Assessing intonation skills in a tertiary music training programme

[Abstract]: Buttsworth, Fogarty, and Rorke (1993) reported the construction of a battery of tonal tests designed to assess intonation abilities. A subset of the tests in the battery predicted 36 per cent of final scores in an aural training subject in a tertiary music course. In the current study, the original battery of fourteen tests was reduced to six tests and administered three times throughout the academic year to a new sample (N = 87) of tertiary music students. Three research questions were investigated. Firstly, it was hypothesised that tests in the battery would discriminate among the different aural classes at USQ, which were grouped according to ability level. The results from discriminant function analyses provided strong support for this hypothesis. Secondly, it was hypothesised that students should improve their performance on the pitch battery across the three administrations. A repeated measures analysis of variance failed to find evidence of overall improvement. Finally, it was hypothesised that there would be significant differences on the intonation tests between musicians of different instrumental families. Again, no overall differences were found. The results indicated that intonation tests appear to tap an ability that (a) is not significantly modified by training, (b) is more or less the same across different instrument families, and (c) is related to success in music training programmes

Review of the Literature: Can Music Training Improve Memory?

Music training typically starts at an early age when the brain is most receptive to plastic changes. Musicians practice countless hours in an extended amount of time to master their music-making abilities, making them an excellent model to study brain plasticity. Yet, the specific mechanisms that bring about changes following music training are unclear. Though the “Mozart effect” myth has been rejected by numerous researchers, the myth that music training will increase intelligence is still embraced by many teachers, parents and even policy-makers in the education system. In addition, an increasing number of studies now suggest that music training is likely associated with improvements in other areas that are not related to the training itself, such as visual memory. In this review, I evaluate the merits of three studies that drew competing conclusions on the effects of music training on memory to obtain a comprehensive view of the underlying challenges in this field of research. I argue that the extent to which music training extends to other realms outside of the musically relevant skills remains subject to question. Therefore, policy-makers, educators and parents must be prudent when introducing children to music training in hopes of improving their far-transfer skills such as linguistic abilities, social skills and general intelligence

Practicing a Musical Instrument in Childhood is Associated with Enhanced Verbal Ability and Nonverbal Reasoning

Background: In this study we investigated the association between instrumental music training in childhood and outcomes closely related to music training as well as those more distantly related. Methodology/Principal Findings: Children who received at least three years (M = 4.6 years) of instrumental music training outperformed their control counterparts on two outcomes closely related to music (auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills) and on two outcomes distantly related to music (vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning skills). Duration of training also predicted these outcomes. Contrary to previous research, instrumental music training was not associated with heightened spatial skills, phonemic awareness, or mathematical abilities. Conclusions/Significance: While these results are correlational only, the strong predictive effect of training duration suggests that instrumental music training may enhance auditory discrimination, fine motor skills, vocabulary, and nonverba

Does music training enhance auditory and linguistic processing? A systematic review and meta-analysis of behavioral and brain evidence

It is often claimed that music training improves auditory and linguistic skills. Results of individual studies are mixed, however, and most evidence is correlational, precluding inferences of causation. Here, we evaluated data from 62 longitudinal studies that examined whether music training programs affect behavioral and brain measures of auditory and linguistic processing (N = 3928). For the behavioral data, a multivariate meta-analysis revealed a small positive effect of music training on both auditory and linguistic measures, regardless of the type of assignment (random vs. non-random), training (instrumental vs. non-instrumental), and control group (active vs. passive). The trim-and-fill method provided suggestive evidence of publication bias, but meta-regression methods (PET-PEESE) did not. For the brain data, a narrative synthesis also documented benefits of music training, namely for measures of auditory processing and for measures of speech and prosody processing. Thus, the available literature provides evidence that music training produces small neurobehavioral enhancements in auditory and linguistic processing, although future studies are needed to confirm that such enhancements are not due to publication bias.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Enhanced Recognition of Vocal Emotions in Individuals With Naturally Good Musical Abilities

Music training is widely assumed to enhance several nonmusical abilities, including speech perception, executive functions, reading, and emotion recognition. This assumption is based primarily on cross-sectional comparisons between musicians and nonmusicians. It remains unclear, however, whether training itself is necessary to explain the musician advantages, or whether factors such as innate predispositions and informal musical experience could produce similar effects. Here, we sought to clarify this issue by examining the association between music training, music perception abilities and vocal emotion recognition. The sample (N = 169) comprised musically trained and untrained listeners who varied widely in their musical skills, as assessed through self-report and performance-based measures. The emotion recognition tasks required listeners to categorize emotions in nonverbal vocalizations (e.g., laughter, crying) and in speech prosody. Music training was associated positively with emotion recognition across tasks, but the effect was small. We also found a positive association between music perception abilities and emotion recognition in the entire sample, even with music training held constant. In fact, untrained participants with good musical abilities were as good as highly trained musicians at recognizing vocal emotions. Moreover, the association between music training and emotion recognition was fully mediated by auditory and music perception skills. Thus, in the absence of formal music training, individuals who were “naturally” musical showed musician-like performance at recognizing vocal emotions. These findings highlight an important role for factors other than music training (e.g., predispositions and informal musical experience) in associations between musical and nonmusical domains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved

