To study the differential effects of music on performance of a novel motor skill by 38 educable mentally handicapped and 33 non-handicapped 10- to 12-yr.-old boys in elementary school, six groups were formed. Fifteen educable mentally handicapped boys and 10 non-handicapped boys practiced without background music, 12 educable mentally handicapped boys and 12 non-handicapped boys practiced with a popular music background, and 11 educable mentally handicapped boys and 11 non-handicapped boys practiced with a classical music background. All boys were pretested on the motor skill with no music on a Friday, practiced Monday through Thursday in their assigned groups for 10 min. each day, and were posttested on Friday with no music. The novel motor skill of tossing a soccer ball (8 Ibs, of air pressure in the ball) on one bounce into a waste can from a distance of 5 ft. using a two-handed, chest-pass delivery was practiced. The pre- and posttest were 20 attempts to toss the ball into the can with the score being the total number of successful attempts. The popular music used was Y.M.C.A. by Village People and Never Had A Love Like This Before and Let Me Heal The Bruises by Tavares. The songs are vocal arrangements with the first two having fast tempos and the third being a slower song. The classical music used was Fantasia on 'Greensleeves', Fantasia on a Theme, and English Folk Song Suite by Morton Gould and Orchestra. The arrangements are instrumental. A Concord AM-FM Radiocorder/Dual Power was used with the volume set at nine. A 2 X 3 factorial analysis of covariance (pretest score serving as a covariate) was used to test motor skill performance for group (educable mentally handicapped and nonhandicapped) and treatment (classical, popular, or no music). Non-significant F ratios were found for each main effect. Adjusted posttest means for educable mentally handicapped and non-handicapped children were 8.66 and 9.18 (us = 3.33 and 3.131, respectively. Adjusted posttest means for classical, popular, and no music treatments were 8.41, 8.83, and 9.40 (us = 2.87, 3.70. and 3.20), respectively. No interactions were noted. Apparently, these musical selections did not influence handicapped boys' learning of the motor skill used in this project.