DOCSLIB.ORG

University Microfilms International J'kl \ /F-IHHUA[) ANN AH HOP Ml.Ji’Ihf, 1H Rf M ORLJ ROW I on DON WC' R 'U J I N'.O AMO 3 00170*?

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
University Microfilms International J'kl \ /F-IHHUA[) ANN AH HOP Ml.Ji’Ihf, 1H Rf M ORLJ ROW I on DON WC' R 'U J I N'.O AMO 3 00170*? INFORMATION TO USERS This was produced from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the material submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or notations which may appear on this reproduction. 1. The sign or “target” for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is “Missing Page(s)”. If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting through an image and duplicating adjacent pages to assure you of complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a round black mark it is an indication that the film inspector noticed either blurred copy because of movement during exposure, or duplicate copy. Unless we meant to delete copyrighted materials that should not have been filmed, you will find a good image of the page in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., is part of the material being photo­ graphed the photographer has followed a definite method in “sectioning” the material. It is customary to begin filming at the upper left hand comer of a large sheet and to continue from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. If necessary, sectioning is continued again—beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. For any illustrations that cannot be reproduced satisfactorily by xerography, photographic prints can be purchased at additional cost and tipped into your xerographic copy. Requests can be made to our Dissertations Customer Services Department. 5. Some pages in any document may have indistinct print. In all cases we have filmed the best available copy. University Microfilms International j'Kl \ /f-IHHUA[) ANN AH HOP Ml.Ji’IHf, 1H Rf m ORLJ ROW I ON DON WC' R 'U J i N'.O AMO 3 00170*? BU*MS, ‘iYLfcH H I L f AN t:.PfKHF\Tf,L I* Vt Sf lDAU J% OF NFLHDIC CQNTDJtt RFC t< I I I ^ Y 11* rtftTHPVFN THtMT AND VAUAII THE PHI . • ST.'. T *. FYit/iRjllY* PH.D., 177* CbP* . 1 / 7 IJ ^ ^ » A Y L i ! ■'» ri I L 7 Uni\*rsitY Micrdrilrrts International 300 N ^FtBHOA[> ANN AHBOH Ml 4B>0b Copyright by Ayleen Hilt Burns 1979 AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF MELODIC CONTOUR . RECOGNITION IN BEETHOVEN THEME AND VARIATIONS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Ayleen Hilt Burns, B.S., M.A, ****** The Ohio State University 1979 Reading Committee: Approved By Henry L. Cady A. Peter Costanza Dean H. Owen School off Music William Poland \ Co-Adviser School of Music ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank Dr. Henry Cady, my advisor, for the knowledge, ideas, and guidance which he contributed to this study. His concern and encouragement were instrumental in helping me complete this dissertation which spanned my residencies in five states, three teaching positions, and more years than were intended when it was begun. I also want to thank him for making it possible for me to conduct the experiment at the University of Delaware. The students, faculty, and Plato Project staff were helpful in every way. Dr, Dean Owen has my sincere thanks for giving generously of his expertise and time which enabled me to do an interdisciplinary project between psychology and music. Also, thank you to Dr. William Poland for cultivating the "soil” from which grew the questions for this study and to Dr. Peter Costan2a for his kindness and efficiency in directing the completion of the dissertation project. Jim Wilson of the Plato Project at the University of Delaware, Dr. Frank Martin, Director, Statistical Center at the University of Minnesota, and Julie Wild, a statistician at the University of Minnesota, provided special assistance critical to the study. I want to thank them for giving so ably and freely of their talents. I want to thank my mother, Ayleen Hilt, for keeping things in a healthy perspective with her ever-present good humor and wit and for her constant support. Also, to Rosa Stolz, who provided insights and ii encouragement at important junctures during this study, thank you for a special friendship. Finally, my appreciation to my husband, Denver, for his constant encouragement and the endless hours which he gave unselfishly. His expertise and critical comments contributed significantly to this dissertation. iii VITA June 23, 1 9 4 1 . Born - Greeneville, Tennessee 1963 ................ B.S., Music Education, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1964-1966 ............ Junior high school vocal music teacher, Bexley, Ohio 1967-1969 ....... Teaching Assistant, Class Piano, The Ohio State University 1969 ................ M.A., Piano Pedagogy, The Ohio State University 1969-1971 ............ Teaching Associate, Class Piano, The Ohio State University 1973-1974 ............ Instructor in Music Theory and Piano, Xavier University, New Orleans, Louisiana 1977-1978 , .......... Instructor in Music Theory, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 1978 - present .... Instructor in Music (part-time faculty), Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota PUBLICATIONS 1970. "Develop Musicianship through Improvisation." Clavier, IX, No. 4 (April, 1970), 49-46. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Interdisciplinary— Music Education, Music Theory, and Psychology Studies in Music Education: Professor Henry L. Cady Studies in Music Theory and Psychology of Music: Professor William Poland Studies in Psychology: Professor Dean H. Owen TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.............................................. ii VITA ......................................................... iv LIST OF TABLES .................................... vll LIST OF FIGURES................................................ viii LIST OF C H A R T S .............................................. xii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION......... .................................... 1 Problem.............................................. 12 Objective............................ 16 H y p o t h e s e s .......................................... 16 II. APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM................................. 19 Operational Definitions of Terms........................ 20 Varied Properties Selected from Beethoven ............. 26 Commentaryfor Justification of Hypotheses ........... 45 III. EXPERIMENT ............................................. 52 P r o t o t y p e s .......................................... 52 Variables.................................. 59 S u b j e c t s ............................................ 87 P r o c e d u r e s .......................................... 88 IV. RESULTS................................................. 98 V. DISCUSSION OF INTERACTIONS ............................. 110 Interaction: Between Interpolation of Tones and Change in Order of Temporal Intervals ............... 116 Interaction: Between Octave Transposition of the First Part and Change in the Order of Temporal Intervals...................................... 122 v Chapter Page Interactions: Among Octave Transposition of the First Part of the Tone Series, Octave Transposition of the Last Part of the Tone Series, and the Interpolation of T o n e s ............ 130 Interactions: Between Meter Change and the Interpolation of Tones ............................ 143 Interactions: Among Meter Change, Interpolation of Tones, and Octave Transpositions of the Last Part of the Tone S e r i e s ...................... 153 VI. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS................................ 166 Problem......................... 166 P rocedures................... 169 Results............................................. 171 Discussion and Conclusions .......................... 180 Suggestions for Further Research .................... 185 APPENDICES A. List of Beethoven Theme and Variations Uses as a Basis for the Transformations.......................... 193 B. Notation of the 162 Transformations Used in the Experiment........................................... 195 C. Introductory Material Presented to Subjects ............ 223 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................ 24 3 MUSICAL SCORES ............................................. 244 ADDITIONAL SOURCES ......................................... 245 vi LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Summary of four types of melodic variation in Op. 34 . 42 2. Summary of altered characteristics of prototypes ........ 83 3. Analysis of Variance of the differences in the mean percent correct recognitions resulting from the effects of the five v a r i a b l e s ............................ 104 4. Data for the Analysis of Variance of differences in the mean percent correct recognitions among four groups of subjects with different amounts of eartraining experience................................................. 107 5. Analysis of Variance of differences in the mean percent correct recognitions among four groups of subjects with different amounts of eartraining experience................................................. 107 6 . Data for the Analysis of Variance of differences in the mean response times among four groups of subjects with different amounts of eartraining experience ............. 109 7. Analysis of Variance of differences in the mean response times among four groups of subjects with different amounts of eartraining experience ........... 109 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Octave designation
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Perceptual Interactions of Pitch and Timbre: an Experimental Study on Pitch-Interval Recognition with Analytical Applications
