brainstruments': the musical instruments people really play. lee sankey

Brainstruments ‐ Summary Paper v1.1 October 2011 © Lee Sankey 2011. All rights reserved.

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'Brainstruments': The musical instruments people really play. Lee Sankey www.brainstruments.com www.leesankey.com Email: [email protected] Twitter: @leesankey This paper summarises some of the ideas and findings from an ongoing research project for my forthcoming book "Brainstruments" involving insight from over 40 world renowned jazz, blues and classical musicians. My aim is to publish the book in 2012. My findings from interviews with classical musicians are excluded from this paper.


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Abstract Playing a musical instrument involves converting knowledge, emotion and creative ideas into precise motor actions that drive the physical instrument. Neuroscience research has demonstrated that our experience of the world is a mental model constructed by our brains based on inputs from our senses. I propose that when you play a musical instrument you are not playing the physical instrument but instead your brain's mental model of the musical instrument. I call these models 'Brainstruments'. Following on from this, I also propose that some musical instruments help create the 'brainstrument' more than others. For example, a core element is knowing where the notes are on the physical instrument and the associated techniques to produce them. The solution is provided by most instruments' design, for example the keyboard on a piano. However, what happens when an instrument does not provide an obvious mapping solution or aid the brain in creating the mental model which is needed to drive the physical instrument? There are many instruments where this applies including the trumpet, trombone, harmonica and especially vocals where the human body is the physical instrument. How are musicians who have mastered such instruments able to achieve the accuracy and precision to play complex music genres such as Jazz without an obvious pitch layout and related trigger mechanism such as a key? Could the answer help explain why some instruments are under represented in terms of virtuosity? Or what separates great musicians from average ones? I have sought to explore and verify these ideas by interviewing world renowned jazz and blues musicians, 42 at the time of writing. These include 15 professional harmonica players whose interviews I compared with those of 12 amateurs. My findings support the idea that musical instruments are mental models and there is a direct correlation between the quality of the mental model and playing standard. I suggest the ability to create and develop the 'brainstrument' is something that differentiates great musicians from average ones and is an inherent part of being musical. What Is My Harmonica? For many years I've been struck by the seemingly disproportionate number of people who struggle to play the harmonica to a high standard. Pondering my own approach to the harmonica, an instrument I have played for over 20 years and on a professional basis for several of those, I came to realise that whether I am actually playing, actively listening or imagining playing, the audio and physical experiences are twinned with a multi dimensional mental representation that has spatial, directional and other qualities. Individual pitches, scales and phrases 'appear' in a specific, consistent three-dimensional layout. Techniques such as note bending or feedback from the instrument and expressive nuances are represented using things like movement in space and form changes. A minor 3rd for example has a specific spatial position in front of me together with form and directional properties depending on how the note is being played. Scales, arpeggios, phrases and chords form three-dimensional shapes, lines and patterns based on extending the same principles. If I imagine playing or actually hear the blues scale, its sound is also experienced as a specific shape.


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Diagram 1: My mental model of the harmonica involves several layers. The illustration below gives an idea of one of these; my visualisation of note maps. While the image is not an exact representation of my mind's eye, as its aesthetic is partly a function of the programme that created it, hopefully it conveys the concept. Note maps provide the blueprint for scales, arpeggios, phrases and so on. They include such things as 'anchors' and important notes depending on the musical context.

Diagram 2: Visualisations of note mappings enable me to create paths or routes through a spatial arrangement. For example this is how I recall, recognise and understand the blues scale in 1st position. I 'see' this in tandem with real or imagined audio and physical sensations of playing. Mental representations like these give added dimensions to my mental model of the harmonica.

Diagram 3: The image below shows how a note map appears in front of me. When I play the harmonica I am moving through and sculpting spatial arrangements like these. I can hold several in my mind at once, for instance hearing and seeing options for chord changes. This is one aspect of my mental model.


