Swinging, Fast and Slow: Multiscale Synchronisation Dynamics Reveals the Impact of an Improvisatory Approach to Performance on Music Experience

Experiences of collective creative activities play an essential role in human societies, yet these experiences are particularly hard to capture, making their scientific scrutiny extremely challenging. Here we investigate the experience of audience members during a musical concert associated with collective improvisation by analysing the audience's subjective reports and movement patterns. Our results show that performance with improvisational elements affect movement synchronisation between performers and audience members differently at different timescales, which are predictive of changes in the subjective perception of music. These results provide a first step towards the quantification of some of the fundamental aspects of these collective experiences. Moreover, the reported findings shed new light on the relevance of the often-neglected multiscale coordination between audiences and performers, and explains how this rich tapestry of physical behaviour is connected with the quality of the collective subjective experience.