A cross-discipline research project—spanning music, neuroscience, and psychology—brought together two Lawrence University professors and two dual-degree students to study how improvisation exercises can help reduce performance anxiety for vocalists.
The project began a year ago when Dr. Karen Leigh-Post, professor of music, applied voice, and voice science and pedagogy, recognized that a vocal exercise she was using with her students in the Conservatory of Music was resulting in better performances. She brought this to the attention of Dr. Elizabeth Becker, associate professor of neuroscience and a behavioral neuroendocrinologist. Together, with dual-degree students Ryan Saladin ’24 and Dana Abbo ’24, both seniors at the time, an interdepartmental research project was born.
“The exercise is comprised of short melodic fragments on solfege, which the singer uses to improvise their own patterns and melodies at varying levels of complexity,” Abbo said.
The improvisation exercise used in the study is accessible to young musicians. Leigh-Post designed it to train feed-forward processing to optimize one's performance. She sensed this style of exercise aided in reducing performance anxiety as well.
“You’re always looking at what’s next, and that’s the benefit of improv,” said Leigh-Post. “You’re always feeding forward, looking at what’s next instead of judging what has happened.”
Her curiosity brought her to Becker.
“60% of musicians experience performance anxiety, and we know who doesn’t—that’s jazz musicians, who are always doing improvisation,” Becker said.
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Becker, who graduated from Lawrence with a dual degree in voice performance and psychology, was intrigued. She wanted to explore this relationship between the vocal exercise and the performances that follow.
“What I really wanted to ask, empirically and biologically, was what are the mechanisms that underlie the perceivable differences in performance?” she said. “Is it through stress and anxiety reduction?”
The study included volunteer singers who underwent a mock audition with professional adjudicators and written feedback, simulating a real environment that can breed anxiety for performers. In the first round of mock auditions, the volunteers were asked to warm up with their own techniques. The singers’ salivary cortisol was tested, and the researchers then asked participants about their levels of stress and anxiety.
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Over the course of two weeks, participants were taught to use the improvisation exercise before their performance, and the mock audition process was repeated. This time, the singers practiced the improvisation exercise before performing in front of the panel.
“We found that upon arrival, everyone was experiencing a similar level of stress at both the first and second auditions,” Becker said. “We found that cortisol levels during performance were significantly reduced at the second event after they’d practice that intervention right before their performance. They also reported feeling less stress and less anxiety. It was clinically relevant.”
Both Saladin and Abbo graduated in June with dual degrees. Their interdepartmental interests made this study possible. Having students with expertise in both the Conservatory and the Psychology Department served to bridge the gaps, and Becker and Leigh-Post said they couldn’t have done it without them.
“Dr. Becker was really in tune with my experiences as a double-degree student in neuroscience and music performance because she was also a double-degree student at Lawrence, and she immediately presented the idea to me of being a leader on a collaborative project with Dr. Leigh-Post and the Conservatory voice department,” Saladin said. “That's a really special and particularly ‘Lawrence’ set of circumstances.”
Abbo, who majored in music performance (voice) and English, found it equally appealing.
“This project has affirmed to me how fun and rewarding it is to collaborate with people with different areas of expertise,” Abbo said. “None of us could have produced this research or this paper with just our individual skill sets.”
A year later, the project continues to have legs. The research was presented at The Voice Foundation conference in the spring, bringing it to a cross-institutional audience of scholars. The researchers also plan to present it to other voice teachers later this year. Meanwhile, they are preparing a manuscript for publication.
Abbo is currently in London pursuing a master’s degree in modern literature. Saladin is a graduate student in trombone performance at DePaul University.
