Professional Music Training Research Articles

Categorical perception of Mandarin tones by Cantonese trilingual children

It is generally argued that children’s tone perception gradually becomes adult-like after age 6. In addition, previous studies suggest that stimulus duration, vowel quality, and musical training significantly contribute to categorical perception of pitch directions in both tonal and non-tonal language (Chen et al., 2017; Zhao & Kuhl, 2015). However, little is known about how musical training may shape categorical perception of trilingual children, and how stimulus duration and vowel quality come into play. In this paper, we investigate these effects on the categorical perception of Mandarin tones based on Cantonese trilingual children. Specifically, we created rising and falling Mandarin continua on high and low vowels with three duration values. Based on some pilot data, the vowel quality plays a vital role in the categorical perception of rising tones but not in the falling tone pitch directions. Children with professional musical training show much more categorical perception than children without musical training. Specifically, musically trained children show more between-category discrimination than within-category discrimination. Moreover, they are more sensitive to stimulus and are faster in terms of reaction time. Our findings will be compared with previous studies on categorical perception by adults and all significant effects will be discussed.

Enhanced neural and behavioural processing of a nonnative phonemic contrast in professional musicians.

Based on growing evidence suggesting that professional music training facilitates foreign language perception and learning, we examined the impact of musical expertise on the categorisation of syllables including phonemes that did (/p/, /b/) or did not (/ph /) belong to the French repertoire by analysing both behaviour (error rates and reaction times) and Event-Related brain Potentials (N200 and P300 components). Professional musicians and nonmusicians categorised syllables either as /ba/ or /pa/ (voicing task), or as /pa/ or /ph a/ with /ph / being a nonnative phoneme for French speakers (aspiration task). In line with our hypotheses, results showed that musicians outperformed nonmusicians in the aspiration task but not in the voicing task. Moreover, the difference between the native (/p/) and the nonnative phoneme (/ph /), as reflected in N200 and P300 amplitudes, was larger in musicians than in nonmusicians in the aspiration task but not in the voicing task. These results show that behaviour and brain activity associated to nonnative phoneme perception are influenced by musical expertise and that these effects are task-dependent. The implications of these findings for current models of phoneme perception and for understanding the qualitative and quantitative differences found on the N200 and P300 components are discussed.

The Society of Arts and the Challenge of Professional Music Education in 1860s Britain

Higher-level music education was in a poor state in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. In particular, the country’s most significant conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music in London, suffered from a lack of financial support, poor management, and a reputation for mediocre teaching and amateurish standards. Responding to the need for an overhaul, the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce launched an investigation into the management of the Royal Academy of Music in 1865. The Society’s Committee interviewed a range of high-profile figures from Britain and abroad. The reports and debates that ensued cast light not only on the state of the Royal Academy but also on the organization of professional music training across the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe. Many of these discussions revealed important insights into attitudes toward musical training and its institutions, toward the music profession, and toward music itself. Musicians interviewed for the purpose of the Royal Academy report had varying opinions on the curriculum suitable for aspiring professional musicians, including the role of general education and theoretical music studies. The place of amateurs in such institutions was also an important part of the discussion, both in terms of the students admitted and institutional management. Fundamental divisions over the purpose and nature of professional-level education in music reflect both the changing nature of education and deep fractures in the music profession itself, offering valuable insights into the concerns and problems of the time.

Professional Music Training and Novel Word Learning: From Faster Semantic Encoding to Longer-lasting Word Representations.

On the basis of previous results showing that music training positively influences different aspects of speech perception and cognition, the aim of this series of experiments was to test the hypothesis that adult professional musicians would learn the meaning of novel words through picture-word associations more efficiently than controls without music training (i.e., fewer errors and faster RTs). We also expected musicians to show faster changes in brain electrical activity than controls, in particular regarding the N400 component that develops with word learning. In line with these hypotheses, musicians outperformed controls in the most difficult semantic task. Moreover, although a frontally distributed N400 component developed in both groups of participants after only a few minutes of novel word learning, in musicians this frontal distribution rapidly shifted to parietal scalp sites, as typically found for the N400 elicited by known words. Finally, musicians showed evidence for better long-term memory for novel words 5 months after the main experimental session. Results are discussed in terms of cascading effects from enhanced perception to memory as well as in terms of multifaceted improvements of cognitive processing due to music training. To our knowledge, this is the first report showing that music training influences semantic aspects of language processing in adults. These results open new perspectives for education in showing that early music training can facilitate later foreign language learning. Moreover, the design used in the present experiment can help to specify the stages of word learning that are impaired in children and adults with word learning difficulties.

