Musical Expertise Research Articles

Exploring change in networks supporting the deliberate practice of popular musicians

Popular musicians are embedded in dynamic networks supporting their expertise development across different phases. During these phases, network actors support different aspects of deliberate practice in which a musician needs to engage to become an expert. Research in the domain of music is scarce in terms of investigating the change in the supportive networks of deliberate practice over time. Semi-structured interviews with five expert and five intermediate popular musicians were used to explore changes in networks supporting the deliberate practice during their childhood, apprenticeship, and career phases. Egocentric network analysis revealed that networks supporting the deliberate practice of expert musicians are more dynamic and less stable when considering the different phases than the networks of intermediates. In addition, experts are supported by a larger number of network actors during the developmental phases. In both groups, the number of network actors decreased as the musicians progressed through the phases. This decrease was more precipitous between the childhood and apprenticeship phases. Overall, expertise development as a popular musician depends not only on deliberate practice but also on the diversity and change in an adaptive support network from childhood to adulthood.

THE INTERIOR DESIGN OF A MUSIC SCHOOL FOR PERSONS WITH VISION IMPAIRMENT WITH THE CONCEPT OF LANDMARK PERCEPTION IN SURAKARTA, INDONESIA

The Law of the Republic of Indonesia, article 5, paragraphs 1 and 2 concerning the education system, states that every citizen has the same right to obtain a good quality education. Citizens who have physical, emotional, mental, intellectual, and social disabilities are entitled to special education, including vision impairment. One of those people with vision impairment skills is their music expertise by maximizing touch and the sense of hearing. This work aims to realize the Landmark Perception concept by applying dynamic repetition by visualizing the repetition of several elements, such as line, shapes, textures, colors, dimensional gradations, shape gradations, and circulation patterns. These work results are the interior designs for the main facilities, including vocal classrooms, guitar classrooms, Violin classrooms, drum classrooms, piano classrooms, concert halls, and some supporting facilities such as cafeterias and libraries. The results of this work can be a reference for interior designers in designing interiors in a contemporary style based on the needs of people with vision impairment.

Intonation discrimination for tonal chord sequences in a priming paradigm:Effects of target predictability and musical expertise

ABSTRACT To examine priming effects for tonal chord sequences using behavioral methods, experimenters typically employ a discrimination task that draws the participants’ attention to features of the stimulus other than those being assessed, but that may still be affected by the expectedness of the target event. And yet, despite an extensive body of evidence demonstrating tonal priming effects using several discrimination tasks, the relationships between task difficulty, musical expertise, and the expectedness of the target event are not well understood. Thus, this study predicts intonation discrimination performance for tonal chord sequences using measures related to the predictability of the terminal, target chord and the musical sophistication of the participant sample. One hundred participants (50 musicians) were presented with tonal chord sequences and asked to respond to a one-alternative forced choice (1AFC) intonation discrimination task, where out-of-tune targets were mistuned in a range from 1–100 cents sharp using a parametric adaptive staircasing procedure. Chord predictability was estimated using a probabilistic finite-context model, and musical sophistication was measured using the Goldsmith Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI). As expected, discrimination thresholds varied substantially across the participant sample and were strongly negatively correlated with the Gold-MSI. What is more, moderation analyses revealed a significant interaction between intonation size and predictability, suggesting participants conflate chord intonation with unexpectedness when tuning differences are small.

Assessing Music Expertise

We introduce the Berlin Gehoerbildung Scale (BGS), a multidimensional assessment of music expertise in amateur musicians and music professionals. The BGS is informed by music theory and uses a variety of testing methods in the ear-training tradition, with items covering four different dimensions of music expertise: (1) intervals and scales, (2) dictation, (3) chords and cadences, and (4) complex listening. We validated the test in a sample of amateur musicians, aspiring professional musicians, and students attending a highly competitive music conservatory (n = 59). Using structural equation modeling, we compared two factor models: a unidimensional model postulating a single factor of music expertise; and a hierarchical model, according to which four first-order subscale factors load on a second-order factor of general music expertise. The hierarchical model showed better fit to the data than the unidimensional model, indicating that the four subscales capture reliable variance above and beyond the general factor of music expertise. There were reliable group differences on both the second-order general factor and the four subscales, with music students outperforming aspiring professionals and amateur musicians. We conclude that the BGS is an adequate measurement instrument for assessing individual differences in music expertise, especially at high levels of expertise.

