Hasil untuk "Musical instruction and study"

Sizhuo Wang

Piter Sembiring, Al Muqri, Asep Rizwan Nurfalah et al.

This study explores pedagogical approaches in private music education, focusing on their impact on students' musical, cognitive, and emotional development. Using a qualitative approach, the study emphasizes the importance of individualized instruction, parental involvement, and technology integration. Observations and interviews conducted at Favore Music Bandung and GJKI Bandung Raya Church reveal that a flexible, student-centered approach, combined with motivational strategies, can significantly enhance engagement and creativity. Specifically, students showed increased creativity and motivation by selecting their favorite songs, which strengthened their emotional connection to music. Moreover, the integration of technology, including interactive music apps, enabled real-time feedback that enhanced students' technical skills and overall learning experience. Despite challenges such as limited teaching time and students busy schedules, the study suggests that a personalized learning model, focused on students' interests, effectively overcomes these obstacles. This paper concludes that adaptive pedagogical methods are essential for fostering holistic development, with further research needed to explore technology's broader application.

Na An, Sayam Chuangprakhon, Weerayut Seekhunlio et al.

The Guqin, an ancient seven-stringed Chinese zither with a history spanning over 3,000 years, has long been revered as a tool for self-cultivation, artistic refinement, and cultural expression. This study examines the impact of Guqin education on enhancing musical literacy in contemporary China. Conducted in Huizhou, Anhui Province, a historically significant region for Guqin transmission, the study employed a qualitative research approach, including semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis. Two key informants, a master-level Guqin performer, and a Guqin society leader, provided expert insights into the pedagogical significance of Guqin education. The findings reveal that Guqin instruction fosters a deeper understanding of Chinese musical aesthetics, enhances students’ ear training, and strengthens their connection to cultural heritage. Despite these benefits, challenges such as limited institutional support and difficulties adapting to traditional notation persist. This study suggests integrating Guqin education into mainstream curricula, developing structured teacher training programs, and promoting cross-cultural collaborations to preserve this invaluable musical tradition. By revitalizing Guqin education, China can cultivate a new generation of technically proficient musicians deeply connected to their cultural roots, ensuring the sustainability of traditional music for future generations.

Jane Pettegree

A remarkable project to record the Complete Songs of Robert Tannahill, the Paisley weaver-poet, has concluded with the 2024 release of a fifth and final disc, a fitting tribute marking the 250th anniversary of Tannahill’s birth. This review article discusses why Tannahill is an important and distinctive voice in the Scottish traditional song repertoire, and assesses the achievements of the recording project.

Scott Gardiner

Marcio Guedes Correa, Gabrielle Delorence Di Santo

Este estudo bibliográfico pretende estabelecer um panorama sobre as práticas utilizadas na música adaptativa para trilhas sonoras de videogames. A música adaptativa, diferentemente das trilhas sonoras-musicais estáticas tradicionais, ajusta-se em tempo real para refletir os eventos, os ambientes e as ações do jogador no jogo, criando uma experiência auditiva personalizada. Os principais métodos discutidos incluem re-sequenciamento horizontal, camadas verticais e mixagem dinâmica, cada um permitindo transições perfeitas e variações de tom, ritmo e harmonia. Essas técnicas são complementadas por processos algorítmicos para adaptar elementos musicais, como andamento, timbre e leitmotivs, a diversos cenários de jogo. A abordagem teórica enfatiza a interação entre o áudio diegético e não diegético, bem como a integração do design centrado no usuário para garantir a interação intuitiva entre a música e a mecânica do jogo. O trabalho também aborda os desafios para alcançar a coerência em narrativas não lineares, mostrando como as estratégias adaptativas contribuem para a profundidade emocional e o alinhamento narrativo.

Veronica Flynn, Carmen Rovi

We will discuss how certain group theory structures are found in music theory. Western music splits the octave into 12 equal tones called half-steps. We can take this division further and split the octave into 24 equal tones by splitting each half-step in two, called a quarter-step. By assigning each of these 24 notes a number, we can discuss musical actions mathematically. In this paper, we analyze 24-tone microtonal music and explore how musical and harmonic structures in this system can be interpreted in terms of group-theoretic structures. This work extends the study by Crans, Fiore, and Satyendra.