PEMBERDAYAAN ANAK JALANAN MELALUI PELATIHAN MUSIK DI SANGGAR ALANG-ALANG SURABAYA

Mendeskripsikan pelaksanaan program Pelatihan musik, pemberdayaan melalui pelatihan musik, serta kelebihan pelatihan musik untuk pemberdayaan anak jalanan di Sanggar Alang-Alang Surabaya. Penelitian ini termasuk jenis kualitatif deskriptif. Alat pengumpul data yang digunakan adalah observasi, wawancara, dan dokumentasi. Subjek dalam penelitian ini adalah anak-anak jalanan yang mengikuti pelatihan musik di Sanggar Alang-Alang Surabaya. Teknik analisis data yang digunakan adalah koleksi data, reduksi data, penyajian data, serta penarikan kesimpulan dan verifikasi. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan pertama, program pelatihan musik bagi anak jalanan telah berjalan secara terstruktur dalam artian dapat memenuhi komponen-komponen Pendidikan Luar Sekolah sehingga warga belajar dapat menerapkan kemampuan bermusik mereka untuk memenuhi undangan tampil di berbagai acara. Kedua, program pelatihan musik yang ditujukan untuk anak jalanan telah memberdayakan warga belajar karena dapat memberikan berbagai manfaat untuk mereka. Ketiga, kelebihan pelatihan musik dalam upaya memberdayakan anak jalanan telah membuahkan hasil. Kata kunci: pelatihan musik, pemberdayaan, anak jalanan   Abstract Describe the music training program, empowerment through the music training program and the advantages of music training in empowering street children in Sanggar Alang-Alang Surabaya. This research was conducted using qualitative descriptive methods. Data were collected through interviews, observation, and documentation. The subject of this research are street children that followed the music training program in Sanggar Alang-Alang Surabaya. After the data is collected then conducted an analysis to process data, including data collection, data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions and verification. The results of this research are first, First, the music training program for street children have work structured in terms of the components Non Formal education so that the learners can apply their musical ability to fulfill the invitation to perform at various events. Secondly, the music training program for street children have empowered citizens to learn because it can provide a variety of benefits for them. Third, an excess of musical training in an effort to empower street children has produced results. Keywords: music training, empowerment, street children &nbsp

Do instrumental music students hear differently ? : implications for students who have a disability

It should be no surprise to suggest that the better a child listens, the better is their likelihood of classroom success. Within the existing body of research, it is relatively easy to locate evidence that not only is auditory discrimination a key predictor of children's classroom success, but that instrumental music training can enhance children's auditory discrimination skills. Optimizing auditory discrimination is as equally important for children who have a disability as it is for those who do not have a disability. However, the essential problem of (virtually all) the available literature examining music training and its associated non-musical benefits, is that it rarely identifies whether any children who had a disability were included in the study’s experimental samples. This limitation is problematic. While the findings of many studies that investigate auditory discrimination and instrumental music training may well be relevant for children who have a disability, it simply cannot be known with certainty whether they are or not. Therefore, specifically identifying children who had a disability within the participant sample of this study was the critical aspect differentiating this project from the way other, similar studies have been typically run and reported. In all, this study involved 185 eight-year-old children drawn from four schools in south-east Queensland, Australia. Of these, 131 children received instrumental music training (the intervention), while 54 others were not involved in any form of instrumental training over the same 18-week period. A parent survey was used to determine whether individual children who were involved in this study had a disability. Auditory discrimination testing of all the study's participants was performed both before and after the intervention, and scores from each of these tests compared. This study found that children receiving instrumental music training demonstrated significantly greater improvements to their auditory discrimination than did their peers who were not involved in instrumental music training. Critically, this association between instrumental music training and better auditory discrimination performance remained constant regardless of whether the children in this study had a disability. Moreover, this study also found that the effect size for the association between instrumental music training and improvements to auditory discrimination skill was greatest for the children who had a disability and were involved in regular inschool instrumental music classes learning alongside their peers who did not have a disability

Auditory and cognitive performance in elderly musicians and nonmusicians

Musicians represent a model for examining brain and behavioral plasticity in terms of cognitive and auditory profile, but few studies have investigated whether elderly musicians have better auditory and cognitive abilities than nonmusicians. The aim of the present study was to examine whether being a professional musician attenuates the normal age-related changes in hearing and cognition. Elderly musicians still active in their profession were compared with nonmusicians on auditory performance (absolute threshold, frequency intensity, duration and spectral shape discrimination, gap and sinusoidal amplitude-modulation detection), and on simple (short-term memory) and more complex and higher-order (working memory [WM] and visuospatial abilities) cognitive tasks. The sample consisted of adults at least 65 years of age. The results showed that older musicians had similar absolute thresholds but better supra-threshold discrimination abilities than nonmusicians in four of the six auditory tasks administered. They also had a better WM performance, and stronger visuospatial abilities than nonmusicians. No differences were found between the two groups\u2019 short-term memory. Frequency discrimination and gap detection for the auditory measures, and WM complex span tasks and one of the visuospatial tasks for the cognitive ones proved to be very good classifiers of the musicians. These findings suggest that life-long music training may be associated with enhanced auditory and cognitive performance, including complex cognitive skills, in advanced age. However, whether this music training represents a protective factor or not needs further investigation