Gestures in Music" (Journal of Mathematics and Music, Vol 1, Nr. 1 2007) by Guerino Mazzola (University of Minnesota) and Moreno Andreatta (IRCAM in Paris). A gesture is a configuration of curves in space and time. More formally, a gesture is a digraph morphism from a "skeleton" of addressed points to a "body", a spatial digraph of a topological category (in the musical case: time, position and pitch). Since the set of gestures of given skeleton and topological category defines a topological category, one may define gestures of gestures, so-called hypergestures. Gesture in Indian vocal music Indian vocalists move their hands while improvising melody. Although every vocalist has an idiosyncratic gestural style, the motion of the hand and voice are connected through various logics, and many students gesturally resemble their teachers. Nikki Moran, at the University of London, has done research on this topic, and it is one of the subjects of Martin Clayton and Laura Leante's Musical Experience Project at the Open University. Clayton has published a paper on gestural interaction in Indian music performance: "Time, Gesture and Attention in a Khyal Performance." Asian Music, 38 (2), 71–96. Matt Rahaim, a vocalist and ethnomusicologist, has published a book on the relationship between vocalization and gesture in Indian vocal music: Musicking Bodies: Gesture and Voice in Hindustani Music. Rahaim's work approaches gesture and vocalization as parallel expressions of melody, investigates isomorphisms between gesture space and raga space, and studies the transmission and inheritance of "paramparic bodies"--vocal/postural/gestural dispositions handed down through teaching lineages. Hatten's musical gestures Robert Hatten (2004) has been using the concept of musical gestures to denote inner-musical qualities: "Musical gesture is biologically and culturally grounded in communicative human movement. Gesture draws upon the close interaction (and intermodality) of a range of human perceptual and motor systems to synthesize the energetic shaping of motion through time into significant events with unique expressive force. The biological and cultural motivations of musical gesture are further negotiated within the conventions of a musical style, whose elements include both the discrete (pitch, rhythm, meter) and the analog (dynamics, articulation, temporal pacing). Musical gestures are emergent gestalts that convey affective motion, emotion, and agency by fusing otherwise separate elements into continuities of shape and force." See also Pitch space Transformational theory Sources External links Musical Gestures Group, University of Oslo (Norway) Input devices and Music Interaction Laboratory, McGill University The Importance of Bodily Gestures