Luc Nijs

• PhD - MA - MMus
• Associate Professor at University of Luxemburg

Men erkent steeds meer dat het lichaam, lichaamsbeweging en werken met materialen een belangrijke rol spelen bij het beleven, begrijpen en betekenis geven aan kunst (Nijs & Bremmer, 2019). Het lichaam speelt daarbij niet alleen een rol in de totstandkoming van die betekenis, maar ook in het zichtbaar maken van die betekenis. Hoe dergelijke processe...

Dear Colleagues, I need your help 😍 …. For my research, I'd like to find out how instrumental music teachers, musicians, and music teacher trainers think about "Instrumental music teaching and learning in early childhood". Therefore, I am launching a survey to probe their beliefs and strategies when teaching young children (aged 5-7) how to play...

In dit boek wordt de synergie tussen muziek en beweging omarmd en verkend als een medium voor muzikale expressie en welzijn. De achtergrondinformatie in dit boek gaf het denkkader waarbinnen de kinemuzikale benadering tot stand kwam en kan hen die zich willen verdiepen in de verrijkende wereld van muziek en beweging, verder op weg helpen doorheen t...

The aim of this study is to explore the lived experience of students ( N = 1,282) in general education engaging in collective free improvisation (CFI). Fourteen music teachers implemented a CFI lesson in 69 classes in Flanders (Belgium). Lived experience was measured using a Dutch version of the Flow State Scale for Occupational Tasks. This scale r...

Since the beginning of humankind, the use and development of technologies have played an essential role in enhancing human abilities and creating new possibilities for action and expression. As such, new technologies have captured the imaginations of educational scholars and practitioners. One of the latest developments in the evolution of digital...

In this article, we elaborate on the pedagogical-artistic strategies of a community music project and how they may inspire formal music educational practices. To do so, we draw on findings from a study on the pedagogical-artistic strategies of the musicians-coaches of the Ostend Street Orkestra (TOSO), a community music project that started as an a...

The aim of this study is to explore the lived experience of students (N = 1,282) in general education engaging in collective free improvisation (CFI). Fourteen music teachers implemented a CFI lesson in 69 classes in Flanders (Belgium). Lived experience was measured using a Dutch version of the Flow State Scale for Occupational Tasks. This scale re...

In this article, we give an overview of theoretical and empirical research that exemplifies how and why the body of the student and teacher plays a pivotal role in music learning and teaching processes. We will discuss the concepts of entrainment, alignment, and prediction, that have been developed within the theory of embodied music cognition, and...

Schools too often undermine creativity, said Ken Robinson, an educationalist who has changed thinking on schools. In his famous TEDtalk “Do schools kill creativity?,” he argues that the undermining of creativity results from being too focused on children’s heads rather than on their bodies. In line with Robinson’s observation, music education has b...

The field of community music has been continuously expanding during the last years alongside the need for experienced musicians who can carry out music activities for culturally diverse groups. Based on previous studies, we identified a need for research-based practices for training musicians and music teachers who wish to facilitate community musi...

Research shows that several factors often impede potential authors from engaging in the publishing process. These include negative emotions stemming from unpleasant reviewer feedback and/or a lack of specific knowledge regarding the various stages of writing and publishing. In this article, based on a session we presented at the 2022 ISME Early Chi...

Instrumental music teaching traditionally emphasizes the cognitive, motor, and motivational processes of score reproduction, often at the expense of creative musical activities, such as improvisation or composition. Since today’s international art school curricula prominently include creativity competencies, opportunities to integrate creativity in...

Instrumental music teaching traditionally emphasizes the cognitive, motor, and motivational processes of score reproduction, often at the expense of creative musical activities, such as improvisation or composition. Since today’s international art school curricula prominently include creativity competencies, opportunities to integrate creativity in...

Ashley (2016) considers the core notion of improvisation “that of constraint: of the scarcity of [cognitive] resources, in real time, that humans can utilize for making music when they are not following a predetermined plan of action.” Early research on improvisation focused on the cognitive machinery, mainly in adult expert (jazz) improvisers and...

The present contribution introduces a theoretical framework to explore music performance from a perspective inspired by the conceptual resources of two orientations known as Dynamical System Theory and Embodied Cognitive Science. We discursively elaborate on how music performance might be conceived of as a complex, multi-component system that deals...

In this chapter we present how we conceive of an Embodied Music Pedagogy. First, we will shortly discuss the two main theories on which an Embodied Music Pedagogy is based: the theory of embodied music cognition and dynamical system theory. The former advocates the bodily basis of musical sense-making, the latter the dynamical nature of human inter...

In musical instrument training, researchers have gradually started exploring the potential of interactive technologies supporting learning processes and teaching methods. Although numerous technological tools have been proposed to enhance instrument learning and teaching, these methods rarely find their way into daily practice and teaching routines...

In a newly designed collaborative online music course, four musical novices unknown to each other learned to play the clarinet starting from zero. Over the course of 12 lessons, a special emphasis was placed on creativity, mutual interaction, and bodily movement. Although addressing these dimensions might be particularly challenging in distance lea...

