An Investigation Of Musical Discrimination Training In Beginning Instrumental Music Classes.

Abstract

The main problem of this study was to determine if elementary instrumental music students who receive musical discrimination training demonstrate higher levels of musical discrimination skill than students who do not receive training. An ancillary problem was to determine the effect of discrimination training on instrumental performance achievement. The Test of Musical Discrimination (TMD), by Froseth, was employed as the pretest-posttest measure. The Instrumental Performance Achievement Test (IPAT), designed by the investigator, was an additional posttest measure. The Musical Aptitude Profile, by Gordon, was employed to study relationships between musical aptitude and both musical discrimination skill and instrumental performance achievement. Forty-three fifth-grade beginning instrumental music students served as subjects. Students were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, taught by the investigator. The tape-recorded discrimination program followed three steps: (1) identification of aural musical phenomena through use of models and discriminative foils, (2) discrimination exercises, and (3) student imitation of tape-recorded models. Use of one tape in each experimental group class constituted the treatment. Following an eighteen-week experimental period, TMD was readministered and tape-recorded student performances on IPAT were evaluated. Differences between groups on the TMD melody subtest and TMD composite were significant (p < .05), favoring the experimental group. Differences on the TMD rhythm subtest and IPAT were not significant. It appears that musical discrimination skills of elementary instrumental music students can be developed by systematic training. A longitudinal study is needed to determine the effect of discrimination training on instrumental performance achievement.