Journal of Research in Music Education

James C. Carlsen is the recipient of the MENC 1994 Senior Researcher Award. The following speech was presented on April 8, 1994, at a special session of the Society for Research in Music Education at MENC's National Biennial In-Service Conference held in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In this study, I investigated the effects of tempo direction, listening mode, and level of subjects' musical experience on speed and accuracy in tempo change detection abilities. Tempo-change and direction-change examples gradually decelerated, accelerated, or remained steady. Listening mode included listening only, listening and watching a conductor, and listening and moving. The two levels of musical experience were defined as music majors (n = 80) and nonmajors (n = 80). Subjects listened to music examples and manipulated a Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI) to demonstrate perception of tempo alteration. Analysis of data included subject response latency and accuracy.

Experience was found to be a determinant in quantifiably different temporal response. Music majors more accurately detected tempo changes than did nonmajors. Subjects were generally better at detecting tempo acceleration over tempo deceleration. Subjects demonstrated a slightly lower degree of response accuracy when listening and watching a conductor compared to the conditions of listening alone and listening and moving. Most demonstrated shorter initial response latencies during tempo acceleration. The combined variables of experience, tempo-change direction, and listening condition had an interactive effect on response latency.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of harmonic context on the sightsinging skill of middle school choral music students. A nonrandomized control-group pretest-posttest design with one between-group (treatment method) and two within-group (trial and test context) factors was used. The treatment method used three harmonic contexts: (a) melody only, (b) piano harmony, and (c) vocal harmony. The trial condition had two levels (pretest and posttest), and the test context condition had four levels: (a) melody-only, (b) piano-harmony, (c) vocal harmony/upper with the melody in the higher of two voices, and (d) vocal harmony/lower with the melody in the lower of two voices. A repeated measures ANOVA revealed significant differences for the test context and trial main effects and for the trial by treatment group interaction; subjects obtained the highest sightsinging scores when tested in a melody-only context. Because of the significant interaction between trial and treatment group, one-way ANOVAs were used to test for simple main effects in both trial conditions (pretest and posttest). Although no significant differences were detected in the pretest ANOVA, the posttest ANOVA revealed significant differences among treatment groups. Post hoc analysis indicated that subjects in the melody-only treatment group showed more improvement in sightsinging skill than did subjects in the vocal-harmony treatment group. No difference was revealed, however, between the melody-only treatment group and the piano-harmony treatment group.

This study was designed to replicate and extend existing literature by seeking to determine important factors and abilities that influence sightreading skill in music. The Watkins-Farnum Performance Scale (WFPS) was administered to 101 high school clarinet and trumpet students who were completing Australian Music Examinations Board (AMEB) performance examinations. Findings show that, in the beginning stages of training, sightreading skill is not significantly correlated with the ability to perform a repertoire of rehearsed music for a comprehensive performance examination as assessed on the AMEB examination. As instrumentalists mature, however, correlations between these two aspects of performance seem to strengthen markedly. Consistent with other studies, results show that rhythmic errors far outweigh all other types of errors. Differing strategies used by high-scoring and low-scoring subjects on the WFPS and by two groups of high school subjects in school years 7-9 and 10-12 were observed and discussed.

This article reports some of the findings of a qualitative study of musical learning processes. The data were drawn from analysis of videotapes and audiotapes that shadowed the classroom experiences of two target students in a fifth-grade general music class over a period of 5 months.

A portion of the curriculum in the study class involved small-group composition projects. Findings reported here characterize the group composition process in terms of the nature of the strategies the children used as they worked together with peers to solve those compositional problems. Children who were successful in completing class assignments used strategies that seemed to follow a pattern of moving from whole (initial planning) to part (development of motivic ideas) and back to whole (reassembling and practicing). The children's decisions seemed to stem from a holistic viewpoint, reflecting a preconceived vision of the final product from the outset. In contrast, there were very few instances of random exploration.