Download Aural Skills Symposium Abstracts

Aural Skills Pedagogy Symposium: What is to be done?
Royal Academy of Music
7 April 2017
Abstracts
1. Anna Wolf (Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media)
Can we measure aural skills? Development and evidence from the Musical Ear Training Assessment
(META)
The testing of musicality has been in effect for 100 years. So far, most tests have focused on the aspect of
musical talent and applied the paradigm of detecting small discriminations and differences in musical
stimuli.
Less research has been conducted on the assessment of musical skills primarily influenced by an individual’s
practice. Up to the present day, there has been no comprehensive set of tests to objectively measure
musical skills, which has rendered it impossible to measure the long-term development of musicians or to
conduct studies on the characteristics and constituents of musical skill.
The following study has, for the first time, developed an assessment instrument for analytical hearing
following a strict test theoretical validation, resulting in the Musical Ear Training Assessment (META). By
means of three pre-studies, a developmental study (n = 33) and a validation study (n = 393), we verified a
one-dimensional test model using sophisticated methods of Item Response Theory identifying the best 53
items to measure a person’s aural skills. For better application, two test versions with 10 and 25 items have
been compiled (META-10 and META-25).
Aside from psychometric test development, it was possible to investigate a variety of moderator variables
assumed to influence the ear training skill. To our surprise, the participants’ main instrument did not
influence the META score (d = 0.10), nor did whether the participant had learnt some method of
solmisation (d = 0.11). However, the most-played genre (d = 0.20) and, unforeseen by us, the participant’s
gender (d = 0.23; males outperforming females) had significant impacts on the test score (p < .05).
Future studies will investigate the mentioned effects, especially the hard-to-explain gender effect, and
focus on a comprehensive view of the musician’s ear, including notation-evoked sound imagery to explore
a general model of musical hearing mechanisms, their influences and educational implications.
2. Kent Cleland (Baldwin Wallace University, Berea Ohio USA)
Techniques for Teaching the Reading of Atonal Melodies
One of the more challenging skills that students and teachers alike face in the aural skills classroom is the
reading of atonal melodies. While one may be tempted to omit this topic from the curriculum, atonally
structured music does appear in the literature, and it remains a musical texture from which modern
composers draw when creating certain sonic landscapes. As a result, it is important to teach students how
to effectively read, hear and understand sounds composed using this musical language. The challenge
arises because, unlike tonal literature, atonal music lacks intuitively recognizable points of reference from
which a student can re-orient himself or herself as melodic material progresses. Furthermore, atonal
musical languages are organized and structured in ways that run counter to the ways that the human mind
biologically, culturally and socially understands music.
This presentation offers strategies for the teaching of atonal music reading, as well as a suggested pacing of
the introduction of these strategies within the context of a comprehensive aural skills curriculum. These
include 1) singing and improvising symmetrical scale structures, 2) identifying and singing intervallic
context, 3) identifying identical or closely located pitches across spans of melodic material, and 4)
identifying and utilizing rapidly shifting tonal centers in the music. The presentation will conclude with a
demonstration of how these techniques may be used to read an atonal melody.
3. Peter Lee (Rising Software – publishers of Auralia Ear Training and Musition Music Theory software)
Successful integration of technology in aural courses - Auralia case study
Auralia is used in universities around the world to successfully assist instructors with student assessment
and practise, with a comprehensive set of administration tools and high quality content.
In the past, many instructors have found integration of technology into aural and theory courses
problematic; inadequate content, poor reporting, and often, a lack of flexibility. Auralia allows instructors
to create their own syllabus or curriculum, mapping content to suit their course and student requirements.
These syllabi can be used by students for practise, or, they can be used in quizzes, tests and exams. The
included content library contains hundreds of audio recordings and notation excerpts, providing students
and instructors with an almost endless number of high quality questions. Instructors can import their own
audio and notation examples, allowing content to be mapped to course curriculum. Any item created by an
instructor can be included in aural and theory worksheets, in combination with any of the existing Auralia
and Musition drills.
This rich feature set ensures that instructors using Auralia do not have to change their way of teaching, or
stop using their preferred textbook; Auralia is easily be customised to suit individual teaching requirements.
The Cloud edition of Auralia allows students and instructors to use the software both on and off campus,
with all results being stored in the Cloud. Any quizzes or assessment tasks that an instructor assigns is
automatically available to students, regardless of their location.
