Abstract:

Music teachers often have not had the opportunity to develop skills necessary for expertise in dictation. More expert musicians are more efficient at grouping many small events into fewer large events. This chunking is commonly thought of in terms of melodic and rhythmic patterns. Chunking strategies assist students in learning and practicing higher-level listening skills. Aural analysis is critical because it provides students with the opportunities to audiate particular phrases of music so that they can describe the sounds or pitches on particular beats.

The research question for this study was: Does a structured approach to teaching dictation skills through a sound to symbol orientation enhance music dictation? Through a summer professional development program at a university in Texas, K-12 music teachers experienced an innovative orientation to teaching that placed special emphasis on singing, memory, and understanding music by labeling sounds and pitches using rhythm syllables before the notation of melodies. During the intervention period, students developed the ability to label an extensive number of rhythmic and melodic patterns with rhythm and solfege syllables that appeared in music repertoire being studied. Musical concepts were initially explored through singing, aural analysis and creating representations before sounds are labeled with rhythmic or solfège syllables and notated. Pre- and Post-Tests on dictation skills were conducted before and immediately after training. Data was collected from assessment scores for rhythmic and melodic dictation of minor and major melodies. Means and standard deviations of scores were calculated. Then Hedge's g effect sizes and confidence intervals were calculated. Results of this study suggest that teaching musicianship through a sequential sound to symbol orientation could affect the ability of students to internalize (audiate) and notate music. Data revealed that teachers improved in their ability to use tools and techniques that can facilitate the improvement dictation. Overall Hedge 's g effect size was 0.735 (p = .01) with C.I. [0.150, 1.319]. This study supports the model of learning that four steps that are necessary for translating sounds into symbols: hearing, memory, understanding, and notation. Teaching musicianship, particularly dictation, is a complex activity. Understanding how to translate a melody into notation can be improved by the use of various pedagogical tools such as the use of pre-notation and the use of rhythm and solfege syllables. Using pre-notation skills to discover whether students could represent sounds and pitches for melodic dictation was an important step in this study as it allowed us to identify those students that still had problems with “understanding” the melody as opposed to “notating” the melody. Errors in pre-notation indicated that students were unsure as to the role the sounds and pitches in the melody for transcription. This systematic model of learning permits students to develop their aural awareness skills as well as their ability to read music as a consequence of music instruction that is perceptually based. A structured approach to teaching dictation skills through a sound to symbol orientation with an emphasis on developing audition skills could be an effective pedagogical approach.

Keywords:

Music education, dictation skills.