Skilful force control in expert pianists

Dexterous object manipulation in skilful behaviours such as surgery, craft making, and musical performance involves fast, precise, and efficient control of force with the fingers. A challenge in playing musical instruments is the requirement of independent control of the magnitude and rate of force production, which typically vary in relation to loudness and tempo. However, it is unknown how expert musicians skilfully control finger force to elicit tones with a wide range of loudness and tempi. Here, we addressed this issue by comparing the variation of spatiotemporal characteristics of force during repetitive and simultaneous piano keystrokes in relation to the loudness and tempo between pianists and musically untrained individuals. While the peak key-descending velocity varied with loudness but not with tempo in both groups, the peak and impulse of the key-depressing force were smaller in pianists than in the non-musicians, specifically when eliciting loud tones, suggesting superior energetic efficiency in the trained individuals. The key-depressing force was more consistent across strikes in pianists than in the non-musicians at all loudness levels but only at slow tempi, confirming expertise-dependency of precise force control. A regression analysis demonstrated that individual differences in the keystroke rates when playing at the fastest tempo across the trained pianists were negatively associated with the force impulse during the key depression but not with the peak force only at the loudest tone. This suggests that rapid reductions of force following the key depression plays a role in considerably fast performance of repetitive piano keystrokes.