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This multi-dimensional mental model is how my mind recognises and recalls music in order to map it and my technique onto the physical harmonica. Musical ideas are expressed in the same manner. My 'harmonica in the mind' does not look much like the physical instrument as there's nothing about the way a harmonica looks that tells you how to mentally approach it or how it behaves when played. Yet my mental model feels as real to me as my hands on the fretboard of my guitar which I have also played for over twenty years. In contrast, the guitar is much 'foggier' in my mind. It will come as no surprise which of the two instruments I have an affinity with. People can hear the mental fog when I play guitar, less so with the harmonica. In 2007 I began asking other harmonica players how they knew where the notes were on the physical instrument, what they could recall when imagining playing and how they knew what a fellow player was doing, for example when they listened to a record. Surprisingly, virtually no one mentioned any kind of mental representation, only the physical and audio dimensions. I had assumed all 'harp' players had one of some kind. For instance, Howard Levy, a fabulous diatonic harmonica player and pianist, has described how he maps everything onto a representation of the piano rather than the harmonica. I took straw polls on similar questions at 3 separate harmonica workshops in 2009 (around 200 people in total) with the same results. Interestingly, the people who did mention mental representations and mappings always seemed to be the most advanced players, or those who had progressed the most relative to the time they had been practising.


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These experiences motivated me to investigate further. Could this apparently widespread absence of spatial, visual or other representations in players' mental experiences explain why so many people struggle to play the harmonica to a high standard? Could this also apply to other instruments? Do expert musicians use similar mental abstractions to represent and recall their knowledge, technique and apply them to their physical instruments? Is the quality of the mental model and the ability to create it, a skill that separates great players from average ones? Beyond the Physical Instrument Advances in neuroscience made by scientists such as Chris Frith and Jeff Hawkins have demonstrated that our experience of the world is a mental model constructed by the brain based on input from the senses, combined with predictions, associations, prior experience to give meaning and context. Chris Frith Emeritus Professor at the Welcome Trust for Neuroimaging at University College London and author of "Making Up The Mind" succinctly puts this as "Even if all our senses are intact and brain is functioning normally, we do not have access to the physical world. It may feel as if we have direct access, but this is an illusion created by the brain." (1) Many things we take as reality are in fact mental interpretations and constructions of physical phenomena. Colour and music are examples of mental constructions, not properties of the physical world. There is nothing inherently red about light photons of that frequency (2). There is no such concept as major and minor in air vibrations (3). Dr Frith continues "Because we have no connection to the physical world around us, our brains have to make inferences about that world on the basis of the crude sensations they receive from our eyes, ears and all the other sense organs. These inferences can be wrong. Furthermore there are all sorts of things our brains know that never reach our conscious minds." (4). The act of playing a musical instrument requires applying knowledge, emotions and creativity to generate precise motor actions that drive the physical instrument which produces sound. Dr. Alvaro Pascual Leone, Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, states this brilliantly. " Playing a musical instrument requires more than factual knowledge about the musical instrument and the mechanics of how it is played. For example given complete information about hand position, finger motions and the sequence of keys to push for how long and with what force, I would still be unable to play even the simplest piano sonata."(5). In this scenario, even though you would have all the information, you wouldn't have the physical technique to apply it to the physical instrument. When we refer to 'technique' we are typically describing sensory motor skills. People often talk of developing 'muscle memory' for complex actions e.g. in sport or music, but in reality your muscles don't have memory. Muscle movement and control are generated by the brain. Alvaro Pascual Leone continues "The central nervous system has to acquire and implement a 'translation mechanism' to convert knowledge into action" (6). So playing a musical instrument, including the human body, is an act of cognition. The physical musical instrument itself is a vehicle for neural activity. It follows that a musician's perception of their physical instrument, like all tools and objects we interact with, is a mental construction pieced together by the brain using input from their senses. I therefore propose the following: When you play a musical instrument you are not playing the physical instrument, but instead your brain's mental model of that instrument based on a perception built from your senses. The perception of the physical instrument is just one component in a complex mental system which makes up the whole instrument. I call this model a 'brainstrument'. A musician's mental model is more than a representational and


