On sensorial openness in music ensemble playing — resonance and entrainment

Collaborative settings of music performance imply a real-time feedback response in an interactive multi-sensorial environment. Can we ― and if so how do we ― adjust ourselves in the continuity of a co-created performance? When the artist is a soloist, feedback loops are rather monological, and the produced sound reflects in a mirror-like way the embodied output of the artist. In co-creative performances, the monologue is reinforced not only by a dialogue-like exchange but by co-creative synchronisation and reinforcement of shared musical pulse, sound and intentions. The senses, actions and perceptions of and by the body are multiplied and collaboratively transformed. Each musician needs a lot of skill to control, cope with and display these multiple sound-reflections of and to his or her body.
This lecture will shortly develop some scientific, philosophical and musical insights into these sensorial affordances and skills needed in co-creative music-performance settings and point to the pedagogical implications. Co-created sound and co-created pulse emerge from embodied, sensorial and reflective (and often tacit) intentions which include bio-physiological notions as entrainment, multi-sensoriality and enaction. This situation of continuous 're-sonance' and 'con-sonance' resembles the mirror room of Leonardo Da Vinci. Specific experiences of flow in sound — 're-sonance' — and in time (pulse) — 'entrainment' — emerge, creating a space in which the boundaries of self and other are blurred.