Music Fundamentals Research Articles

The Design and Implementation of the Curriculum for the Collegiate Group Piano Course at the Comprehensive Universities in China

The music education in China is unevenly distributed. Well known music conservatories in cosmopolitan cities offers high quality training both in theory and performance. On the other hand, general comprehensive universities, especially in the rural areas have limited resources and qualified teachers, and often require students a minimum of music training prior to college admission. Piano is the most versatile instrument to train music fundamentals, consequently, piano become mandatory course for a music degree in a comprehensive university. Many music departments offer group piano course to accommodate as many students. This essay will evaluate the course design of the collegiate group piano in China, and offer suggestions for implementation.

Interdisciplinary Assignments in the Music Fundamentals Classroom

Interdisciplinary Assignments in the Music Fundamentals Classroom

No Fear, Just Fun!: Meaningful, Memorable Musicking in Secondary General Music

Secondary general music is hard to define. For some, this denotes an accelerated version of elementary general music or a decelerated version of a college music appreciation course. Others view this as any nontraditional ensemble geared for middle or high school students, such as guitar, keyboard, or steel pans. Still, for others, secondary general music is not so much a stand-alone course as it is any time devoted to teaching fundamental skills to students in band, orchestra, and choir so they may more successfully perform the repertoire. The authors acknowledge each of the above-listed views as valid; thus, rather than debate what is secondary general music, we will highlight each viewpoint in a three-part series. The first of this series will focus on a class structure where students experience various activities all while learning music fundamentals, studying music history, and developing music literacy skills.

American preservice elementary teachers’ self-reported learning outcomes from participating in Korean percussion lessons in a music-methods course

The purpose of this study was to examine American preservice classroom teachers’ self-reported learning outcomes after partaking in a weekly Korean percussion ensemble in an elementary music-methods course. The preservice classroom teachers rehearsed a Korean percussion ensemble piece ( Samulnori) as their course routine for half of the semester. Participants’ open-ended essays and semi-structured interviews were analyzed to determine their learning outcomes. Based on Abril’s (2006) three world music learning outcome categories (musical, cultural, and other) as initial codes, the emergent coding process was adopted. Through the data analysis, four themes emerged that illustrated preservice classroom teachers’ learning outcomes: (a) Cultural Awareness: Difference, (b) Music Fundamentals: Overlap with Traditional Course Content, (c) Bonding Experience: Community, and (d) Teacher Education: A Well-Rounded Teacher. Based on the results, possible implications for teaching culturally diverse musics to preservice classroom teachers in music-methods courses were discussed.

Anne Young’s Introduction to Music (1803): Pedagogical, Speculative, and Ludic Music Theory

In 1801, the Scottish music theorist Anne Young (1756-1827) created an elaborate board game set designed to teach musical fundamentals. This video offers some thoughts on the creation and reception of her works, contextualizing their creation and reception within the history of education in late eighteenth century Britain.

Anne Young’s Musical Games (1801): Music Theory, Gender, and Game Design

In 1801, the Scottish music theorist Anne Young (1756-1827) created an elaborate board game set designed to teach musical fundamentals. This video offers some thoughts on the creation and reception of her works, contextualizing their creation and reception within the history of education in late eighteenth century Britain.

Acoustic resonance at the dawn of life: musical fundamentals of the psychoanalytic relationship.

This paper uses a case vignette to show how musical elements of speech are a crucial source of information regarding the patient's emotional states and associated memory systems that are activated at a given moment in the analytic field. There are specific psychoacoustic markers associated with different memory systems which indicate whether a patient is immersed in a state of creative intersubjective relatedness related to autobiographical memory, or has been triggered into a traumatic memory system. When a patient feels immersed in an atmosphere of intersubjective mutuality, dialogue features a rhythmical and tuneful form of speech featuring improvized reciprocal imitation, theme and variation. When the patient is catapulted into a traumatic memory system, speech becomes monotone and disjointed. Awareness of such acoustic features of the traumatic memory system helps to alert the analyst that such a shift has taken place informing appropriate responses and interventions. Communicative musicality (Malloch & Trevarthen 2009) originates in the earliest non-verbal vocal communication between infant and care-giver, states of primary intersubjectivity. Such musicality continues to be the primary vehicle for transmitting emotional meaning and for integrating right and left hemispheres. This enables communication that expresses emotional significance, personal value as well as conceptual reasoning.

