Music Reading Research Articles

Teaching Pitch Notation–Reading Skills

The teaching of music-reading skills has been cited as a neglected area of music education needing improvement. Music reading is the process of translating notation into sounds. Producing the notated sounds by singing, more specifically referred to as sight-singing, is especially demanding because it requires the individual to first mentally construct aural images of the sounds, an essential process that is challenging to teach and assess. This article describes a series of activities for teaching music-reading skills in general music or choir, focusing mainly on reading and singing pitch notation, though many of the ideas could also be used to teach rhythm reading. The activities are sequential, are easy to implement, and allow for the assessment of skill acquisition at various stages of development.

Effects of The Lexical Rhythm Learning Strategy on Music Teacher Candidates’ Success in Rhythm Dictation

Rhythm is a fundamental subject in music education. In general, voluntary, and occupational education between pre-school and higher education, rhythm instruction is included in music education either through instrument training or music theory. This study determines the effects of the lexical rhythm learning strategy on music teacher candidates’ success in rhythm dictation. It also presents the study group’s views and opinions about the strategies they used in learning rhythm. The study group (n=20) consisted of first year music teacher candidates registered in the Musical Hearing, Reading, and Writing II course in the Music Education Programme in the Department of Fine Arts Education at the Mugla Sitki Kocman University, Faculty of Education during the 2016-2017 academic year. The research used quantitative and qualitative methods. “The Rhythm Dictation Test” was used to test the research hypotheses. In addition, an interview form was administered at the end of both the pre-test and post-test to ascertain subjects’ strategies of writing dictates and their perception of the difficulty of the rhythm dictation. A significant difference was found between experimental and control groups in their total rhythm dictation scores, in favour of the experimental group. The lexical rhythm learning strategy was adopted by the entire experimental group, it was effective in the perception of rhythm patterns, and it made dictation easier. As a result, effectiveness of the lexical rhythm learning strategy in dictating compound rhythm patterns was highlighted.

Distractor familiarity reveals the importance of configural information in musical notation.

The study of perceptual expertise in a visual domain requires the definition of boundaries for the objects that are part of the domain in question. Unlike other well-studied domains, such as faces or words, the domain of musical notation has been lacking in efforts to identify critical features that define the objects of music reading. In the present study, we took advantage of the distractor familiarity effect in visual search. We asked participants to search for a prespecified target note among familiar/unfamiliar distractor notes when two features of musical notation, dot-stem configuration (the way of connecting the dot and the stem of a note) and connectedness (whether or not the dot and the stem of a note were connected), were manipulated. A participant's level of music-reading expertise predicted the magnitude of the distractor familiarity effect only when the dot-stem configuration was diagnostic for the search. Connectedness did not induce a distractor familiarity effect, regardless of its diagnosticity. Dot-stem configuration is a defining feature of music notes, helping to characterize the boundaries of the domain of music-reading expertise. This work has also improved on the tasks used to quantify expertise in reading musical notation.

Visual training with musical notes changes late but not early electrophysiological responses in the visual cortex.

Visual expertise with musical notation is unique. Fluent music readers show selectively higher activity to musical notes than to other visually similar patterns in both the retinotopic and higher-level visual areas and both very early (e.g., C1) and later (e.g., N170) visual event-related potential (ERP) components. This is different from domains such as face and letter perception, of which the neural expertise marker is typically found in the higher-level ventral visual areas and later (e.g., N170) ERP components. An intriguing question concerns whether the visual skills and neural selectivity observed in music-reading experts are a result of the effects of extensive visual experience with musical notation. The current study aimed to investigate the causal relationship between visual experience and its neural changes with musical notation. Novices with no formal musical training experience were trained to visually discriminate between note patterns in the laboratory for 10-26 hr such that their performance was comparable with fluent music readers. The N170 component became more selective for musical notes after training. Training was not, however, followed by changes in the earlier C1 component. The findings show that visual training is enough for causing changes in the responses of the higher-level visual areas to musical notation while the engagement of the early visual areas may involve additional nonvisual factors.

