Aural Skills Acquisition – Gary Karpinski (1)

(a) A melodic dictation. (b) One student response (in diplo- matic transcription) corrected only for rhythm. Some Proposals It is possible to mark every detail of pitch and rhythm and still remain quite consistent while yielding meaningful scores and providing ample feedback for students. The following suggestions adhere to these princi- ples. 1. Correct and evaluate the rhythms first. Although it is possible to evaluate pitches before rhythms, it is more informative to leave the pitches until after the rhythms have been evaluated.

This procedure allows us first to examine when students thought things occurred and then to ex- amine what they thought they heard in the light of our understanding of their perception of the timing of things. This can involve some of what I will refer to as “normalizing” the rhythms of responses to dictations. Simply put, our first job is to straighten out whatever rhythms (or absence thereof) appear on student papers. Blombach (1990) describes checking from the beginning and from the end.

These are good places to start, considering the serial-curve response of short-term memory.®* However, such statistics are valid across populations, not necessarily for any one individual during any particular dictation. So it behooves us to check for segments of correct rhythmic material from all portions of the dictation. The amount of rhythmic displacement an instructor is willing to accept is a personal matter, although such criteria should be clear to students. All corrections and normalizations of the rhythm should be written out- side the staff, to allow room for pitch corrections.

Example 3.18(a) shows a melodic dictation; Example 3.18(b) shows one student response, with rather liberal rhythm corrections added. It is helpful to join the normal- 64. In brief, the serial curve for memory is a graphic representation of the fact that we tend to remember initial and recent elements more than those in the middle. Melodic Dictation Example 3.19. The response from Example 3.18, now also corrected for pitch.

ized or corrected rhythms to their incorrect notations through some kind of marking: note the rectangle in Figure 3.18(b). 2. Correct and evaluate the pitches in light of the corrected rhythms. Now that the corrected or normalized rhythms have been supplied, treat the pitches as if they were written in those normalized rhythms. As with rhythm, look for correct segments (not individual pitches*5).

Copyright © 2000 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Karpinski, Gary S. (Gary Steven) Aural skills acquisition : the development of listening, reading, and performing skills in college-level musicians / Gary S. Karpinski. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-511785-9 1, Ear training. 2. Sight-reading (Music) 3. Music in universities and colleges. I. Title. MT35.K186 2000 781.4’2—dc21 99-057684 13: S57 9 Bers 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To my mother and the memory of my father ame © es i geet = ~ — weit iv > ak Win – J 7 — ore 4 St Th!

. ; _ chet — A ele 7 j ona “% Pe oe Sa ee) ie wal e Acknowledgments It is due in large part to the faith and persistence of Maribeth Anderson Payne, executive music editor at Oxford University Press, that this book exists at all. Our early conversations about the various paths a book like this might take have helped to shape the entire project. Her encourage- ment to continue my work studying aural skills acquisition as a scholarly discipline motivated me to return to this topic even after pursuing several other long and deeply involving projects.

I owe a debt of gratitude to many others who helped in various ways. To the dozens of professors and teaching assistants who have taught aural skills with me over the years, thank you for being such wonderful colleagues, listening to my ideas, critiquing them, and providing many valuable ideas of your own. To Mary Arlin, Richard Ashley, Ann Blombach, John Buccheri, Carol Krumhansl, Alice Lan- ning, Suzanne La Plante, Steve Larson, Alissa Leiser, Elizabeth West Marvin, Joe Palca, Janet Palumbo, Joel Phillips, Lee Riggins, Carl Schachter, John Sloboda, Paulina Stark, and David Williams, thank you for your prompt replies to requests for reprints and other sources.

To Pamela Juengling, music librarian at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and to Ann Maggs, music library assistant at Amherst College, thank you for your generous help in finding and obtaining materials. To Sigrun Heinzelmann, thank you for your meticulous, responsible, and intelligent research assistance. To Andrew Davis, Hali Fieldman, Richard Kram, and Mary Wennerstrom, thank you for your careful attention in reading portions of early drafts of the manu- script.

Special thanks are due to Michael Rogers, whose support and en- couragement for over a decade have inspired and sustained me.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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