Navigating and developing acoustics research and curriculum within the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology

Acoustics at the Georgia Institute of Technology has primarily been based within mechanical engineering with various other faculty spread throughout the university. Within the last decade, the School of Music has developed an internationally recognized graduate degree program and research center in music technology. Since winning the Student Paper Award, my professional career has started in a unique faculty position within the School of Music at Georgia Tech, where my responsibilities are split between being an ensemble/choral conductor and an active member of the Center for Music Technology. One of the recent challenges is the development of an innovative undergraduate curriculum model that fuses music fundamentals, music technology, general musicianship, and engineering/computer science. At the graduate level, new coursework I have created has included a musical acoustics course for music technologists and a historical acoustics and modeling course. Additionally, developing a research track of acoustics within the confines of music technology has allowed my research to morph into musically related areas that my graduate research did not allow. Areas of current research include historical architectural acoustics, active temperament, synthesis, and noise control.

Review of Joe Mulholland and Tom Hojnacki, The Berklee Book of Jazz Harmony (Berklee Press, 2013) and Dariusz Terefenko, Jazz Theory: From Basic to Advanced Study (Routledge, 2014)

[1] Jazz theory texts have certainly come a long way since the 1970s and 1980s, when generalities and street talk often took precedence over serious academic rigor. The textbooks under review here are both robust volumes with much to offer the educated musician. Joe Mulholland and Tom Hojnacki primarily address jazz harmony-though they cannot avoid touching upon other fronts-in a way that is at once both conservative and forward-looking. They are the chairs of the Harmony Department at the Berklee College of Music, and their textbook, The Berklee Book of Jazz Harmony, presents a system that has been taught there since the 1960s.(1) The scope of Dariusz Terefenko's Jazz Theory: From Basic to Advanced Study is considerably broader. It addresses topics that do not always appear in jazz theory texts, such as jazz rhythm, music fundamentals (a very thorough treatment), and even post-tonal jazz with a primer on pc-set theory.[2] Both books include digital audio resources. Terefenko provides a play-along DVD and a companion website.(2) The website is open to everyone, requiring no password and stipulating no window of time for user access. It features ear-training exercises, recordings of examples, appendices, and an extensive workbook of written exercises. Mulholland and Hojnacki provide a CD with recordings of original compositions that serve as examples in the text. The Berklee Book would benefit from including some opportunities for readers' self-assessment. However, for the present edition such objectives are somewhat beyond (or peripheral to) the intent of the book, which is simply to introduce Berklee's harmonic system to new readers.[3] Despite their differences, these books do have enough in common to invite comparison. Consider the following passages, excerpted from relatively early chapters in each, where the authors differentiate jazz from other tonal musics. Mulholland and Hojnacki do this at the very outset:One thing that distinguishes mainstream jazz harmony from other tonal styles is the tremendous amount of harmonic color that arises due to the pervasive use of tertian extensions of the basic chord types. Jazz musicians refer to these notes as tensions.Jazz harmony is also characterized by a strong progressive drive or forward propulsion analogous to the rhythmic character of the music. (1)While the authors dedicate most of their energy to explaining jazz's "tremendous amount of harmonic color," they pay more than lip service to the "forward propulsion analogous to the rhythmic character of the music." In several cases, they even go so far as to consider how that propulsion works within jazz's rhythmic framework (a topic addressed in more detail below).[4] Terefenko makes a comparable statement that summarizes an introduction to tonic, pre-dominant, and dominant functions:As will be demonstrated time and time again, functional tonality in jazz has different properties than that of common-practice classical music. These properties are represented by a unique set of rules dictating the unfolding of harmonic function, voice-leading conventions, and the overall behavior of chord tones and chordal extensions. (26)Shortly thereafter, he makes the following observation about the relationship between harmony and rhythm, which further aligns his theory of jazz with that of Berklee's method:In this early exposition of harmonic progressions, we cannot ignore other important factors that contribute to the concept of tonality, such as metric placements and duration of chords. (31-32)[5] Claims that jazz is a different kind of tonal music are hardly profound. However, they are significant simply because jazz theory texts do not normally make such observations. These authors use similar differentiations to situate their discourses within spaces that allow critical inquiry from academically informed readers. In doing so, they establish points of departure for presenting innovative ideas on such topics as harmony and form. …

Functional organization for musical consonance and tonal pitch hierarchy in human auditory cortex

Pitch relationships in music are characterized by their degree of consonance, a hierarchical perceptual quality that distinguishes how pleasant musical chords/intervals sound to the ear. The origins of consonance have been debated since the ancient Greeks. To elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these musical fundamentals, we recorded neuroelectric brain activity while participants listened passively to various chromatic musical intervals (simultaneously sounding pitches) varying in their perceptual pleasantness (i.e., consonance/dissonance). Dichotic presentation eliminated acoustic and peripheral contributions that often confound explanations of consonance. We found that neural representations for pitch in early human auditory cortex code perceptual features of musical consonance and follow a hierarchical organization according to music-theoretic principles. These neural correlates emerge pre-attentively within ~150ms after the onset of pitch, are segregated topographically in superior temporal gyrus with a rightward hemispheric bias, and closely mirror listeners' behavioral valence preferences for the chromatic tone combinations inherent to music. A perceptual-based organization implies that parallel to the phonetic code for speech, elements of music are mapped within early cerebral structures according to higher-order, perceptual principles and the rules of Western harmony rather than simple acoustic attributes.