Staas de Jong

As technologies and interfaces for the instrumental control of musical sound get ever better at tracking aspects of human position and motion in space, a fundamental problem emerges: Unintended or even counter-intentional control may result when humans themselves become a source of positional noise. A clear case of what is meant by this is the "stillness movement" of a body part occurring despite the simultaneous explicit intention for that body part to remain still. In this paper, we present the results of a randomized, controlled experiment investigating this phenomenon along a vertical axis relative to the human fingertip. The results include characterizations of both the spatial distribution and frequency distribution of the stillness movement observed. Also included are results indicating a possible role for constant forces and viscosities in reducing stillness movement amplitude, thereby potentially enabling the implementation of more positional control of musical sound within the same available spatial range. Importantly, the above is summarized in a form that is directly interpretable for anyone designing technologies, interactions, or performances that involve fingertip control of musical sound. Also, a complete data set of the experimental results is included in the separate Appendices to this paper, again in a format that is directly interpretable.

Renaud Bougueng Tchemeube, Jeff Ens, Philippe Pasquier

With the recent developments in machine intelligence and web technologies, new generative music systems are being explored for assisted composition using machine learning techniques on the web. Such systems are built for various tasks such as melodic, harmonic or rhythm generation, music interpolation, continuation and style imitation. In this paper, we introduce Apollo, an interactive music application for generating symbolic phrases of conventional western music using corpus-based style imitation techniques. In addition to enabling the construction and management of symbolic musical corpora, the system makes it possible for music artists and researchers to generate new musical phrases in the style of the proposed corpus. The system is available as a desktop application. The generated symbolic music materials, encoded in the MIDI format, can be exported or streamed for various purposes including using them as seed material for musical projects. We present the system design, implementation details, discuss and conclude with future work for the system.

Fionnuala Rogers, Ege Erdem, C. Metzler-Baddeley

Ageing is associated with a loss of fluid intelligence and motor functions which hamper independence and quality of life. Training in a musical instrument can improve fluid intelligence and executive function (EF) in older non-musicians but the neural correlates underpinning the benefits remain elusive. The primary aims of this study are to: i) test the acceptability of Piano Instruction for Adult Novices as Online Cognitive Intervention (PIANO-Cog), a novel bespoke 8-week self-guided piano training programme for adults over the age of 50 years; and ii) to test the feasibility (in terms of recruitment, retention and adherence) of a large scale RCT comparing PIANO-Cog to a passive control. Secondary aims of this study are: i) to investigate the effects of online piano training on fluid abilities, EF and motor function; ii) to investigate training-induced microstructural brain changes using ultra-strong gradient (300mT/m) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and iii) to investigate how the latter may be linked to cognitive improvements post-training. A two-armed unblinded RCT will be conducted on 50 healthy non-musician adults over the age of 50. Participants will be randomised to a piano training (PT) or passive control group for 8 weeks, stratified for age and sex. PT participants will receive a training manual and 20-min video tutorials each week, and will practice 30 min, 5 days per week. Control participants will receive no intervention for the 8-week period. Cognitive testing and MRI of the brain will take place before and after the intervention. The primary aim of the trial is to determine the acceptability of PIANO-Cog as an online cognitive intervention for adults over 50 who are non-musicians, and the feasibility of conducting a large-scale RCT in terms of recruitment, retention and adherence. Self-guided music training programmes could provide a cost-effective method of maintaining or improving cognitive and motor functions that individuals can implement in their own homes. Secondary aims are regarding the investigation of positive transfer of piano training to EF and fluid abilities in ageing, and to provide evidence for the relationship between training-induced cognitive enhancements and underlying white and grey matter microstructural changes. ISRCTN11023869 (retrospectively registered). 20/10/2025 version 1.5

John Roger A. Obja-an

The purpose of the study was to describe how mindful music instruction strategy helps in the assessment of music listening skills and how it makes the students understand and appreciate western classical music. Mindful music instruction is a concept as described by Anderson (2016) and Langer (2016) where constructs of mindfulness can be done thru direct instruction to the listener. Creative Music Listening Response by Kratus (2017) was used to describe successful music responses. Quantitative and qualitative descriptive research methods were used. The study was implemented to nineteen (n=19) all girls’ school in the Philippine capital. Mindful music instruction was given before listening to music selections which range from classical to romantic styles. Findings show that the students described a clearer image/emotion/story of the music with thorough explanations from beginning to end. These images/emotions/stories were well supported with descriptions of musical elements although accuracy and consistency of the terms needs to be given attention. The summary of scores of each student showed that seven had proficient level of music listening response while twelve have advanced level. Results of student self-assessment checklist, self-reflection and interview validated the facts of the findings as students show more appreciation and understanding of western classical music and become more aware and attentive to the music they listen to. Results of students’ checklist seem to agree on the inaccuracy of using musical elements. Recommendations were given in the further use of mindful music instruction in music education in different settings, across different levels.

