Poor Pitch Singing: Response of Monotone Singers to a Program of Remedial Training

An experiment was carried out to see whether the musical performance of monotones could be improved by a program of remedial training. A group of 90 children aged 6+ to 8+ years was chosen, all of whom had been rated by their school singing teachers as monotones or droners. The children were randomly assigned to a remedial training group, a traditional training group or a control group. All children in the experiment were assessed on a nine-test pre- and posttest battery of musical recognition and production with single note, interval, melody, and rhythm scales, and a test of free song. Responses were tape-recorded and scored blind by a panel of music teachers who knew neither which group the child was in, nor whether the responses derived from the pre- or posttraining session. A group of 30 normal singing children of the same age was also given the test battery to judge the discriminating powers of the various individual subtests.

The remedial training group was given two 30-minute sessions per week for eight weeks and had practice in singing a note within their speaking range. The traditional training group was intended to control for the possibility that extra attention and tuition might by itself improve the child's vocal performance. This group studied contemporary and traditional songs with piano, guitar, and percussion accompaniment for the same length of time. All groups showed significant improvement from pre- to posttest assessment except on the test of single note recognition. The monotone and normal singing groups did not differ on this measure. The remedial group showed greater improvement of single note and interval production than did the other two groups. Their vocal range was extended significantly, but within the eight weeks there was no differential improvement of this group on the test of free song.