Children's Singing Research Articles

Miming to recorded music: Multimodality and education.

Listening is understood in the field of music education to be one of the most important ways through which people engage with music. On the one hand, it is an integral part of performing and creating (Elliott, 1995; Loane, 1984; Sloboda, 1988), allowing control, regulation, and assessment of each decision; on the other hand, listening is also valued as an activity in itself (Reimer, 1989; Swanwick, 1979) and it is, as such, one of the pillars of many music curricula, namely, in Portugal, where the present research was developed.Despite the general agreement on the importance of music listening for music teaching and learning, it is also acknowledged that listening activities in the classroom need careful design in order to allow successful response and learning on the part of the children (Espeland, 1987). Classical music is one of the listening choices of many teachers, not only to fulfil curriculum demands but also to draw children's attention to some types of music that do not usually make part of their listening lists. Notwithstanding, having children listening to recorded music in the classroom raises some pedagogical problems, especially if children do not spontaneously identify themselves with the idioms or if children are asked to listen quietly and in physical passivity; they usually lack interest and motivation and they tend not to learn many relevant things from those experiences.As opposed to the active music making involved in performing and composing, where children sing, move, or play instruments, listening to music in the audience might indeed result in a poorer context of experience, with less perception modalities being activated. To make this point clearer, a pianist on the stage, for example, even if she is playing a piece of music for the first time, is likely to develop a stronger interaction with the music, due to what she listens to, reads on the music sheet, and feels through her performing gestures, than the person sitting and listening in the audience. The modalities involved are potentially more powerful for the pianist than for the listener (ignoring for the moment the difference in time spend with the music).The present paper focuses on some pedagogical strategies of listening to music in the elementary music classroom, which have been developed and published in Portugal (Godinho, 2010, 2012; Godinho & Brito, 2010) and which have become quite spread in elementary schools. With the broad purpose of expanding the listening scope and aural skills of students, these pedagogical materials deliberately involve children in active participation during the listening situations, either playing rhythmic instruments or miming stories along with the pieces. In this sense, listening activities are slightly transformed into performing activities, having children becoming a sort of musicians in the orchestra or mime performers.These strategies are aligned with other studies and projects (Cohen, 1997; Espeland, 1987) that were also concerned with authentic listening experiences in classroom settings. Espeland (1987) has advocated that the active response on the part of the listener is crucial in understanding and, therefore, his project involved the children in activities of verbal, visual, and kinetic expression. These activities were mainly the result of creative group work by the children, and watching the group discussions and solutions for each piece allowed teachers to have access to the ways children understand the music they listen to.The idea that the physical active response can constitute a window into one's understanding was also developed by Cohen (1997) through two kinds of processes: first, she created some kinesthetic analogues for the pieces, or musical mirrors, which she modeled for her students, allowing them to enter into her listening experience, by inviting them to perform the analogues with her; second, she asked her students to create their own kinesthetic analogues for the pieces they listened to, which represented their understanding and personal response to the music. …

Enhancing gesture quality in young singers

ABSTRACTStudies have shown positive results for the use of gesture as a successful technique in aiding children's singing. The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of movement training for children with regard to enhancing gesture quality. Thirty-six fifth-grade students participated in the empirical investigation. They were randomly assigned into control and experimental groups: (1) control group – children who sang with gesture but without movement training and (2) experimental group – children who sang with gesture and received Dalcrozian movement training. The gestures were designed for developing singing voice, whereas the movement activities were designed for developing effective gestures for singing. The instructional unit, consisting of two 40-minute sessions per week for 24 sessions, focused on gesture use in singing. Each individual child was tested a Chinese art song. Three experts were asked to judge the children's individual gesture and singing performances by using a nine-point scale. Results showed that the children who received movement training gained a significantly higher score on gesture quality. It was concluded that the combination of gesture and movement training could be a powerful teaching strategy in children's singing.

Singing abilities in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI).