The Crisis of Classical Music in America: Lessons from a Life in the Education of Musicians by Robert Freeman (review)

The Crisis of Classical Music in America: Lessons from a Life in the Education of Musicians. By Robert Freeman. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. [xxv, 243 p. ISBN 9781442233010 (hardcover), $95; ISBN 9781442233027 (paperback), $45; ISBN 9781442233034 (e-book), $44.99.] Illustrations, appendices, bibliographic references, index. American musicologist and educator Robert Freeman offers a personal yet authoritative look at classical music education in America in his book, The. Crisis of Classical Music in America. This book tells the tale of Freeman's journey to becoming a professional musician. Raised in a musically-talented family, Freeman taught at Princeton University and MIT, served as director of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, president of the New England Conservatory, and dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. His background uniquely qualifies him to write about and critique classical music education in America. Written in first-person narrative, this book is a collection of Freeman's ideas and thoughts from his lifelong professional musical training and over four decades of leadership in academia. Freeman is undoubtedly one of the most respected and influential scholars to provide insights on the past, present, and future of classical music education in American colleges. The foreword, written by Leonard Slatkin, music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, is the personal reflection of an industry' insider on the challenges facing classical music education in the United States. Like Freeman, Slatkin is apprehensive about the disappointing changes in music education in public schools in America: More than a quarter century ago, Dr. Freeman began to address the educational issues that have today reached nothing less than crisis proportions, from the disappearance of music education in the public schools to the glut of single-minded musicians who have learned to excel at competitions rather than at music making, Slatkin writes. Today we see a vast migration [to study music] here [in America] from East Asia. ... A principal question that concerns Dr. Freeman is where all these talented kids from all over the world are going to go when they graduate (pp. xi, xiv). Freeman explores and addresses these issues in his book. This book is divided into two sections. The first section discusses the development of the American classical music industry and education, while the latter section presents the author's advice and recommendations to people associated with the industry. In chapters 1 to 3, Freeman looks at the historical context of classical music education in America and its challenges, and discusses his experiences related to classical music education. Chapter 1 is an overview of higher education and the classical music industry in America from the mid-1950s, when Freeman was in college, and how these relate to the social, political, and technological developments in American society. He points out that the environment and survival of the classical music industry is dependent on the economy. This is directly related to the elite image of classical music: that it is only for people who can afford to go to concerts, own musical instruments, and take music lessons. While many music graduates become music teachers, Freeman argues that music students and musicians need to face the reality of shrinking markets and audiences created by social and technological changes. Chapter 2 explores the development of classical music education. Freeman traces the earliest thoughts on music education to the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, which concern music's role in society and the development of a harmonious personality rather than instruction in performance (p. 13). In addition, classical music and education have an impact on social and gender roles and are important to religious communities, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, which played a large role in disseminating music education to the public. …

Tuning Features of Chinese Folk Song Singing: A Case Study of Hua'er Music

The learning and teaching of different singing styles, such as operatic and Chinese folk singing, was often found to be very challenging in professional music education because of the complexity of varied musical properties and vocalizations. By studying the acoustical and musical parameters of the singing voice, this study identified distinctive tuning characteristics of a particular folk music in China-Hua'er music-to inform the ineffective folk singing practices, which were hampered by the neglect of inherent tuning issues in music. Thirteen unaccompanied folk song examples from four folk singers were digitally audio recorded in a sound studio. Using an analyzing toolkit consisting of Praat, PeakFit, and MS Excel, the fundamental frequencies (F0) of these song examples were extracted into sets of "anchor pitches" mostly used, which were further divided into 253 F0 clusters. The interval structures of anchor pitches within each song were analyzed and then compared across 13 examples providing parameters that indicate the tuning preference of this particular singing style. The data analyses demonstrated that all singers used a tuning pattern consisting of five major anchor pitches suggesting a nonequal-tempered bias in singing. This partly verified the pentatonic scale proposed in previous empirical research but also argued a potential misunderstanding of the studied folk music scale that failed to take intrinsic tuning issues into consideration. This study suggests that, in professional music training, any tuning strategy should be considered in terms of the reference pitch and likely tuning systems. Any accompanying instruments would need to be tuned to match the underlying tuning bias.

Auditory evoked responses in musicians during passive vowel listening are modulated by functional connectivity between bilateral auditory-related brain regions.

