'Back' to Perceptual Basics: Embodied Metaphors in Music/Sound Pedagogy

• In Event: Exploring the Sonic in Music Teaching & Learning

Abstract

Those engaging in music/sound teaching and learning regularly utilize metaphors as communicative tools during collaborative music/sound processes. This phenomenon is ubiquitous across music teaching and learning practices globally and across skill levels, from beginner to expert. Such metaphors reference embodied experiences stemming from other sensory modalities beyond hearing and listening. Examples include:

Elementary students standing when they hear a ‘high’ pitch and sitting when they hear a ‘low’ pitch.
An ensemble leader exploring a more ‘relaxed’ groove.
A voice student thinking about molasses during an intervallic leap.

The cross-modality of these metaphors raises questions about both the cognitive and experiential processes that give rise to them. Music theorist and composer Fred Lerdahl and philosopher/linguist Ray Jackendoff were some of the first to explore the cognitive processes associated with these metaphors and to apply them within a music theoretical context (Generative Theory of Tonal Music, 1985). During this same general period, philosopher of music Peter Kivy argued for the deep connection between musical gesture and embodied gestures. Meanwhile, throughout the mid-20th century, Eleanor and James Gibson laid the groundwork for ecological theories of perception and learning that continue to provide conceptual tools and frameworks for work in this area.

This presentation focuses on recent empirical and theoretical work that builds from this body of work and explores the synaesthetic characteristics of music/sonic cognitive processes and experiences, particularly related to movement and space (Whalley, 2024; Radschinski-Gorman, 2018). My aim is to make distinctions between linguistic metaphors, perceptual metaphors, and ‘direct’ music/sound/embodied meanings, and to bring these distinctions to bear on music/sound pedagogies. An important aspect of this project is to identify which types of metaphors are ‘intuitive’ (perceptual) for most students and which metaphors are learned (cultural). I find it essential for music teachers to be intentional about the role metaphors play within their pedagogical practices. As such, an important building block is identifying which metaphors are being taught to the students in the process of teaching music/sound concepts (a two-step pedagogical process), and which metaphors utilize synaesthetic perceptual processes directly in the process of teaching music/sound concepts (a single-step pedagogical process).

Author

• Rebecca Rinsema, Northern Arizona University