Reflections on the pilot study and focus of the main study

The movement and interview analyses provided an opportunity for me to try out the data collecting and analysis methods I had chosen for this research. I found many deficiencies in the design and limitations in the methods of analysis. For example, the language I used in the workshops was not clear enough and the questions I asked were not as specific as they could have been regarding internal consistency. Regarding the data analysis methods, I experienced data overload, which meant that I was limited in the amount of data that I could deal with, especially regarding the movement data. It may also have been helpful to revisit the movement data in light of the interview data and find a way of synthesizing the data to create a more critical discussion of the findings. However, I was careful to not ignore information that conflicted with my assumptions regarding the validity of a Somatic Movement approach, although I could have offered a more detailed critical discussion of the disadvantages which emerged, such as participant’s experience of discomfort and self-consciousness. Furthermore, I needed to consider that body movement methods do not always have a positive effect on musicians’ performance. One participant commented that ‘I found it quite hard … I’m not comfortable to start with … I feel quite heavy … even though I’m moving, I feel static … I feel very self- conscious’. Another mentioned that ‘it’s a bit intimidating sometimes’. This once more raises the issue of my facilitation during the workshop and how my teaching approach may have influenced the outcome of the three main themes. I took this into account when planning the main study and made the language that I used and the facilitation process much clearer and systematic and less exploratory in nature.

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Johnson’s following argument was helpful in framing the discussion of the pilot study findings:

The meaning in and of the music is not verbal or linguistic, but rather bodily and felt. We understand the meaning of longing, desire, expectation for better things to come, and so on. We cannot convey it verbally, but it is nonetheless meaningful, and is enacted via our active engagement with the music. (Johnson 2007: 242)

Nevertheless, I noticed the limitations regarding the overly simplistic nature of relating certain musical performance concepts to certain Image Schemata. For instance, the dynamic nature of the Source–Path–Goal schema is reflected in the various spatial senses of the concept of a journey involving a starting point – trajectory and destination. Yet the focus of the discussion of this schema is based on our understanding of the English words ‘beginning’, ‘middle’ and ‘end’, and by extension our understanding of what constitutes a story. It does not take into account other modes of understanding such as our sense of moving from one place to another or of moving one part of our body from one place to another. This highlighted how a Source–Path–Goal schema can both enrich and constrain possible interpretation of movement and interview data and that further consideration of the helpfulness of Image Schemata in understanding how body movement awareness and experience can be transformed into specific sounds during music performance was needed.

Before conducting this pilot study, I had thought the most important themes were the broader and bigger issues such as musical expression, transmission of musical ideas to the listener and music performance education. However, during the pilot study, my thinking shifted focus to using the personal imagery of the performer to assist the realization of musical phrasing ideas. I noticed that my participants brought with them their complex musical backgrounds, their influences, their weaknesses and strengths and the wide variety of musical situations they had dealt with. In the workshops, I found them moving with purpose to work out and question their personal musical perceptions and in the interviews they talked openly about their personal experiences, which they seemed to attach importance to. The movement and the interview data seemed to be

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achieving new objectives. It shifted my attention from a general observation of how the participants moved in relation to music to how their individual movement experiences in relation to music can be transformed into organized patterns of movement that can help them achieve their musical intentions at their instrument. It made me aware of the notion of kinaesthetic imagery as a practice method and the idea of Image Schemata as a means of transforming movement experiences. However, I also noticed that there were limitations to this idea, not least that the imagery so far had been instigated by me playing the piano or by a participant listening to a recording. This influenced my decision to limit my playing in the main study to just the warm-up exercises and to re-design the way I presented the exercises so that the participant had the chance to develop his personal imagery, encouraging him to be his own inner teacher, ready to guide himself on the path to improved technique at the piano and thus adopting a more Somatic approach.

The pilot study participants experienced movement/music exercises that were individual and collective. They described their involvement as individuals and as members of a group. They presented their lived-experience as they were seeing it and at the same time their lived-experience of empathizing with others. However, the pilot study made it clear that I was studying individuals’ rather than group interaction. Nevertheless, the individual aspects that arose were not as specific to individual participants as I first thought. They are aspects which have commonalities to other musicians from similar backgrounds – as the main study shows – but they may be seen differently.

The pilot study highlighted many aspects related to a Somatic approach, sensory imagery and the practise of musical phrasing such as spatial pathways, moving away from and towards the body, different manners in which we can move to music, embracing possibilities, tension and release, mind-body dualism, health and well-being, imagery, making connections with a lived world, imagination, use of metaphor, or the felt flow of musical motion. After analysing the data, I noticed that it was not how the participants moved in relation to the musical phrasing that was important: it was how they made sense of their experiences and applied them that was interesting and

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illuminating. For instance, relating this to Johnson’s notion of Image Schemata, one participant seemed to make sense of his experience through a combination of Vertical, Container and Balance Image Schemata whereas another found reason through a combination of Source–Path–Goal, Vertical and Centre–Periphery schemata. These insights prompted me to re-direct my focus from a group study to a more in-depth main study of one pre-professional music performance student with a western classical music training background. The participant, a pianist, was selected from the initial group of volunteers. He was unable to take part in the pilot study due to prior commitments but was interested in exploring different opportunities to deepen his understanding of different methods of practising to complement his already established tool bag, such as trial and error, repetitive practise and staccato training (a technique he talked about quite a lot as a means of achieving a legato touch especially with regard to scales and arpeggios by practising everything staccato first).

5.5 Summary

In this chapter, I have presented the movement patterns in relation to musical phrasing of one of my participants, Joey, as an example of my chosen method of analysing the movement data through KMP, and recounted the movement-related music experiences and stories of five pilot study participants. At the time of the study, they were all undergraduate music performance students studying music performance at a university in England. The data gathered through the movement workshops and interviews highlighted various aspects of Kestenberg’s (1999) shape flow design movement category and experiences of participants during the movement workshops as they engaged in the movement/music exercises. The spatial movement patterns of one participant showed a willingness to let go and release many preconceptions about moving to music whereas another participant revealed her reticence to let go of the idea that movement was useful only for relaxing the body and not as a means of practising or improving her performance or way of interpreting the music.

Extracts from the semi-structured interviews were analysed. These helped to formulate key connecting themes and stories.

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Through my data, I identified three connecting themes:

 Widening possibilities;  Tension and release; and  Making connections.

The first of these themes – the connection between body movement, imagery and music perception – led me to study Johnson’s work on Image Schemata (see Chapter 2). The latter two themes introduced me to kinaesthetic imagery and kinaesthetic imagination, the notion of release in the body and guided movement imagery practice. As a result, I looked into the principles of SRT (see Chapter 2).

The chapter ended by addressing the focus of the main study. The pilot study was invaluable in helping me rethink and redirect the focus of my research. Having discussed the surrounding literature in the previous chapter, I made contact with this field through this pilot study. I decided that Johnson’s theory of Image Schemata would be very useful in interpreting the research findings and in attributing meaning. LMA/BF, SRT and KMP complemented the theoretical concepts of Johnson and helped to enrich my discussion of the data in the main study. In the next chapter, I introduce the main study and briefly revisit my methodological considerations in view of the reshaping of the main study.

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Chapter 6: The main study: working with a