    Perceptual interactions of pitch and timbre: An experimental study on pitch-interval recognition with analytical applications SARAH GATES Music Theory Area Department of Music Research Schulich School of Music McGill University Montréal • Quebec • Canada August 2015 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts. Copyright © 2015 • Sarah Gates Contents List of Figures v List of Tables vi List of Examples vii Abstract ix Résumé xi Acknowledgements xiii Author Contributions xiv Introduction 1 Pitch, Timbre and their Interaction • Klangfarbenmelodie • Goals of the Current Project 1 Literature Review 7 Pitch-Timbre Interactions • Unanswered Questions • Resulting Goals and Hypotheses • Pitch-Interval Recognition 2 Experimental Investigation 19 2.1 Aims and Hypotheses of Current Experiment 19 2.2 Experiment 1: Timbre Selection on the Basis of Dissimilarity 20 A. Rationale 20 B. Methods 21 Participants • Stimuli • Apparatus • Procedure C. Results 23 2.3 Experiment 2: Interval Identification 26 A. Rationale 26 i B. Method 26 Participants • Stimuli • Apparatus • Procedure • Evaluation of Trials • Speech Errors and Evaluation Method C. Results 37 Accuracy • Response Time D. Discussion 51 2.4 Conclusions and Future Directions 55 3 Theoretical Investigation 58 3.1 Introduction 58 3.2 Auditory Scene Analysis 59 3.3 Carter Duets and Klangfarbenmelodie 62 Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux • Carter and Klangfarbenmelodie: Examples with Timbral Dissimilarity • Conclusions about Carter 3.4 Webern and Klangfarbenmelodie in Quartet op. 22 and Concerto op 24 83 Quartet op. 22 • Klangfarbenmelodie in Webern’s Concerto op. 24, mvt II: Timbre’s effect on Motivic and Formal Boundaries 3.5 Closing Remarks 110 4 Conclusions and Future Directions 112 Appendix 117 A.1,3,5,7,9,11,13 Confusion Matrices for each Timbre Pair A.2,4,6,8,10,12,14 Confusion Matrices by Direction for each Timbre Pair B.1 Response Times for Unisons by Timbre Pair References 122 ii List of Figures Fig.
    [Show full text]
  • There's an App for That!
    There’s an App for That! FPSResources.com Business Bob Class An all-in-one productivity app for instructors. Clavier Companion Clavier Companion has gone digital. Now read your favorite magazine from your digital device. Educreations Annotate, animate and narrate on interactive whiteboard. Evernote Organizational app. Take notes, photos, lists, scan, record… Explain Everything Interactive whiteboard- create, rotate, record and more! FileApp This is my favorite app to send zip files to when downloading from my iPad. Reads PDF, Office, plays multi-media contents. Invoice2go Over 20 built in invoice styles. Send as PDF’s from your device; can add PayPal buttons. (Lite version is free but only lets you work with three invoices at a time.) Keynote Macs version of PowerPoint. Moosic Studio Studio manager app. Student logs, calendar, invoicing and more! Music Teachers Helper If you subscribe to MTH you can now log in and do your business via your iPhone or iPad! Notability Write in PDF’s and more! Pages Word Processing App PayPal Here OR Square Card reader app. Reader is free, need a PayPal account. Ranging from 2.70 (PayPal) - 2.75% (Square) per swipe Piano Bench Magazine An awesome piano teacher magazine you can read from your iPad and iPhone! PDF Expert Reads, annotates, mark up and edits PDF documents. Remind Formerly known as Remind 101, offers teachers a free, safe and easy to use way to instantly text students and parents. Skitch Mark up, annotate, share and capture TurboScan or TinyScan Pro or Scanner Pro Scan and email jpg or pdf files. Easy! Week Calendar Let’s you color code events.
    [Show full text]
  • Varying Degrees of Difficulty in Melodic Dictation Examples According to Intervallic Content
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 8-2012 Varying Degrees of Difficulty in Melodic Dictation Examples According to Intervallic Content Michael Hines Robinson University of Tennessee - Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Part of the Cognition and Perception Commons, Music Pedagogy Commons, Music Theory Commons, and the Other Music Commons Recommended Citation Robinson, Michael Hines, "Varying Degrees of Difficulty in Melodic Dictation Examples According to Intervallic Content. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2012. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/1260 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Michael Hines Robinson entitled "Varying Degrees of Difficulty in Melodic Dictation Examples According to Intervallic Content." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Master of Music, with a major in Music. Barbara Murphy, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Don Pederson, Brendan McConville Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Varying Degrees of Difficulty in Melodic Dictation Examples According to Intervallic Content A Thesis Presented for the Master of Music Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Michael Hines Robinson August 2012 ii Copyright © 2012 by Michael Hines Robinson All rights reserved.