Assisted Music Score Reading Using Fixed-Gaze Head Movement

Eye-tracking has a very strong potential in human computer interaction (HCI) as an input modality, particularly in mobile situations. However, it lacks convenient action triggering methods. In our research, we investigate the combination of eye-tracking and fixed-gaze head movement, which allows us to trigger various commands without using our hands or changing gaze direction. In this instance, we have proposed a new algorithm for fixed-gaze head movement detection using only scene images captured by the scene camera equipped in front of the head-mounted eye-tracker, for the purpose of saving computation time. To test the performance of our fixed-gaze head movement detection algorithm and the acceptance of triggering commands by these movements when the user's hands are occupied by another task, we have designed and developed an experimental application known as EyeMusic. The EyeMusic system is a music reading system, which can play the notes of a measure in a music score that the user does not understand. By making a voluntary head movement when fixing his/her gaze on the same point of a music score, the user can obtain the desired audio feedback. The design, development and usability testing of the first prototype for this application are presented in this paper. The usability of our application is confirmed by the experimental results, as 85% of participants were able to use all the head movements we implemented in the prototype. The average success rate of this application is 70%, which is partly influenced by the performance of the eye-tracker we use. The performance of our fixed-gaze head movement detection algorithm is 85%, and there were no significant differences between the performance of each head movement.

Music instruction and reading performance: Conceptual transfer in learning and development

Background: This article reported on the developmental consequences of music instruction in Foundation Phase level of South African school context, specifically in relation to learners’ learning and acquisition of early reading abilities. Against the background of the recent upsurge in research interest on the subject of conceptual and skills transfer among primary school learners in South Africa, the article uses contemporary advances in theory to interrogate empirical research on the benefits of music instruction for successful acquisition of reading abilities. Aim: The study aimed to interrogate the question – and resuscitate debate about – how conceptual skills in one subject discipline could transfer to benefit the learning and development of related conceptual skills in a different but related subject discipline. Setting: The setting for the research was a boys-only public primary school located in a middle-class suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. Methods: Document analysis and observation of reading activities and the performance records of Foundation Phase learners was carried out by the first author, and the performance of a group that was part of the school’s music instruction programme was compared with that of a group that was not part of that programme. Results: The results suggested that participation in school music instruction might benefit primary school learners’ development of early reading abilities. Conclusion: This is especially so when instructional activities are purposefully structured to benefit cognate conceptual skills, with crucial implications for policy development and the organisation of subject matter content knowledge in primary schooling in contemporary South Africa.

Music-reading expertise modulates the visual span for English letters but not Chinese characters.

Recent research has suggested that the visual span in stimulus identification can be enlarged through perceptual learning. Since both English and music reading involve left-to-right sequential symbol processing, music-reading experience may enhance symbol identification through perceptual learning particularly in the right visual field (RVF). In contrast, as Chinese can be read in all directions, and components of Chinese characters do not consistently form a left-right structure, this hypothesized RVF enhancement effect may be limited in Chinese character identification. To test these hypotheses, here we recruited musicians and nonmusicians who read Chinese as their first language (L1) and English as their second language (L2) to identify music notes, English letters, Chinese characters, and novel symbols (Tibetan letters) presented at different eccentricities and visual field locations on the screen while maintaining central fixation. We found that in English letter identification, significantly more musicians achieved above-chance performance in the center-RVF locations than nonmusicians. This effect was not observed in Chinese character or novel symbol identification. We also found that in music note identification, musicians outperformed nonmusicians in accuracy in the center-RVF condition, consistent with the RVF enhancement effect in the visual span observed in English-letter identification. These results suggest that the modulation of music-reading experience on the visual span for stimulus identification depends on the similarities in the perceptual processes involved.

White spaces, music notation and the facilitation of sight-reading

The use of interword separation has consistently been proven to enhance fluency in reading language scripts. At the same time, neurophysiological evidence has shown that music and language scripts can activate very similar neural circuitry that integratively encodes the symbols that comprise them. By analogy to interword separations in language, we hypothesize that visual separation cues in musical scores should facilitate music reading. We report an experiment in which separating short fragments of musical discourse by vertical white gaps in the notation enhanced sight-reading fluency by significantly reducing the number of mistakes that musicians made when reading the scores without previous preparation. These results are in accordance with a view of music reading as sharing cognitive strategies with language reading; they have significant implications for our understanding of the acquisition of musical literacy and for the design of musical scores, and for our knowledge of the sense-making processes involved in reading in general.

