Training Alone to Play Together App

Introduction

Making music together requires not only individual skills and musical expertise, but the ability to coordinate one's actions with others. Typically, musicians try to improve their joint performances by practicing together. However, musicians encounter two kinds of obstacles when trying to improve their joint music-making skills.

Obstacles to Joint Music Making

1. Lack of Opportunities for Joint Rehearsal
   One obstacle is the lack of sufficient opportunities for joint rehearsal.

2. Lack of Research-Guided Exercises
   The other obstacle is the lack of research-guided exercises that would allow for learning transfer across pieces, partners, and different coordination problems.

Proposed Solution

Based on the results of an ERC Consolidator project investigating the behavioral, cognitive, and neural mechanisms involved in joint action learning, we propose to develop an app that allows musicians at any level of expertise to improve their joint playing skills.

Features of the App

Two aspects of the app make it possible to overcome the typical limitations of joint practice:

1. Virtual Partners for Training
   With the knowledge gathered during the ERC Consolidator project, we will be able to program virtual partners with whom musicians can train their ensemble skills individually outside of resource-intensive joint rehearsals.

2. Training Flexibility in Coordination
   The app will focus on training the ability to flexibly shift between self-other integration and self-other segregation, which is a high-level skill with a large potential to generalize to a wide range of pieces and playing styles.

Accessibility and Testing

The app will be web-based and freely accessible to a large pool of users. Its effectiveness will be thoroughly tested in the lab and in the field to assess its value for musicians playing in smaller and larger ensembles.

Conclusion

As the first app directly training joint music making, TAPTAPP will provide new opportunities for musicians and has the potential to transform music education.