I'm happy that the authors have addressed my concerns. I recommend that this protocol should be approved.

Chiba, Fujii & Savage:   Sight vs. sound in the judgment of music performance
review by David W. Hughes
 
This is a fascinating and valuable article. I myself have performed Tsugaru shamisen in Japan before audiences, and I have also (despite trying to avoid it!) been a judge at a few folk song contests, some of which have included Tsugaru shamisen performers. 
   I’d never thought about whether sight (i.e. the appearance of the performers, their facial expressions, movement, clothing etc) influenced my judgment of performers, sometimes overcoming sonal differences between contestants (not only shamisen players but also singers). This article finally makes me think about it – about music as a “multimodal phenomenon”, to quote the authors.
   I have toured the UK (as lecturer, co-performer etc) with two different folk music groups from Japan which included high-level Tsugaru shamisen players. Though these performances were concerts, not contests, I was definitely aware that bodily movement, facial expression and other visible elements impacted on the audience, and I even advised the performers of this. In fact, the performers were already aware of the importance of visuality. So indeed this article is important for bringing this to my conscious attention, and to realise that surely sight is indeed competing with sound for many judges and audiences.
 
This article should definitely be published and publicized. But for readers like me, more detailed explanation of some terms and concepts will be needed.
   This article is quite technical, sometimes using terms that elude me a bit. On p.1, line 27 of the abstract, “d = 0.4” confused me. I searched the internet for this phrase, and it seems to link with “Cohen’s d”, though even then I couldn’t completely grasp it. This article does explain it somewhat, as an “effect size”, but perhaps a bit more explanation is needed for non-specialist readers. Also in section 2.3, the terms “p-value”, “t-test” and “alpha level” need more explanation, at least for people like me! Also, “GC” in line 188 puzzled me, but I presume it refers to the co-author Gakuto Chiba.
   They have also cited many writings that I, as a “normal” ethnomusicologist, have never read or even heard of. This is useful, in that those technical writings are surely important to the more scientific readers at whom the article is clearly aimed. Much of the analysis and discussion in this article will indeed appeal to and interest people like me – as I noted above, it certainly made me think more clearly about the influence of visuals in music performance. But this article will also reach out to scholars focusing on sound perception and “cross-modal” analyses.
   They also cite a range of writings about Western classical music, noting that scholars have often pursued “the role of visuals and sound” (p.3). Thus considering the sonic-visual differences in perception of other musical genres broadens such analysis in a valuable way.
 
   One of their predictions (p.4, H1) is that “visuals will dominate the judgment” of the upper ranks of a Tsugaru shamisen competition, when the sonic performances are very close in quality. I’d never thought of that, but in fact I agree.
 
   Various small changes are needed to help non-specialist readers. For example, on p.4, line 119, they write that they selected “brief 6s excerpts” for one test. I’ve finally realized that 6s = 6 seconds! But this was only made clear to me in line 327. They should change this to “brief 6-second excerpts”.
   Still, the method for the test described there – having different people judge a performance in different ways, by only its audio, only its visual, or both together (audiovisual) – is excellent and indeed focusses on the theme of this article. And then comparing the participants’ judgments with the actual outcome of those performers in a contest helps us understand how audio and visual judgments can differ greatly.
 
   Overall, despite some terminology eluding me, I truly look forward to the results of the full testing they will conduct, again focusing on the different perceptions by their test participants of audio, visual and audio-visual versions of performances. Thus I support their plans 100%. This article simply needs a bit more clarity in some places (mostly mentioned above) to make things clearer and easier for readers like me who are unlikely to read all the relevant publications in their bibliography.
 
CONCLUSION: Yes, this article deserves full support and publication.
 
Dr David W. Hughes (dh6@soas.ac.uk), 26 October 2021