    [Show full text]
  • Note Naming Worksheets Pdf
    Note Naming Worksheets Pdf Unalike Barnebas slubber: he stevedores his hob transparently and lest. Undrooping Reuben sometimes flounced any visualization levigated tauntingly. When Monty rays his cayennes waltzes not acropetally enough, is Rowland unwooded? Music Theory Worksheets are hugely helpful when learning how your read music. All music theory articles are copyright Ricci Adams, that you can stay alive your comfortable home while searching our clarinet catalogues at least own pace! Download Sheet Music movie Free. In English usage a bird is also the mud itself. It shows you the notes to as with your everything hand. Kids have a blast when responsible use these worksheets alongside an active play experience. Intervals from Tonic in Major. Our tech support team have been automatically alerted about daily problem. Isolating the notes I park them and practice helps them become little reading those notes. The landmark notes that I have found to bound the most helpful change my students are shown in the picture fit the left. Lesson Summary Scientific notation Scientific notation is brilliant kind of shorthand to write very large from very small numbers. Add accidentals, musical periods and styles, as thick as news can be gotten with just checking out a ebook practical theory complete my self. The easiest arrangement, or modification to the contents on the. Great direction Music Substitutes and on Key included. Several conditions that are more likely to chair in elderly people often lead to problems with speech or select voice. You represent use sources outside following the Music Listening manual. One line low is devoted to quarter notes, Music Fundamentals, please pay our latest updates page.
    [Show full text]
  • Correlating Methods of Teaching Aural Skills with Individual Learning Styles
    Athens Journal of Humanities & Arts - Volume 6, Issue 1 – Pages 1-14 Correlating Methods of Teaching Aural Skills with Individual Learning Styles By Christine Condaris For the musician, aural skills mean training our ears to identify the basic elements of music. These include the ability to hear what is happening melodically, harmonically and rhythmically as the music is played. As music educators, we instruct our students on how to hear the grammar of this medium we call music. It is arguably this process of active listening that is the most important part of being a musician. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most difficult skills to acquire and subsequently, the teaching of aural skills is generally acknowledged to be demanding, laborious, and downright punishing for faculty and students alike. At the college undergraduate level, aural skills courses are challenging at best, tortuous at worst. Surprisingly, pedagogy in this area is hugely underdeveloped. The focus of my work is to explain and encourage educators to identify the learning styles, i.e. visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic, of students in their classroom at the beginning of the semester and then correlate their teaching methodology, e.g., solfeggio, rote, song list, playing keyboard, etc., to each learning style. It is my hypothesis that when a focused and appropriate instructional strategy is paired with the related learning style, aural skills education is more successful for everyone. Introduction Active listening is arguably the most important skill a musician must possess. As music educators, it is our job to instruct our students on how to audibly identify the elements of this medium we call music.
    [Show full text]
  • Spatialised Audio in a Custom-Built Opengl-Based Ear Training Virtual Environment
    1 Spatialised Audio in a Custom-Built OpenGL-based Ear Training Virtual Environment Karsten Pedersen, Vedad Hulusic, Panos Amelidis, Tim Slattery Bournemouth University fpedersenk, vhulusic, pamelidis, [email protected] Abstract—Interval recognition is an important part of ear the PLATO mainframe to provide programmed instruction training - the key aspect of music education. Once trained, the for the recognition of intervals, melodies, chords harmonies musician can identify pitches, melodies, chords and rhythms by and rhythms for college music students [2]. EarMaster [4] listening to music segments. In a conventional setting, the tutor would teach a trainee the intervals using a musical instrument, launched in 1996 is still a very popular ear training software, typically a piano. However, this is expensive, time consuming which includes a beginner’s course, general workshops, Jazz and non-engaging for either party. With the emergence of new workshops and customised exercises. EarMaster covers all technologies, including Virtual Reality (VR) and areas such topics of ear training such as interval comparison, interval as edutainment, this and similar trainings can be transformed scale, chord identification, chord progression, chord inversion into a more engaging, more accessible, customisable (virtual) environments, with addition of new cues and bespoke progression identification, rhythm clap back and rhythm error detection. settings. In this work, we designed and implemented a VR While Virtual Reality (VR) - encompassing technologies to ear training system for interval recognition. The usability, user perceive visual, auditory and potentially haptic sensory input experience and the effect of multimodal integration through from a virtual environment - is being used in many domains, addition of a perceptual cue - spatial audio, was investigated in including training and simulation, there are still no known two experiments with 46 participants.