Currently, there is striking evidence showing that professional musical training can substantially alter the response properties of auditory-related cortical fields. Such plastic changes have previously been shown not only to abet the processing of musical sounds, but likewise spectral and temporal aspects of speech. Therefore, here we used the EEG technique and measured a sample of musicians and nonmusicians while the participants were passively exposed to artificial vowels in the context of an oddball paradigm. Thereby, we evaluated whether increased intracerebral functional connectivity between bilateral auditory-related brain regions may promote sensory specialization in musicians, as reflected by altered cortical N1 and P2 responses. This assumption builds on the reasoning that sensory specialization is dependent, at least in part, on the amount of synchronization between the two auditory-related cortices. Results clearly revealed that auditory-evoked N1 responses were shaped by musical expertise. In addition, in line with our reasoning musicians showed an overall increased intracerebral functional connectivity (as indexed by lagged phase synchronization) in theta, alpha, and beta bands. Finally, within-group correlative analyses indicated a relationship between intracerebral beta band connectivity and cortical N1 responses, however only within the musicians' group. Taken together, we provide first electrophysiological evidence for a relationship between musical expertise, auditory-evoked brain responses, and intracerebral functional connectivity among auditory-related brain regions.

EXPERIENCIA DEL ENTRENAMIENTO MUSICAL EN UNA UNIVERSIDAD PARTICULAR DE LIMA

El objetivo de la Revolución del Entrenamiento Musical es aprovechar las modernas herramientas tecnológicas para la educación, aplicándolas al entrenamiento auditivo, dentro de un programa de formación musical profesional. En este trabajo, se presentará la experiencia de transformación del curso presencial de Nivelación en Lectura y Entrenamiento Auditivo, de un pregrado universitario de Música, a la modalidad b-learning. La modalidad b-learning de este curso se estableció sobre un Aula Virtual en una plataforma Moodle. El trabajo en línea, dentro de esta Aula Virtual, incluyó foros de comunicación, foros académicos, recursos autoinstructivos de entrenamiento auditivo y tareas académicas. La estrategia del trabajo online del curso consideró varios aspectos: 1) Estructura del Aula Virtual; 2) Comunicación dentro del Aula Virtual; 3) Administración del Aula Virtual; 4) Creación y organización de contenidos; 5) Planteamiento de una metodología de estudio en línea; 6) Diseño y puesta en marcha de las actividades en línea; 7) Calificación de las actividades realizadas en línea; 8) Evaluación de todo el proceso. Los resultados obligaron a replantear los contenidos del mismo curso en los niveles siguientes debido a los importantes avances alcanzados.

Musicianship Boosts Perceptual Learning of Pseudoword-Chimeras: An Electrophysiological Approach

A vast amount of previous work has consistently revealed that professional music training is associated with functional and structural alterations of auditory-related brain regions. Meanwhile, there is also an increasing array of evidence, which shows that musicianship facilitates segmental, as well as supra-segmental aspects of speech processing. Based on this evidence, we addressed a novel research question, namely whether professional music training has an influence on the perceptual learning of speech sounds. In the context of an EEG experiment, we presented auditory pseudoword-chimeras, manipulated in terms of spectral- or envelope-related acoustic information, to a group of professional musicians and non-musicians. During EEG measurements, participants were requested to assign the auditory-presented pseudoword-chimeras to one out of four visually presented templates. As expected, both groups showed behavioural learning effects during the time course of the experiment. These learning effects were associated with an increase in accuracy, a decrease in reaction time, as well as a decrease in the P2-like microstate duration in both groups. Notably, the musicians showed an increased learning performance compared to the controls during the first two runs of the spectral condition. This perceptual learning effect, which varies as a function of musical expertise, was reflected by a reduction of the P2-like microstate duration. Results may mirror transfer effects from musical training to the processing of spectral information in speech sounds. Hence, this study provides first evidence for a relationship between changes in microstates, musical expertise, and perceptual verbal learning mechanisms.

Views of Preservice Music Teachers Regarding the Lesson of Personal Instrument (Guitar) that is Involved in the Undergraduate Program of Music Teaching

“Personal instrument training” stands as one of the lessons constituting basic dimensions of music in the programs applied oriented towards educating “teacher” in Faculties of Education Fine Arts Education Sections Music Teaching Departments that serve in the field of professional music training, hi the lesson, it is aimed to make preservice music teachers acquire qualifications avocationally, and to realise the educational opportunity which will enable them to play and teach the instruments. The increase in the interest towards the guitar in our country ensured that the instrument takes place in the curriculums of many agencies and institutes that are within formal-common education. With the advantages it carries, guitar has ranked among the instruments that are educated in “Personal Instrument (Guitar)” lesson in the institutes educating music teachers, hi the study, with reference to the importance of instrument training and guitar training which is educated in this field, an answer is sought for the question “What are the views of preservice music teachers about “Personal Instrument”(guitar) lesson?”. The lesson of “Personal Instrument” (guitar) in Music Teaching Department is analyzed in terms of its usability, physical sufficiency and program content.