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enablement framework for the mind. The mental model is the instrument. This concept also applies to mental models that do not result in motor actions for a specific physical instrument but the human body only, as in the case of human vocals. The harmonica as far as my mind is concerned is the mental model I briefly described in the introduction. I don't play the 'harmonica', I play this mental model which provides a better framework than the physical instrument alone. This concept has huge implications for all musicians, but especially for those whose instrument does not actively help create and shape a mental model. Do You See C? Most instruments provide a solution to what form the mental model should take through their design and the manner in which they are played, for instance the keyboard on a piano. For a beginner the piano keyboard is of course a complete mystery. Jazzy melodic phrases are not literally marked out and have to be learnt. However, as a person learns they have the visual feedback of the keyboard as well as the auditory dimension. The keyboard aids a player to map chords, scales and so forth through mental representations such as paths, lines and shapes. David Sudnow in his seminal book "The Way of Hand" describes his use of these kinds of representations in great detail. For example in this passage about places on the keyboard "And there was their use in learning: arrayed places to go, elaborate ranges of possibilities for lending organization to manipulations they themselves told me nothing about, visually detected and then tactilely found fields and crisscrossing vectors for practising manoeuvrability, instantly available potential courses to be seen at a glance while trying to keep up the play as the changes went by." (7). However, what happens if an instrument's design does not facilitate building a mental model? The diatonic harmonica for example presents several challenges. The physical instrument does not allow the player to see how the notes are laid out. Many notes are achieved through bending reeds, effectively making them conceptually 'hidden'. Each octave is laid out differently meaning a player can't apply one set of logic across the instrument's range. Notes are tightly bunched together requiring dexterity and precision to play with control. My mental model enables me to deal with these challenges. On a rudimentary level it provides my mind a way of 'seeing' where the notes are even though the physical instrument does not. There are other instruments where these kinds of challenges apply e.g. the trumpet, trombone, and vocals. Such instruments, to varying degrees, do not facilitate the mapping process of the sound of a note to precisely where that note is on the instrument and the corresponding physical actions required to reproduce it. So how does a trombone player like Jim Fryer achieve the accuracy required to play jazz given there are no markers on the slider and the concept of individual notes being "about there" will fall way short of the precision required? Following on from my first proposal: Musical knowledge and techniques such as precise note position for certain instruments are abstract concepts for which the brain needs an alternative method of representation to facilitate the act of playing, whether imagined or real, as it is not supplied by the physical design of the instrument. This requires the player to create their own mental representations, metaphors and so on to construct the mental model of the instrument. I therefore suggest that some musical instruments aid the creation of the mental model through their physical design more than others.


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Musician Interviews To investigate and explore these issues I have conducted in-depth interviews with world-renowned jazz and blues musicians, 42 so far (Appendix A). These include 15 professional harmonica players whose interviews I've compared with 12 amateurs of various standards (Appendix B). The professional group comprises of some of the finest jazz and blues musicians in the world today spanning a range of instruments that include those that utilise keys, keyboards and fretboards to more abstract instruments that do not. All interviews have taken place face to face and lasted anything from 30 minutes to 4 hours. Rather than sticking to rigidly to a questionnaire I used a series of around 30 questions to help facilitate and encourage discussion. None of the participants knew the questions in advance or played their instruments during the interviews. I am aware that a lack of a scientific interview methodology could be criticised on a number of levels. For instance some interviews took place where background noise or music was present. I did not phrase each question the same to every musician. So it is conceivable that factors like these may have influenced a person's answer. My priority when setting out on this exercise was to facilitate an open discussion. There are also practical considerations such as the availability of an artist which inevitably meant interview length and circumstances vary. At a high level, participants were asked to:

• Listen to a piece of recorded music featuring their instrument and describe how they

knew what the player was doing.

• Describe the experience of improvising without their instrument.