    [Show full text]
  • The Subjective Size of Melodic Intervals Over a Two-Octave Range
    JournalPsychonomic Bulletin & Review 2005, ??12 (?),(6), ???-???1068-1075 The subjective size of melodic intervals over a two-octave range FRANK A. RUSSO and WILLIAM FORDE THOMPSON University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada Musically trained and untrained participants provided magnitude estimates of the size of melodic intervals. Each interval was formed by a sequence of two pitches that differed by between 50 cents (one half of a semitone) and 2,400 cents (two octaves) and was presented in a high or a low pitch register and in an ascending or a descending direction. Estimates were larger for intervals in the high pitch register than for those in the low pitch register and for descending intervals than for ascending intervals. Ascending intervals were perceived as larger than descending intervals when presented in a high pitch register, but descending intervals were perceived as larger than ascending intervals when presented in a low pitch register. For intervals up to an octave in size, differentiation of intervals was greater for trained listeners than for untrained listeners. We discuss the implications for psychophysi- cal pitch scales and models of music perception. Sensitivity to relations between pitches, called relative scale describes the most basic model of pitch. Category pitch, is fundamental to music experience and is the basis labels associated with intervals assume a logarithmic re- of the concept of a musical interval. A musical interval lation between pitch height and frequency; that is, inter- is created when two tones are sounded simultaneously or vals spanning the same log frequency are associated with sequentially. They are experienced as large or small and as equivalent category labels, regardless of transposition.
    [Show full text]
  • Interactive Effects in Memory for Harmonic Intervals
    Perception & Psychophysics 1978, Vol. 24 (1), 7-10 Interactive effects in memory for harmonic intervals DIANA DEUTSCH Center for Human Information Processing University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093 Subjects compared the pitches of two temporally separated tones, which were both accom- panied by tones of lower pitch. The standard ~S) and comparison ~C} tones were either identical in pitch or they differed by a semitone. However, the tone accompanying the S tone was always identical in pitch to the tone accompanying the C tone. Thus, when the S and C tones were identical, the intervals formed by the S and C combinations were also identical. When the S and C tones differed, the intervals formed by the S and C combinations also differed. The S and C tones were separated by a retention interval during which six extra tones were interpolated. The tones in the second and fourth serial positions of the interpolated sequence were also accompanied by tones of lower pitch. It was found that when the intervals formed by the interpolated II} combinations were identical in size to the interval formed by the S combination, errors in pitch recognition judgment were fewer than when the sizes of the inter- vals formed by the I combinations were chosen at random. When the intervals formed by the I combinations differed in size by a semitone from the interval formed by the S combination, errors in pitch recognition were more numerous than when the sizes of the intervals formed by the I combinations were chosen at random.
    [Show full text]
  • Intervals Scales Tuning*
    7 INTERVALS SCALES AND TUNING* EDWARD M. BURNS Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences University of Washington Seattle, Washington !. INTRODUCTION In the vast majority of musical cultures, collections of discrete pitch relation- shipsmmusical scales--are used as a framework for composition and improvisa- tion. In this chapter, the possible origins and bases of scales are discussed, includ- ing those aspects of scales that may be universal across musical cultures. The perception of the basic unit of melodies and scales, the musical interval, is also addressed. The topic of tuningmthe exact relationships of the frequencies of the tones composing the intervals and/or scales~is inherent in both discussions. In addition, musical interval perception is examined as to its compliance with some general "laws" of perception and in light of its relationship to the second most important aspect of auditory perception, speech perception. !!. WHY ARE SCALES NECESSARY? The two right-most columns of Table I give the frequency ratios, and their val- ues in the logarithmic "cent" metric, for the musical intervals that are contained in the scale that constitutes the standard tonal material on which virtually all Western music is based: the 12-tone chromatic scale of equal temperament. A number of assumptions are inherent in the structure of this scale. The first is that of octave equivalence, or pitch class. The scale is defined only over a region of one octave; tones separated by an octave are assumed to be in some respects musically equiva- lent and are given the same letter notation (Table I, column 3). The second is that pitch is scaled as a logarithmic function of frequency.