한국과 일본에서의 음악낭독극 연구

한국과 일본에서의 음악낭독극 연구

Learning on the job

The application of new methods and measures in domains with few methodological traditions of that kind often presents researchers with a challenge; they may have to take up the task of developing their understanding of the phenomenon while, at the same time, creating the practices for its study. For us, the method was eye tracking, and the topic, music reading. One key characteristic of music reading is that themusic reader’s gaze moves slightly ahead of the current point of performance. This gap allows the performer to prepare for the upcoming motoric responses. In this paper, we present our 10-year-long path, describing the steps we have taken while studying this “looking ahead” in music reading. We will point out how we have, after both advances as well as setbacks, come to change our views on how best to explain the various components affecting this specific act and how it is best measured. Finally, we discuss some of the lessons we have learned, hoping in this way to provide practical suggestions for others who plan to take up methods from other domains and use them in novel ones.

The Effect of Recorder Learning Based on Bruner’s EIS Theory to Music Reading Ability of Elementary School 4th grade Students.

The Effect of Recorder Learning Based on Bruner’s EIS Theory to Music Reading Ability of Elementary School 4th grade Students.

Memorizing silently to perform tonal and nontonal notated music: A mixed-methods study with pianists.

Musicians use silent music reading for memorizing, and this includes different types of mental imagery and analytical functions. The aim of this mixed-methods study was to address the effects of mu ...

Visual Information Pianists Use for Efficient Score Reading.

When sight-reading music, pianists have to decode a large number of notes and immediately transform them into finger actions. How do they achieve such fast decoding? Pianists may use geometrical features contained in the musical score, such as the distance between notes, to improve their efficiency in reading them. The aim of this study is to investigate the visual information pianists rely on when reading music. We measured the accuracy of the musical score reading of 16 skilled pianists and investigated its relationship with the geometrical features. When a single note was presented, pianists easily read it when it was located within three ledger lines. When two notes with an octave interval were presented, interestingly, their readable range was extended compared to that of the single note. The pianists were also able to recognize the octave interval correctly even if they misread the height (or pitch) of the target notes. These results suggest that the pianists decoded two notes composing an octave interval as a single “two-tone geometric pattern.” Analyzing the characteristics of incorrect responses, we also found that pianists used the geometrical features of the spatial relationship between the note head and the ledger line, and that the cause of the misreading could be categorized into four types: [Type I] Confusion to a neighboring note having the same ledger line configuration; [Type II] Interference from a commonly used height note having the same note name; [Type III] Misunderstanding based on the appearance probability; [Type IV] Combination of the above three. These results all indicate that the pianists' abilities in score reading rely greatly on the correlation between the geometric features and playing action, which the pianists acquired through long-time training.

THE PRODUCTION OF POLYPHONIC MANUSCRIPTS IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY PARIS: NEW EVIDENCE FOR STANDARDISED PROCEDURES

Modern understanding of the production and dissemination of thirteenth-century polyphony is constrained by the paucity of manuscript sources that have been preserved in their entirety; the panorama of sources of medieval polyphony is essentially fragmentary. Some of the surviving fragments, however, were torn from lost books of polyphony that were to some extent comparable to well-known extant codices. The fragment of polyphony preserved in the binding of manuscript 6528 of the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid is illustrative in this respect. This fragment displays a number of codicological and musical features that are strikingly similar to those of the Florence manuscript (F). Both sources share format and mise-en-page, make use of similar styles of script, notation and pen-work decoration, transmit the pieces in the same order, and present virtually identical musical readings. The Madrid fragment thus provides new evidence for a standardised production of polyphonic books in thirteenth-century Paris. The study provides a detailed account of the fragment’s codicological and philological features, and explores the hypothesis that it originated in the same Parisian workshop that produced F.