A review of the effect of musical training on neural and perceptual coding of speech

Several studies have reported enhanced neural coding of stimulus periodicity (frequency following response; FFR) and/or shorter neural response latencies to speech sounds in musicians than in non-musicians. Such enhanced early encoding may underlie the reported musician advantage for perceiving speech in noise. If such perceptual benefits are confirmed, it is possible that musical training may be an effective intervention for offsetting the decline of this important skill with age. This presentation will review evidence for and against the musician advantage in the neural coding and perception of speech, and will highlight several reasons to be cautious of the generalizability of the musician advantage in the published literature, including (1) small sample sizes, (2) varying definitions of musician and non-musician, (3) dichotomous between-group comparisons (e.g., comparing professional musicians to non-musicians), (4) possible speech-corpus specific effects, and (5) the multitude of degrees of freedom in FFR analyses. Efforts towards large-sample replications that use open science techniques, including preregistered hypotheses, methods and analyses, as well as open source data, should bring clarity to the association between musical expertise and the neural coding and perception of speech in noise. [Work supported by NIH under Grant R01 DC005216 and NSF-BCS under Grant 1840818.]

The role of E. Mravinsky in the triumph of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5

The author reconsiders the interpretation of the concept of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 based on the fact that the composition was created during Stalin’s Great Terror of the 1930s and after a harsh criticism of his compositions by the Communist Party and the USSR government in the early 1930s. During the creation of the Symphony No 5, the Soviet music experts defined its concept as a celebration of a “happy” life of Soviet people, However, in the author’s opinion, the symphony has another idea. The researcher notes that the triumph of the Symphony No 5 in the global culture had happened only owing to the director’s interpretation by Yevgeny Mravinsky during the premiere at Leningrad Philharmonic Hall on November 21, 1937, after which the Symphony was performed all over the world and became the gold standard of the Soviet music. Probably, Shostakovich intended to create an optimistic finale for the Symphony. But there are many examples when the composer’s goal doesn’t correspond with the final result. The author provides the conclusion that almost all music experts, who analyze this symphony, use abstract phrases: contrast themes, lyrical image, enemy, etc. But the only proven fact is that a “mechanistic” march is a heavy and ponderous advance of the power of a tyrant eliminating everything he wants based on the principle “who is not with us is against us”. This idea pierces into the Forth and later the Seventh Symphonies by Shostakovich. Today, the Symphony is still a music masterpiece and a part of the global music heritage, but the new socio-cultural interpretations of modern directors each time reveal the new faces of this composition.  

The Mediating Effects of Self-Encourage in the Relationships between Shame and Professional Self-Efficacy of Music Therapy Experts and Students

The Mediating Effects of Self-Encourage in the Relationships between Shame and Professional Self-Efficacy of Music Therapy Experts and Students

