
Download the article here! Or alternatively here.
Image credit: Huw Cheston