Luc Nijs
Biographic Data
| ID | 2234737 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Luc Nijs |
| GIVEN NAMES | Luc |
| FAMILY NAME | Nijs |
| SIGNATURE | NIJS L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7054-2660 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Embodiment Indicators of Music Skill Acquisition: A Scoping Review of Psychophysiological and Biomechanical Studies
In this scoping review, we investigate music skill acquisition from an embodiment perspective. We conceptualize the acquisition of musical expertise, not only as a technical process but as a gradual incorporation process, in which the instrument becomes experienced as an extension of the body, and the body itself becomes the vehicle of musical meaning and expression. To structure this process of embodiment, we draw on theoretical perspectives fro…
Application of Visual Information in Music Education Digital Technologies: A Scoping Review
The relationship between sound and visual representation has long intrigued artists and educators, with historical explorations ranging from colour–music correspondence to alternative notations and graphic visualisations of music. Recent advances in digital technologies have significantly expanded the pedagogical potential of visual information in music education. However, there is still no comprehensive review mapping how visual information is a…
Flow in instrumental improvisation: Task constraints and their connection to students’ personality, musical skills, and self-regulation
This study investigated the effect of task constraints on the flow experience of novice improvisers and the mediating effects of personality, musical skills, and self-regulation. In addition, we aimed to identify the environmental factors that are most indicative of flow in improvisational learning. Intermediate-level instrument students ( N = 111) participated in a quasi-experiment with repeated measures during regular class hours. The students …
Collective free improvisation in the Flemish general music classroom: Probing student’s lived experience through flow
The aim of this study is to explore the lived experience of students ( N = 1,282) in general education engaging in collective free improvisation (CFI). Fourteen music teachers implemented a CFI lesson in 69 classes in Flanders (Belgium). Lived experience was measured using a Dutch version of the Flow State Scale for Occupational Tasks. This scale reflects the degree of Sense of Control, Positive Emotional Experience and Absorption by Concentratin…
Fostering a Synergy Between the Development of Well-Being and Musicianship: A Kinemusical Perspective
With amateur and professional musicians facing high risks to mental and physical health, it is important to reflect on the nature of instrumental music education and to design novel educational approaches that take the development of well-being into account. In this article, I plead for a “caring” stance towards instrumental music education, conceiving the development of well-being as an integral element of the development of musicianship. First,…
Developing Musical Creativity Through Movement: Navigating the Musical Affordance Landscape
Schools too often undermine creativity, said Ken Robinson, an educationalist who has changed thinking on schools.In his famous TEDtalk "Do schools kill creativity?," he argues that the undermining of creativity results from being too focused on children's heads rather than on their bodies.In line with Robinson's observation, music education has been criticized for a lack of creative approaches, and a focus on disembodied learning experiences.In o…
Instrument teachers’ practices, beliefs, and barriers regarding musical creativity: Exploring the creative process of interpretation
Instrumental music teaching traditionally emphasizes the cognitive, motor, and motivational processes of score reproduction, often at the expense of creative musical activities, such as improvisation or composition. Since today’s international art school curricula prominently include creativity competencies, opportunities to integrate creativity in instrumental lessons must be explored. This study investigates instrument teachers’ conception of m…
The pedagogical–artistic strategies of community music facilitators as an inspiration for formal music education: A single case study
In this article, we elaborate on the pedagogical–artistic strategies of a community music project and how they may inspire formal music educational practices. To do so, we draw on findings from a study on the pedagogical–artistic strategies of the musicians–coaches of The Ostend Street Orchestra (TOSO), a community music project that started as an artistic response towards the commotion around a group of homeless people in the coastal town of Ost…
Toward a meaningful technology for instrumental music education: Teachers’ voice
In musical instrument training, researchers have gradually started exploring the potential of interactive technologies supporting learning processes and teaching methods. Although numerous technological tools have been proposed to enhance instrument learning and teaching, these methods rarely find their way into daily practice and teaching routines. In this study, we report data from an online survey study administered to violin and drum kit teac…
The Role of the Body in Instrumental and Vocal Music Pedagogy: A Dynamical Systems Theory Perspective on the Music Teacher's Bodily Engagement in Teaching and Learning
Instrumental and vocal teachers often employ their body in teaching to facilitate sensorimotor engagement with the voice or an instrument. Yet, teacher’s bodily engagement in instrumental and vocal education is scarcely addressed in music educational research studies. In our view, this scarcity is related to the lack of a framework about the role of the music teacher’s body in instrumental and vocal education. In this article, we will adopt a dyn…
Children’s verbal explanations of their visual representation of the music
Recent findings in music research are increasingly confirming the embodied nature of music cognition. Assuming that a bodily engagement with music may affect the children’s musical meaning formation, we investigated how young children’s interaction with music, based on verbal description after listening versus body movement description while listening, may be reflected in the verbal explanation of their own visual representations of the music the…