ALICE MEYNELL'SPRELUDES, OR PRELUDES TO WHAT FUTURE POETRY?

In 1875, the young poet Alice Thompson (soon to be Alice Meynell) publishedPreludes(1875), a slender volume of lyrics illustrated by her sister, Elizabeth. Given the professional musical training of the Thompson women, the title of the volume may recall Chopin's musicalPreludes(1838), those brief lyrical pieces composed when Chopin was twenty-seven that cover all twenty-four musical keys and demonstrate, as one critic has put it, an “astonishing variety and vividness of mood…achieve[d] in little more than a blink of an eye” (Siepman 5). Meynell'sPreludes, written in her mid-twenties and published when she, too, was twenty-seven, may similarly have aimed at variety and vividness of mood, achieved within the brief compass of lyric verse; this sense of the title certainly fits with a wide range of subjects, meters, and stanzaic forms in the volume. Yet whether or not the title embeds a musical allusion,Preludessuggests, more fundamentally, a first volume of poetry, a volume anticipatory of a later, larger poetic achievement and perhaps also of a new direction in lyric verse.

Transmodal Sensorimotor Networks during Action Observation in Professional Pianists

Audiovisual perception and imitation are essential for musical learning and skill acquisition. We compared professional pianists to musically naive controls with fMRI while observing piano playing finger-hand movements and serial finger-thumb opposition movements both with and without synchronous piano sound. Pianists showed stronger activations within a fronto-parieto-temporal network while observing piano playing compared to controls and contrasted to perception of serial finger-thumb opposition movements. Observation of silent piano playing additionally recruited auditory areas in pianists. Perception of piano sounds coupled with serial finger-thumb opposition movements evoked increased activation within the sensorimotor network. This indicates specialization of multimodal auditory-sensorimotor systems within a fronto-parieto-temporal network by professional musical training. Musical ''language,'' which is acquired by observation and imitation, seems to be tightly coupled to this network in accord with an observation-execution system linking visual and auditory perception to motor performance.

Frank Callaway 1919-2003

Frank Callaway, the fourth Honorary President of ISME, was a New Zealander who contributed greatly to raising the profile of music education in both that country and Australia. His essentially democratic view of music education was moulded by his teaching experience at King Edward Technical College in Dunedin. At the University of Western Australia he created a school of music which placed the discipline within the orbit of both education and the humanities, as well as later developing professional musical training. The performance of music was an essential component of all of his educational projects. Strongly influenced by Grainger’s advocacy of world music education, he used his international positions as well as the creation of major musical events in his home country to promote the value of cross-cultural interchange.

Transmodal sensorimotor networks during action observation in professional pianists

Audiovisual perception and imitation are essential for musical learning and skill acquisition. We compared professional pianists to musically naive controls with fMRI while observing piano playing finger–hand movements and serial finger–thumb opposition movements both with and without synchronous piano sound. Pianists showed stronger activations within a fronto-parieto-temporal network while observing piano playing compared to controls and contrasted to perception of serial finger–thumb opposition movements. Observation of silent piano playing additionally recruited auditory areas in pianists. Perception of piano sounds coupled with serial finger–thumb opposition movements evoked increased activation within the sensorimotor network. This indicates specialization of multimodal auditory–sensorimotor systems within a fronto-parieto-temporal network by professional musical training. Musical ''language,'' which is acquired by observation and imitation, seems to be tightly coupled to this network in accord with an observation–execution system linking visual and auditory perception to motor performance.

Functional imaging in musicians

Studying professional musicians offers an ideal model to explore the effect of long term regular practice upon adaptive plasticity of the sensorimotor system. Functional studies in musicians showed an enlargement of cortical finger representations (Elbert, et al. 1995) and of auditory representation for tones (Pantev, et al. 1998; Schneider, et al. 2002). In predisposed individuals, defective motor reorganization due to musical practice can lead to uncontrolled movements such as task induced dystonia with a smearing of representational zones (Elbert, et al. 1998; Pujol, et al. 2000). Investigations of unimanual complex motor tasks demonstrated changes in motor activation patterns due to professional musical training (Hund-Georgiadis and von Cramon 1999; Krings, et al. 2000).