Attention in Skilled Behavior: an Argument for Pluralism

Peak human performance—whether of Olympic athletes, Nobel prize winners, or you cooking the best dish you’ve ever made—depends on skill. Skill is at the heart of what it means to excel. Yet, the fixity of skilled behavior can sometimes make it seem a lower-level activity, more akin to the movements of an invertebrate or a machine. Peak performance in elite athletes is often described, for example, as “automatic” by those athletes: “The most frequent response from participants (eight athletes and one coach) when describing the execution of a peak performance was the automatic execution of performance” (Anderson et al. 2014). While the automaticity of skilled behavior is widely acknowledged, some worry that too much automaticity in skill would challenge its ability to exhibit human excellence. And so two camps have developed: those who focus on the automaticity of skilled behavior, the “habitualists,” and those who focus on the higher-level cognition behind peak performance, the “intellectualists.” We take a different tack. We argue that skilled behavior weaves together automaticity and higher-level cognition, which we call “pluralism.” That is, we argue that automaticity and higher-level cognition are both normal features of skilled behavior that benefit skilled behavior. This view is hinted at in other quotes about automaticity in skill—while expert gamers describe themselves as “playing with” automaticity (Taylor and Elam 2018), expert musicians are said to balance automaticity with creativity through performance cues: “Performance cues allow the musician to attend to some aspects of the performance while allowing others to be executed automatically” (Chaffin and Logan 2006). We describe in this paper three ways that higher-level cognition and automaticity are woven together. The first two, level pluralism and synchronic pluralism, are described in other papers, albeit under different cover. We take our contribution to be both distinguishing the three forms and contributing the third, diachronic pluralism. In fact, we find that diachronic pluralism presents the strongest case against habitualism and intellectualism, especially when considered through the example of strategic automaticity. In each case of pluralism, we use research on the presence or absence of attention (e.g., in mind wandering) to explore the presence or absence of higher-level cognition in skilled behavior.

The Development of Music Expertise: Applications of the Theories of Deliberate Practice and Deliberate Play

Musicians and athletes share many common traits. Both groups learn a combination of physical and mental skills to attain expert status. In this literature review, I provide a short history of research on expertise development and two models: Bloom’s model of expertise development and the Developmental Model of Sport Participation. The Bloom model categorizes learning activities between combinations of free play and deliberate practice throughout the three stages of development. However, Developmental Model of Sport Participation includes a new category, deliberate play, which combines aspects of play and deliberate practice. Research indicating music learning through deliberate practice, deliberate play, and music play is presented. If students are able to learn through the more enjoyable deliberate play and music play, teachers should consider including these activities to better match developmental stages and potentially improve retention. Implications for future research and music teachers are discussed.

DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN'S BUDDHIST SONGS AS LEARNING MEDIA IN BUDDHIST RELIGIOUS EDUCATION SUBJECTS IN GRADE V

This study aims to make songs and find out the process of making children's Buddhist songs as a medium of learning in the subject of Buddhist Education in the fifth grade. The research conducted is a research and development using the ADDIE with details of the process: 1) analysis includes: preliminary studies, needs analysis, material analysis; 2) design includes: making song lyrics and making an initial cover design of the album cover; 3) development including making music, making album cover designs and improving products based on advice from advisers and experts. The percentage of material experts is 89.05% which shows that the material contained in the product is very feasible to be applied to students. The percentage by music experts is 76.5% which means that the product developed is suitable to be a learning medium); 4) implementation includes limited product trials to teachers and students. The results of trials from teachers showed a percentage of 86.87% with very decent criteria and the results of trials from students showed a percentage of 90% with very decent criteria; and 5) evaluation includes evaluation of the product after the trial.

Eros, Beauty, and Phon-Aesthetic Judgements of Language Sound. We Like It Flat and Fast, but Not Melodious. Comparing Phonetic and Acoustic Features of 16 European Languages.

