What is your thought process during sight-reading? Advanced sight-readers’ strategies across different tonal environments

Sight-reading strategies used for reading music in different tonal environments are critical for musicians to perform accurately. We investigated the strategies advanced sight-readers utilize when they encounter different tonal environments. After a brief study period, six advanced sight-readers performed a through-composed piece that included tonal, non-tonal, and ambiguously tonal music. Immediately following the performance, participants went back through the music and described their thought process and strategies. Participants reported different strategies from one another to play accurately, but there were also common strategies used for different tonal environments. We found verbal reports of critical and relevant strategies of advanced sight-readers were categorized as attention, static analysis, informed intuition, and performer’s analysis. The sight-readers executed their performance interacting with static analysis, informed intuition, and performer’ s analysis. Most importantly, participants relied heavily on performer’s analysis for the expressive performance in the tonal section, followed by the non-tonal and ambiguously tonal sections. Findings imply that advanced sight-readers’ strategies moved back and forth between attention, intuition, and analytical strategies based on the demands in each tonal environment.

Speaking of your own repertoire: an investigation of music performance during practice

The purpose of this study was to explore musicians’ approaches to performance during practice and identify the factors that underpinned their approaches. We hypothesised that musicians would be able to recall their focus, knowledge and thoughts of their own repertoire during music performance and that such data would reveal musicians’ cognitive behaviours during the performance. By analysing musicians’ retrospective verbal protocols, we found that musicians used four main reasoning processes – study, static analysis, intuition and performer’s analysis – in their approach to music performance. The findings show that musicians utilise multiple cognitive behaviours for music performance. The implications for instrumental music teaching are discussed.