Peter Visentin

• University of Lethbridge

Researchers have found that many post-secondary music students suffer from physical and mental health issues. However, researchers have mainly studied these problems at the individual level, with little investigation of how music students’ work is shaped by the coordinating effects of policies, texts, and discourses at and beyond their local site....

High prevalence of musicians’ physical and mental performance-related health issues (PRHI) has been demonstrated over the last 30 years. To address this, health promotion strategies have been implemented at some post-secondary music institutions around the world, yet the high prevalence of PRHI has persisted. In 2018, an international group of rese...

Playing the piano at expert levels typically involves significant levels of trial-and-error learning since the majority of practice occurs in isolation. To better optimize musical outcomes, pianists might be well served by emulating some of the practices found in sports, where motor learning strategies are grounded in biomechanics and ergonomics in...

One of the greatest challenges in reducing high rates of performance injuries among musicians is in providing them usable tools to address playing-related musculoskeletal problems (PRMP) before they become disorders. Studies in biomechanics have the potential to provide such tools. In order to better understand the mechanisms through which PRMP man...

Piano performance motor learning research requires more “artful” methodologies if it is to meaningfully address music performance as a corporeal art. To date, research has been sparse and it has typically constrained multiple performance variables in order to isolate specific phenomena. This approach has denied the fundamental ethos of music perfor...

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: To address the need for accessible health education and improved health literacy for musicians throughout their lifespan. METHODS: Formation of a multicultural, international, and interdisciplinary collaborative research team, funded by the Worldwide Universities Network. The goal is to design a multi-strand research program...

Kicking in soccer has been the subject of scientific research for more than 40 years yet review articles summarizing the biomechanical fundamentals of kick optimization as a guide to coaching are scarcely to be found. The current review article aims to bridge the gap between scientific research into the maximal instep kick (including studies employ...

Background: Elite cello playing requires complex and refined motor control. Cellists are prone to right shoulder and thoracolumbar injuries. Research informing injury management of cellists and cello pedagogy is limited. The aims of this study were to quantify the torso, right shoulder, and elbow joint movement used by elite cellists while perform...

The violin plays a central role in Western classical music traditions. Performing on the violin requires a complex interaction between motor control and auditory perception. The development of such skills requires extensive training over a period of years. With modern movement analysis techniques, characteristic motor behaviors associated with viol...

No existing studies of badminton technique have used full-body biomechanical modeling based on three-dimensional (3D) motion capture to quantify the kinematics of the sport. The purposes of the current study were to: 1) quantitatively describe kinematic characteristics of the forehand smash using a 15-segment, full-body biomechanical model, 2) exam...

Instrumental music performance ranks among the most complex of learned human behaviors, requiring development of highly nuanced powers of sensory and neural discrimination, intricate motor skills, and adaptive abilities in a temporal activity. Teaching, learning and performing on the violin generally occur within musico-cultural parameters most oft...

Instrumental music performance ranks among the most complex of learned human behaviors, requiring development of highly nuanced powers of sensory and neural discrimination, intricate motor skills, and adaptive abilities in a temporal activity. Teaching, learning and performing on the violin generally occur within musico-cultural parameters most oft...

Instrumental music performance ranks among the most complex of learned human behaviors, requiring development of highly nuanced powers of sensory and neural discrimination, intricate motor skills, and adaptive abilities in a temporal activity. Teaching, learning and performing on the violin generally occur within musico-cultural parameters most oft...

In soccer, the bicycle kick has provided viewers moments of breathtaking spectacle that seem virtuosic in scope. The novelty of such moments is underscored by the rarity with which players have performed this complex skill during national or international tournaments. The rarity of these occurrences is both a product of perceptions that it is a hig...

Available at NOVA Science Publishers - https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=39432 - In order for scientific research in music performance to have meaningful application, it must first understand the needs of the vocation and then prove its utility through methods that provide results that are user-friendly. For many m...

EMG is a well proven technology in the fields of motor control and motor learning. Performance mastery on a musical instrument requires some of the most sophisticated neurological processes of any human activity (including rapid interlacing of the cortices that control the auditory, visual, and motor sensory systems). Surprisingly the number of EMG...

Music ensemble playing relies heavily on a conductor's gestural cues. Visibility of those cues varies within the ensemble, so conductors typically use compensation strategies selectively to improve the clarity of their gestures for different players. Currently, there are no quantitative studies evaluating the efficacy of such compensatory strategie...

In a prisoner's dilemma, constructed narratives are used to demonstrate problems within individual rationality and decision-making. Performing artists can be seen as facing a type of prisoner's dilemma in their careers: they must practice repeated movements for long periods in order to improve, yet despite the short-term perception of gained artist...

A desire to communicate concepts or ideas using representations of bodily form and function is a significant feature of historical and contemporary visual culture. As an unfolding of time-based events, gesture is intrinsically integrated with the aesthetic experience, form and function of human movement. In the visual and creative arts, various app...

While biomechanics has achieved successes in many fields involving locomotion, motor learning, skill acquisition, technique optimization, injury prevention, physical therapy and rehabilitation, one area has heretofore been scarcely represented in the literature - Arts Biomechanics. Arts Biomechanics clearly has significant potential for application...

This study explores the utility of movement analysis technology as a means of contributing to a performance pedagogy informed in part by science. Two research questions were investigated: Can biomechanical skills needed for performance on the violin be accurately and objectively characterized and generalized? Can these data be used to inform perfor...

Performance of instrumental music requires high precision and the automisation of motor control to free the performer to focus on the artistic outcome. To acquire this high skill, training is experience-based, involves one-on-one instruction, and requires long hours of repetitive practice. This approach is consistent with a traditional model of voc...

The article EMG Characterization of Embouchure Muscle Activity, by Iltis and Givens, published in the March 2005 issue [MPPA 2005;20(1):25-34], adds significantly to the body of knowledge attempting to relate muscle activity to pathologies that appear to arise from it. In their study of embouchure dystonia, the authors focused on small/tiny muscles...

Multidimensional Signal Analysis (MSA) involves the coordination and correlation of data gathered by multiple analytical techniques. For complex bio-systems, MSA provides a means to better investigate aspects of the system that cannot easily be understood using a single method. This is clearly the case for repetitive use injuries – also commonly re...

A cognitive shift is evident in the constituencies that deal with OS injuries. Medical practitioners, performers, educators and researchers are now clearly concerned with prevention as a desired strategy. Realistically, the medical community must take on the burden of changing attitudes within the artistic community. As artistic success or failure...

Studies show that 43% to 66% of professional musicians need to stop performing for extended periods due to occupational injuries, often identified as overuse syndrome. Repetitive movement may be the mechanism of these injuries, but the identification of causal factors requires quantitative research into the kinematic and kinetic characteristics of...

Overuse Syndrome (OS) resulting from repetitive motion affects a significant percentage of performing musicians. Particularly susceptible to OS, violinists use different kinds of muscle control patterns in the right and left limbs and must assume a complex asymmetrical posture to hold and play the instrument. There is a clear need for developing ef...

INTRODUCTION Musicians are a group particularly susceptible to overuse syndrome (OS), with up to 65% of professionals afflicted [1]. Violinists are at particularly high levels of risk for developing OS, due to the repetitive nature of the movements they use. Of 227 music students surveyed, string players reported shoulder pain more often than any o...