Interpersonal Entrainment in Music Performance (IEMP) aims to develop a better understanding of how groups of people coordinate behaviour within a musical context. Interpersonal entrainment—the coordination of movements in time and space between two or more individuals—is a key component of the musical experience that allows performers to organize and synchronize their behaviours in intricate and highly varied ways. The present project is the first large-scale research project to examine interpersonal entrainment from a cross-cultural perspective. IEMP makes use of existing recordings from a broad range of musical cultures—from the jembe music of West Africa to North Indian classical music to Western jazz—in order to test how entrainment between musicians varies from culture to culture, and how this variation impacts upon listeners’ perceptions and evaluations of these recordings.
IEMP is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and led by Prof Martin Clayton (Durham University), along with Co-Investigators Prof Tuomas Eerola (Durham University), Prof Peter Keller (University of Western Sydney), and Prof Antonio Camurri (University of Genoa). The project involves a network of over 20 researchers from across the globe with backgrounds in musicology, computing/engineering, psychology, and mathematics.
Please visit the sub-pages of this project page to learn more about the specific work packages associated with IEMP, our project team, research outputs, public events, and associated media.
Music & Science Lab 