Evaluating the Experiential Quality of Musical Instruments

Gian-Marco Schmid investigates how musicians perceive the experiential quality of musical instruments using a bottom-up psychometric questionnaire development process and finds that there are three main factors on which musicians base their evaluation of musical instruments: (1) experienced freedom & possibilities, (2) perceived control & comfort and (3) perceived stability, sound quality & aesthetics. This structure is similar to research regarding the conceptualization of violin quality. It is therefore suggested that musicians who use different instruments tend to have an analogical concept of instrument quality.