Dans cette contribution, nous expliquons comment un projet musical communautaire utilisant l'improvisation libre collective peut inspirer un plus large éventail de pratiques éducatives. Le projet concerné est l'Ostend Street Orkestra (TOSO), un projet avec des sans-abri et un groupe diversifié de musiciens dans la ville d'Ostende (Belgique). Axé su...

An increasing amount of research emphasises the influence of body movement on the perception of music. This study contributes to the research by investigating whether varied qualities of body movement, when aligned to music may affect the way children attribute meaning to that music. To address this question, 34 children (aged 9–10) were divided in...

In recent decades, advancements in digital technologies have become a rich source of inspiration for artists, who seek to leave the trodden paths and find novel ways of expression. In addition, digital technologies are increasingly implemented in the development of artistic skills, providing new means to develop the artists’ reflection on their own...

Worldwide, children face adverse childhood experiences, being exposed to risks ranging from, exposure to political violence and forced migration over the deleterious effects of climate change, to unsafe cultural practices. As a consequence, children that seek refuge or migrate to European countries are extremely vulnerable, often struggling with in...

In dit hoofdstuk nemen we het concept van belichaamde cognitie in relatie tot muziekonderwijs onder de loep. Er komt steeds meer onderzoek dat bevestigt dat het lichaam van zowel de docent als de lerende een betekenisvolle rol kan spelen bij leerprocessen, bijvoorbeeld bij het leren van taal en wiskunde (Paas & Sweller, 2012; Glenberg, Brown, & Lev...

In this contribution, we draw on findings from a non-formal, community music project to elaborate on the relationship between the concept of eudaimonia, as defined by Seligman, the interactive dimensions of collective free improvisation, and the concept of collaborative creativity. The project revolves around The Ostend Street Orkestra (TOSO), a mu...

Pedagogical strategies of the coaches in a community music program with improvisation.

Improvisation for all! How a participatory music project can inspire formal music education.

Recent findings in music research are increasingly confirming the embodied nature of music cognition. Assuming that a bodily engagement with music may affect the children’s musical meaning formation, we investigated how young children’s interaction with music, based on verbal description after listening versus body movement description while listen...

Instrumental and vocal teachers often employ their body in teaching to facilitate sensorimotor engagement with the voice or an instrument. Yet, teacher's bodily engagement in instrumental and vocal education is scarcely addressed in music educational research studies. In our view, this scarcity is related to the lack of a framework about the role o...

Executive functions (EFs) are cognitive functions needed for adaptive and targeted behavior. Music aptitude is the potential or capacity for musical achievement. A key element of music aptitude is audiation, defined as the process through which sound becomes music and meaning is attributed to that music. In this paper, we report on the association...

For centuries, wood, and more specifically spruce, has been the material of choice for violin top plates. Lately, carbon fiber instruments have entered the market. Some studies show that composite materials have potential advantages for making instruments [Damodaran, Lessard, and Babu, Acoust. Aust. 43, 117–122 (2015)]. However, no studies exist th...

For centuries, wood, and more specifically spruce, has been the material of choice for violin top plates. Lately, carbon fiber instruments have entered the market. Some studies show that composite materials have potential advantages for making instruments [Damodaran, Lessard, and Babu, Acoust. Aust. 43, 117–122 (2015)]. However, no studies exist th...

Can a bodily engagement with music affect the process of musical meaning formation and, as such, affect children’s graphic representation of music? To address this question a comparative study was conducted in which primary school children (n = 52; age = 9–10) without any formal music education participated in a verbal-based (describe the music ver...

The embodied music cognition research paradigm increasingly leads to findings that convincingly undergird the idea of the relationship between human movement and musical experience as a cornerstone of musical meaning formation and understanding. But even though movement is an integral part of early childhood music education, the findings and concep...

The two-variable model of musical creation (Stijnen&Vervliet, 2017) suggests two cognitive factors that that might withhold musicians from actively and intrinsically engaging in improvisation or composition. The first one, momentum, is linked to the amount of time that is available to come up with a creative product and involves the controlling of...

Music education has only scarcely embraced blended modes of learning. Moreover, existing applications often involve classical ways of online learning. In this project, we present the concept and a demonstrator of Singewing Space, a web-based interactive educational technology that introduces a novel approach to blended learning in music education,...

Music affords a wide range of interactive behaviors involving social, cognitive, emotional, and motor skills. In this chapter, we consider the role of technologies in relation to these interactions afforded by music. A general conceptual model is introduced that forms a basis to frame and understand a vast number of music-based interactive systems....

In diverse interaction processes that characterize music experience, the human hand can be seen as a mediator and facilitator for the brain’s processing of musical expressive patterns. After a brief overview on the human expressive system for music, we consider gestures and hand articulations in music production and performance, focusing on hand de...

New interactive music educational technologies are often seen as a ‘force of change’, introducing new approaches that address the shortcomings (e.g. score-based, teacher-centered, disembodied) of the so-called traditional teaching approaches. And yet, despite the growing belief in their educational potential, these new technologies have been proble...

