Preferences of Undergraduate Music Majors for Sequenced versus Performed Piano Music

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether musicians would evaluate sequenced piano music recorded from a sampling synthesizer differently than they evaluated commercially recorded performances by concert pianists. Subjects, 40 undergraduate music majors, of whom 17 were piano majors, listened to four performances each of four different piano pieces: one performance of each piece was sequenced; the other three were commercial recordings. Subjects consistently rated the quality of recording higher for sequenced excerpts than for commercial excerpts. This was likely a consequence of using long-playing recorded performances as opposed to compact disc recordings, however. Also, there was a tendency for subjects to rate the tone quality of the piano lower for the sequenced excerpts than for the commercial excerpts. There were no significant differences between ratings of sequenced and commercial excerpts for technical merit, artistic merit, and overall impression. These three ratings were highly correlated with each other, corroborating earlier research demonstrating the unidimensionality of performance evaluation. Also, tempo affected technical merit ratings: faster performances of the same piece were rated higher than slower ones. Results from this study imply that the use of sampled sounds and sequencers, in certain circumstances, might enable musicians lacking the technical skills of concert artists to create recorded performances equal in technical and artistic merit to recorded performances of concert artists.