In recent years, a strong focus on popular music has increased in South Korean music education. Although this shift in the curricular content has led to studies on the formation of popular music repertories in the curriculum, few studies have attended to teachers’ attitudes and learning practices to popular music as related factors. To understand popular music education in South Korea, we investigated music teachers’ attitudes, learning practices, and critical issues that have arisen in their teaching. We conducted an online survey with secondary music teachers ( N = 138) followed by a focus group interview ( n = 6). The findings suggest that teachers’ attitudes toward popular music (positive, neutral, or negative) were associated with their learning practices, including the time they spent on popular music, their selections of popular music genres, and musical activities. This provides a starting point for further investigation of the teachers’ attitudes related to their learning practices in shaping popular music curriculum. Regardless of the teachers’ attitudes to popular music, they agreed popular music a good place to start for their students. In addition, they had similar or divergent perceptions and concerns of teaching popular music depending on their attitudes, as they have found their own individual ways of incorporating popular music.

Studies on music performance have received greater attention in the last several decades since the establishment of musical performance studies, and emotional expressivity has taken an important place in the study of emotional communication. The methodological or thematic integration of these domains in the study of music performance may expand the rationale for studying performance. The purpose of this study was to explore a virtuoso’s expressivity in terms of sanjo-specific features, including jangdan, indicating a rhythmic pattern, and jo, a structural feature that conveys emotional meanings. We investigated tempo and dynamics in the melodies within the unit of a jangdan across jo and those acoustic cues related to the jo transition. The findings suggest that the virtuoso, Kim Juk-pa, differentiated tempo and dynamics in the conveyance of structural features of jo. Tempo and dynamics were indicative of a jo shift, acting as a clue for her individuality. This provides current performers with critical sources for understanding the virtuoso’s expressivity corresponding with jo’s changes. The sanjo virtuoso’s individuality could be further elaborated via multi-dimensional analysis of historically informed recordings; this approach to music performance would lead to improved learning, transmission, and creation of new forms of music across cultures.

The purpose of this study was to explore musicians’ approaches to performance during practice and identify the factors that underpinned their approaches. We hypothesised that musicians would be able to recall their focus, knowledge and thoughts of their own repertoire during music performance and that such data would reveal musicians’ cognitive behaviours during the performance. By analysing musicians’ retrospective verbal protocols, we found that musicians used four main reasoning processes – study, static analysis, intuition and performer’s analysis – in their approach to music performance. The findings show that musicians utilise multiple cognitive behaviours for music performance. The implications for instrumental music teaching are discussed.

Sight-reading strategies used for reading music in different tonal environments are critical for musicians to perform accurately. We investigated the strategies advanced sight-readers utilize when they encounter different tonal environments. After a brief study period, six advanced sight-readers performed a through-composed piece that included tonal, non-tonal, and ambiguously tonal music. Immediately following the performance, participants went back through the music and described their thought process and strategies. Participants reported different strategies from one another to play accurately, but there were also common strategies used for different tonal environments. We found verbal reports of critical and relevant strategies of advanced sight-readers were categorized as attention, static analysis, informed intuition, and performer’s analysis. The sight-readers executed their performance interacting with static analysis, informed intuition, and performer’ s analysis. Most importantly, participants relied heavily on performer’s analysis for the expressive performance in the tonal section, followed by the non-tonal and ambiguously tonal sections. Findings imply that advanced sight-readers’ strategies moved back and forth between attention, intuition, and analytical strategies based on the demands in each tonal environment.