Early acquisition of musical aural skills

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Early acquisition of musical aural skills

• Richard Parncutt1 Gary McPherson2 Margit
  Painsi1 Fränk Zimmer1
• 1Department of Musicology, University of Graz
• 2 School of Music, University of Illinois

ICMPC Bologna 21-26 August 2006
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Aims

• How and why do children spontaneously recognize
  musical pitch structures?
• Improve ear training?
• Exploratory qualitative study

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Acquisition of musical aural skills Intuitive
cognitive model

• Exposure phase
• aural (visual, tactile-motor, linguistic) ?
  memory
• Experimentation phase
• match memory to performance by trial and error
• Recognition phase
• auditory pattern ? memory ? linguistic label

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Background Skill acquisition

• Nature/nurture
• interaction between genes environment
• Expertise approach
• more practice ? more skill
• Critical periods
• earlier practice ? more skill
• (Intrinsic) motivation
• motivation ? practice ? skill

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Background Subskill interdependence

• Musical skills
• general musicality or
• independent specific skills?
• Is audiation central?
• Origins of musicality origins of audiation?

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Relation to other approaches
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Methodological problem Memory

• Strong for
• meaningful events
• Unreliable if
• long ago
• BUT
• Longitudinal observation is also problematic
• implicit skill acquisition

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Methodological problem Questionnaires
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Specific issues

• Instrument
• Specific early experiences
• Age at onset of recognition
• Situations
• Active or passive
• Motivation
• Belief in talent

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Data collection

• period
• Sep 2005 to June 2006
• publicity
• email lists
• participants
• 196
• missing data
• many

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Sex of participants

• 112 female
• 84 male

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Nationality of participants

• 51 USA
• 19 UK
• 7 Canada
• 5 Australia
• Language of questionnaire
• Western bias of internet

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Age of participants

• mean 36 years
• min 18
• max 83

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Aural skills of participants

• Best grade for an ear training test
• A 109
• B 23
• C 3
• D 1
• E 1

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Years of musical practice

• mean 28
• min 4
• max 70
• Does practice make perfect?

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CV of average participant

• Began to play regularly
• aged 7 years (min 2, max 21)
• Played continuously
• stops for only 1 year
• Filled our questionnaire
• aged 36 years

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Instrument

• Are some instruments better
• for ear training than others?

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Main instrument

• 59 piano
• 8 guitar
• 7 flute
• 5 violin
• Keyboard represents aural structures visually?
• Parents of talented children choose piano?

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First year of playing Instruments played

• piano 63
• violin 13
• flute 6
• guitar 5
• recorder 4
• others 9

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Instruments in the home

• 140 people named 311 instruments
• piano (106)
• guitar (40)
• violin (28)
• recorder (22)
• flute, keyboard, trumpet, harmonica, cello,
  organ, clarinet, accordion, banjo/mandolin
• Important for ear training?
• 86 yes
• 10 no
• 4 cant remember

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Why piano?
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Early musical experiences

• Early before learning first instrument
• What early musical experiences promote
  development of aural skills?

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Early musical experiences

• Age at middle of period
• 4.5 years
• Frequency of musical experiences
• 5.3 (1 very rare 7 very frequent)

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Family member whose musical activities
experienced most often

• 49 mother
• 31 father
• 8 sister
• 4 brother

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Early musical activities Materials

• lullabies
• hymns
• traditional and folk songs
• Christmas songs
• Suzuki songs

• Examples
• Mother at piano, kids play drums sleigh bells
• Dad made up songs about our family
• My brother and I made up Gregorian chants

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Early musical activities How enjoyable?

• mean 6.3
• (1 not at all 7 very)
• enjoyment ? motivation ? practice

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Early musical activities Specific emotions

• Music as
• private experience
• It was amazing to produce sounds.
• Music always gave me an immediate feeling of
  exhilaration.
• part of intensive personal interaction
• Happy, closeness with family members, fun and joy
  in learning the tune and rhythm of songs
• I could switch off from the unhappy family life
  and escape into music.
• I enjoyed this time because I gave our family the
  'glue' that held us together.

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Age

• At what age do children
• acquire basic aural skills?

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First memory of recognizing pitch structures

• Age mean 8.6 years (min 2, max 18)

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Age at which specific structures recognized

• Basic structures learned between 8 and 14
• Basic structures consolidated before building on
  them

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Role of situation

• In what situations do children
• acquire aural skills?

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First year of playing

• Situations in which learned about music
• Conventional music lessons 64 (130)
• Working out pieces by ear alone 24 (103)
• Mental practice 16 (54)
• Composing alone at instrument 16 (72)
• Playing by ear with friends or family 16 (46)
• Composing with friends or family 19 (9)
• But our participants may not be representative
• Percentage average of those who replied (In
  brackets number who replied to question)

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First memory of recognizing pitch structures
Wide variety of situations. Examples
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Context in which skill originally acquired

• Wide variety of responses
• family and outside
• formal and informal
• group and solo
• instrumental and choral
• theory and practice

• Aural skills are learned
• Learning is mainly active

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Musical styles in which structures recognized

• Rank order
• classical
• childrens
• pop/rock
• religious

? Participant bias towards classical music
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Learning styles

• Active or passive?
• Motivated or just happened?

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Most important factor in developing this skill
? Role of active learning
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Why motivated to acquire this skill?
? Role of relevant, useful goals
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Inherited or learned?

• Questions about origins of skills
• All answers involved musical activities
• No-one objected that skills were inborn
• How important were your early musical activities
  for the development of your aural abilities?
• 5.8 (1 not at all 7 very)
• ? Participants believe skills are learned

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Inherited or learned

• Source of info for opinion then
• 46 compare memory with current knowledge
• 18 parents then
• 15 peer comparison then

Real learning belief in talent
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Interesting but unreliable data

• Metacognition is weak
• Even for the most talented
• Memory is unreliable
• Respondents may invent or exaggerate
• Our participants are biased toward
• upper middle class
• classical music

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Consistent with expertise model

• motivation ? practice ? skill
• Critical periods?

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Interdependence of musical subskills

• Musicality as
• independent specific skills
• Central role of audiation
• supports other subskills

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Educational implications Home

• Parents should
• hear, make, enjoy music themselves
• own and play several instruments
• encourage child from an early age (6?) to
• hear, make, enjoy a lot of music
• experience keyboard and choral singing
• take music lessons
• develop own musical tastes and passions

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Educational implications Institutional

• Offer parental training incl. music
• More music in school
• Musical interaction teachers?parents
• Ear training at school, not university