Tonal memory

Abstract: In two studies, groups of children with a wide range of reading ability and including a high proportion of poor readers were given Bentley's musical ability battery. Scores on tonal memory and chord analysis were related significantly to reading age with chronological age and IQ partialled out. The implications of these findings for views about component skills involved in reading and listening to music are discussed.

Abstract: Few attempts have been made to look systematically at the relationship between musical and intonation analysis skills, a relationship that has been to date suggested only by informal observations. Following Mackenzie Beck (2003), who showed that musical ability was a useful predictor of general phonetic skills, we report on two studies investigating the relationship between musical skills, musical training, and intonation analysis skills in English. The specially designed music tasks targeted pitch direction judgments and tonal memory. The intonation tasks involved locating the nucleus, identifying the nuclear tone in stimuli of different length and complexity, and same/different contour judgments. The subjects were university students with basic training in intonation analysis. Both studies revealed an overall significant relationship between musical training and intonation task scores, and between the music test scores and intonation test scores. A more detailed analysis, focusing on the relationship between the individual music and intonation tests, yielded a more complicated picture. The results are discussed with respect to differences and similarities between music and intonation, and with respect to form and function of intonation. Implications of musical training on development of intonation analysis skills are considered. We argue that it would be beneficial to investigate the differences between musically trained and untrained subjects in their analysis of both musical stimuli and intonational form from a cognitive point of view.

Abstract: DURING THE LAST forty-five years attempts have been made to devise tests of musical talent which have been used with varying degrees of success. These include such standardized music tests as those developed by Seashore (8), Mosher (6), Gildersleeve (2), and Kwalwasser-Dykema (4). Only a few ewerimental studies, such as that by Ottmann (7), have been made coincident with the construction of these tests. Farnsworth ( 1 ) has attempted to write about musical talent and growth based upon empirical evidence. Discussions concerning musical characteristics, however, are frequently based upon esperience or opinion or both. Although attempts to define musicianship have not succeeded, mally of the skills which comprise it are wellknown. Wheelwright (10) gave a definition of musicianship as related to reading music. Sight-reading has always been considered an important part of good musicianship, although teachers present a wide variance in both attention and approach to its development. Although research is needed concenling much of the music-learning process, investigation of the unknown role of the ear may be especially important. Schools are at great variance in their attention to the ear-training of students. Research concerning tonal memory by Van Neuys and Weaver (9), concluded that a group's memory span for various kinds of meaningful melodies decreased as the complexity of note relations increased, both for rhythm and melody. While observing the learning process, educators have noted those musically talented students who have the ability to reproduce immediately music which they hear. It is implied that this skill for the instrumentalist, ear-playing, is dependent on inherent ability as well as on the technical skill required when playint the instrument. This paper describes an attempt to find the relationship between high school instrumental music students' performances of sight-reading music and reproducing music immediately by ear, and to discover the relative contribution which certain student characteristics may malie to these two performances.1 The student characteristics include amounts of music instruction, kinds of music instruction, intelligence quotients, mental ages, leadership status, and music goals.