This article concerns sound aesthetic preferences for European foreign languages. We investigated the phonetic-acoustic dimension of the linguistic aesthetic pleasure to describe the “music” found in European languages. The Romance languages, French, Italian, and Spanish, take a lead when people talk about melodious language – the music-like effects in the language (a.k.a., phonetic chill). On the other end of the melodiousness spectrum are German and Arabic that are often considered sounding harsh and un-attractive. Despite the public interest, limited research has been conducted on the topic of phonaesthetics, i.e., the subfield of phonetics that is concerned with the aesthetic properties of speech sounds (Crystal, 2008). Our goal is to fill the existing research gap by identifying the acoustic features that drive the auditory perception of language sound beauty. What is so music-like in the language that makes people say “it is music in my ears”? We had 45 central European participants listening to 16 auditorily presented European languages and rating each language in terms of 22 binary characteristics (e.g., beautiful – ugly and funny – boring) plus indicating their language familiarities, L2 backgrounds, speaker voice liking, demographics, and musicality levels. Findings revealed that all factors in complex interplay explain a certain percentage of variance: familiarity and expertise in foreign languages, speaker voice characteristics, phonetic complexity, musical acoustic properties, and finally musical expertise of the listener. The most important discovery was the trade-off between speech tempo and so-called linguistic melody (pitch variance): the faster the language, the flatter/more atonal it is in terms of the pitch (speech melody), making it highly appealing acoustically (sounding beautiful and sexy), but not so melodious in a “musical” sense.

Audiovisual structural connectivity in musicians and non-musicians: a cortical thickness and diffusion tensor imaging study

Our sensory systems provide complementary information about the multimodal objects and events that are the target of perception in everyday life. Professional musicians’ specialization in the auditory domain is reflected in the morphology of their brains, which has distinctive characteristics, particularly in areas related to auditory and audio-motor activity. Here, we combined diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) with a behavioral measure of visually induced gain in pitch discrimination, and we used measures of cortical thickness (CT) correlations to assess how auditory specialization and musical expertise are reflected in the structural architecture of white and grey matter relevant to audiovisual processing. Across all participants (n = 45), we found a correlation (p < 0.001) between reliance on visual cues in pitch discrimination and the fractional anisotropy (FA) in the left inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), a structure connecting visual and auditory brain areas. Group analyses also revealed greater cortical thickness correlation between visual and auditory areas in non-musicians (n = 28) compared to musicians (n = 17), possibly reflecting musicians’ auditory specialization (FDR < 10%). Our results corroborate and expand current knowledge of functional specialization with a specific focus on audition, and highlight the fact that perception is essentially multimodal while uni-sensory processing is a specialized task.

Articulatory motor planning and timbral idiosyncrasies as underlying mechanisms of instrument-specific absolute pitch in expert musicians.

The study of musical expertise illustrates how intense training in a specialized domain may instigate development of implicit skills. While absolute pitch, or the ability to identify musical pitches without external reference, is rare even in professional musicians and is understood to have a genetic component, anecdotal evidence and pilot data suggest that some musicians without traditional absolute pitch are nonetheless better able to name notes played on their musical instrument of expertise than notes played on less familiar instruments. We have previously termed this particular gain in absolute pitch identification ability “instrument-specific absolute pitch” (ISAP) and have proposed that this skill is related to learned instrument type-specific timbral and intonational idiosyncrasies and articulatory motor planning activated by the timbre of the instrument. In this Registered Report Protocol, we describe two experiments designed to investigate ISAP in professional oboists. Experiment 1 tests for ISAP ability by comparing oboists’ pitch identification accuracies for notes played on the oboe and on the piano. A subset of the participants from Experiment 1 who demonstrate this ability will be recruited for Experiment 2; the purpose of Experiment 2 is to test hypotheses concerning a mechanistic explanation for ISAP. The outcome of these experiments may provide support for the theory that some individuals have ISAP and that the underlying mechanisms of this ability may rely on the perception of subtle timbral/intonational idiosyncrasies and on articulatory motor planning developed through intensive long-term training. In general, this work will contribute to the understanding of specialized expertise, specifically of implicit abilities and biases that are not addressed directly in training, but that may yet develop through practice of a related skill set.

What makes a child musical? conceptions of musical ability in childhood

ABSTRACT Tests of musical ability in children have relied on diverse conceptions of what musical abilities are. Recent investigations suggest that such conceptions can be seen as socially constructed and differ between cultures, sub-groups, and individuals. Based on a previous study on conceptions of adult musical ability, we designed a questionnaire targeting musical behaviours of 3–6-year-old children. 922 German adults who regularly spend time with children assessed how often a musical child would show these behaviours. Principal component analysis revealed four components of childhood musical ability: musical communication, enthusiasm and motivation, analytical understanding of music, and musical abilities in a narrow sense. The importance assigned to the components differed depending on musical expertise: Participants with higher expertise rated analytical music skills as significantly less important. Results suggest that ecologically valid tests of musical ability in childhood should cover a wide range of skills and observable behaviours.