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is a heritable neurodevelopmental disorder diagnosed when a child has difficulties learning to produce and/or understand speech for no apparent reason (Bishop et al., 2012). The verbal difficulties of children with SLI have been largely documented, and a growing number of studies suggest that these children may also have difficulties in processing non-verbal complex auditory stimuli (Corriveau et al., 2007; Brandt et al., 2012). In a recent study, we reported that a large proportion of children with SLI present deficits in music perception (Planchou et al., under revision). Little is known, however, about the singing abilities of children with SLI. In order to investigate whether or not the impairments in expressive language extend to the musical domain, we assessed singing abilities in eight children with SLI and 15 children with Typical Language Development (TLD) matched for age and non-verbal intelligence. To this aim, we designed a ludic activity consisting of two singing tasks: a pitch-matching and a melodic reproduction task. In the pitch-matching task, the children were requested to sing single notes. In the melodic reproduction task, children were asked to sing short melodies that were either familiar (FAM-SONG and FAM-TUNE conditions) or unfamiliar (UNFAM-TUNE condition). The analysis showed that children with SLI were impaired in the pitch-matching task, with a mean pitch error of 250 cents (mean pitch error for children with TLD: 154 cents). In the melodic reproduction task, we asked 30 healthy adults to rate the quality of the sung productions of the children on a continuous rating scale. The results revealed that singing of children with SLI received lower mean ratings than the children with TLD. Our findings thus indicate that children with SLI showed impairments in musical production and are discussed in light of a general auditory-motor dysfunction in children with SLI.

An analysis of song-leading by kindergarten teachers in Taiwan and the USA

The purpose of this study was to examine components of the song-leading process used by kindergarten teachers in Taiwan and the United States, including the critical matter of starting pitch. Five public school kindergarten teachers in Taipei, Taiwan, and five public kindergarten teachers in Seattle, USA, were invited to participate in this study on a voluntary basis. They were asked to teach six children's songs at six different times. Non-participant observations were undertaken in order to develop an understanding of how kindergarten teachers led children in singing a song, and to determine teachers' starting pitch. Each teacher was observed for her singing activities with children in 20- to 30- minute sessions. Results revealed that kindergarten teachers utilised similar song-leading techniques and that the teacher's location in Taiwan or the USA appeared to have no impact on these techniques. Most teachers requested, and even demanded, children's focused attention prior to beginning to sing the song. Teachers typically sang the songs at a medium volume, with little variation. There were differentiations, however, as to the provision of metre and the delivery of a signal for bringing into the singing of the song. Reference notes were seldom used, that is, there was little use by teachers of the presentation of a starting pitch in advance of the singing. Few teachers offered feedback to children as to the accuracy and quality of the singing. Finally, results also indicated that regardless of the nationality, the starting pitch of the songs sung by kindergarten teachers was generally dramatically lower than children's natural singing range, extending from G3 to D4. This study calls to mind the importance of providing kindergarten teachers with vocal skills, such that, they learn not only child-appropriate repertoire but also the critical means of teaching songs to children in a thorough-going song-leading process.

An Analysis of Pre-Service Teachers' Subjective Perception Regarding Children's Singing in the Early Childhood Classroom

An Analysis of Pre-Service Teachers' Subjective Perception Regarding Children's Singing in the Early Childhood Classroom

“Ring” in the Solo Child Singing Voice

Listeners often describe the voices of solo child singers as being "pure" or "clear"; these terms would suggest that the voice is not only pleasant but also clearly audible. The audibility or clarity could be attributed to the presence of high-frequency partials in the sound: a "brightness" or "ring." This article aims to investigate spectrally the acoustic nature of this ring phenomenon in children's solo voices, and in particular, relating it to their "nonring" production. Additionally, this is set in the context of establishing to what extent, if any, the spectral characteristics of ring are shared with those of the singer's formant cluster associated with professional adult opera singers in the 2.5-3.5kHz region. A group of child solo singers, acknowledged as outstanding by a singing teacher who specializes in teaching professional child singers, were recorded in a major UK concert hall performing Come unto him, all ye that labour, from the aria He shall feed his flock from The Messiah by GF Handel. Their singing was accompanied by a recording of a piano played through in-ear headphones. Sound pressure recordings were made from well within the critical distance in the hall. The singers were observed to produce notes with and without ring, and these recordings were analyzed in the frequency domain to investigate their spectra. The results indicate that there is evidence to suggest that ring in child solo singers is carried in two areas of the output spectrum: first in the singer's formant cluster region, centered around 4kHz, which is more than 1000Hz higher than what is observed in adults; and second in the region around 7.5-11kHz where a significant strengthening of harmonic presence is observed. A perceptual test has been carried out demonstrating that 94% of 62 listeners label a synthesized version of the calculated overall average ring spectrum for all subjects as having ring when compared with a synthesized version of the calculated overall average nonring spectrum. The notion of ring in the child solo voice manifests itself not only with spectral features in common with the projection peak found in adult singers but also in a higher frequency region. It is suggested that the formant cluster at around 4kHz is the children's equivalent of the singers' formant cluster; the frequency is higher than in the adult, most likely due to the smaller dimensions of the epilaryngeal tube. The frequency cluster observed as a strong peak at about 7.5-11kHz, when added to the children's singers' formant cluster, may be the key to cueing the notion of ring in the child solo voice.

