Systems NeuroscienceResearch PaperEffective utilization of gravity during arm downswing in keystrokes by expert pianists
Section snippets
Participants
Seven active expert pianists (three males and four females, mean age±SD=24.3±3.2 years) with more than 15 years of classical piano training and seven novice piano players (three males and four females, age=21.0±4.6 years) with less than 1 year of piano training participated in the present study. All of the expert pianists had won awards at domestic and/or international classical piano competitions. In order to exclude the possibility that any differences in the keystroke motions across pianists
Time history curves
Representative mean time history curves of the muscular activities of the upper arm (biceps and triceps) muscles, elbow muscular torque and angular velocity at the forte and piano loudness by one of the experts and one of the novices are shown in Fig. 2. In the preparatory arm-lift phase, both the expert and the novice showed an increase in biceps muscular activity immediately prior to increases in flexion muscular torque and angular velocity at the elbow joint. Toward the end of the arm-lift
Discussion
The use of gravity to effectively reduce muscular work for the production of elbow extension muscular torque, independent of interaction torque arising from the surrounding joints and gravitational torque, was investigated using expert and novice players of the piano during the downward key-striking motion in the present study. The findings demonstrated a clear skill-level difference in coordination of upper arm muscular activity in relation to the production of elbow extension muscular torque.
Conclusion
In summary, a clear expert-novice difference in the activity of the muscles for the production of muscular torque at the elbow joint to drive a downswing motion of the arm in the present study indicated an expertise-dependent nature of gravity-muscular force interaction in piano keystrokes. The novices commonly used a muscular force-driven arm downswing so that a target tone could be constantly produced, whereas the experts relied heavily on a gravity-dependent drop of the arm while keeping the
Acknowledgments
We thank to Prof. Eckart ALTENMÜLLER (Hanover University of Music and Drama) for his critical comments and helpful and constructive suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript. A part of the present study was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (Start-up). This work was also partly supported by SCOPE, MIC and SRPBS, MEXT.
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