| Summary: | Musicians are on stage not only to be heard but also to be seen. The visual aspects of music are a crucial part of the experience. Whether performers move too much or too little for a particular audience member, their gestures are often noticed. Some audiences may enjoy certain gestures while others may find them distracting. To study this topic in greater detail, I view my research through the lens of marimba performance. The marimba is a large instrument that can involve many movements to produce a sound. The way marimbists move while playing is noticed due to the nature of the instrument. When I interviewed ten professional marimbists in a 2011/2012 study, most participants discussed distracting gestures as a negative part of performance and said that they try to avoid extra gestures unless they relate to the music. The same participants were video recorded performing four excerpts from standard marimba repertoire by Gordon Stout, J.S. Bach, and Keiko Abe. The results of the analysis include: 1) gesture repetition in multiple takes of the same excerpt; 2) movement-areas of the body that I observed most in each participant; 3) a comparison of each participant to the others; and 4) results, patterns, and trends. This research also includes a discussion of literature in visual aspects of music performance, insight to why performers move the way that they do, an explanation of “sound producing” versus “ancillary gestures”, and a detailed discussion of my research study. Although this study will not lead to conclusions that can be applied to all marimbists, it will, however, provide an important contribution to physical gesture research in music performance by presenting patterns and trends from a comparative study of ten professional musicians.
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