The Well Crafted Mind: Musical Musings from Bibliography Project

One of my favorite activities in my mind is to think of possibilities for different things. I'm not great at figuring out how to make possibilities into reality, but that's okay; it's an area I know I need to grow in. We recently did an annotated bibliography for our course and all of my sources dealt with music and VR.

Let me tell you, there's not much out there.

Compared to other disciplines, anyway.

And that's frustrating in some ways, but really exciting in other ways (because that means there's a whole lot of untapped potential out there)! One of the articles I read talked about using headgear to help conductors gain experience in ensemble conducting. During conducting classes in undergrad, there is a limit on how much "stick time" a student gets with the ensemble. Practicing in front of a mirror or in front of only a few musicians does not really prepare you for standing in front of 45-60 people and conducting a piece of music. You need to give cues to different sections and provide direction for a variety of musical elements (dynamics, tempo, style, etc.), all without having your head buried in the score. One of the biggest things every student conductor must work on is giving appropriate eye contact. This particular study had the students wear headgear that could track their eye movements and they were able to practice conducting a virtual ensemble with educational cues in the environment. For example, at the time the clarinets entered the music, a red box would pop up, directing the student to look in that direction to give a cue. The headgear was programmed in such a way to track at what time the student looked in the direction of the clarinets and was able to provide feedback on whether or not the student looked at the section at the right time.

Studies like this are useful, but I don't find the results to be compelling because no one is testing on a larger scale. Several of the sources I found had great ideas but only sampled a few students. One particular study sampled only four students and they were all women ages 21-30. This is a good reminder for me to try to widen my test groups if I end up doing research in any of these areas. The results do lead us to more studies; however, and that's where I think this particular study on VRLE's and conductors shines. It shows where the research can go and opens up a world of possibilities for musicians and music educators. My perception of music education in general (regarding VR or any online tech for that matter) is that most folks think it can't be done or it's too hard to do, so very few want to explore it. I'm ready to push through that way of thinking and challenge musicians to see a world, albeit a virtual one, full of opportunities.