A Study for Composition and Comparison of the Music Perception Tests for Normal Hearing and Cochlear Implant Users

Purpose: The aim of this study was to compose the test for music perception and analyze the characteristic of cochlear implant users’ music perception.Methods: The test was made up with the pitch, melody, and timbre factors, using three low and high frequencies, six music genres, and four types of musical instruments correspondingly. The tests were conducted to 10 normal-hearing (NH) young adults and 10 young cochlear-implant (CI) users.Results: All the music perception tests showed significant differences between NH and CI group [F(1, 4) = 0.018, p = 0.019]. In the pitch test, CI group showed significantly lower correction rate(51.3%) than NH group (82.7%) did with higher correction rates in low frequencies. In the melody test, CI group showed significantly lower correction rate (29.7%) than NH group (95.8%) did with the highest performance in folk songs (51.7%). In the timbre test, CI group showed significantly reduced performance (22.5%) than NH group (65.8%) did. For both CI and NH groups, the pitched percussion showed the highest scores (45% and 100%) while the woodwind showed the lowest scores (13.3% and 48.3%).Conclusion: Out of three tests, CI group showed better performance in pitch perception than melody and timber perception. CI group showed better performances in low pitch sounds, melodies of familiar genre, and sound of pitched percussion instruments’ timber showing complicated music perception ability. To enhance the music perception ability for CI users by aural rehabilitation, more specified and systematic music perception test material should be developed.

Helen Gifford’s Marlovian Regarding Faustus

Australian composer Helen Gifford’s Regarding Faustus (1983) is an innovative musical theater setting of Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy Doctor Faustus, with additional adaptation from Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, verse by Marston and Shakespeare, Greene’s Historie of Frier Bacon, and Frier Bongay, and Australian indigenous ceremonial practices. Developing the piece for performance by tenor Robert Gard, Gifford makes effective use of dissonance, with pitched and non-pitched percussion, and pre-recorded chorus, oscillating between diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. Her libretto underplays the visceral aspects of the Faustus character, who damns himself yet still invites our pity. The work is distinctive in its intercultural scope and creative synthesis.

Improvisational Practices in Elementary General Music Classrooms

Despite historic and ongoing support for the inclusion of improvisation in the elementary general music curriculum, music educators consistently report challenges with implementation of improvisational activities in their classes. This study was designed to examine (a) the extent to which improvisational activities were occurring in the participants’ elementary general music classrooms, (b) the nature of these improvisational activities, and (c) participants’ perceptions of the quality of their students’ improvisations. The most common improvisational activities reported by these teachers were question-and-answer singing, improvising on unpitched and pitched percussion instruments, and improvising rhythmic patterns using instruments. Analysis of their reflections on these activities revealed three broad themes: (a) process, practice, and experience, (b) sequencing, scaffolding, and modeling in instruction; and (c) collaboration, reflection, and creation. These teachers stated they were most interested in the quality of the improvisational process rather than with the product and indicated that sequencing was crucial in the instruction of improvisation. While some put less importance and priority on improvisation, the majority perceived it as necessary to the development of students’ musical skills, as an important way for students to show musical understanding, and as an empowering creative process that produces independent thinkers and musicians.