Acoustic properties of vocal singing in prelingually-deafened children with cochlear implants or hearing aids

The purpose of the present study was to investigate vocal singing performance of hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants (CI) and hearing aids (HA) as well as to evaluate the relationship between demographic factors of those hearing-impaired children and their singing ability. Thirty-seven prelingually-deafened children with CIs and 31 prelingually-deafened children with HAs, and 37 normal-hearing (NH) children participated in the study. The fundamental frequencies (F0) of each note in the recorded songs were extracted and the duration of each sung note was measured. Five metrics were used to evaluate the pitch-related and rhythm-based aspects of singing accuracy. Children with CIs and HAs showed significantly poorer performance in either the pitch-based assessments or the rhythm-based measure than the NH children. No significant differences were seen between the CI and HA groups in all of these measures except for the mean deviation of the pitch intervals. For both hearing-impaired groups, length of device use was significantly correlated with singing accuracy. There is a marked deficit in vocal singing ability either in pitch or rhythm accuracy in a majority of prelingually-deafened children who have received CIs or fitted with HAs. Although an increased length of device use might facilitate singing performance to some extent, the chance for the hearing-impaired children fitted with either HAs or CIs to reach high proficiency in singing is quite slim.

Developing Children's Singing Aptitudes Using Music Therapy

The research presented in this paper is in the process of stimulating the efforts to increase the quality of the music education through access to adequate education for each child's personality, in the sense that we should address all children and not just the musically gifted ones. Tests based on both active and passive music therapy were administered to a number of children who participated in music therapy classes.By means of the exercises performed during the experiment, a synthesis of soul, body and emotions was made, which is essential for learning, because the children learned to express music through sound, thoughts, feelings and creation in a sensitive, expressive manner. The music therapy classes conducted encouraged nonverbal expression and the development of social skills such as: listening, attention and direct personal contact.

The Musical Ear: Oral Tradition in the USA

The Musical Ear: Oral Tradition in the USA. By Anne Dhu McLucas. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010. Pp. 205, list of recorded examples, series editors' preface, acknowledgments, introduction, appendices of comparative transcriptions, bibliography, index, audio CD.)This pathbreaking volume, published as part of the SEMPRE Studies in the Psychology of Music, is two books in one. One concerns music in the United States, with special attention to how oral tradition comes into play in traditional, popular, and art musical expressions, illustrated by a telling variety of concise case studies. The other concerns the scientific evidence that can help us understand how the human brain processes music. Four chapters on aspects of the first topic are each followed by "interludes" exploring the second. The relationships between chapters and interludes, at first loose, become more intimate as the volume goes on, and the fifth chapter synthesizes and summarizes.Chapter 1 offers tidy case studies introducing general themes in oral tradition. Two songs sung by Hazel Dickens illustrate the fidelity-creativity continuum, a Mescalero Apache singer highlights the importance of meticulous memory in ritual song, a blues artist shows the importance of malleability of materials in his creativity, and last, a fiddler conjoins memory and notation as he learns an Irish tune. Interlude 1, "The Brain, Memory, and Oral Tradition," treats similarly general themes, that is, factors affecting short- and long-term memories of melodic contour; here, brain geography becomes important. Chapter 2 treats oral tradition as an ingredient in popular music, with special attention to three topics: the interaction of musically literate and non-literate individuals in the cultivation of such music; timbre; and the variable nature of the "hook." The following interlude focuses on the creative side of oral tradition, with sections on "filling in for memory loss," imprecise contour memory as a spark for creativity, improvisation, and the interaction of repetition and creativity-all familiar topics, but with discussion buttressed by the results of careful scientific research.Chapter 3 is a bit of a forced march through most of the topics conventionally treated in histories of American music, from early religious music through music in a variety of theatrical contexts to formal composition, mostly of the twentieth century. Two threads dominate: which important repertoires or individual composers draw directly or indirectly on oral tradition, and the topic of performance practice, that is, how much of what musicians do and audiences hear is not reflected in notation. McLucas pursues the latter thread in the following interlude, detailing, for instance, how the habits of thought associated with notation tend to limit variety in rhythm and timbre even for modern composers who are consciously focusing on those elements.In chapter 4, the survey approach to American music as consisting of tribal/folk, pop, and art musics yields to a behavioral emphasis to explore how oral tradition operates in individuals' lives. McLucas notes how children sing, how a near universality of ability in active musicianship fades when formal training kicks in for a selected minority, and how some music activity persists nevertheless for the majority-in group singing situations, karaoke, sports chants, and so on. …