The Complete Musician: An Integrated Approach to Tonal Theory, Analysis, and Listening. By Steven G. Laitz

The Complete Musician is a comprehensive theoretical training text for undergraduates. The main volume, containing the principal text and exercises, with a disc of recorded examples, is accompanied by a workbook of supplementary exercises with its own CD. The main volume has four appendices: these either offer further material on basic subjects for less experienced students or they extend various sections of the text, with such topics as intervals, sequences, and invertible counterpoint. Appendix 3, subtitled ‘The Motive’ (pp. 768–803), provides a useful analogue to Part 7, on ternary, rondo, and sonata forms. The book was first published in 2004, a second edition appearing in 2008. Under present review is the third edition. This includes a number of revisions listed in the Preface (pp. xv–xvii) such as: a reduced number of chapters; more material on musical fundamentals; solutions to certain exercises in Appendix 6; many new examples from the repertory, and a new companion website (www.oup.com/us/laitz).

Rehearsal Characteristics of “Superior” Band Directors

The purpose of this study was to investigate the rehearsal characteristics of “superior” middle and high school band directors. A total of 131 respondents from Florida, Kentucky, and North Carolina who received a “superior” rating for 4 out of the past 5 years, completed an open-ended essay question online asking them to describe which aspects and/or elements they considered to be the most important during their music rehearsal. Using a previously established descriptive approach consisting of qualitative coding techniques, responses were analyzed and placed into a taxonomic structure according to similar themes that emerged from the data. Results from the 792 comments listed indicate that both middle and high school directors spend the most time working on “Music Fundamentals,” with “Tone Quality/Production” listed as the most frequent response for both groups. Additionally, directors placed importance on “Conductor/Teacher Behaviors,” “Teaching Techniques,” “Classroom Environment/Behavior,” “Use of Specific Warm-ups to Teach,” “Selecting Literature,” and “Good Relations with Students.”

Creative Thinking in Music

Creativity can be experienced in many roles of musicianship: performing, improvising, and composing. Yet, activities that encourage creative thought in our music classrooms can be a challenge to implement. A strong music education curriculum for middle school general music is important; as this may be the last time we reach students who do not participate in band, orchestra, or choir. This article provides information on the development of a middle school general music curriculum model where creative thinking in music through music composition activities is the focus of instruction. Students with limited experience in music were given opportunities to explore and express musical ideas in their compositions. Music fundamentals were introduced following the composition experience. The composition experiences provided fertile ground for creative thinking in music, and students in the program were highly engaged in the music-learning process. The Webster Model of Creative Thinking in Music is examined to discover the keys to success in this model.

John Adams’s Nixon in China: Musical Analysis, Historical and Political Perspectives by Timothy A. Johnson (review)

