monthlyNews_2015

AIRS News

AIRS 6th Annual Meeting, held in Nashville Tennesee July 30 - August 1, was a resonding sucess. See the full program and proceedings here. Following the Annual Meeting, AIRS members made the following presentations at SMPC 2015, also in Nashville:

• The Influence of music training on vocal melodic completions, Bing-Yi Pan, Annabel J. Cohen, UPEI, Charlottetown

  The top-down system of the implication realization (IR) theory (Narmour, 1990; 2014) suggests that music experience influences melody expectancy. Listener rating studies have provided evidence for this (Krumhansl et al., 1999; Krumhansl et al., 2000; Vos & Pasveer, 2002). However, few have tested the theory by studying spontaneous melody production. The present study used data acquired through the AIRS Test Battery of Singing Skills (Cohen et al., 2009; Pan et al., 2012) to explore how western music training affects improvisational singing following a prior melodic context. Young adults (20 musicians; 20 nonmusicians) were presented with an 8-note melody and were asked to first repeat it and then continue singing and finish it. 34 participants (19 musicians) completed the task. The singing recordings were notated by two musicians together (including the first author). To start the improvisation, musicians tended to choose the dominant (G, 42.1%) and subdominant (E, 21.1%), while non-musicians tent to begin with tonic (C, 33.3%) and subdominant (E, 26.7%). All of the musicians (100%) ended the song at tonic (C), while less than half of non-musicians (46.7%) did so.  Furthermore, the range of the composition covered by musicians (M = 8.11 semitones, SD = 2.49) was significantly larger than the range of non-musicians (M = 5.33 semitones, SD = 2.69), F (1, 32) = 9.67, p < .005. The number of diatonic scale notes used by musician (M = 4.73, SD =1.04) exceeded that used by non-musicians (M = 3.53, SD =1.25), F (1, 32) = 9.38, p = .004. The study provides direct evidence that: (a) music training shapes melodic expectancy when improvising; (b) music training expands materials one can comfortably use in on-the-spot melody creation. The role of music training – whether cognitive and/or vocal motor flexibility and vocal range – remains to be investigated. 
  

• Is playing a musical instrument better for you than singing? A review, Annabel J. Cohen, UPEI, Charlottetown

  Singing accurately, musically, and emotionally requires sensory, cognitive, motor and affective control. Yet the mental processes underlying performing on a musical instrument (rather than the human voice) more often attract the attention in both psychological work and the popular press. Does practice on the “flashy” instrument create that much more of a sensorycognitive-emotional workout than does practice on the hidden musical instrument of the human voice? Is  ractice and performance on a musical instrument qualitatively better for you than practice and performance in singing? Are choristers necessarily less happy than instrumentalists? The present paper directs attention to the following: (1) articles in the press that extol the benefits of music, referring only to examples of playing a musical instrument; could their statements apply equally to serious vocal music study? (2) programs such as El Sistema provide music training primarily on musical instruments; could these programs work equally well if focused on the human voice? (3) obviously for the same cost more students can be engaged in music through singing than through playing a musical instrument (4) comparisons of test performance of singers vs instrumentalists are rare in the music-psychological or cognitive literature and warrant more studies to address the gap in knowledge about the relative benefits of singing. If it is shown that the so-called benefits of instrumental music training are equal to the benefits of voice training, then public efforts to provide musical training should consider the relative cost of instrumental teachers and musical instruments versus the cost of choral leaders and no instruments. In a world where resources are insufficient to provide music training for everyone, decisions to fund instrumental as opposed to choral programs deserve social scientific justification. The relevant literature will be reviewed. (supported by SSHRC AIRS).
  

• Singing and multi-cultural group cohesion, Arla Good, Frank Russo,  Ryerson University, Toronto

AIRS News

• AIRS 6th Annual Meeting.  The AIRS 6th Annual Meeting (2015) will  take place in Nashville, Tennessee  (Music City, USA ☺) July 31 - August 1(noon).  A student/early career professional pizza dinner, round-table, including "on-the-town" experience will take place at 5:30 pm July 30 (contact Arla Good agood@arts.ryerson.ca).  The Policy and Planning Committee meeting will also take place the evening of July 30.  The AIRS Annual meeting takes place prior to the opening of the biennial meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC), 1:00 pm August 1st, co-convened by Reyna Gordon and Elisabeth Dykens. Note: Registration in the AIRS meeting is open to all those seriously interested in research in all aspects of singing. For further information contact Ross Dwyer (rdwyer@upei.ca,  902-566-6023).
  

The following will be presented during the 1.5 days of the AIRS 6th Annual Meeting:

Oral presentations

Test-retest reliability and repeated  attempts in singing accuracy measurement. Bryan E. Nichols and Sijia Wang (University of Akron, Ohio, USA) Theme 1

Natural singing practices surrounding babies in their daily lives. Alisa Chitwood & Beatriz Ilari (University of Southern California) Theme: 2.1 and 1

Childhood songs: Views and values in the Vietnamese American home. Tina Huynh and Beatriz Ilari (University of Southern California). Theme: 2.1 and 1  and 3.1

The impact of singing on language development in 4-year old children. Caitlin Bridson-Pateman, Petra Hauf, Annie Larouche, and Helene Deacon  (St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia Canada, and Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia Theme 2.3

Singing-Voice and the acquisition of phonetics in the learning of French as a foreign language. Sandra Cornaz (Lansad, Univ. Grenoble Alpes  (Grenoble, France); Diane Caussade (Univ Grenoble Alpes, GIPSA-Lab, Grenoble, France). Theme 2.3

Antecedents to the career of singer-songwriter: Preliminary on-line survey results.  Christopher Robison & Annabel Cohen (University of Prince Edward Island). Theme 3.3  (2.1)

Alzheimer’s hand gestures and speech disorders in spoken and sung modalities. Diane Caussade I(GIPSA-lab, CNRS & LIDILEM ); Fanny Gaubert (Centre de formation en orthophonie, ISTR, Univ claude Bernard, Lyon, France); Maud Seriux (Centre de formation en orthophonie, ISTR, Univ claude Bernard, Lyon, France; Nathalie Henrich-Bernardoni (CNRS, Grenoble, France); Nathalie Vallee (CNRS, Grenoble, France). Theme 3.3 and 1.2

Workshops