Jialin Li, Hyuntai Kim

Musical theatre education necessitates a flexible and well-structured curriculum that combines creative instruction, theoretical knowledge, and current pedagogical practices. However, many existing curricula continue to face challenges, such as limited resource allocation, a lack of adaptive learning strategies, and insufficient opportunities for personalized learning paths. These gaps often lead to poor student performance, low engagement, and unsatisfactory feedback from instructors. To address these issues, this study introduces the Musical Theatre Curriculum Planning Algorithm (MTCPA). This curriculum optimization framework combines adaptive learning with a project-based approach, leveraging traditional, digital, and experiential learning sources. The MTCPA was evaluated using a dataset of 200 students that incorporated blended learning methods, gamification elements, and AI-assisted feedback mechanisms. The instructional materials were divided into three main categories: acting, singing, and dancing. The framework's effectiveness was measured using key indicators, including student performance outcomes, engagement levels, and instructor evaluations. The results show significant improvements: student performance scores increased by 27%, engagement levels increased by 35%, resource utilization increased by 40%, and teacher satisfaction with the curriculum design increased by 30%. The proposed algorithm not only improves classroom performance but also enhances long-term skill retention through practical application, promoting early career readiness in the competitive fields of musical theatre and the performing arts. Furthermore, the data-driven, adaptive nature of MTCPA enables a structured yet innovative approach to curriculum planning, leading to more effective decision-making and pedagogical creativity. To summarize, the MTCPA represents a significant step forward in musical theatre education, demonstrating how incorporating adaptive, personalized, and technology-supported learning can result in measurable improvements in student success, engagement, and curriculum efficiency. By combining traditional methods with modern innovations, MTCPA helps to reshape musical theatre pedagogy, ensuring that students are better prepared to face both academic and professional challenges in the performing arts.

Bogdan Pindović , Biljana Novković Cvetković, Aleksandar M. Stojadinović

Observing the development of music pedagogy as a science, it is difficult to imagine the teaching process in the modern era without the integration of contemporary technology. The use of smartphones, tablet computers, and auxiliary tools in Solfège instruction, such as smartboards, audio CD players, projectors, MIDI controllers, and keyboards, represents one of the most significant advancements in the effective delivery of music education today. This paper presents the results of a study conducted to examine the use of smart devices in the implementation of Solfège teaching content. Based on this, an analysis was carried out on a representative sample using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The findings highlight the advantages and limitations of modern digital teaching tools. The research concluded that students hold a positive view regarding the use of modern technologies in Solfège instruction, recognize the competence of professors and teaching assistants in utilizing these technologies, and believe that their application can enhance the creativity of both instructors and assistants.

J. R. Ahokas, S. Saarikallio, Graham F. Welch et al.

This study investigated whether enhanced rhythm training improves literacy development and working memory performance in pupils in the first and second year of school. According to recent literature, we hypothesized that rhythm-focused training could be effective for children with reading difficulties. Pupils aged 6 to 8 years participated in the study, implemented as part of regular school music lessons. Children were divided into an experimental group that received enhanced rhythm training and a control group that received an equivalent amount of music instruction but without enhanced rhythm training. The intervention was delivered once a week for three months (13 lessons in total). The test battery included pre- and post-measures (0 and 3 months, respectively) with literacy and working memory assessment, and follow-ups (8 and 20 months) with literacy assessment. There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in literacy skills after training. However, there was a moderate improvement in working memory performance for the experimental, but not the comparison group. In a post hoc analysis, we found an effect in a subgroup of lower starting-level readers, as the increase in literacy development of these students was statistically significant in the experimental, but not in the comparison group.

Jed Villanueva, Beatriz Ilari, Assal Habibi

This study aims to investigate the development of pitch-matching, rhythmic entrainment, and socioemotional skills in children who received formal music instruction and other non-music based after school programs. Eighty-three children, averaging 6.81 years old at baseline, were enrolled in either a music, sports, or no after-school program and followed over four years. The music program involved formal and systematic instruction in music theory, instrumental technique, and performance. Most control participants had no music education; however, in some instances, participants received minimal music education at school or at church. Musical development was measured using a pitch-matching and drumming-based rhythmic entrainment task. Sharing behavior was measured using a variation of the dictator game, and empathy was assessed using three different assessments: the Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescence (trait empathy), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (theory of mind), and a Fiction Emotion-Matching task (state empathy). Results revealed no time-related associations in pitch-matching ability; however, formal music instruction improved pitch-matching relative to controls. On the contrary, improvements in rhythmic entrainment were best explained by age-related changes rather than music instruction. This study also found limited support for a positive association between formal music instruction and socioemotional skills. That is, individuals with formal music instruction exhibited improved emotion-matching relative to those with sports training. In terms of general socioemotional development, children’s trait-level affective empathy did not improve over time, while sharing, theory of mind, and state empathy did. Additionally, pitch-matching and rhythmic entrainment did not reliably predict any socioemotional measures, with associations being trivial to small. While formal music instruction benefitted pitch-matching ability and emotion-matching to an audiovisual stimulus, it was not a significant predictor of rhythmic entrainment or broader socioemotional development. These findings suggest that the transfer of music training may be most evident in near or similar domains.