Music and Cochlear Implants

Currently, most people with modern multichannel cochlear implant systems can understand speech in quiet environment very well. However, studies in recent decades reported a lack of satisfaction in music perception with cochlear implants. This article reviews the literature on music ability of cochlear implant users by presenting a systematic outline of the capabilities and limitations of cochlear implant recipients with regard to their music perception as well as production. The review also evaluates the similarities and differences between electric hearing and acoustic hearing regarding music perception. We summarize the research results in terms of the individual components of music (e.g., rhythm, pitch, and timbre). Finally, we briefly introduce the vocal singing of prelingually-deafened children with cochlear implants as evaluated by acoustic measures.

Práticas de Técnica Vocal e Respiratória (‘PRATÉVOR’) e Outros Fatores Potenciadores da Qualidade do Canto Coral no 1.º Ciclo do Ensino Básico

This paper shows, as unifying theme, the “practices of respiratory and vocal technique (PRATEVOR) applied to choral singing in primary schools”.It wants to share, although succinctly, a study conducted in 2010 in the High School of Education of Setubal in the Master of Music Education, a process that started from the methodological approach of PRATEVOR, acronym created by me to summarize some practices of physiological nature (posture, breathing, vocalization, coordination, vocal registration, etc.) that, by its regular application, could contribute to promote the quality of singing performed by children in general education.Having as scenario of application the specificity of the first cycle curriculum of primary education in the Autonomous Region of Madeira, and justified by the regime of autonomy of the regional education system, this study begins to develop itself from the questioning of the beneficial effects of vocal and respiratory technique adapted to children in schools, as(one of) valuation factor(s) of singing together exercised in the classroom. If initially started to be implemented to my schoolchildren through a specific educational project part of my Master of Music Education, later the process focuses on the reality of other similar projects of this school choral singing modality developed in 11 schools on the Madeira Island, whose teachers involved in this artistic area benefited anteriorly from a process of skills acquisition.In this line of investigative thinking, other variables also turn out to be triggered by the search, also as factors to consider, seeing it on its complementarity as significant contributions to the qualification of choir singing developed in primary schools.In parallel we developed a research project that consisted of a two comparative studies of type Research-Action. Over the four phases, different questionnaires were held involving experts in child singing, choral singing school teachers and students. Embodied in a broad review of the literature, the results of the study point to several conclusions which, by their predicted applicability in an educational context, are intended to constitute indicators that can help to improve the practice of music singing, reflected and reconstructed in the current school.

Researching the first year of the National Singing Programme Sing Up in England: An initial impact evaluation.

