Musical Literacy and Literature in Strings Education

Chapter 3 seeks a meaningful way of acquiring musical literacy and literature through learning the string instruments. In this section, the book offers actual musical examples for the learners. The chapter also introduces practical strategies on when and how to teach musical notation to early strings learners. The author expands the discussion on music reading and shares teaching examples with a special emphasis on acquiring musical literature and literacy as the students perceive more enjoyment as they read music of various kinds. The author also includes an adaptation of Dalcroze methods, choral methods, and composition methods to the violin teaching and learning with more specific musical examples on reading.

Choral Music Education

Preservice choral music teacher preparation benefits from reviews of literature, published over four decades that, taken together, document the gradual transformation of practice. These reviews of literature provide a place to begin the present chapter, followed by an update of that literature to determine where the field has remained stable and where boundaries have been challenged and expanded in the 21st century. Subsequently, a content analysis of major textbooks for choral methods courses is undertaken, revealing gaps between research and practice in these areas: (a) connecting vocal development to social development, (b) connecting teacher effectiveness to student progress, and (c) recognizing the multiple cultural influences on choral singers. The chapter concludes with a proposed framework for preparation of choral music educators, borrowed from the training of healthcare professionals, called cultural humility. Cultural humility is not intended to be learned in a classroom, but instead through ongoing clinical practice.

Collaboration and Meaning Making in the Women’s Choral Rehearsal

This chapter gives examples of collaborative choral methods that impact female singers positively and holistically as individuals and musicians. A brief overview of the inception and facets of feminist pedagogy reveal its potential influence on singers and lays the groundwork for a qualitative research study of a collegiate women’s choir led by a conductor who has adopted the values of feminist pedagogy. The case study illustrates ways in which feminist pedagogy can be implemented in the choral rehearsal through collaborative methods that give singers the opportunity to make their own decisions within the music-making process. Through these collaborative learning techniques, singers experience an increase in mental engagement, confidence in their abilities, ownership in the music-making process, and improved musicianship. The exploration of multiple meanings and meaning-making via collaborative methods is a catalyst for self-expression, improved performance experiences, and a greater capacity within choral pedagogy to understand and relate with others.

Monkey See, Monkey Do? The Effect of Nonverbal Conductor Lip Rounding on Visual and Acoustic Measures of Singers’ Lip Postures

If singers, without prior prompting, mimicked a conductor’s nonverbal behavior and if this mimicry changed their vocal sound in less than a second, then such a phenomenon could interest vocal music teachers as a time-efficient pedagogical strategy. We tested this claim (“What they see, you will get”), which appears in choral methods literature, by measuring visual and acoustic responses to one nonverbal conductor behavior in a particular singing context. Specifically, we sought to determine whether singers ( N = 114) performing the first phrase of Mozart’s motet, “Ave Verum Corpus,” would mimic a conductor’s rounded lip posture on two /u/ vowels. We also wondered whether conductor lip rounding affected these singers’ tone quality. Visual measures (within-subjects photo comparisons and photo grid analyses) indicated that more than 90% of participants displayed more lip rounding on both /u/ vowels in the experimental condition as compared with baseline. Formant frequency profiles indicated that more than 90% of singers lowered all four examined formant frequencies each time the conductor rounded his lips. We discussed these converging visual and acoustic data in terms of the study’s limitations, potential pedagogical implications of mimicry by vocal performers, and directions for future research.