Development: towards musical skill

1
Development towards musical skill

• MUSI 1911/2
• Introduction to the Psychology of Music

2
Overview

• Intro and overview
• Development of musical skill what is developing?
• Staged development
• Musical ability vs. musical skill
• Two examples
• Kemp Personality of the performer
• Sloboda et al Practice and skilled performance
• Summary

3
Development of musical skill

• What is developing?
• When is it developing?
• Specific skills (Shuter-Dyson And Gabriel, 1981)
• Ability to recognise transpositions
• Ability to accurately reproduce rhythms
• Shuter-Dyson , R. and Gabriel, C. (1981). The
  psychology of musical ability. London Methuen.
• Types of skills (Swanwick and Tillman, 1986)
• Mastering material
• Developing expression
• Swanwick, K. and Tillman, J. (1986). The sequence
  of musical development. British Journal of Music
  Education. 3, (3), 305 - 39.

4
Staged development

• Maturation is discontinuous
• Sensitive or critical periods
• Linked to general development?

5
Musical ability vs. musical skill

• Why do we develop?
• Environment (we acquire skills)
• explicit learning
• implicit learning
• Inherited characteristics (we possess abilities)
• fixed
• changing
• Both play a role

6
Two examples

• Kemp (1981) Personality of the performer
• Sloboda, Davidson, Howe and Moore (1996)
  Practice and skilled performance
• Kemp, A. E. (1981). Personality Structure of the
  Musician, I Identifying a Profile of Traits for
  the Performer, Psychology of Music, 9 (1), 3-14.
• Sloboda, J. A., Davidson, J. W., Howe, M. J. A.
  and Moore, D. G. (1996). The role of practice in
  the development of expert musical performance.
  British Journal of Psychology, 87, 287-309.

7
Kemp (1981) personality of the performer

• Standard personality tests
• introverted
• Pathemic (not tough, but practical, critical)
• intelligent
• (anxiety)
• Cause or effect?
• Acquired or inherited?
• Generalisation/reductiveness

8
Sloboda et al (1996) Practice and skilled
performance

• interview study (also diary study)
• more practice better achievement
• more practice on main instrument
• success already increasingly divergent by second
  year
• strongest effect for formal practice
• Why?
• Encouragement?
• Early signs?

9
Summary

• Specific and General Skills
• description (when and what)
• theory (why)
• Inheritance and Environment
• Ability and Skill (and Talent)