Visual expertise in a music reading flicker paradigm: Evidence from eye movements

Visual expertise in a music reading flicker paradigm: Evidence from eye movements

Computadores na educação musical

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A kottaolvasás és az orientációs képesség összefüggésének vizsgálata online tesztkörnyezetben

Kutatásunkban a zenei műveltség egyik alapvető komponensét, a kottaolvasás fejlettségét, valamint az orientációs képességgel való kapcsolatát vizsgáltuk online diagnosztikus tesztkörnyezetben 9–12 éves zeneiskolás tanulók bevonásával (n=124). Saját fejlesztésű mérőeszközünkkel a dallamolvasás, a ritmusolvasás, a zenei hallás fejlettségéről, valamint a zenei szimbólumok és fogalmak ismeretéről alkottunk képet. Az orientációs képesség vizsgálatára szintén saját fejlesztésű mérőeszközt alkalmaztunk. A kottaolvasás negyedik és hatodik évfolyam között szignifikánsan fejlődik. A dallamolvasás, a ritmusolvasás, a zenei hallás, valamint a zenei szimbólumok ismerete szignifikánsan összefügg a kottaolvasás fejlettségével. Az orientációs képesség és a kottaolvasás között szintén szignifikáns korreláció mutatható ki. A zeneiskolai tantárgyak közül a zenetörténet és a zenekar érdemjegyei állnak legszorosabb kapcsolatban a kottaolvasás fejlettségével. A szolfézs tantárgy tevékenységei iránti tanulói attitűd vizsgálata alapján pedig az éneklés és a zenehallgatás szignifikáns korrelációja mutatható ki. A szülők iskolai végzettsége és a kottaolvasás fejlettsége között nem találtunk összefüggést. Az elméleti jelentőségén túl kutatásunk hozzájárulhat a kottaolvasást segítő fejlesztő programok kidolgozásához.

A szövegolvasási és kottaolvasási képesség kapcsolata

A tanulmány a szövegolvasási és a kottaolvasási képesség elméleti kereteit, illetve e képességek kapcsolódási pontjait tekinti át. Bemutatja két hazai zenei képességvizsgálatnak a kottaolvasás fejlődésére vonatkozó eredményeit. A szövegolvasás és a kottaolvasás hasonlóságot mutat az elsajátításukhoz szükséges nyelvi és zenei észlelés terén. A működésükhöz szükséges nyelvi és zenei készségek között szintén párhuzam vonható, valamint fejlettségük mértéke is jellemezhető hasonló megközelítéssel. Napjaink egyik legfontosabb pedagógiai kihívása, hogy a tanulókat megfelelő szövegértési képesség birtokosává tegyük. Ebben segítséget nyújthat a zeneoktatás, így például a kottaolvasás elsajátítása is. Ezek a lehetőségek azonban egyelőre kevéssé kihasználtak.

STUDENTS' EXPECTATIONS AND REFLECTIONS ABOUT PIANO COURSES IN FINNISH PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER EDUCATION

In Finland, music subject is part of National Core Curriculum and in the primary school stage (grades 1-6) usually taught by primary school teachers. To assure instruction of music education on a highly professional level, pre-service teachers are taught piano course as part of music didactics.This article reports findings of the pilot study carried out as part of ArcTop research project between University of Lapland and University of Helsinki to develop and improve primary school teacher education in both institutions. Students' expectations and reflections are examined through the lens of self-efficacy theory by Bandura (1977, 1986, 1997).The data were collected using an open-ended questionnaire to find out students experiences in piano playing and music reading as well as their self-reflections about the learning process. The answers (n = 97) were processed statistically and analysed using qualitative content analysis. The results revealed that most of the participants (n = 64) were inexperienced in piano playing. At the same time they were highly motivated and eager to learn and practice. The students also mentioned the lack of elementary music literacy knowledge and the insufficient number of contact lessons which give grounds for making further arrangements in the curriculum.

Eye on Music Reading: A Methodological Review of Studies from 1994 to 2017.

In this review, we focus on the methodological aspects of eye-tracking research in the domain of music, published and/or available between 1994 and 2017, and we identify potentially fruitful next steps to increase coherence and systematicity within this emerging field. We review and discuss choices of musical stimuli, the conditions under which these were performed (i.e. control of performance tempo and music-reading protocols), performer’s level of musical expertise, and handling of performance errors and eye-movement data. We propose that despite a lack of methodological coherence in research to date, careful reflection on earlier methodological choices can help in formulating future research questions and in positioning new work. These steps would represent progress towards a cumulative research tradition, where joint understanding is built by systematic and consistent use of stimuli, research settings and methods of analysis.