• For both professional and amateur diatonic harmonica players I also played a series of recorded harmonica phrases and asked if there were any mental experiences other than the audio dimension which helped translate the sound into knowing how to replicate the phrases on the harmonica.

Summary Findings and Insights

• The mental models of 9 out of the 10 professionals who specialise in the diatonic

harmonica (90%) use some form of spatial and directional representation in addition to auditory and physical sensations, whether actually playing, imagining playing or actively listening. In other words, the description of an imagined or real playing experience includes representations in addition to audio and physical sensations. In contrast only 3 out of the 12 diatonic harmonica amateurs (33%) described anything similar. This is statistically significant. The rest of the amateurs could not describe how they knew where notes were or articulated any other mental dimensions other than the physical sensations with real or imagined audio. This finding suggests a direct relationship to the playing standard of diatonic harmonica players and the presence of an articulated mental model where knowledge and technique are presented to the mind using mental representations and metaphors absent on the physical instrument


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The following comments refer to the group of 42 professional musicians interviewed. • In addition to the pairing of audio and physical dimensions, 40 of 42 (95%) described

mental representations involving spatial and or visual elements for the mapping of musical knowledge and technique when listening to a piece of music and when imagining improvising.

• 11 of the 17 musicians (65%) whose first instrument presents a pitch layout and trigger mechanism, such as a guitar, use those elements as the basis for their model. This includes the sitar player Balugi Shirivastav who is blind. However, for 6 individuals, the mental model was not a literal representation of the physical instrument but instead an abstract form, normally representing music rather than the instrument. I had not anticipated this. For example saxophonist Nigel Hitchcock described how the saxophone in his mind changed from being based on the instrument's keys to pitch ratios. In these cases participants described how these changes occurred as their skill developed.

• All 5 of the chromatic harmonica players described various mental representations involving shapes, lines and spatial aspects as part of their playing and listening experiences. 3 of them use a mental model of the piano rather than the harmonica.

• Excluding the 15 professional harmonica players, I found that 9 of the 11 musicians (82%) who play as their first instrument one that does not use a keyboard or fretboard, described spatial and visual representations in tandem with physical and audio experiences. Including diatonic and chromatic harmonica players the measure rises to 88% (23 of 26). The 2 musicians that did not were interestingly both trumpet players. One explanation might be that the more the instrument is part of the body the less of a requirement there is for a visual or spatial model. The lips produce the sound on a trumpet. This needs further investigation.

• Some musicians described mental models that extended beyond mapping elements associated with the practicalities of translating musical knowledge and technique to the physical instrument to also include representations for 'soft' concepts such as time and abstract concepts such as expression.

• Only 5 (12%) musicians were aware of their mental model prior to the interview. The rest had never considered how their knowledge, musicianship and experience of playing are presented to their minds.

• Some musicians described how their representations changed depending on whether they were engaged in actually playing, playing in the mind or listening. All the musicians described how they are not actively thinking about their technique when performing. Their focus is on elements such as emotion. However, during practise their focus changes, and players describe 'using' the components of their mental model such as the spatial arrangement of notes. This suggests that a mental model has different modes, 'connecting' with the musician's conscious or subconscious depending on what the individual is doing.

• A high degree of mental practise in all the professional musicians. One remarked that "I rarely practise, but I play in my mind all the time."

• Exponents of the same instrument can have very different kinds of mental model. On the diatonic harmonica I have found 5 different types and 3 on the chromatic harmonica. This suggests that there is no such thing as a generic or 'right way' to mentally model an


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instrument.

• Some musicians use a mental model of another instrument as a substitute or to supplement their own one. For example Claire Martin sometimes is "singing the piano".

• 16% of the professional musicians (7 out of 42) described synesthesia like representations. Descriptions included number forms, chords as coloured shapes and lines. I am not qualified to say whether these individuals have synesthesia in the clinical sense, as synesthesia like representations can occur in non-synesthetes. Nevertheless the presence of such mental representations in the professional group is staggeringly high compared to the estimated occurrences of synaesthesia in population of about 1 in 2000.

