Elsevier

Human Movement Science

Volume 26, Issue 5, October 2007, Pages 769-785
Human Movement Science

Walking on music

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2007.07.007Get rights and content

Abstract

The present study focuses on the intricate relationship between human body movement and music, in particular on how music may influence the way humans walk. In an experiment, participants were asked to synchronize their walking tempo with the tempo of musical and metronome stimuli. The walking tempo and walking speed were measured. The tempi of the stimuli varied between 50 and 190 beats per minute. The data revealed that people walk faster on music than on metronome stimuli and that walking on music can be modeled as a resonance phenomenon that is related to the perceptual resonance phenomenon as described by Van Noorden and Moelants (Van Noorden, L., & Moelants, D. (1999). Resonance in the perception of musical pulse. Journal of New Music Research, 28, 43–66).

Introduction

There is a close relationship between music and body movement. In order to sing, blow the flute, strike the violin or hit the drum, one needs a moving body that performs the sound producing action. Also listening to music is often accompanied by body movements. Just think about dancing or clapping hands during a live pop concert. Several sports activities, like aerobics or spinning, are based on the use of music. Soldiers walk on the beat of military marches and people performing physical and often repetitive tasks sing work songs to synchronize their physical movements (Mc Neill, 1995). The relation between music and body movement is stressed in current theories on embodied cognition where the role of the body is seen as a mediator for music perception (Leman, 2007). Next to a theoretical approach, moving on music should be studied in an experimental way. In this article two aspects of moving on music, synchronization and spatialization, are studied experimentally.

The synchronization of body movements with music has been studied extensively in tapping experiments (Large, 2000, Repp, 2006). In these experiments people have to tap along with the perceived musical tempo. Several aspects of musical synchronization have been observed and quantified. They include the negative asynchrony (i.e., the phenomenon that during tapping in synchrony with an auditory metronome the taps tend to precede the tones by a few tens of milliseconds), variability, and rate limits (see Desain and Windsor, 2000, Repp, 2006). Another aspect of musical synchronization is concerned with the metrical level at which people tend to synchronize their taps. For example, one can synchronize with a musical tempo of 120 beats per minute (BPM), but also with half (60 BPM) or twice this tempo (240 BPM). Several studies have shown that people prefer to tap with a tempo that is close to a neutral or spontaneous tempo, which is associated with natural types of body movement (e.g., Fraisse, 1982, Van Noorden and Moelants, 1999). Also in music theory (e.g., Willemze, 1956) it has been observed that the moderate musical tempi (cf. andante) are close to some biological rhythms of the human body such as the heartbeat and the tempo of walking. Based on an overview of different experiments, Moelants (2002) concluded that there is a clear correspondence between the tempi of spontaneous movements, as observed in walking, clapping and finger tapping, and tempi perceived in music.

While many studies have focused on the synchronization aspect, much less attention has been paid to what is called here the spatialization aspect. This aspect refers to the spatial movement trajectories of human body parts between successive synchronization points. It is plausible to assume that the spatial trajectories of repetitive body movements may vary a lot, depending on the character of the music. This might be independent of the musical tempo. Clynes, 1977, Clynes, 1995 was interested in the temporal forms of emotions and asked participants to press a continuous pressure sensitive button in a repetitive way while listening to music. Becking (1958) connected two-dimensional shapes to the musical beat by observing his own conducting-like movements. These authors stressed that moving the body on music is not only a matter of synchronizing with fixed points in time, but also of making a connection between these points.

In order to study both the synchronization and the spatialization aspect of moving on music, we focused on a basic movement pattern that nearly all humans perform in daily life, namely walking. The choice to study walking movements was inspired by the work of MacDougall and Moore (2005). They determined the long-term energy spectrum of motor activity and found a highly tuned resonance frequency at 2 Hz due to human locomotion. No influences of the mechanical properties of the body on this movement spectrum were found. This poses an enigma for investigators of human walking as many studies have linked the preferred walking tempo to the mechanical properties of the body (e.g., Bertram, 2005). Furthermore, the authors argued that the spontaneous movement spectrum shows a strong resemblance with the histogram of musical tempi as described by Moelants (2002). Van Noorden and Moelants (1999) have shown a strong link between the histogram of musical tempi and a perceptual resonance curve with a resonance frequency at 2 Hz. Several phenomena in rhythm perception and production, such as subjective rhythmization, the existence region of musical pulse, tapping tendencies along polyrhythms and peaks in tempi histograms of musical pieces, can be explained on the basis of this resonance model. An interesting question is whether this perceptual resonance curve is linked to the global locomotor resonance curve as found by MacDougall and Moore, and also whether it is independent of the mechanical properties of the body.

