It is easy to say a show is more moving, and hard to know whether that is the song or the hall. To separate them, one audience heard new songs performed live and another heard exactly the same recordings, with sensors on the heads of both. What told them apart?
The heads moved faster. Researchers compared an audience that heard new songs live with an audience that heard a recording of them in the same hall, measuring rather than settling for who enjoyed it more. At the live performance the movements were faster. also than neutral listeners did.
The comparison was run in the hall in two conditions, so that no difference could be attributed to merely sitting in an audience rather than to the live performance.
The researchers used songs from an album that had not been released, which helped narrow differences in prior familiarity with the songs between the groups.
Head movement speed was higher in the live performance. A prior connection to the artist mattered too: fans tended toward faster movement and stronger rhythmic coordination.
The finding does not prove physical presence is always better than listening at home. It shows that besides the sounds themselves, the circumstances of the performance may be part of the experience.
wat. At a live performance, listeners’ heads moved faster than when the same songs were played from a recording in the hall.
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A cultural experience is not only the file being played; the encounter with performers and with an audience may change the body’s response.
How do we know?
Motion sensors recorded listeners’ heads at two events in the hall: a live performance and a playback of the recorded album.
What is still unknown
This examined one artist, one album and one audience. More head movement is not a direct measure of enjoyment or of the success of every performance.
Learn something?
Where to next
Does seeing the pianist change the heart rate of the audience?live music
Does music before a workout change what your body can do?performance
What changed when basketball players tried to sleep ten hours?performance