Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
Cogn Process. 2024 Feb;25(1):163-171. doi: 10.1007/s10339-023-01159-9. Epub 2023 Sep 22.
The nature of music improvisation continues to provide an interesting showcase of the multifaceted and skilful ways we engage with and act within our environments. Improvising musicians are somehow able to generate musical material in real time that adaptively navigates musical situations. In this article I explore the broader aspects of improvised activity-such as our bodily interactions with the instrument and environment-as they relate to improvised music-making. I do so by drawing upon principles from the embodied cognitive sciences, namely ecological and dynamical systems approaches. Firstly, I introduce the concept of affordances to illustrate the bidirectional relationship between improvisor and environment. I then take a dynamical view, exploring the ways that a trumpet player coordinates their body with their instrument and engages with trumpet affordances in order to navigate musical situations. I continue this dynamical view, taking the improviser to be an adaptive system whose behaviours are self-organised responses to a set of constraints. To conclude, I situate my research within the wider 4E approach. I advocate that 'E' approaches, which take seriously the role of the body-instrument-environment relationship, provide an insightful perspective on the nature of improvisation.
音乐即兴创作的本质继续为我们以多方面和熟练的方式与环境互动和作用提供了一个有趣的展示。即兴演奏的音乐家能够以某种方式实时生成适应性地导航音乐情境的音乐素材。在本文中，我通过借鉴具身认知科学的原则，即生态和动力系统方法，探讨了即兴活动的更广泛方面，例如我们与乐器和环境的身体互动。首先，我引入了可供性的概念来说明即兴者和环境之间的双向关系。然后，我从动态的角度出发，探索小号演奏者如何协调他们的身体与乐器，并利用小号的可供性来驾驭音乐情境。我继续这种动态的观点，将即兴者视为一个自适应系统，其行为是对一组约束的自组织响应。最后，我将我的研究置于更广泛的 4E 方法中。我主张，认真对待身体-乐器-环境关系的“E”方法为即兴创作的本质提供了一个有见地的视角。