In music science, some studies have focused on music and walking. However, none of these studies have focused on the basic link between walking tempo, walking speed, and musical tempo. In an experiment by Friberg, Sundberg, and Frydén (2000), sonifications of different gaits were made by mapping the force curve of different kinds of walking to the sound level envelope for a single tone of 196 Hz. These sonifications were then used in three different listening experiments. The aim was to see whether the motion quality of different gaits could be transferred to music and perceived by the listeners. The authors’ conclusion was that the motion character of a gait can be conveyed to a listener by the sound level envelopes of tones, modeled from the vertical pattern exerted by the foot. In another study, Friberg and Sundberg (1999) observed that the average velocity curve of runners coming to a stop fitted well with the average tempo curve of the final ritardando in recordings of baroque music. This study fits well into a series of studies proposing kinematic models for the final retard as well as for ritardandi and accelerandi from complete performances (Honing, 2003, Todd, 1992a, Todd, 1992b). Giordano and Bresin (2006) investigated the hypothesis that similarities between music performance and locomotion are possible because expression of emotions in music originates, at least in part, as an allusion to locomotion sounds. They tested this view by studying human locomotion sounds in both production and perception.

In the field of movement science, we are not aware of any study that addresses the specific relation between music and walking. In their review article on the psychophysical effects of music in sport and exercise, Karageorghis and Terry (1997) concluded that the synchronization of submaximal exercise (i.e., exercise below maximum effort) with musical accompaniment results in an increased work output. Music apparently reduces the rate of perceived exertion during submaximal exercise and tends to enhance the affective states at both medium and high-level work intensity. The effect of asynchronous music (background music) in contributing to optimal arousal was found to be unclear.

In the present article we study whether people can synchronize their walking movements with the musical tempo and whether their walking tempo corresponds with their tapping tempo on the same music. Next, we study, independently of the musical tempo, the spatialization of the walking movements in terms of walking speed or step size.1 We assume that the musical character may influence the step size (and thus the walking speed) of the walking movements. We study both the spatialization differences between walking movements on musical and metronome stimuli of the same tempo and between walking movements on different musical stimuli of the same tempo. Finally, we investigate whether the spatialization of the movements shows the resonance phenomenon as postulated for music perception.

Section snippets

Participants

Twenty healthy persons (10 men, 10 women) participated in the experiment, ranging in age from 20 to 29 with an average of 25 years. Seventeen participants played a musical instrument (on average 5.9 h per week); four of them were professional musicians. They received a gift coupon for their participation.

Procedure

For the first part of the experiment, the participants were invited to the open-air athletics track of Ghent University. They were verbally instructed about the experimental task. Participants

Results

First, we examined the walking speed and tempo while synchronizing with the perceived musical pulse. In particular, we compared the degree of synchronization and the metrical level at which the participants walked with the degree of synchronization and the metrical level at which the participants tapped on the same music. Next, we examined differences in walking speed (spatialization) while synchronizing with music and with simple metronome stimuli and tested the basic assumption that music can

Discussion

Both in the walking and tapping part of the experiment, most participants synchronized with the musical and metronome stimuli. The two participants (8 and 18) who only synchronized their walking tempo properly around 120 BPM are interesting because in the data of these participants we still could observe an increasing walking speed as the nominal tempo increased. This implies that, although these participants did not know how to synchronize, the music still had a significant impact on their

Conclusion

The present study dealt with common activities very close to our daily experiences. Walking on music turned out to be a rich and multidisciplinary research topic about which surprisingly little knowledge has been assembled yet. It combines relevant insights for music and rhythm perception research, music education, sports and handicapped training, and walking dynamics. We showed that people can synchronize their walking movements with music over a broad range of tempi, but that this

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