Temporal and Motor Transfer in Music Performance

Three transfer-of-learning experiments were conducted to investigate performers' ability to generalize knowledge of specific temporal structure and motor movements from one melody to another. Skilled pianists performed one melody during 10 training trials and another melody during 4 test trials, under speeded performance conditions. In Experiment 1, the meter and/or motor movements (hand and finger assignments) were altered from training to test melodies; in Experiment 2, the rhythm and/ or motor movements were altered; in Experiment 3, the meter and/or rhythm were altered. Differences in total melody duration from training to test were smaller when meter, rhythm, or motor variables were retained across sequences. Furthermore, the same variables of meter, rhythm, and motor movements influenced the tempo of each performance. These findings support distinct temporal and motor representations underlying performance of simple melodies.