The Effect of Aural Analysis on Melodic Dictation

This study approaches melodic dictation in relation to aural analysis, by investigating the effect on an aural analysis, accomplished before dictation taking, on its results. 98 music undergraduates participated in the study by performing a melodic dictation task. The participants were divided into a control group and an experimental group. Subjects in the experimental situation were asked to answer a few questions about the melody regarding structure, motifs and harmonic tension prior to notating it. The participants in the control group performed significantly better. Moreover, no association between the precision of analysis and performance in the dictation task was found. It is possible that the difference in performance is due to an attention overload, provoked by the dual task accomplished by the experimental group, which may happen when aural analysis is not a well-practiced strategy. The analytical task could have impacted either the memory encoding phase or it could have interfered with the recent memory. Further research is needed, therefore, in order to explore the impact of trained versus untrained analytical tasks during melodic dictation.