ABSTRACT - The article reports on the first year of an independent evaluation of the National Singing Programme 'Sing Up' (2007-2011) in England. The aim of the Sing Up Programme is to provide all primary-aged children (up to the age of 11 years) with opportunities for singing under high quality vocal leadership both within their school curriculum and outside of school on a regular basis. As part of the evaluation, members of the research team visited 81 schools across England, and assessed the singing behavior and development of 3,762 individual children using the combination of two established rating scales. The focus was on providing an initial profile of children's singing prior to the launch of the National Programme and, subsequently later in the first year, to conduct a small number of additional visits to see if there was any evidence of early impact. The results confirm that children's singing is subject to developmental processes, with variations related to sex, age and ethnicity. There is also some evidence that, notwithstanding such variations, a programme of sustained singing education can have a positive benefit on children's singing behaviors and development. KEYWORDS - children's singing development, Sing Up INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Research suggests that singing behaviors are subject to developmental processes in which individual neuropsychobiological potentiality is shaped (nurtured and/or hindered) by learning experiences within sociocultural contexts (Knight, 2010; Welch, 2007, 2011). Although singing is commonplace, it is also marked by cultural diversity, with development related to opportunity (e.g., Mang, 2007), the prosodie features of indigenous languages (Azechi, 2008), as well as the dominant characteristics of the local musical soundscapes (Welch, 2006a, 2006b, 2011; Welch, Sergeant, & White, 1997). In many parts of the world, the ability to sing is a mark of an individual's underlying musicality (cf. Sloboda, Wise, & Peretz, 2005). Consequently, those individuals whose singing development has been hindered in some way are often labelled (including self-labelled) in some absolutist sense under a bipolar categorization of 'can'/'cannot' sing, with variations in their ascribed musical identity as a 'non-singer', 'tone-deaf', or 'tone-dumb' being found in virtually all cultures. Yet, as mentioned above, contrary evidence from developmental and neurological studies continues to emerge that singing and musical behaviors are context bound and susceptible to improvement with appropriate experience which can be informal as well as formal (e.g., Brown, Martinez, Hodges, Fox, & Parsons, 2004; Dalla Bella, Giguere, & Peretz 2007; Fuchs et al., 2007; Kleber, Veit, Birbaumer, & Lotze, 2007; Koelsch, Fritz, Schulze, Alsop, & Schlaug, 2005; Mang, 2006, 2007; Mithen & Parsons, 2008; Stewart & Williamen, 2008; Welch et al., 2008; see Welch, 2006a for review). Furthermore, the recent wealth of studies into the neurosciences and music (cf. Avanzini, Faienza, Minciacchi, Lopez, & Majno, 2003; Avanzini, Koelsch, Lopez, & Majno, 2005) continue to amass evidence of the multi-sited representation of musical behaviors in various regions of the brain, including singing (Kleber et al., 2007). These and related studies also indicate that there are various other-than-musical benefits that can accrue for the individual from engaging in musical (including singing) activity, such as related to physical and psychological health and well-being (Clift & Hancox, 2001; Clift et al., 2007; Kreutz, Bongard, Rohrmann, Hodapp, & Grebe, 2004; Welch, 2005), social skill development and social inclusion (Odena, 2007; Portowitz, Lichtenstein, Egorova, & Brand, 2009) and cognitive development (Schlaug, Norton, Overy, & Winner, 2005). Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that music is figuring more significantly in the contemporary educational policies of several of the world's governments. …

Human singing: Towards a developmental theory.

