Journal of Research in Music Education

The present study examined the effects of melodic context and performance tempo on the I ability of advanced-level instrumentalists to perform previously learned music passages in novel settings. Twenty-seven graduate and undergraduate music majors practiced nine one-measure target tasks until achieving a specified performance criterion and subsequently performed the same measures at different tempi and in different melodic contexts that varied in level of complexity. Performances were evaluated on the bases of tempo accuracy, rhythm accuracy, and pitch accuracy. Results indicate a significant multivariate effect attributable to performance tempo, p < .006. Subjects' tempo accuracy and pitch accuracy were adversely affected by differences between the tempo at which specific passages were originally learned and the tempi at which they were subsequently performed. Although the multivariate effect of melodic context was statistically nonsignificant (p > .10), there were important differences in subjects' tempo accuracy among the three melodic context conditions.

This study offers a historical perspective of the implementation of Comprehensive Musicianship from 1966 through 1968 in the five colleges and universities that formed the Southern Region of the Contemporary Music Projects Institutes for Music in Contemporary Education (IMCE) program: East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina; Florida State University, Tallahassee; George Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville, Tennessee; University of Georgia, Athens; and University of Kentucky, Lexington.

Diverse realizations of Comprehensive Musicianship were fostered among the Southern Region IMCE institutions, ranging from East Carolina University's integrated theory-history courses for freshmen, sophomores, and juniors to the University of Georgia's small-scale experiment on the use of composition as part of sophomore theory instruction. Although the IMCE program influenced music faculty members in the Southern Region schools to confront important issues about college training in musicianship, the long-term effects of the program were minimal in the five schools.

This study was designed to investigate listener discrimination of modulated intensity. Synthesizer music, previously recorded music excerpts, and electronic tones with gradual increases, decreases, or no change in intensity were presented to 108 subjects, 54 musicians and 54 nonmusicians. The total amount of stimulus modulation for both increase and decrease conditions was 12 dB(A) at the rate of 1 dB per second, well above the relative threshold level The time (in seconds) necessary for correct judgments of intensity change served as the dependent measure.

Musicians did not differ from nonmusician subjects in the number of correct discriminations nor in latency of correct responses. An analysis of response time demonstrated a significant effect of modulation direction. Subjects correctly discriminated intensity modulation decreases sooner than intensity increases. There were, however, significant interactions between stimulus examples and modulation conditions. Results are discussed in relation to a series of studies concerning temporal modulations within musical contexts.

One hundred thirty-five undergraduate nonmusic majors participated in a free-recall task in which they were asked to remember the titles of 12 songs that they heard in different sequences. The investigators were seeking evidence that cognitive categorization of the titles was based on the musical element of style. The purpose was to compare the subjects development of any apparent categorization of the musical stimuli with categorization strategies that research suggests apply to verbal information. Results indicate that many subjects seemed to categorize the musical stimuli by applying verbal stylistic labels. Furthermore, the subjects' subsequent strategies for manipulating verbal labels show many similarities to, and some differences from, how subjects would be expected to process purely verbal information. Educational implications and ideas for future research are suggested.

This study concerns the comparative effectiveness of verbal instruction and modeling instruction in instrumental music classrooms. The primary hypothesis maintains that modeling is more effective than verbal instruction. Four middle school band classes (N = 128), two taught for 10 weeks with verbal instruction and two with modeling instruction, were pretested and posttested for ear-to-hand skills, kinesthetic response skills, and music discrimination skills. Students in the two classes receiving modeling instruction achieved significantly higher scores on tests of ear-to-hand skills and kinesthetic skills than did those in the two classes receiving verbal instruction, although those in the modeling classes did not achieve significantly different scores in a test of general music discrimination skills. These findings suggest that the use of modeling strategies and devices such as melodic echoes and rhythmic movement to music can lead to increased ear-to-hand skills and kinesthetic response skills.

This investigation was designed to examine the effect of overt listener categorization on preference for “crossover” excerpts (i.e., instrumental selections of artists nominated for Grammy awards in more than one popular style per year). Results showed no significant differences in nonmusic majors' (n = 534) preferential ratings subsequent to one of the following treatments: (a) stipulated categorization (pop, rock, jazz), (b) no overt categorization, or (c) free-operant categorization (any classification system). Subjects with musical experience responded significantly more positively than did the musically inexperienced, and females' ratings were significantly more positive than were males‘. The investigation's second component compared continuous versus static responses using a Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI) and Likert-type scales. Results showed that responses made across time were significantly more positive compared to static responses. Musical experience and gender significantly affected preferences for pop and jazz, but not rock.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether musicians would evaluate sequenced piano music recorded from a sampling synthesizer differently than they evaluated commercially recorded performances by concert pianists. Subjects, 40 undergraduate music majors, of whom 17 were piano majors, listened to four performances each of four different piano pieces: one performance of each piece was sequenced; the other three were commercial recordings. Subjects consistently rated the quality of recording higher for sequenced excerpts than for commercial excerpts. This was likely a consequence of using long-playing recorded performances as opposed to compact disc recordings, however. Also, there was a tendency for subjects to rate the tone quality of the piano lower for the sequenced excerpts than for the commercial excerpts. There were no significant differences between ratings of sequenced and commercial excerpts for technical merit, artistic merit, and overall impression. These three ratings were highly correlated with each other, corroborating earlier research demonstrating the unidimensionality of performance evaluation. Also, tempo affected technical merit ratings: faster performances of the same piece were rated higher than slower ones. Results from this study imply that the use of sampled sounds and sequencers, in certain circumstances, might enable musicians lacking the technical skills of concert artists to create recorded performances equal in technical and artistic merit to recorded performances of concert artists.

In this study, I investigated the contributions of tonal syllables, hand signs, and letter representations of tonal syllables, as well as high and low levels of tonal aptitude and school readiness, to the development of verbal and symbolic tonal syllable skills of first-grade students. During Part 1 (17 weeks), all groups echoed tonal patterns with tonal syllables during the first 9 minutes of every class meeting—normally three per week. Group 1 echoed the patterns with tonal syllables only, whereas Groups 2 and 3 echoed and used hand signs; Group 3 also viewed letter representations of the patterns on cards. The patterns, randomly chosen from a 378-item list of three- and four-note tonal patterns, used the syllables do, re, mi, sol, and la; a range from C₄ (middle C) to A₄ was always used. During Part 2 (17 weeks), all groups echoed tonal patterns but also saw them written in noteheads on a staff. Every other class meeting Group 3 viewed letter representations on the staff instead of note-heads.

A three-way analysis of variance of data from the Metropolitan Readiness Tests, the Primary Measures of Music Audiation (PMMA), and three singing tests showed no method to be significantly better for any group as a whole nor for a specific aptitude group. Only tonal aptitude, as measured by PMMA, had a significant effect on test scores.