evidence for flow and virtuosity

Evidence of several flow components (defined in Section 3.7) emerge from the video, log data, and discussions. The linear approach to composing music in patterns sequentially – without significant backtracking, and as opposed to establishing and building on an outline – demonstrates the existence of clear goals, which the composer knows how to achieve using the program, confident in the balance of challenge and ability.

focus and

feedback A high rate of interaction is sustained over several hours,

maintaining concentration and focus. Specific techniques, like “spot-on debugging”, help keep the user engaged and absorbed in the editing process, providing direct & immediate feedback. Through similar expert use of the keyboard, he is likewise able to maintain a strong sense of control throughout.

action-awareness

merging On viewing 5 hours of footage from a single working session, he

was surprised not only by the length of time he had been working, but to see how “obsessed” he was, comparing his typing to “speedcubing” (competitive Rubik’s Cube solving). This extreme level of engagement indicates action-awareness merging, from which he exhibits a distorted sense of time and lack of self-

consciousness, commenting,

I'm never conscious of those kazillions of keyclicks [...] It’s also as if it’s very long/boring. I was almost afraid that this vid’ showed tracking is *not* fast, but alas, when in the first 18 minutes I have a full orchestra/bigband … I guess it’s still radically fast.

9

The composer cited an earlier occasion, in the MSX program FAC SoundTracker, where his knowledge of the program and reliance on audio feedback enabled him to continue using the program several days after his monitor had stopped working.

The barrage of sound in these editing sessions may seem discordant to observers, as the disjointed playback jumps randomly and fleetingly between short excerpts of the music. However, the subject remains unfazed, again indicating his concentration and

focus and loss of self-consciousness.

intrinsic

motivation Perhaps most importantly, the fact that the subject voluntarily

spends 5 hours of tiring, engaged interaction on a musical exercise with no promise of extrinsic reward, seems to point to an inherently enjoyable, intrinsically-rewarding flow experience.

From observations, interaction data, and subsequent discussions, it is evident that the composer is able to use the tracker as part of what he sees as an intuitive (“natural”) approach to composing, where his focus and expertise enable him to quickly sketch and refine (“explore-expand”) musical ideas in notation, guided by the frequent and integral use of audio feedback. The tracker, through its use of the keyboard, enables the development of motor skills that enable rapid and fluent interaction bridging note entry and music editing with program control. In this example of constructive flow

interference (inset left, explained in Section 4.3, Figure 4-9),

focused interaction with the notation is supported by both visual and musical feedback (flow redundancy), though manual skill is required to fluidly integrate them in the user experience.

In the logs, these skills and working styles are manifest in several ways, such as the rates of interaction, fluidity of input sequences, as well as frequency and use of musical feedback. In the following chapters, these quantities are among those explored using logs and feedback from other users of the reViSiT program, in an effort to build a broader understanding of flow and virtuosity in general use of music software. Specifically, Chapter 7 looks at the users’ development of motor skills with the computer keyboard, notably through which a rapid edit-audition cycle becomes possible. This skilled use of musical feedback is further detailed in Chapter 8, which explores how a greater frequency of feedback contributes to greater liveness in the user experience (see Section 4.2.4). Chapter 8 likewise explores the role of visual feedback, and factors that affect a user’s focus and concentration. Further components of flow (see Section 3.7) are examined in Chapter 9, which combines earlier findings from the video study and user logs with additional survey results, working towards a more general model of how a program’s capacity for flow is determined by specific properties of the notation.

chapter seven keyboard use and motor learning in tracking

The use of the keyboard is central to tracking, distinguishing it from the more common mouse-based GUIs used by sequencers, DAWs and score editors. The keyboard’s distributed, fixed layout supports motor learning that enables rapid rates of interaction, and control over a broad range of program functionality. In many trackers, all tasks are executable through the keyboard, including note entry and editing, block selection and clipboard arranging, playback and program management.

This section looks at several aspects of keyboard interaction, across varying levels of experience. Following a simple look at speed and the rate of interaction, other aspects of timing, such as rhythm, are explored. Performance metrics are then integrated with accounts of keyboard and program knowledge, such as command vocabulary and fluency, using a descriptive model of tracker interaction that generalises tasks in music software, to illustrate the development of technique in the tracker.

The findings and methods presented in this section should be generalisable to other music hardware built on similar styles of interaction, such as MIDI controllers, instruments, and control surfaces with multiple, fixed-function controls, plus other space-

multiplexing input devices, as opposed to time-multiplexing