Summary Discussion and Conclusions The research interviews I have conducted so far support the view that musical instruments are mental models. As one might expect, the majority of professional musicians who play instruments that present a note layout use a mental representation based on the design of their physical instrument. However, unexpected outcomes were the degree to which literal models were extended to include other dimensions such as time and that some musicians' mental models were not literal representations of the physical instrument at all. These observations underscore the suggestion that the perception of the physical instrument is just one component of a wider mental model. Perhaps the most compelling evidence in support of this idea is simply the variation in the mental models of different musicians who play the same type of physical instrument. I found that 88% of the professional musicians whose instrument does not provide or suggest a basis for the mental model have either fabricated one, accidently in most cases, or use the model of another, such as the piano, to replace the absence or reduction of visual and tactile references with their own mental representations and frameworks. These individuals have created their own mental mechanisms that fill in the gaps arising from the design and practicalities of their particular instrument. This requires thinking in ways not necessary on more literal kinds. I am suggesting that musicians who have mastered such instruments are gifted in this area in addition to the traditional view of being musically talented. Surprisingly, I found this thinking can also apply to musicians whose instrument does present a note layout as they also adapt and extend their models. All these musicians are in a very real sense designing and customising their own instruments by creating interfaces that provide the representations and frameworks for musical knowledge, ideas and how to execute them. Individuals who are not able to the same degree, or do not have a natural propensity to think in ways that create such a model are at a disadvantage. Without a mental model that facilitates the development of clarity, a player is unlikely to achieve virtuosity as essentially they will live in a world of varying degrees of 'left a bit, right a bit'. Instruments that do not facilitate the creation of the mental model could well be limiting important neural functions such as the effect of mirror neurons, chunking, recall, task preparation and mental practise. The last point raises the question of what an instrument provides for recall in order to 'play in the mind'? All the professionals in this study described high levels of mental practise, including those whose instruments present these kinds of challenges. The comparison between professional and amateur harmonica players indicates there is a direct link between playing standard and the quality of the mental model. I suggest this principal applies to all musical instruments and therefore, the ability to create and utilise the mental model is something that separates virtuoso and average musicians. I believe this helps explain why certain


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instruments produce few great exponents and why some people fail to reach advanced levels of musicianship. Another unexpected result was that 89% of the professional musicians were unaware of their mental model and had never articulated it to anyone before. This raises two important issues. Firstly, the role of procedural and declarative knowledge types. The former where a person has knowledge they can verbalise and the latter knowledge that they can't even though the knowledge is clearly present. Improvising Jazz requires a player to be able to play ideas without consciously thinking, i.e. second nature. Like in many sports, there is not the time to think 'how' to execute an idea or indeed even what the idea is. To achieve this fluidity, a musician's technique may become so embedded in their subconscious it is conceivable that they may not be able to articulate the specifics of what they are doing. There were 3 interviews in the professional group where this appeared to be the case. They were 2 trumpeters and a harmonica player. Clearly these players do have mental models as they are virtuoso musicians but they were not able to articulate things like how they played in the mind or translate knowledge and ideas onto their instrument. It is significant that this included trumpet players where the instrument sound is the players lips i.e. the instrument is part of the body and that the trumpet requires daily practise to obtain and maintain a high playing standard. One could surmise that there is more chance that this instrument would involve implicit knowledge. It seems unlikely the inability to describe a mental model seen in the amateur group of harmonica players is explained by the same reasons. And ultimately, 95% of the professionals were able to describe their mental model after some questioning. The second issue is why the professional musicians developed rich mental models without making a conscious effort to do so and why this did not appear to happen with majority the amateurs whose mental models only contained the audio and physical dimensions. Could this be as a result of a genetic or environmental condition which created a propensity to subconsciously form mental representations and frameworks? Speaking from my own perspective, as a child I was constantly drawing from my imagination, a skill that I continued to develop through my teens as a freelance designer. Perhaps by the time I picked up the harmonica I had a propensity to think visually which is a crucial advantage in playing an instrument with no visual feedback. In the case of the amateur harmonica players interviewed it is conceivable that the added dimensionality might appear over time. It is striking that 3 of 4 players who described a model which included dimensions beyond purely the physical were those who had been playing less than 5 years. I.e. the absence of extra dimensionality occurred in both beginner and experienced players. This suggests that the ability to create and develop the mental model of the musical instrument is down to the individual and not just a possible function of time. There are obviously many factors which affect the playing standard both for an instrument in general and that achieved by individuals. Cultural factors such as likelihood of a musical instrument to be taught at school or simply how much time an individual practises are just two such powerful examples. However, I believe a largely ignored but critical success factor is a musician's mental model - the 'brainstrument' as I have termed it. The mental model is what the musician plays and what is being 'built' when they practise. The significance of the mental model is hidden during learning to play most popular instruments as the solution to mapping the notes and the associated techniques is supplied by the instrument itself. As a result, a player does not have to actively consider creating a mental model or what might not be included through normal inputs. My research interviews indicate that there is a direct relationship between playing standard and the quality of the mental model. Top-flight musicians have a superior ability to create and use their 'brainstrument'. They are therefore able to actually build better instruments in the fullest sense, sometimes even extending them to include dimensions