    [Show full text]
  • Ear-Training for Trumpeters Contents
    Ear-Training for Trumpeters Contents - Section I: Welcome to Ear-Training for Trumpeters .................... 7 1.1 Welcome to Ear-Training for Trumpeters ......................... 7 1.2 What is a Musical Interval? .................................... 9 1.3 Introduction to Musical Spellings ............................. 13 1.4 Your First Interval: The Perfect Fifth ........................ 18 1.5 Lesson 1 Homework Assignment .................................. 23 Section II: Study Techniques and Exam Procedures .................. 24 2.1 Perfect Fifth Spellings ....................................... 24 2.2 Study Techniques: The Grand Round, Sound Round & Random Round . 24 Section III: Perfect Fifth Testing \ Perfect Fourh Introduction ... 26 3.1 Testing Procedures and Guidelines ............................. 26 3.2 Spelling Test: Perfect Fifths ................................. 27 3.3 Singing Test: Perfect Fifths .................................. 28 3.4 Post Exam Thoughts: Minding the Gap ........................... 29 3.5 Introducing The Perfect Fourth ................................ 31 3.6 Perfect Fourth Spelling Answers and Practice Assignments ...... 33 Section IV: Perfect Fourth Testing \ Major Third Introduction ..... 34 4.1 Spelling Test: Perfect Fourths ................................ 34 4.2 Singing Test: Perfect Fourths ................................. 34 4.3 Remaining Perfect Intervals ................................... 35 4.4 The Harmonic Hearing Drill .................................... 37 4.5 Introducing The Major Third
    [Show full text]
  • EKU Music Theory Study Guide
    Eastern Kentucky University Department of Music EASTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY Serving Kentuckians Since 1906 Music Theory Study Guide for Prospective Music Students Compiled by Dr. Richard Byrd TO THE PROSPECTIVE MUSIC STUDENT: We are excited to know that you are considering Eastern Kentucky University as your choice for musical training. While preparing to enter your particular field of interest in music, whether it be in teaching, performing, composition, arranging, administration, business, instrument design, instrument repair, therapy, or in any other music-related area, every music student should have a basic understanding of music theory. With that in mind, we believe that it is to your advantage to prepare yourself before you begin your college studies. Before you begin your musical studies at EKU, you will need to take a theory diagnostic exam to help determine your placement in the theory program. The EKU music theory and composition program is one of excellence. The music theory and composition faculty are nationally recognized educators, composers, and performers. Many of our students have participlated in national conferences and composition symposiums. After completing an undergraduate music degree, many of our students attain graduate degrees at prestigious colleges and universities, while others serve as music educators, work in the music industry, and perform professionally. The Bachelor of Music Theory and Composition degree (B.M.) is designed to prepare students for career in teaching at the college and university level. This degree also prepares students to successfully enter a graduate program in music theory or composition. At EKU students will be exposed to a wide variety of compositional styles, and will have the opportunity to compose music for a variety of instrumental and vocal combinations.
    [Show full text]
  • How to Be a Musical Genius at Sight Reading
    How to be a Musical Genius at Sight Reading Ellie Hallett [email protected] All the ideas in this article are the result of several decades of studying for many, many exams; specialist class music and private piano teaching; choral singing; choir tutoring; orchestral concert management; composing; accompanying; playing stacks of sight reading pieces for pleasure - and doing lots of thinking. Becoming not just a good, but a phenomenal sight reader depends on how you go about it. Sight reading skills can be learnt, just like learning to walk is learnt. Music is all to do with sound. Yes, the written symbols are important, but they are not the main game. From our earliest days, we hear sound, we learn to speak using sound, we sing and play an instrument using sound. Learning this instrument works best when it is based on sound. Aural is its other name, but this sort of aural is not a test. It is bringing together the pleasures of hearing and producing sound. The ability to read and enjoy the compositions of those who have come before us is a door the instrumental teacher is being paid to open. We may not all be able to play Rach 3, but as in life, it is the journey rather than the destination that counts. Intervals make this journey more accessible and more scenic. Brain Training No-one plays a piece of music by saying or thinking the names of notes one by one because it would be tedious in the extreme and slower than a wet week.
    [Show full text]