The Use of YouTube to Improve Students’ Acuity and Analytic Skills in Discussion of Issues in Music Performance

Abstract

The emergence of YouTube as a public and easily accessible resource for musical performances provides both opportunities and challenges for tertiary level music teaching. The simultaneous combination of visual and aural recognition greatly aids the understanding of music performance practice issues: listening and scrutiny of video footage of both historical and recent performances is an important research activity for developing understanding of past and current performance practices. Such learning enables the skill development and stylistic awareness to underpin more authentic or aesthetically pleasing individual musical interpretation and performance. The authors conducted a study in 2012 to evaluate the use of YouTube footage in classroom settings to initiate discussion of performance practices and raise students' awareness of the effect of the individual persona on a given interpretation. The study found that students developed a more nuanced understanding of what was needed, visually and aurally, to create stylish and professionally credible performances as well as gaining greater awareness and understanding of criteria that can be used to assess the performance of others. A follow up study in 2014 evaluated tertiary music performance students' subsequent use of YouTube outside the classroom environment. The data strongly suggests that the earlier use of YouTube as a teaching tool in the curriculum and the development of critical awareness and judgment in that forum has contributed to this cohort's willingness to engage with this audiovisual resource for personal learning and that they exhibit a high degree of critical judgment in their viewing and use of the resource.

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