S. Pang, R. Kan

Musical experiences in early piano instruction tend to be led by visual-based methods, limiting opportunities to develop aural abilities for children to understand music. This study examines the exploratory behaviour of music listening through auditory approaches that support visual-based methods to foster musical comprehension. Drawing from case studies of young music learners between the ages of 7 and 8, qualitative data were collected through lesson observations, interviews, game-based assessments, and performance evaluations of a prepared piece. Positive instances of recall, calibration, association, and empowerment indicated how participants perceived and strengthened the association of heard sounds. The findings further highlight the demanding cognitive ability needed to process visual elements in method books and how auditory approaches can relieve the attention to visual score-reading that enables students to better tune in to the coordination of hands with music. This discussion therefore opens the possibility for exploring how we may uncover nuanced differences in learning when we design teaching methods that straddle both auditory and visual approaches.

S. Wu, Yumi Yoshioka, Zaihua Wen

This study aims to show how creativity and imagination can be integrated into primary school instruction to foster creative musical minds. A mixed method was employed, examining the impact of various pedagogical practices, instructor experience, and cultural differences on students’ creative music-making abilities, focusing on improvisation and composition. Participants included primary school students, piano teachers, and parents from diverse Chinese ethnic backgrounds. The study found that innovative approaches emphasizing creative and experiential learning significantly enhanced students’ ability to structure and optimize music, compared to conventional methods. The cultural context and the teacher’s expertise were also identified as critical factors in fostering students’ creative musical development. Integrating creativity into music education is essential for primary school students. A learning environment that encourages experimentation, self-expression, and discovery plays a vital role in developing students’ creative potential. Music educators should consider adopting teaching methods that prioritize creativity and imagination tailored to the cultural context and the teacher’s expertise to better cultivate creative musical talents in young learners.

D. H. Kim, Hyun Soo Kim

Objectives The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of music appreciation based on classical music activities on musical aptitude of young children. Methods The subjects of this study were 56 who were 5-years-old children enrolled in D kindergarten located G city. To compare the effects of experimental treatments on young children’s musical aptitude scores of pre-test and post-test were analyzed by independent t-test applying SPSS 22.0 program. Hedges'g values were calcu-lated examine the effect size of music appreciation based on classical music activities on musical aptitude of young children. Results As a result of analyzing music appreciation based on classical music activities on musical aptitude of young children, the experimental group showed greater changes than the control group in term of average musical aptitude(tune, rhythm). Conclusions The result of this study is expected to be a future guidelines to develop teaching-learning method to enhance children’s musical aptitude.

[Editor]

Zhiyang Xu, Chao Feng, Rulin Shao et al.

Despite vision-language models' (VLMs) remarkable capabilities as versatile visual assistants, two substantial challenges persist within the existing VLM frameworks: (1) lacking task diversity in pretraining and visual instruction tuning, and (2) annotation error and bias in GPT-4 synthesized instruction tuning data. Both challenges lead to issues such as poor generalizability, hallucination, and catastrophic forgetting. To address these challenges, we construct Vision-Flan, the most diverse publicly available visual instruction tuning dataset to date, comprising 187 diverse tasks and 1,664,261 instances sourced from academic datasets, and each task is accompanied by an expert-written instruction. In addition, we propose a two-stage instruction tuning framework, in which VLMs are firstly finetuned on Vision-Flan and further tuned on GPT-4 synthesized data. We find this two-stage tuning framework significantly outperforms the traditional single-stage visual instruction tuning framework and achieves the state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of multi-modal evaluation benchmarks. Finally, we conduct in-depth analyses to understand visual instruction tuning and our findings reveal that: (1) GPT-4 synthesized data does not substantially enhance VLMs' capabilities but rather modulates the model's responses to human-preferred formats; (2) A minimal quantity (e.g., 1,000) of GPT-4 synthesized data can effectively align VLM responses with human-preference; (3) Visual instruction tuning mainly helps large-language models (LLMs) to understand visual features.