ABSTRACT - The aim of this article is to propose a revision of models of singing development that identify age-related stages of mastery of basic elements of Hie Western-European music system. Instead, emphasis is placed on structural and process-oriented approaches, on growing meta-cognitive strategies, on conceptual analyses that go beyond Western-European conventions and on a methodology that allows assessing the simultaneous configuration of linguistic and musical elements in children's vocal organization from an acoustical standpoint. Hence, singing is conceptualized from various perspectives, conventions associated with singing are analyzed, and basic rules of children's songs are exemplified by careful examination of a single song. A micro-genetic analysis of early song singing illustrates a method for studying a child's strategies in organizing a song. Finally, a seven-stage developmental sequence is proposed as a heuristic for further research. KEYWORDS - singing, development, children, developmental sequence of singing, theory, characteristics of singing, conventions, language and music, analysis of singing 1. INTRODUCTION Human singing is an interdisciplinary domain because it covers musical, linguistic, physiological, cultural, psychological and developmental aspects. The present article addresses theoretical issues related to singing and its development. The developmental perspective entails the search for origins and the investigation of general laws of emergence of novelty in irreversible time (Valsiner, 2003). The main interest concerns the following question: How does singing development begin, and what aspects of singing change during childhood? This article does not intend to give a thorough literature review on empirical studies on children's singing (e.g., Stadler Elmer, 2002; Welch, 2006), nor does it include a review of the development of perception of music and language (e.g., McMullen & Saffran, 2004; Patel, 2008), nor an exploration of infant directed singing (e.g., FaIk, 2009; Longhi, 2009). Rather, the focus is more theoretical. After a brief historical review of ideas about the course of the development of singing and after addressing the shortcomings of these ideas, there follows an outline of a general framework within which singing is considered as an elementary and universal form of human musical expression. For any theory, careful conceptual analyses and descriptions are essential; hence, the next two sections are devoted to characterizing singing and to analyzing conventions that apply to music and to singing, including an illustration of the rules of children's song singing with a song in the German language. Finally, hypotheses on a developmental sequence of singing are proposed as a heuristic in order to replace previous conceptions. An example of a micro-genetic analysis of a very young child's spontaneous song singing provides a representation of this early emergent competence in its complex organization. Almost a century ago, the developmental psychologist Heinz Werner (1917) published the first empirical and pioneering study on children's singing development using phonograph recordings. He asked 45 children between the ages of 2.6 and 5 years to invent melodies with and without given lyrics. Whereas Werner assumed that all of these children would have been able to reproduce a complex children's song such as Fuchs, du hast die Gans gestohlen (Fox you stole my goosey gander) covering a vocal range of a seventh (11 semitones), he characterizes their typical melodic inventions as consisting of a small number of tones, small vocal range, small intervals, falling directions, and continuous repetitions. Further, he postulated a falling glissando or portamento to be the melodic nucleus from which the Urmelodie, the original or primary melody in the form of a falling minor third would have emerged. Most interestingly, he related this early melodic form to the prosodie pattern of calling names, thus emphasizing the relationship between melody and prosody. …

Singing development as a sensorimotor interaction problem.

ABSTRACT - Singing a ubiquitous human behavior and plays a significant role in human culture and socialization. Research on children's singing has focused on music instruction techniques for developing singers, yet little known about the developmental mechanisms underlying singing acquisition. Recently, Berkawska and Dalla Bella (2009a) proposed a sensorimotor loop model of singing to explain poor singing ability in the adult population. Here, we review the literature on the development of singing during childhood in the context of the sensorimotor loop model of singing. KEYWORDS - singing, development, children, auditory perception, motor function Singing widely regarded as a universal human behavior (Dowling, 1984; Welch, 1994) that serves a number of important social functions. Singing an effective means of transmitting cultural knowledge and social customs (Chatwin, 1987; Cong-HuyenTon-Nu, 1979). Singing also used to ease the pressures of everyday life. For example, many workers use song to accompany work activities, especially those requiring the synchronization of repetitive movements (Cong-Huyen-Ton-Nu, 1979; Keil, 1979). Singing often an important part of courtship, and it has been proposed that robust musical calls may signal the possession of healthy, appealing genes to prospective mates (e.g., Huron, 2001). In general, singing can promote social cohesion, reinforce cherished values and ideals, foster shared identity, and promote emotional contagion (Booth, 1981; Peretz, 2006). Finally, singing plays a critical role in child rearing and the caregiver-infant bond. Lullabies and playsongs are found in all known cultures, suggesting that they serve an important function in maternal child care (Trehub, 2000; Trehub & Trainor, 1998). Despite the importance of singing in both human development and human culture, there has been relatively little empirical research on the acquisition of singing during childhood. Singing thought to emerge spontaneously without formal instruction during early child development (Dalla Bella, Giguere, & Peretz, 2007) and many studies over the last 30 years have documented a relatively orderly progression of the acquisition of specific singing abilities during childhood (e.g., see Welch, 2006 for a review). However, the developmental mechanisms underlying singing acquisition during childhood are still not well understood. Although there general agreement that both maturational and experiential factors affect singing development (e.g., Davidson, McKernon, & Gardner, 1981; Stadler-Elmer, 2006; Welch, 1985), there are few empirical studies of how these factors interact. Welch (1986) proposed a model of singing acquisition in which children's singing behaviors appear in a fixed order from Stage 1, where the words of a song are the initial center of interest rather than the melody, to Stage 5, where there are no significant melodic or pitch errors in a child's vocal productions. Presumably this progression impacted by culture, practical experience, and genetically-driven maturation. Detailed study of singing development requires, first, a definition of singing and, second, a notion of what constitutes mature singing behavior. With respect to the first question, Welch (1994) noted that the judgment of an utterance to be speech or song is defined by a complex web of interacting factors encompassing perception, cognition, physical development, maturation, society, culture, history and intentionality (p. 3). Early in development, singing and talking may be less differentiated than later. Indeed, infant-directed speech often referred to as musical speech because of its exaggerated pitch contours, rhythmic patterning and repetition (Fernald, 1991). The boundaries between speech and song can be even less clear in the vocalizations of infants and young children, and determination muddied by the fact that adults often attempt to over interpret infant vocalizations (Welch, 1994). …