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not represented by the physical instrument, be they elements concerned with practicalities or abstract ideas. Less advanced musicians are in effect playing lesser instruments, even if they happen to be using the best physical one available. The ability to create and utilise the mental model of the musical instrument is therefore a critical part of becoming an expert or virtuoso. As such, I suggest it should be seen as important as learning music theory and physical technique and is an inherent part of what it means to be musical. Approaching musical instruments as mental models will have major implications for enabling both professional and amateur musicians to improve their playing standard and to enhance the way music is taught by educators. Further research is required into these ideas and findings. Crucially, do they apply beyond our interactions with musical instruments to other tools and objects? Could the mastery of anything ultimately rely on the quality of mental model? Acknowledgements and Thanks It has been a privilege to meet and discuss these ideas with such amazing musicians. I am grateful to all of them for their contributions and insight. My thanks go to all the amateur harmonica players who participated. I also would like to thank Stuart Banham for producing the computer renderings, Ben May for producing the physical model and Jason Musil for his invaluable research assistance. I would also like to sincerely thank the following neuroscientists for their comments and input, be it for or against the ideas presented here: Chris Frith, Lauren Stewart, Peter Keller, Peter Vuust, Alvaro Pascual Leone, Roger Day, Annabel Cohen and Daniel Leech Wilkinson. Appendix A - Professional Musicians List of the 42 professional musicians interviewed grouped by instrument followed by the date, location of the interview and other instruments played where relevant in brackets, these are marked with an * where the artist also performs with the instrument. Saxophone

• Joe Lovano. 21/03/2010, Chicago, America. (Drums, Piano) • Chris Potter. 01/12/2010, London, England. • Nigel Hitchcock. 13/08/2010, London, England. • Jim Spake. 23/03/2010, Memphis, America. • Nick Payn. 04/03/2010, London, England. (Flute*, Diatonic Harmonica*)

Piano

• Neil Cowley. 25/02/2010, Richmond, England. • Christian Sands. 30/03/2010, New York, America.

Guitar

• Charlie Hunter. 31/03/2010, New Jersey, America. (Bass*) • Matt Schofield. 22/04/2010, London, England. (Bass, Drums) • David Mills. 31/03/2010, New York, America. (Sitar, Bass) • Martin Taylor MBE. 10/02/2011, Edinburgh, Scotland. (Mandolin)


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Sitar • Balugi Shrivastav. 23/10/2010, London, England.