John Adams's in Musical Analysis, Historical and Political Perspectives. By Timothy A. Johnson. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. [xv, 278 p. ISBN 9781409426820. $99.95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.Richard Nixon's diplomatic mission the People's Republic of China in 1972 was one of the most important political events of the twentieth century, as it marked the first time a U.S. president had visited the emerging superpower since its transformation into a Communist nation. The meetings held between and his counterpart Mao Zedong were an important part of the former's strategy of detente with the Communist world. John Adams's opera in China-premiered fifteen years later in 1987-was one of the most important musical events of the twentieth century, as it was the composer's first foray in the world of opera and helped secure his place as one of the preeminent composers in the United States.For scholars of diplomacy and political science who wish examine Nixon's visit, the amount of secondary source material is almost embarrassing in its magnitude. The landscape is altogether different for those who wish study Adams's opera. While there are a number of articles and essays about it, it had not been the subject of extensive, monograph-length discussion. Timothy Johnson's new book, John Adams's Nixon in China: Musical Analysis, Historical and Political Perspectives, aims correct that deficiency. Johnson had focused his previous work on bridging the gap between and other disciplines. His first two books-Foundations of Diatonic Theory: A Mathematically Based Approach Music Fundamentals (Emeryville, CA: Key College Publishing, 2003) and Baseball and the Music of Charles Ives: A Proving Ground (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2004)-paired theory with mathematics and baseball history. This new book returns Johnson an area he began studying more than twenty years ago, when he wrote the first published dissertation on the of John Adams (Harmony in the Music of John Adams: From Phrygian Gates in China, Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1991).In the present book, Johnson sets out to correlate historical events with those depicted onstage and highlight the actions, emotions, feelings, and motivations depicted in the opera through music (p. 5). By and large he succeeds. In comparing historical events the music, Johnson utilizes two primary methods of musical analysis that focus on metrical dissonance and neo-Riemannian harmonic transformations. When using the former, he borrows from Harald Krebs's notational system. The choice analyze Adams's as containing metrical dissonance is a wise one given that the composer consistently builds offsetting layers of time into his music. The predilection for this stylistic feature is as evident in his 2005 opera Doctor Atomic as it is in in China.The latter method of analysis provides a method through which Adams's harmonic language can examined both accurately and rewardingly. Adams has a decidedly twentieth-century bent his harmonic language, yet it defies serial analysis. Rather, he works largely in triads that shiftslowly over time create the foundational building blocks upon which his formal structures rest. The neo-Riemannian analysis is crafted precisely work with these triads, and Johnson does an excellent job of using the tools of the still-new and exciting system. In examining Richard Nixon's News aria in act 1, scene 1, for instance, Johnson points out the shifts from A-flat major F minor, back the original tonality and then C minor (p. 93). The neo- Riemannian system analyzes these changes as simple transformations from one chord the next based on common tones. Johnson then combines these transformations with the significance he has attached each tonality crafta broader semiotic picture of the aria.What makes this approach so successful is the fact that the analysis is never opaque. …

Music Fundamentals

[1] Late one Friday afternoon, as I watched members of my ear-training class write the results of a rhythmic dictation on the board, I realized that one student was staring at the permanent staff lines, as though transfixed. As I approached him, he looked at me and earnestly asked, "Professor, what are we doing here?"[2] This anecdote provides just one example of the kind of teaching situation about which one does not learn a great deal in graduate school. Socioeconomic circumstances often find the least experienced teachers in the most complex classroom environments. Because disability inextricably threads its way through the intricate social fabric of gender, class, and race, it's not surprising that many-though certainly not all-students with disabilities choose accessible, affordable, urban colleges. Hunter College, part of the CUNY system, is one such institution. At least partially because of its proximity to bus and subway transportation, low tuition, and flexible class schedule, disabled students have become a fixture of classes at Hunter. In addition, Hunter is on a direct subway line from Roosevelt Island, where many disabled New Yorkers have found community and accessible apartments for decades (Hughes 2007). Thus, while many distinguished and experienced faculty teach at Hunter and the CUNY colleges, a significant number of new adjunct professors and graduate student fellows take charge of classes, particularly those at the introductory level.[3] Because I have chosen to present this paper as a case study, the collective "identity" of the institution is essential to my methodology. This paper finds its basis not in traditional research, but rather in the details of my experience teaching one multiply-disabled student. This pupil took three music classes with me when I was a graduate teaching fellow at Hunter College between 2003 and 2006.[4] I met Daniel Trush when he began attending Hunter as a non-matriculated student. Having learned some basic piano skills with his music therapist as part of his physical and cognitive rehabilitation, Daniel enrolled in my Music Fundamentals class. He subsequently took Ear Training I and a general voice performance class with me, and also took an elementary piano class and Music Appreciation with other instructors. Each of these courses presented different challenges for Daniel, his note-taker, his family-who attended each class with him-and for me. Although I had taught students with visual impairments and other physical disabilities in previous classes at Hunter, I had never yet encountered a student with a significant cognitive disadvantage. Daniel's presence in my classes inspired me to strive for greater clarity in my own teaching, and provided the opportunity for me to reevaluate my methods of assessment and mentoring.[5] As a rule, I ask students to fill out a questionnaire on the first day of class with basic information about their lives as students, but I also ask them to detail their musical lives and add some significant details about themselves that they think I ought to know. Being the academic packrat that I am, I managed to unearth Daniel's questionnaire from the first day of Music Fundamentals. He writes:I have a great interest in music and plan to take a number of music classes. I had a brain aneurism when I was 12 and was in a coma for many days. I never lost my love of music. Before my brain injury, I played the guitar for two years, and the trumpet for two years. Since my injury, I have played the keyboard with my right hand for the last three years.I learned later from his father, Ken Trush, that Daniel is a survivor of five brain aneurisms, one of which burst when he was twelve, leaving him hospitalized for a year. He used a wheelchair for two years following his injury, but Daniel has since learned to walk again using leg braces and he now has the full use of his right hand. When playing keyboard music, he can use the index finger of his left hand to deliver the bass line. …

