An old one, but a good example of how even experts fool themselves. Get a room full of concert violinists and have them play 6 different instruments. 3 would by “old Italian” instruments by Stradivari and Guarneri. 3 were modern instruments. Do you think that the professionals would be able to tell the modern instruments from the older ones? Research designer Claudia Fritz set up her experiment to test just that.
When Fritz asked the players which violins they’d like to take home, almost two-thirds chose a violin that turned out to be new. She’s found the same in tests with other musical instruments. “I haven’t found any consistency whatsoever,” she says. “Never. People don’t agree. They just like different things.”
It’s another example of how hard it is to be objective when judging something musical. We all have different tastes and different ways of thinking about music and this helps define our subjective musical experiences. It’s almost impossible to separate ourselves from our preferences and expectations. For Fritz, this opens up a different area to explore.
“People looked at the violin, tried to understand how it vibrates, what are the mechanics behind it,” she says of past research. “But nobody has really looked at the human side.” She says her research is aimed at determining how people choose what they like, and what criteria they use.
If our cognitive biases influence us so much as to how we talk about our equipment, how much of how we discuss practice methods and pedagogical materials is similarly biased? A couple of days ago I discussed a device that is supposed to help brass players develop a better embouchure. Is an individual’s success with such a device also going to depend on their expectations and beliefs?
It would be nice to believe that we are able to rise above these tendencies, but the research shows that we really can’t help it. A humbling thought.
