The Meaning Behind the Motions

“We know from studies that gestures organize our thoughts and shape how others perceive us,” Gardner says. “If you ask someone to sit on their hands and give directions, they’ll struggle. The question was, ‘How does this apply to music?’”

A research study Gardner published in Music Theory Online coauthored with Nicholas J. Shea, an assistant professor of music theory at Arizona State University, answers this question by exploring how movements impact the perception and structure of music. 

The spark for this research emerged during an unexpected moment during the COVID-19 pandemic. While exchanging favorite performance clips with Shea, Gardner found himself transfixed by footage of rock ’n’ roll pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. “She wasn’t just playing guitar,” he recalls. “She was narrating the song with her body.” Her exuberant movements, including rhythmic foot tapping and sweeping arm gestures, amplified the music’s emotional core and guided the audience’s focus.

Gardner and Shea analyzed dozens of live performances, including those by Tharpe, R&B singer Macy Gray, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, and folk-leaning singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman. They selected performances where the camera angles made gestural analysis accessible to lay audiences, not just trained musicians. In “Fast Car,” for instance, Chapman’s deft finger movements along the fretboard mirror the song’s chordal progression, providing visual cues for audiences to anticipate the music’s direction. The study also deliberately excluded choreographed movements, instead focusing on spontaneous gestures that help performers process and express musical ideas.

The research identified three distinct categories of gestures. Some, like strumming or clapping, produce sound directly. Others, like pointed fingers or raised chins, are communicative, used to enhance or clarify ideas. The third category facilitates musical transitions, guiding both artist and audience through the song’s structure. Expanding on a concept music theorist David Temperley calls the “surface-to-structure process,” Gardner suggests that more pronounced gestural performances allow aspects of musical structures to rise to the musical surface.

In addition, the research revealed systematic patterns in how musicians use space and movement. For example, Gardner notes the study found that “the formal sections” of a song—like the verse, bridge, and chorus—“are often delineated by where the guitar player is. Empirically, we actually see larger shifts and leaps on the guitar fretboard when formal sections change.”

Comparing gestures across genres also yielded surprising insights. “Rock music actually had a lot more natural gestures than pop music,” Gardner says, “and these increased depending on where they were in the formal section of the song.” For example, singers moved far more in the choruses than they did in the verses.

Instrument-specific physicality also emerged as a crucial factor. “Balance plays a huge role in how drummers and pianists perform,” Gardner observed. “For drummers, it depends on how their kit is set up or the tempo of the song. For pianists, the physicality of moving across the keyboard shapes how their bodies interact with the music.”

The implications of this study extend from stadium concerts to places like conservatory classrooms. At Oberlin, Gardner emphasizes stage presence awareness in education and cites classical pianist Lang Lang’s theatrical style as an example. “There’s an interview where someone asked him, ‘Why do you do that when so many pianists don't like it?’” he says. “And he said, ‘It’s to bring new kids into piano and classical music—they see me; they get really excited.’”

Gardner also frequently involves Oberlin students in his research. In 2024, he coauthored a study with Abby Fiedler ’26 that was presented at the national conference of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition and later submitted for publication. This study examined how genre familiarity affects how audiences interpret the movements of performers. “Working with students allows us to test new ideas and push the boundaries of what we know about music,” Gardner says. “Their fresh perspectives often lead us to unexpected discoveries.”

Gardner’s findings raise intriguing questions about live performance’s evolution: How might classical concerts change with increased attention to movement? Could performers strategically use gestures to shape audience expectations? These questions suggest that understanding the physical language of music may be key to its future.

“Concerts create real-time connections that recordings can’t replicate,” Gardner notes. “Why else do people keep going to concerts? It’s not just to hear the songs—it’s to feel them with others.

“Gestures are not just embellishments,” he continues. “Music lives in the body as much as it does in the ear, so by not considering the impact of gestures in music, we’re missing half the conversation.”

Samuel Gardner studies music cognition and music theory; his research, which has a specific focus on modern popular music, emphasizes how gesture facilitates and embodies our musical understanding. He earned a doctorate at The Ohio State University.

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Illustrator: Christian Woltman

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