The effects of visual cues and notational features on sight-reading accuracy

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• David Duncan, Katya Ness, and Ian Cross (University of Cambridge)
• Tuesday 02 December 2025, 17:00-18:00
• CMS computer room, Faculty of Music (11 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP).

If you have a question about this talk, please contact jbf43.

Abstract

The ability to read and perform from written notation is a fundamental skill in many fields of music performance. While for many musicians, staff notation is both transparent and flexible, a medium that can be used fluently and imaginatively, it is frequently experienced as complex and difficult — as a form of communication it is nobody’s first language.

When reading text, spaces between words improves reading accuracy and fluency, even when added to writing systems that don’t traditionally feature them. While music reading is a more complex task, the introduction of white spaces to delineate units of music may delimit information uptake, analogous to how interword spacing helps readers to identify word boundaries and process written information.

In this talk we will present the results from a series of experiments conducted with adults at the University of Cambridge and at the Royal Northern College of Music, as well as complementary studies with children, considering the impact of the added white spaces on accuracy and fluency and reviewing the main factors that appear to induce sight-reading errors.

Biographies

Ian Cross is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Emeritus Professor of Music and Science and a Director of Research at the University of Cambridge, having taught in the Faculty of Music from 1986 to 2021 and founded the Centre for Music & Science there in 2002. His widely-cited research on music has encompassed psychoacoustics, cognitive neuroscience, experimental archaeology, evolutionary theory and the social effects of musical interaction. He is also a classical guitarist.

David Duncan is a Fellow of Clare Hall and Research Assistant on the Score Design for Music Reading project. Prior to joining the project, he worked in publishing as an editor at Edition Peters and as a developer of both graded music exams and vocational qualifications at the London College of Music and RSL Awards. He also works as a music engraver, primarily for Oxford University Press.

Katya Ness is a doctoral student and research assistant at the University of Cambridge, working on the Leverhulme-funded Score Design for Music Reading project under the supervision of Professor Ian Cross. Her research investigates how modifications to conventional notation can support children’s sight-reading fluency and accuracy, building on her background in performance science and earlier work on how students develop sight-reading skills. Alongside her research, she is active as a teacher and accompanist.

Zoom link

https://zoom.us/j/99433440421?pwd=ZWxCQXFZclRtbjNXa0s2K1Q2REVPZz09 (Meeting ID: 994 3344 0421; Passcode: 714277)

This talk is part of the CMS seminar series in the Faculty of Music series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• CMS computer room, Faculty of Music (11 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP)
• CMS seminar series in the Faculty of Music

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