Observing Plasticity of the Auditory System: Volumetric Decreases Along with Increased Functional Connectivity in Aspiring Professional Musicians.

Playing music relies on several sensory systems and the motor system, and poses strong demands on control processes, hence, offering an excellent model to study how experience can mold brain structure and function. Although most studies on neural correlates of music expertise rely on cross-sectional comparisons, here we compared within-person changes over time in aspiring professionals intensely preparing for an entrance exam at a University of the Arts to skilled amateur musicians not preparing for a music exam. In the group of aspiring professionals, we observed gray-matter volume decrements in left planum polare, posterior insula, and left inferior frontal orbital gyrus over a period of about 6 months that were absent among the amateur musicians. At the same time, the left planum polare, the largest cluster of structural change, showed increasing functional connectivity with left and right auditory cortex, left precentral gyrus, left supplementary motor cortex, left and right postcentral gyrus, and left cingulate cortex, all regions previously identified to relate to music expertise. In line with the expansion–renormalization pattern of brain plasticity (Wenger et al., 2017a. Expansion and renormalization of human brain structure during skill acquisition. Trends Cogn Sci. 21:930–939.), the aspiring professionals might have been in the selection and refinement period of plastic change.

Affective and Cognitive Responses to Musical Performances of Early 20th Century Classical Solo Piano Compositions

Effective audience engagement with musical performance involves social, cognitive and affective elements. We investigate the influence of observers’ musical expertise and instrumental motor expertise on their affective and cognitive responses to complex and unfamiliar classical piano performances of works by Scriabin and Hanson presented in audio and audio-visual formats. Observers gave their felt affect (arousal and valence) and their action understanding responses continuously while observing the performances. Liking and familiarity were rated after each excerpt. As hypothesized: visual information enhanced observers’ action understanding and liking ratings; observers with music training rated their action understanding, liking and familiarity higher than did nonmusicians; observers’ felt affect did not vary according to their musical or motor expertise. Contrary to our hypotheses: visual information had only a slight effect on observers’ arousal felt affect responses and none on valence; musicians’ specific instrumental motor expertise did not influence action understanding responses. We also observed a significant negative relationship between action understanding and felt affect responses. Ideas of empathy in musical interactions motivated the research; the empathy framework in relation to musical performance is discussed. Nonmusician audiences might be sensitized to challenging musical performances through multimodal strategies to build the performer-observer connection and increase understanding of performance.

The Music Instruction of the Special Program in the Arts: Grade 9 students of DepEd Region X, Mindanao Philippines

The study utilized descriptive design which endeavors to examine and evaluate the music instruction in the Special Program in the Arts in selected SPA schools in Region X. The participants of study were all the Grade 9 SPA Music students in the selected SPA schools in Region X, during the school year 2019-2020. The researcher used two (2) sets of assessment tools to evaluate knowledge on music theory and singing ability of students. The first set of tool is a written examination and the second set is a Scoring Rubrics to rate (Dep Ed Order No 73, s. 2012) the singing ability of the students. Three music experts evaluated the students’ singing ability using rubrics. The students were rated according to given criteria such as melody, rhythm, timbre, and dynamics. Students were also rated for musicianship and stage presence. Most of the student-respondents mastered the Intensity level of sound/music and they also Mastered the minor/major scale pattern. A clear evident that after seventeen years of implementation of SPA Music Program, teachers and administrator enhance their teaching-learning styles to suit the needs of the students. The students’ performance in music theory is approaching proficient indicates that the SPA Music Program is well-organized and still progressing. This dissertation sheds light on the Department of Education to strengthen its instructions, guidelines, and policies on the Special Program in the Arts.