Effect of keyboard ownership on keyboard performance in a music fundamentals course

This study examined whether requiring undergraduate college nonmusic majors, enrolled in a music fundamentals course, to own a keyboard would enhance their keyboard skills. The course included instruction in reading notation, singing and keyboard skills. There were two groups. One group (experimental) owned keyboards and had them accessible at their homes for practice, while the other group (contact-control) had to check out keyboards for use in the music building. Students' keyboard skills were tested three times. There was no significant difference in keyboard performance data between groups. There was also no significant difference in overall student achievement, which included music reading, singing, rhythm accuracy and keyboard skills. While one might assume that students having ready access to their own keyboard at home would increase the likelihood of practice and therefore enhance their keyboard performance, as well as other music skills, that was not the case in this study.

Self-evaluation, creativity, and musical achievement

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between students’ self-assessments of their musical compositions and experts’ assessments. College students ( N = 54) who were enrolled in a music fundamentals course for elementary education students participated in this study. Each student completed three composition-performance assignments using a soprano recorder. Upon completing each assignment, students were asked to self-administer controlling and informational feedback. The third set of compositions was used as a measure of the students’ compositional creativity. Independent judges reached acceptable levels of agreement in assessing compositional creativity and other dimensions allowing students to be placed into high-, middle-, and low-creativity groups. The students’ informational feedback was analyzed and classified. Chi-square analyses of the students’ informational feedback yielded statistically significant differences among the three creativity groups. Students in the high- and middle-creativity groups were more likely to cite experimentation and express optimism than students in the low creativity group ( p < .05); the high- and middle-creativity groups were also more likely to cite eight or more factors in their self-assessments ( p < .001). Students in the high-creativity group were more likely to employ an expressive intent in their title and engage in critical analyses than students in the middle- and low-creativity groups ( p < .05). There was no significant correlation between the judges’ evaluations and the students’ controlling feedback.

The Development of Intuitive Musical Understanding: A Natural Experiment

Tracing the compositional process of two musically untrained college students, this close case study demonstrates their ability to produce archetypal tonal melodies, even when working initially within the constraints of tonally and metrically ambiguous melodic materials. The two students were representative of a sample of about 75 who participated in a new approach to music fundamentals supported by a novel, interactive computer music environment. Students’ logs, including their composition sketches, decision-making, analysis of progressive modifications and completed compositions, serve as evidence and data for analysis. It is argued that, when students work at their own pace with immediate sound feedback, can modify given materials and have access to multiple representations at differing levels of detail, they are able to make explicit their intuitive criteria for compositional decision-making, as well as proposing an intuitive model of a ‘sensible tune’.

Using Creativity Assessment Experience to Nurture and Predict Compositional Creativity

The purpose of this inquiry was to examine students' assessments of musical creativity in relation to their ability to function creatively as composers. Compositions collected from 54 nonmusic majors enrolled in music fundamentals classes were used as a measure of compositional creativity. Independent judges reached acceptable levels of agreement in assessing musical creativity and other dimensions allowing students to be placed into high-, middle-, and low-creativity groups. Additionally, students completed Creativity and Craftsmanship Assessments (CCA) by listening to sets of 5 exemplary compositions produced by students previously enrolled in the course. Students' verbal descriptions of creativity and craftsmanship from the CCA were categorized. A chi-square analysis of the students' descriptions yielded statistically significant differences between high-, middle-, and low- creativity groups. Students in the high-creativity group were more likely to cite temporal factors as contributing to creativity and craftsmanship than were students in the middle- or low-creativity groups (p < .01); students in the low- and middle-creativity groups were more likely to use metaphors than were students in the high-creativity group (p < .05).

Interval Matching by Undergraduate Nonmusic Majors

This article describes the sixth in a series of studies designed to gain a better understanding of factors that may affect pitch matching. Undergraduate nonmusic majors ( N = 141) enrolled in a music fundamentals class were classified as uncertain, modulating, or certain singers. They listened to a stimulus tape of descending minor thirds, sung by men in their normal and falsetto registers (G3-E3 and G4-E4, respectively, with G3 (middle C being C4), and to two sine-wave stimuli in the same octaves and attempted to sing back the interval they heard. There were no significant differences in the accuracy of responses to male and sine-wave stimuli or between men and women participants. There were significant differences among singer types, with inaccurate singers being less in tune than either modulating or certain singers. There was a significant interaction of response accuracy between participant sex and stimulus octave. These results differ somewhat from previous research with children, in which stimulus timbre and participant sex were factors.