PLXTRM: Prediction-Led eXtended-guitar Tool for Real-time Music applications and live performance
This article presents PLXTRM, a system tracking picking-hand micro-gestures for real-time music applications and live performance. PLXTRM taps into the existing gesture vocabulary of the guitar player. On the first level, PLXTRM provides a continuous controller that doesn’t require the musician to learn and integrate extrinsic gestures, avoiding additional cognitive load. Beyond the possible musical applications using this continuous control, the…
Gestures in Contemporary Music Performance: A Method to Assist the Performer's Artistic Process
0
Assessing a Clarinet Player's Performer Gestures in Relation to Locally Intended Musical Targets
Musicianship is known to display high-level skills, which involve different aspects of mental processing and corporeal control. Of particular interest is the match between the musician's mental focus on musical targets (the so-called musical intentions) and the expressive (or so-called auxiliary) body movements. To what extent are these related to each other? And what does this relationship reveal about mind–body connections? To approach these qu…
The Music Paint Machine: Stimulating Self-monitoring Through the Generation of Creative Visual Output Using a Technology-enhanced Learning Tool
In this paper, we discuss the pedagogically grounded and research-based design of a technology-enhanced learning tool, the Music Paint Machine. This interactive music system introduces a musical experience in which the musician creates a digital painting by playing an acoustic musical instrument and by moving the body on a coloured pressure mat. As a learning tool it aims at the development of musical creativity, at the stimulation of embodied un…
User-oriented studies in embodied music cognition research
Music research aims at developing a research space that, in a proactive sense, can support the development of creative and cultural industries. In that context, we argue that a focus on users and their experiences in using tools may become more important in music research. It implies an expansion of the traditional methods of music psychology with methods that can address relevant features of musical action and musical tool use. This paper discus…
Assessing a Clarinet Player's Performer Gestures in Relation to Locally Intended Musical Targets
Musicianship is known to display high-level skills, which involve different aspects of mental processing and corporeal control. Of particular interest is the match between the musician's mental focus on musical targets (the so-called musical intentions) and the expressive (or so-called auxiliary) body movements. To what extent are these related to each other? And what does this relationship reveal about mind–body connections? To approach these qu…
Gestures in Contemporary Music Performance: A Method to Assist the Performer's Artistic Process
0
The Music Paint Machine: Stimulating Self-monitoring Through the Generation of Creative Visual Output Using a Technology-enhanced Learning Tool
In this paper, we discuss the pedagogically grounded and research-based design of a technology-enhanced learning tool, the Music Paint Machine. This interactive music system introduces a musical experience in which the musician creates a digital painting by playing an acoustic musical instrument and by moving the body on a coloured pressure mat. As a learning tool it aims at the development of musical creativity, at the stimulation of embodied un…
User-oriented studies in embodied music cognition research
Music research aims at developing a research space that, in a proactive sense, can support the development of creative and cultural industries. In that context, we argue that a focus on users and their experiences in using tools may become more important in music research. It implies an expansion of the traditional methods of music psychology with methods that can address relevant features of musical action and musical tool use. This paper discus…
Assessing a Clarinet Player's Performer Gestures in Relation to Locally Intended Musical Targets
Musicianship is known to display high-level skills, which involve different aspects of mental processing and corporeal control. Of particular interest is the match between the musician's mental focus on musical targets (the so-called musical intentions) and the expressive (or so-called auxiliary) body movements. To what extent are these related to each other? And what does this relationship reveal about mind–body connections? To approach these qu…
The Music Paint Machine: Stimulating Self-monitoring Through the Generation of Creative Visual Output Using a Technology-enhanced Learning Tool
In this paper, we discuss the pedagogically grounded and research-based design of a technology-enhanced learning tool, the Music Paint Machine. This interactive music system introduces a musical experience in which the musician creates a digital painting by playing an acoustic musical instrument and by moving the body on a coloured pressure mat. As a learning tool it aims at the development of musical creativity, at the stimulation of embodied un…
Gestures in Contemporary Music Performance: A Method to Assist the Performer's Artistic Process
0
PLXTRM: Prediction-Led eXtended-guitar Tool for Real-time Music applications and live performance
This article presents PLXTRM, a system tracking picking-hand micro-gestures for real-time music applications and live performance. PLXTRM taps into the existing gesture vocabulary of the guitar player. On the first level, PLXTRM provides a continuous controller that doesn’t require the musician to learn and integrate extrinsic gestures, avoiding additional cognitive load. Beyond the possible musical applications using this continuous control, the…
The Role of the Body in Instrumental and Vocal Music Pedagogy: A Dynamical Systems Theory Perspective on the Music Teacher's Bodily Engagement in Teaching and Learning
