An investigation into beginning string players' instrumental intonation accuracy in relationship to stabilized tonal music aptitude and vocal intonation accuracy
Date
2011
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
With the intent of improving string pedagogy, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between stabilized tonal music aptitude and instrumental intonation and the relationship between vocal intonation accuracy and instrumental intonation accuracy of beginning string players. The following research questions were investigated: (a) Is there a relationship between beginning string players’ stabilized tonal music aptitude and their ability to play their instruments with accurate intonation?, and (b) Is there a relationship between beginning string players’ ability to sing with accurate intonation and their ability to play their instruments with accurate intonation?. Participants for this study were 28 beginning sixth grade string students from three intact classrooms. Participants were from two schools, School A and School B; the researcher acted as a teacher-researcher for this study. The study was conducted over a five-week period. The teacher-researcher administered the Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation (IMMA) tonal subtest (Gordon, 1979a) to measure the stabilized tonal music aptitude of the participants. The teacher-researcher taught an eight- measure researcher-composed etude, first vocally and then instrumentally to the participants for a total of four instructional periods. During the sixth visit, participants sang and played the etude into an audio recorder. Using a 5-point continuous rating scale, two independent judges rated participants’ ability to both sing and play the etude with accurate intonation. Pearson product moment correlations were conducted to determine whether there was a relationship between stabilized tonal music aptitude and instrumental intonation accuracy, or between instrumental intonation accuracy and vocal intonation accuracy. Results from this study yielded a moderately low relationship between instrumental intonation accuracy and stabilized tonal music aptitude (r = .32) and a low relationship between instrumental intonation accuracy and vocal intonation accuracy (r = .23). A number of factors may have contributed to these results. The small sample size (N = 28) and moderate interjudge reliability for the rating scale may have contributed to the lack of statistical findings. Other contributing factors may have been environmental factors such as student participation in choral groups and instrumental chamber ensembles.