A unique child singing: Practice in pictures - Going for a song

Shared singing with a carer with whom a child is securely attached is an important learning resource, says Anne O'Connor.

Gender Differences in Long-Term Average Spectra of Children's Singing Voices

This paper forms part of a larger study into the nature of singing development in children and examines gender differences in long-term average spectra (LTAS). Three hundred and twenty children in age groups 4-11 years learned a song and were then recorded singing alone. LTAS curves were calculated for each voice. Age of each singer was estimated and gender attributed by a panel of independent listeners. Rate of gender identification (71%) was consonant with that reported for children's speech. Progressive statistically significant shifts of spectral energy as a function of increasing age (reported in a previous study) were found to be present in the data for both genders, but the developmental timetable over which the changes took place was earlier for girls than for boys. A theoretical basis for the developmental changes is proposed.

A developmental approach to voice science

Vocal development had been studied mostly with a focus on speaking, and only rarely, on singing. Traditional theories on singing development are often based on wrong premises, e.g. eurocentrism, and reliable analyses of singing are missing or selective. A new theory ‐ inspired by the principles of Piaget's theory ‐, and a new methodology ‐ based on acoustic measures ‐ are proposed. The voice starts to organise at birth, and gradually adapts to the cultural surrounding and its conventions concerning language, music, and social rules. Vocal and musical behaviour are highly adaptive and constructive, and concern two symbolic systems: music and language. The child develops the voice by playing and imitating. The development proceeds from sensorimotor activities towards more and more conscious actions and thoughts. In order to study children's singing, computer aided programs were devised to analyse and represent pitch, timing, pitch qualities, and syllables. This method yields complex configurations of these parameters describing children's song singing. Detailed descriptions allow to reconstruct the strategies children apply to invent or learn new songs. The empirical results from children at various ages demonstrate that the focus on the analysis of the organisation of the vocal expression is a promising research strategy.

The Extreme Connection Between Bodies and Houses

The Extreme Connection Between Bodies and Houses

The use of gesture techniques in children's singing

The purpose of this study was to begin to explore the link of gesture and voice when teaching children and to examine how the children used these gestures in singing. Semi-structured interviewing techniques and observation were used extensively to collect information from the respondents. Five children were asked to participate in this preliminary work individually. The results demonstrated that there was a link between children's singing voice and their use of gesture by observing the Dalcrozian mirror and follow games. The functions of gestures could be defined as being for focus, guidance, support, good intonation and sensation. In addition, some specific teaching techniques were required for achieving a more effective gesture and a more successful sound. Gesture techniques helped the children to improve their vocal techniques and correct their vocal faults. This study opened the field for the full study of gesture in aiding children's singing.

Seen but Not Heard: Young Children, Improvised Singing and Educational Practice

In this article the author suggests that the persistence of a ‘performance model’ of early childhood music education has detracted attention from children's spontaneous musical activity. The article focuses on one dimension of children's spontaneous musicality: improvised singing. Descriptions of short episodes taken from two periods of observation, the first in a day-care setting among two- and three-year-olds and the second in a nursery among three-year-olds, provide examples of different kinds of improvised singing and how they are integrated into physical movement, and play with objects and malleable substances such as sand and water. The descriptions move into detailed discussion which draws attention to the way in which, as they play, the children's singing represents one mode blended among many and gives insight into time-based processes. The author goes on to suggest that these time-based processes support ways of engaging, either with material things or in interacting with others. The article contains a number of propositions for the benefits which might accrue from a reconsideration of singing in early childhood education.