Tapping to hip-hop: Effects of cognitive load, arousal, and musical meter on time experiences

Experiences of time vary intra- and interindividually, depending on factors such as attentional resource allocation and arousal. Music as a temporal art that is structured by multiple temporal layers is ideal for investigating human time experiences. The current study used examples of hip-hop music that varied in arousal but were constant in tempo. Participants judged the passage of time to be quicker when cognitive load was high in a dual-task condition, and perceived duration to be shorter when performing a concurrent motor task (tapping along with the music). Perceived musical arousal did not affect subjective time. Attending to a higher metrical level by tapping with half notes resulted in shorter duration estimates and a quicker passage of time, compared to tapping with eighth notes of the same music. Results were not influenced by spontaneous motor tempo, musical expertise, preference or familiarity with the music. Taken together, these findings indicate consistent effects of cognitive load and attention to meter on time experiences.

Musical expertise and personality – differences related to occupational choice and instrument categories

Several studies have documented personality differences between musicians and non-musicians, and there have also been reports of personality differences between musicians playing different instruments. However, the samples have been small and findings are often inconsistent between studies. Here, we investigated Big Five personality differences between professional musicians, amateur musicians, and non-musicians in more than 7000 participants, as well as differences related to instrument categories. We had two specific hypotheses, i.e. that musicians would have higher openness than non-musicians, and that singers would be more extraverted than instrumentalists. Indeed, we found large group differences in openness, with professionals scoring higher than amateurs, who scored higher than non-musicians. Furthermore, singers were, as predicted, higher on extraversion than instrumentalists among both professionals and amateurs. We also found that professionals had higher neuroticism, lower agreeableness, and lower conscientiousness than amateurs. For professionals and amateurs, there were personality differences between instruments, but the patterns were inconsistent. This suggests that the differences were not primarily related to instrument choice per se, but instead possibly moderated by other factors such as musical genre and the social context of music making in each group.

Musical Expertise Shapes Functional and Structural Brain Networks Independent of Absolute Pitch Ability.

Professional musicians are a popular model for investigating experience-dependent plasticity in human large-scale brain networks. A minority of musicians possess absolute pitch, the ability to name a tone without reference. The study of absolute pitch musicians provides insights into how a very specific talent is reflected in brain networks. Previous studies of the effects of musicianship and absolute pitch on large-scale brain networks have yielded highly heterogeneous findings regarding the localization and direction of the effects. This heterogeneity was likely influenced by small samples and vastly different methodological approaches. Here, we conducted a comprehensive multimodal assessment of effects of musicianship and absolute pitch on intrinsic functional and structural connectivity using a variety of commonly used and state-of-the-art multivariate methods in the largest sample to date (n = 153 female and male human participants; 52 absolute pitch musicians, 51 non-absolute pitch musicians, and 50 non-musicians). Our results show robust effects of musicianship in interhemispheric and intrahemispheric connectivity in both structural and functional networks. Crucially, most of the effects were replicable in both musicians with and without absolute pitch compared with non-musicians. However, we did not find evidence for an effect of absolute pitch on intrinsic functional or structural connectivity in our data: The two musician groups showed strikingly similar networks across all analyses. Our results suggest that long-term musical training is associated with robust changes in large-scale brain networks. The effects of absolute pitch on neural networks might be subtle, requiring very large samples or task-based experiments to be detected.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT A question that has fascinated neuroscientists, psychologists, and musicologists for a long time is how musicianship and absolute pitch, the rare talent to name a tone without reference, are reflected in large-scale networks of the human brain. Much is still unknown as previous studies have reported widely inconsistent results based on small samples. Here, we investigate the largest sample of musicians and non-musicians to date (n = 153) using a multitude of established and novel analysis methods. Results provide evidence for robust effects of musicianship on functional and structural networks that were replicable in two separate groups of musicians and independent of absolute pitch ability.