Instrumental and vocal teachers often employ their body in teaching to facilitate sensorimotor engagement with the voice or an instrument. Yet, teacher’s bodily engagement in instrumental and vocal education is scarcely addressed in music educational research studies. In our view, this scarcity is related to the lack of a framework about the role of the music teacher’s body in instrumental and vocal education. In this article, we will adopt a dyn…
Children’s verbal explanations of their visual representation of the music
Recent findings in music research are increasingly confirming the embodied nature of music cognition. Assuming that a bodily engagement with music may affect the children’s musical meaning formation, we investigated how young children’s interaction with music, based on verbal description after listening versus body movement description while listening, may be reflected in the verbal explanation of their own visual representations of the music the…
Toward a meaningful technology for instrumental music education: Teachers’ voice
In musical instrument training, researchers have gradually started exploring the potential of interactive technologies supporting learning processes and teaching methods. Although numerous technological tools have been proposed to enhance instrument learning and teaching, these methods rarely find their way into daily practice and teaching routines. In this study, we report data from an online survey study administered to violin and drum kit teac…
Instrument teachers’ practices, beliefs, and barriers regarding musical creativity: Exploring the creative process of interpretation
Instrumental music teaching traditionally emphasizes the cognitive, motor, and motivational processes of score reproduction, often at the expense of creative musical activities, such as improvisation or composition. Since today’s international art school curricula prominently include creativity competencies, opportunities to integrate creativity in instrumental lessons must be explored. This study investigates instrument teachers’ conception of m…
The pedagogical–artistic strategies of community music facilitators as an inspiration for formal music education: A single case study
In this article, we elaborate on the pedagogical–artistic strategies of a community music project and how they may inspire formal music educational practices. To do so, we draw on findings from a study on the pedagogical–artistic strategies of the musicians–coaches of The Ostend Street Orchestra (TOSO), a community music project that started as an artistic response towards the commotion around a group of homeless people in the coastal town of Ost…
Fostering a Synergy Between the Development of Well-Being and Musicianship: A Kinemusical Perspective
With amateur and professional musicians facing high risks to mental and physical health, it is important to reflect on the nature of instrumental music education and to design novel educational approaches that take the development of well-being into account. In this article, I plead for a “caring” stance towards instrumental music education, conceiving the development of well-being as an integral element of the development of musicianship. First,…
Developing Musical Creativity Through Movement: Navigating the Musical Affordance Landscape
Schools too often undermine creativity, said Ken Robinson, an educationalist who has changed thinking on schools.In his famous TEDtalk "Do schools kill creativity?," he argues that the undermining of creativity results from being too focused on children's heads rather than on their bodies.In line with Robinson's observation, music education has been criticized for a lack of creative approaches, and a focus on disembodied learning experiences.In o…
Embodiment Indicators of Music Skill Acquisition: A Scoping Review of Psychophysiological and Biomechanical Studies
In this scoping review, we investigate music skill acquisition from an embodiment perspective. We conceptualize the acquisition of musical expertise, not only as a technical process but as a gradual incorporation process, in which the instrument becomes experienced as an extension of the body, and the body itself becomes the vehicle of musical meaning and expression. To structure this process of embodiment, we draw on theoretical perspectives fro…
Application of Visual Information in Music Education Digital Technologies: A Scoping Review
The relationship between sound and visual representation has long intrigued artists and educators, with historical explorations ranging from colour–music correspondence to alternative notations and graphic visualisations of music. Recent advances in digital technologies have significantly expanded the pedagogical potential of visual information in music education. However, there is still no comprehensive review mapping how visual information is a…
Flow in instrumental improvisation: Task constraints and their connection to students’ personality, musical skills, and self-regulation
This study investigated the effect of task constraints on the flow experience of novice improvisers and the mediating effects of personality, musical skills, and self-regulation. In addition, we aimed to identify the environmental factors that are most indicative of flow in improvisational learning. Intermediate-level instrument students ( N = 111) participated in a quasi-experiment with repeated measures during regular class hours. The students …
Collective free improvisation in the Flemish general music classroom: Probing student’s lived experience through flow
The aim of this study is to explore the lived experience of students ( N = 1,282) in general education engaging in collective free improvisation (CFI). Fourteen music teachers implemented a CFI lesson in 69 classes in Flanders (Belgium). Lived experience was measured using a Dutch version of the Flow State Scale for Occupational Tasks. This scale reflects the degree of Sense of Control, Positive Emotional Experience and Absorption by Concentratin…
Neuroscience and Music Perception (12 works) · Diverse Music Education Insights (11 works) · Musical (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Art (9 works) · Visual arts (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Embodied cognition (8 works) · Artificial Intelligence (7 works) · Music education (6 works)