Within this session we will briefly demonstrate some of the features mentioned, as well as discuss issues
around integration - curriculum, student engagement and instructor usage.
4. Chris Atkinson (Aural Skills Coordinator, Royal Academy of Music)
Some thoughts on trying to improve understanding of pitch function in tonal music in undergraduate
performers.
Based on my belief that, in an ideal world, a performer performs a piece of music that is retained as sound
in their head – their musical inner ear – rather than simply, and unmusically, converting symbols on a score
into muscle movements, a possible definition of Aural Skills for performers might be: skills necessary to
receive, process, organise, understand, and hence fully apprehend, as conceived musical sound, the music
we wish to perform.
During my teaching at the Royal Academy of Music over nearly eleven years, I have observed many
concerts and performance assessments which, on the whole, are very accomplished, technically highly
polished and could frequently pass for professional performances. But, without wanting to criticise our
students unduly, a good educator must always look for what could be even better and there is one issue
which for me is quite recurrent. This is the probably long and widely debated notion that performers might
communicate meaning in music or express the content of the music more powerfully by having a greater
analytical understanding of it.
This paper looks in particular at trying to improve our students’ ability to recognise and understand pitch
function in tonal music. Also considered, given the definition of Aural Skills above, is the possibility that
such an improvement might also in fact improve their mental processing of music during performance in
matters such as recall of melody and harmony, including at a level beneath conscious awareness. I draw on
my own experience as a clarinettist and my observations of Academy students and how they approach
specific Aural tasks, as well as examples of recent music-psychology theory.
Two kinds of Aural training activities are considered which seek to promote specifically the relation of
pitches to tonal context, ie. with minimum resort to pitching by interval from neighbouring notes or use of
absolute pitch.
5. Gary S. Karpinski (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
The Seeing Ear: Towards a Rationale for Dictation
Universities, colleges, and conservatories around the world cram students in rows and force them to
huddle over staff paper as they listen to short passages played on classroom pianos. Students strain to
focus on these fleeting pitches and rhythms, and scribble furiously as they try to translate sounds into
symbols. Why do we force our students to take dictation? For what reasons has this practice become
ensconced in music curricula from Arkansas to New Zealand? There are very few vocations in which
listening to several iterations of a brief passage and then writing it down in pencil is a quotidian skill.
Nevertheless, this is a nearly ubiquitous pedagogical requirement. For example, in the U.S. the National
Association of Schools Of Music lists ‘the ability to take aural dictation’ as part of the ‘common body of
knowledge and skills’ that all students must acquire in programs leading to baccalaureate degrees in music
and all undergraduate degrees leading to teacher certification (NASM 2016, 99). If few or none of our
graduates will find work that requires them to take dictation, then why require students to take dictation
during their schooling?
This paper takes a close look at the many skills necessary for listeners to translate musical sounds into
notation, with an eye towards the practical applications those skills find in musicians’ daily lives. Among
those skills are focused attention, short-term musical memory, pulse inference, meter perception,
perception of rhythm proportions, contour perception, tonic inference, perception of scale-degree
function, plus a strong working knowledge of how to notate rhythms and pitches in various clefs, keys, and
meters. This paper explores diverse applications of these skills in various career paths — those of
performers, educators, composers, arrangers, editors, scholars, and others. In addition, the paper examines
skills that can be built on a solid foundation of those dictation-based skills, such as error detection,
memorization, phrasing and interpretation, analysis, and intonation. In sum, this paper traces the many
manifestations of what Benward (1978) called ‘the seeing ear’ throughout our musical lives.
6. Jena Root (Dana School of Music, Youngstown State University, Ohio)
Teaching Improvisation: Starting Points
Traditional course objectives for aural skills classes often include facility in singing prepared and at-sight
exercises, melodic and harmonic dictation, and pitch mapping through a solmization system. Put more
simply, we might say that the successful aural skills sequence develops a student’s musical understanding
through internal hearing or “aural imagination.”
Sight-singing requires the student to process musical notation through the eye, into the musical
understanding of the mind, and to prove that understanding by using the voice to generate sound.
