Journal of Research in Music Education

Pedagogical practices in a Yamaha Music School were explored using ethnographic techniques to collect data during one semester of instruction. Two groups of participants served as informants in this study: (1) children 4-6 years of age, who were enrolled in the Yamaha Junior Music Courses, and (2) their teachers and parents in the setting. Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) guidelines as published by the National Association for the Education of Young Children were the theoretical grounding for the study. The following question guided the investigation: In what ways are the events and interactions in a Yamaha music class congruent or incongruent with DAP guidelines ? Congruent events and interactions were the pace and variety of instructional activities, recognition of individuals, involvement of parents, and inclusion of dramatic play. Incongruent events and interactions were the approach to two-hand playing, fixed accompaniment tempos, minimal peer interactions, and fixed curricular goals.

Recently, there have been attempts to identify songs common to the heritage of the United States. Although researchers in previous investigations have studied songs that are common to specific geographical areas, this studys purpose was to determine which songs are familiar to U.S. citizens across several regions and also to uncover various epistemological definitions of what it means to “know” a song. By cross-referencing modern lists with the contents of two songbooks popular during the community song movements of the World Wars I and II, I sought to determine which songs were common across the eras studied. Also important to this study was finding out how many of the 42 songs listed in MENC's Get American Singing … Again! (1996) appeared in previous investigations and in either of the community song movement books. Results indicated that there is a disparity between the songs that Americans actually know and those that experts say they should be learning. Experts seem to be more in agreement with songbook editors of previous eras than with people who are currently learning and re-creating a new generation of common songs. Finally, 38% of the songs included on MENC's list were not found in any previous study or in either of the community songbooks, raising questions about their inclusion on a national list.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether selected nonmusical attributes of sixth-grade pianists would affect ratings of their performances. Twenty pianists (10 girl and 10 boys) were videotaped. They and their performances were rated by 123 musically trained evaluators. Members of the visual group viewed a videotape with the sound turned off. They rated pianists on appropriateness of dress, stage behavior, and physical attractiveness. These ratings were the basis for grouping students as being high or low on each of these three attributes. Audiovisual and audio group members rated musical performance on five test items. Results revealed support for the existence of a bias: although high pianists were rated higher than low pianists under the audio condition for all three attributes, the differences between them often were significantly greater under the audiovisual condition than under the audio-only condition. In addition, and unlike finding of earlier studies, videotaped performances were not rated higher than audiotaped performances. Also, female judges were more lenient than male judges. Finally, male and female pianists were affected differently by nonmusical attributes for about half of the test items.

The distinguished music scholar John Blacking (1928-1990) made the study of music in culture and the nature of musical thought and behavior his lifelong quest. Although an anthropologist by training and an ethnomusicologist in his academic output, he produced a vast quantity of publications on the nature of musicality and musical development in the Venda children of northern Transvaal, South Africa. There are multiple purposes of this research, starting with a profile of the professional career of John Blacking, from his musical beginnings in England to his South African Odyssey of fieldwork and teaching of music as a social and cultural force, and finally to his teaching and scholarly contributions as an academic powerhouse and articulate advocate for the education of children in and through music in the United Kingdom, the United States, and internationally. An examination follows to gauge the extent of John Blacking's fieldwork and theoretical views relevant to music, education, and culture, with particular attention to Blackings approach to the study of children as a distinctive musical culture and the nature of their musicality, the central role of physical movement and dance as integrated within the musical experience, and the development of world musics in educational programs.

This article describes the sixth in a series of studies designed to gain a better understanding of factors that may affect pitch matching. Undergraduate nonmusic majors (N = 141) enrolled in a music fundamentals class were classified as uncertain, modulating, or certain singers. They listened to a stimulus tape of descending minor thirds, sung by men in their normal and falsetto registers (G₃-E₃ and G₄-E₄, respectively, with G₃ (middle C being C₄), and to two sine-wave stimuli in the same octaves and attempted to sing back the interval they heard. There were no significant differences in the accuracy of responses to male and sine-wave stimuli or between men and women participants. There were significant differences among singer types, with inaccurate singers being less in tune than either modulating or certain singers. There was a significant interaction of response accuracy between participant sex and stimulus octave. These results differ somewhat from previous research with children, in which stimulus timbre and participant sex were factors.