Dynamics of walking to music

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Dynamics of walking to music

• Leon van Noorden Frederik StynsIPEM-Dept. of
  MusicologyGhent University, Belgiumleonvannoorde
  n_at_mac.com

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introduction

• Van Noorden and Moelants (1999) have shown that
  many phenomena in rhythm perception/production
  can be explained by a resonance phenomenon with a
  peak close to 2 Hz. Recently MacDougall and Moore
  (2005) also found a peak at 2 Hz after measuring
  the body movements of people during a whole day.
  They found that this peak was due to the
  locomotion system and they linked this to the
  study of Van Noorden and Moelants (1999).
  Studying the relation between music and
  walking might lead to a scientifically based
  choice of music for fitness and sports training.

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Experiment 1 walking on music of different
tempi

• 20 subjects
• IPOD 68 music 13 metronome fragments, 1
  minute, 50-190 BPM
• Measuring walking speed Garmin GPS watch
• Measuring heart Rhythm Garmin GPS watch
• Measuring step frequency audio-recording of
  foot fall with mp3 recorder

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• Relation between walking tempo (bpm) and walking
  speed (km/h) .

These results show a clear discontinuity at 2 Hz.
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• There is a strong resemblance with the data of
  Bertram (2005) the red lines are the predicted
  loci of the lowest energy in human walking, the
  black lines are the measurements of the walking
  speed under frequency constraints

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Experiment 2 walking on music of the same
tempo, various styles

• In experiment 1 subjects walked faster on the
  music fragments than on the metronome fragments
  of the same tempo. In experiment 2 we studied
  whether we could also find a difference between
  musical fragments of the same tempo.
• 18 subjects
• IPOD 52 music 6 metronome fragments, 30 sec
• all 130 BPM
• measuring walking kinematics with Xsens

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Preliminary results

• Not all subjects show an equal impact of the
  music on their walking distance (see figure
  below).
• There is music that makes the sensitive
  subjects walk faster and other music that makes
  them walk slower in comparison with the more
  neutral metronome fragments.
• The subjects agree upon what are fast music
  fragments and slow music fragments.
• The impact for the sensitive subjects of the
  slow music tends to be bigger than the fast
  music in comparison with the subjects who dont
  show any impact.

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Cyclograms angle thigh-shank (y) vs angle thigh
(x) for 6 subjects and 6 musical fragments
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References

• Bertram, J. E. A. (2005). Constrained
  optimization in human walking Cost minimization
  and gait plasticity. Journal of Experimental
  Biology, 208, 979991.
• McDougal l, HG., Moore, ST(2005). Marching to
  the beat of the same drummer. Journal of applied
  physiology, 99, 1164-1173.
• Styns, F., Van Noorden, L., Moelants, D., Leman,
  M. (2007). Walking on music. Human movement
  science, 26, 769-785.
• Van Noorden, L., Moelants, D. (1999). Resonance
  in the perception of musical pulse. Journal of
  new music research, 28, 43-66.