Conversely, dictation begins with sound that enters through the ear into the mind; in this case, the student
proves the same internal musical understanding through transcription. What is typically called “ear
training” more accurately trains the ear, eye, and voice to convey the musical work of the mind. If musical
understanding is the goal, then sight-singing and dictation are the traditional assessment tools.
A third tool, improvisation, can be used to reinforce this type of musical understanding and to help the
student synthesize the more traditional modes of aural learning. Improvising a melody over a given chord
progression is an eye-ear-voice-mind activity, which, even at a most basic level, fosters harmonic
awareness. By learning to create logical melodic ideas while moving about in a prescribed harmonic space,
the student can go on to make more informed choices in related activities such as counterpoint, voice
leading, and composition.
This session will provide sample assignments and pedagogical guidance for instructors who wish to
integrate improvisation into the aural skills curriculum. Activities range from foundational (melodic and
rhythmic improvisation over a single chord and basic diatonic progression models) to advanced (working
with figuration and chromatic harmony), and include both vocal and instrumental performance. Attendees
are encouraged to participate in what will be an interactive workshop-style presentation. Additionally, the
presenter will discuss methods for tailoring exercises “on the spot” to classes comprising students of
diverse backgrounds: from those who embrace musical experimentation, to those who might be more
hesitant to leave the clear expectations of the notated score. The session will conclude with a brief
discussion of available web-based technologies that enable students to practice and submit assignments
online.
7. Robin Harrison
The Kodály Technique – recently accredited by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage
Will it really do what it says on the tin?
“Because of its global use as an aural training method and its profound influence on musicians at all stages
of progression within their musical journey“
When we originally wanted to learn to play our instrument we did so often because we liked the sound of
that instrument and we wanted to make some fabulous noise on it! In other words, we focused on sound.
The Kodály technique equally starts with the sound as its objective and sets out to train the inner ear,
initially via the voice. It reverses traditional music tuition by moving from sound to symbol (“producing to
visually recording”) before moving from symbol to sound (essentially “reproducing”). The method
frequently starts by teaching games to cohorts of young children that result in securing the sense of pulse
and rounds to enhance the sense of pitch. Kodály worked through a specific sequence of intervals from
those that he believed are easiest to sing in tune, to the more challenging.
Does the approach have any relevance to the advanced student or the modern world? The following will
be explored: Application of the pedagogy to training the musician to hear notation in their mind before
they perform on an instrument/voice/conduct. How transposition develops by ‘hearing within the key’.
Can aural and dictation skills can improve in such a way that improvisation becomes spontaneous for all?
Counterpoint skills evolve and so the ability to play one part whilst listening to another (crucial to ensemble
playing) is enhanced. Is it possible that the ability to hear counterpoint in the mind assists score reading
and thus conducting? Modern technology can allow much musicianship development such that individual
study is possible and thus personal development can be rehearsed both through repertoire and has a core
part of practice technique. Can apps and software really play a part, or are they all a gimmick?
Conclusion – This technique develops the musician by training the mind. Therefore, however the music is
channelled (conducting, voice, instrument) it will reveal a deeper understanding, intimate knowledge and
therefore expression. This Kodály inspired approach moves beyond intervallic training providing the most
broad-spectrum skills base that leads to the entire musician flourishing.
8. Simon Parkin (Royal Northern College of Music)
Aural training within an integrated approach to musicianship training
When I was a student, aural skills were tested rather than taught. Since there appeared to be no clear
correlation between aural exam marks and level of performance or ‘musicality’, the aural programme was
re-examined, and it was decided that there needed to be more integration with music-making. Theory skills
are needed to process what is heard. Improvisation training in ensembles develops listening and reaction,
as well as practical knowledge of harmony and modes. ‘Aural’ skills are, therefore, clearly part of a wide
range of musical abilities that need to be coherently structured within an integrated unit.
My presentation will focus on the development of this integrated approach to musicianship training at my
conservatoire. It will mention the positives (increased motivation and good feedback from students, a
genuine link between musical ability and high marks) and some of the difficulties (finding staff happy and
able to teach all aspects of the programme, the mis-match between how quickly a student can absorb
information in theory, and put it into practice on their instrument).
Having taught first aural, then aural with practical musicianship, then musicianship, then theory and
musicianship, I can trace this evolution, and point the way forward towards an idealised approach where all
‘academic’ musical subjects are coordinated and integrated.