The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among musical characteristics and musicians' and nonmusicians' preferences for world musics. World musics were drawn from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Musical characteristics included tempo, pitch redundancy, tonal centeredness, consonance, brightness in timbre, percussiveness, loudness, textural complexity, and richness in embellishment. Preference was also examined in relation to familiarity. Subjects were 449 undergraduate students (180 music majors and 269 nonmusic majors). Subjects completed a preference-rating scale that included a total of 36 instrumental excerpts from nine countries. Results showed that all nine musical characteristics were significant sources of variance in world music preferences. The following musical characteristics were preferred by both musicians and nonmusicians: fast tempo, loud, tonal-centered, having many different pitches, consonant, moderately embellished, smooth-sounding, and bright timbre. Musicians preferred excerpts with complex texture, whereas nonmusicians preferred moderately complex textures. A positive relationship between familiarity and preference was found across all musical styles. In general, musicians had significantly higher preference means than did nonmusicians:
The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between world music preferences and multicultural attitudes of nonmusic-major undergraduate students. The World Music Preference Inventory (WMPI) and the Multicultural Attitude Inventory (MAI) were administered to 50 undergraduate nonmusic majors. Two scores were determined from the WMPI (composite preference and composite correct identification) for eight world music style categories: Africa, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Middle East, and Thailand. No significant correlations were found between the composite preference score and composite correct identification score. There was, however, a significant correlation between the composite preference score and the composite MAI score. Furthermore, significant correlations were found among the preference subscores of all style categories, indicating that subjects' preferences for the eight world musical style categories were similar. Analyses revealed that there was a significantly higher degree of preference for instrumental excerpts than for vocal excerpts.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of active versus passive listening on the quality of 35 American children's invented notations of two Korean pieces, as a way to investigate the effect of listening conditions on children's perception of music and their music preference. Participants ranged in age from 7 5 years to 12 8 years. Active listeners moved spontaneously while listening, first with props, and second in sand, before drawing the way the music goes with coloured pens. Passive listeners sat quietly during two listenings before "drawing the way the music goes" (adapted from Bamberger, 1982, p. 210). The results of the study showed that the active group's invented notations referenced significantly more of the music's rhythm or beat and its groupings of notes into patterns. Interestingly, 94-4% of the active listeners preferred the piece that featured rhythmic and percussive sounds, changing tempo and dynamic contrasts compared to 52-9% of the passive listeners. Our results lend credence to the idea that the natural locomotor rhythms of the body may be the source of children's perception of the movement, nuance and patterns in music.
We compared teacher behaviors, student behaviors, and student achievement in private piano instruction in the People’s Republic of China and in the United States. The research questions were: (1) What were the similarities and differences in private piano lessons regarding teacher verbalizations, teacher modeling, and student behaviors? (2) Was there a difference in the frequency of student success and non-success during lessons? We analyzed 32 video segments (16 pre-college piano teachers each in China and the United States) using a computer observation program. Results indicated some similarities in student and teacher behaviors and no significant difference in students’ success rates within these lessons. Differences were found in time spent on teacher questions, teacher multiple modeling, student play, and students’ verbal response to teacher questions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.