The human body, its movement, and music

Seeing and paying attention to a pianist’s efficiency is an immersive and pleasurable experience. The pianist and the tool, with a mix of ability, training, and existence, develop a collection of unforgettable minutes on their own and the target market. Yet exists a method to boost the efficiency and our understanding of just how the entertainer and their tool interact to develop this magic, while additionally reducing performance-related injuries?

Mi-Eun Kim, supervisor of key-board researches in MIT’s Music and Theater Arts Section, and Praneeth Namburi PhD ’16, a research study researcher in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, are checking out just how the body functions when pianists play. Their joint job, The Biomechanics of Taking In a New Piano Ability, intends to establish mechanistic understandings that might change just how we comprehend and educate piano strategy, minimize performance-related injuries, and bridge the space in between imaginative expression and biomechanical performance.

Their job is amongst those just recently chosen for a SHASS+ Connection Fund give with the MIT Human Insight Collaborative

” The job arised from a merging of rate of interests and individual experiences,” Namburi states. “Mi-Eun observed extensive injuries amongst fellow pianists and saw just how these injuries might thwart professions.”

Kim is a popular pianist that has actually carried out on phases throughout the USA, in Europe, and in Asia. She made the Liszt-Garrison Competitors’s Liszt Honor and the Corpus Christi solo reward, to name a few honors. She instructs piano and chamber songs with MIT Songs’s Emerson/Harris Program and chamber songs with MIT’s Chamber Music Society She made postgraduate degrees from the College of Michigan and holds a bachelor of arts level in background from Columbia College.

Namburi’s job concentrates on the biomechanics of effective, meaningful, and worked with motion. He attracts ideas from musicians and professional athletes in specialized motion techniques, such as dance and secure fencing, to examine proficient motion. He made a PhD in speculative neuroscience from MIT and a bachelor of design level in electric and digital design from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological College.

Going after the job

Kim and Namburi got to their job by taking various roadways right into the arts. While Kim was finishing her researches at the College of Michigan, Namburi was taking dancing lessons as a leisure activity in Boston. He found out that both meaningful and lasting motions could share a common measure. “A crucial understanding was that flexible cells play a vital duty in worked with, meaningful, and lasting motions in dancing– a concept that might prolong past dance,” he keeps in mind.

” We identified that researching flexible cells might clarify minimizing injury danger, in addition to comprehending music expression and personification in the context of piano having fun,” Kim states.

Kim and Namburi started teaming up on what would certainly become their job in October 2023, though the foundation remained in location months previously. “A checking out pupil collaborating with me on a research study job researching pianists in the MIT.nano Immersion Lab connected to Mi-Eun in summer season 2023,” Namburi remembers. A common Instagram video clip revealing their configuration with movement capture sensing units and a pianist playing Chopin on an electronic key-board stimulated Kim’s passion. The Immersion Laboratory is an open-access, shared center for MIT and past committed to imagining, comprehending, and engaging with huge, multidimensional information.

” I could not understand all the sensing units, however instantly discovered they were utilizing an electronic key-board,” she states.

Kim wished to boost these researches’ top quality by combining the artists with the appropriate tools and tool. While the electronic pianos they ‘d formerly made use of are mobile and offer music tool electronic user interface (MIDI) information, they do not supply the very same experience as an actual piano. “Pianists desire for using an optimal tool– a 9-foot show grand with flawlessly controlled 24-inch tricks that replies to every music intent without resistance,” Kim states.

The scientists brought a Spirio grand piano to the Immersion Laboratory and observed that the tool might both capture pianists’ hammerstrike speeds and duplicate them to repeat the efficiency. Checking Kim’s efficiency on the show grand piano, for instance, both kept in mind significant distinctions in her having fun design.

” Regardless of all the sensing units, lights, and onlookers, playing really felt so all-natural that I neglected I remained in a laboratory,” she states. “I might concentrate simply on the songs, without fretting about adjusting to a smaller sized key-board or electronic noise.”

This configuration enabled them to observe pianists’ all-natural motions, which was specifically what Kim wished to research.

Throughout Independent Activities Duration 2025, Kim and Namburi held a brand-new training course, Biomechanics of Piano Playing, in the Immersion Laboratory. Trainees and professors from MIT, Harvard College, the College of Michigan, the College of Toronto, and the College of Hartford participated. Individuals found out just how to make use of movement capture, accelerometers, and ultrasound imaging to envision signals from the body throughout piano having fun.

Monitorings and results

If the performance and regarded fluency of a professional pianist’s motions originates from using the body’s intrinsic flexible devices, Kim and Namburi think, it’s feasible to upgrade just how piano having fun is instructed. Each wishes to minimize events of playing-related injuries and boost just how artists discover their craft.

” I desire us to connect the space in between imaginative expression and biomechanical performance,” Namburi states.

With their exploratory sessions at the Immersion Laboratory, Kim and Namburi discovered commonalities, collecting info concerning their monitorings of and experiences in piano and dancing with sensing unit modern technology, consisting of ultrasound.

Past these, Kim saw prospective for changing piano rearing. “Conventional mentor counts greatly on subjective summaries and allegories gave with generations,” she states. “While beneficial, these strategies might be boosted with goal, clinical understanding of the physical devices behind proficient piano efficiency– evidence-driven piano rearing, if you will.”