This article presents PLXTRM, a system tracking picking-hand micro-gestures for real-time music applications and live performance. PLXTRM taps into the existing gesture vocabulary of the guitar player. On the first level, PLXTRM provides a continuous controller that doesn’t require the musician to learn and integrate extrinsic gestures, avoiding ad...

Over the past decade, embodied music cognition has become an influential paradigm in music research. The paradigm holds that music cognition is strongly determined by corporeally mediated interactions with music. They determine the way in which music can be conceived in terms of goals, directions, targets, values, and reward. The chapter gives an o...

In this paper, we propose a method to assist a performer in dealing with the challenges of contemporary music performance. Such a method aims at making a performer’s artistic process (which is based on cognitive and sensorimotor schemes) more explicit, in order to better understand the relationship between goals, actions, and sounds. The method doe...

This paper presents the concept and the realisation of an interactive multimedia installation, called BilliArT, together with an explorative user study conducted on the data gathered during a public exhibition of the installation. The study concerns functional properties of the installation (e.g. usability, design quality) and subjective qualities...

De muziekpedagogiek is voortdurend in beweging. Deze publicatie staat stil bij de rol en betekenis van technologie in muziekeducatie. In de verschillende hoofdstukken komen zowel academische perspectieven als getuigenissen uit de praktijk aan bod. De praktijkvoorbeelden situeren zich in de context van het deeltijds kunstonderwijs, het leerplichtond...

Published in: Cultuur+Educatie. Wanneer een muziekdocent zijn professionele handelen op basis van zijn dagelijkse praktijkervaringen bijstuurt, dan komt daar wellicht reflectie bij te pas. Dergelijke reflectie wordt wel eens vaker gekoppeld aan een basiscompetentie die omschreven wordt als de “onderzoekende docent”. Maar kunnen we reflectie zomaar...

Can interactive technologies be useful for music education? This question was empirically investigated during a nine-month longitudinal study in which twelve children (1st and 2nd grade) learnt to play the clarinet. Six children (the intervention group) received instruction with the Music Paint Machine, an interactive music system that allows a mus...

In this paper we describe a nine-month longitudinal study in which twelve children (1st and 2nd grade) learned to play the clarinet. Six of the children received instruction with an interactive music system, called the Music Paint Machine. This educational technology allows a musician to make a digital painting by playing music and by making variou...

In this paper we report on the results of an experiment on the experience of flow and presence while engaging with an interactive music system, the Music Paint Machine. This music system provides a game-like environment in which a musician can create a digital painting by playing an acoustic musical instrument, by moving the body in different direc...

In this paper, we discuss the pedagogically grounded and research-based design of a technology-enhanced learning tool, the Music Paint Machine. This interactive music system introduces a musical experience in which the musician creates a digital painting by playing an acoustic musical instrument and by moving the body on a coloured pressure mat. As...

Musicianship is known to display high-level skills, which involve different aspects of mental processing and corporeal control. Of particular interest is the match between the musician's mental focus on musical targets (the so-called musical intentions) and the expressive (or so-called auxiliary) body movements. To what extent are these related to...

Aan de vooravond van de hervormingen die het Deeltijds Kunstonderwijs idealiter moeten leiden naar een inhoudelijke vernieuwing, is een reflectie over evaluatie in de instrumentles bijzonder op zijn plaats. Evaluatie is immers onlosmakelijk verbonden met lesgeven. “To teach is to assess”, zei Keith Swanwick (1988) . Evaluatie is dan ook een weerspi...

Music research aims at developing a research space that, in a proactive sense, can support the development of creative and cultural industries. In that context, we argue that a focus on users and their experiences in using tools may become more important in music research. It implies an expansion of the traditional methods of music psychology with...

Interactive music systems offer new possibilities to support instrumental music teaching by providing a corporeally grounded experience as a basis for understanding music and music playing. In this paper we introduce the Music Paint Machine, a device that enables music performers to make a painting on a computer screen by playing their instrument....

Het Deeltijds Kunstonderwijs van vandaag is een onderwijsvorm die meer dan ooit in beweging is en bruist van de activiteiten. En toch schort er wat aan. Al jaren zeggen sommigen, de één al wat meer vanop de zijlijn dan de ander, dat heel wat zaken pedagogisch anders aangepakt moeten worden. Hun kritieken kregen onlangs ook weerklank in het rapport...

Relying on psychological research about flow experience and on the didactics of "Begeleid zelfstandig leren" (social constructivist approach to learning) I developed an evaluation system that functions on all levels of a music school (class: student & teacher - course - department - school). At the core of this new system is the autonomy of each st...

Leerlingenevaluatie wordt in het deeltijds kunstonderwijs op zeer diverse wijze ingevuld. Ze gebeurt veelal op het niveau van de klas, gekarakteriseerd door de intuïtieve aanpak van elke individuele leraar. Deze tekst bevat een pleidooi voor een evaluatiesysteem dat werkzaam is op alle niveaus van de school en zowel het leerproces van de leerling,...