Bass

• Jasper Hoiby. 19/10/2010, London, England. • Laurence Cottle. 09/07/2010, London, England. (Trombone*) • Peter Vuust. 11/06/2011, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Drums

• Evan Jenkins. 14/08/2010, London, England. • Peter Erskine. 22/03/2011, London, England. (Piano) • Brian Blade. 29/03/2011, Paris, France. (Guitar*, Vocals*)

Trumpet

• Randy Brecker. 20/11/2010, Frankfurt, Germany. (Flugel Horn*, Piano) • Guy Barker. 15/12/2010, London, England. (Flugel Horn*, Piano) • Abram Wilson. 28/11/2010, London, England. (Piano)

Trombone

• Jim Fryer. 30/03/2010, New York, America. (Euphonium, Trumpet, French Horn, Piano, Vocals)

• Mark Nightingale. 28/04/2011, London, England. (Piano)

Vocals • Ian Shaw. 14/07/2010, London, England. (Piano*) • Claire Martin OBE . 08/06/2010, London, England. (Piano) • Anita Wardell. 05/08/2011, London, England. (Piano)

Violin

• Chris Garrick. 08/06/2011, London, England. (Piano)

Chromatic Harmonica • Hendrik Meurkens. 30/03/2010, New York, America. (Vibes*, Tenor Saxophone, Piano) • Gregoire Maret. 01/04/2010, Brooklyn, America. (Piano) • Olivier Ker Ourio. 10/04/2010, Paris, France. (Piano, Guitar) • Yvonnick Prene. 02/04/2010, New York, America. (Piano, Guitar) • Joe Powers. 26/06/2010, London, England. (Vocals*, Diatonic Harmonica*, Piano*)

Diatonic Harmonica

• Howard Levy. 09/03/2010, Chicago, America. (Piano*, and pretty much anything you can make music on)

• Dennis Gruenling. 29/03/2010, New Jersey, America. (Chromatic Harmonica, Saxophone, Guitar)

• Jason Ricci. 24/03/2010, Nashville, America. • Joe Filisko. 20/03/2010, Chicago, America. (Guitar) • Brendan Power. 13/03/2010, Canterbury, England. (Chromatic Harmonica) • Greg Zlap. 10/04/2010, Paris, France. • JJ Milteau. 11/04/2010, Paris, France. • Adam Gussow. 25/03/2010, Clarksdale, America. • Dave Barrett. 30/10/2010, Bristol, England. (Chromatic harmonica, Piano, Guitar,

Saxophone) • Will Greener. 08/05/2010, London, England. (Piano, Flute, Guitar)


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Appendix B - Amateur Diatonic Harmonica Players Name, interview date and location, years playing.

Russ. 08/05/2010, Milton Keynes, England. (4) Arthur. 08/05/2010, Milton Keynes, England. (8) Bob. 30/10/2010, Bristol, England. (10) Graham. 14/04/2010, London, England. (9) James. 08/05/2010. Milton Keynes, England. (5) Liam. 30/10/2010, Bristol, England. (4) Pedro. 10/08/2011, London, England. (3) Peter. 23/08/2011, London, England. (2.5) Robin. 30/10/2010, Bristol, England. (15) Stewart. 14/04/2010, London, England. (1.5) Ian. 30/10/2010, Bristol, England. (47) Sean. 08/05/2010. Milton Keynes, England. (9) References 1) Chris Frith. (2007). Making Up The Mind - How the Brain Creates our Mental World. P. 40 2) Randolph Blake & Robert Sekuler. (2006). Perception - Fifth Edition. P.236. 3) Daniel Levitin. (2006). This is Your Brain on Music. P.22. 4) Chris Frith. (2007). Making Up The Mind - How the Brain Creates our Mental World. P. 60. 5) Alvaro Pascual Leone. (2001). The Brain That Plays Music and Is Changed by It. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. P.315-329. 6) Alvaro Pascual Leone. (2001). The Brain That Plays Music and Is Changed by It. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. P.315-329. 7) David Sudnow. (2001). Ways of the Hand - A Rewritten Account. P.31.

brainstruments': the musical instruments people really play. lee sankey

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