Scientists have discovered a new technique to examine how musicians intuitively communicate with one another during a performance, silently predicting how each will express the music.
The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, provide new insights into how musicians synchronise their movements so they are playing exactly in time, as one single unit.
"Successfully performing music with a group is a highly complex endeavour," said Laurel Trainor from the McMaster University in Canada.
"How do musicians coordinate with each other to perform expressive music that has changes in tempo and dynamics?Accomplishing this relies on predicting what your fellow musicians will do next so that you can plan the motor movements so as to express the same emotions in a coordinated way.