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Teacher feedback is an integral component of helping students understand their current level of achievement and what they can do to improve their performance. This study built on literature in educational psychology by adopting a framework developed by Hattie and Timperley to explore how different types of feedback are used in studio instrumental lessons. For this study, we investigated the use of feedback of highly experienced collegiate instrumental studio music teachers ( N = 6) and their students ( N = 18). Results indicated that around 83% of all teacher comments were classified as “feed-back” (i.e., reflections on what the student just played), with far fewer focused on “feed-forward” (16%) strategies for improving performance and “feed-up” (<1%) goal setting. Task-level comments on what the student had just done comprised 85% of the feedback, in contrast to process-level (9%) feedback that provides strategies for improving the next performance attempt and self-regulation comments (<1%) that cue the learner to monitor and control their own performance. Discussion of these results include comparisons between classroom and studio teaching practices and ways of refining instrumental teachers’ abilities to provide more targeted and effective feedback to their students.

Research has shown that people inaccurately assess their own abilities on self-report measures, including academic, athletic, and music ability. Evidence suggests this is also true for singing, with individuals either overestimating or underestimating their level of singing competency. In this paper, we present the Melbourne Singing Tool Questionnaire (MST-Q), a brief 16-item measure exploring people's self-perceptions of singing ability and engagement with singing. Using a large sample of Australian twins (n = 996), we identified three latent factors underlying MST-Q items and examined whether these factors were related to an objective phenotypic measure of singing ability. The three factors were identified as Personal Engagement, Social Engagement, and Self-Evaluation. All factors were positively associated with objective singing performance, with the Self-Evaluation factor yielding the strongest correlation (r = 0.66). Both the Self-Evaluation factor and a single self-report item of singing ability shared the same predictive strength. Contrary to expectations, our findings suggest that self-evaluation strongly predicts singing ability, and this self-evaluation is of higher predictive value than self-reported engagement with music and singing.

Arts programs are increasingly recognized for their role in promoting student development and cohesive school communities. Yet, most Australian schools are left to navigate a landscape characterized by shifting policy goals and external providers of diverse quality and intent. Drawing on interviews with 27 stakeholders from 19 Catholic primary schools in Melbourne, Australia, we explored key approaches to arts provision in this context, and conditions that hinder and support it. Approaches varied markedly, from school-wide programs embedded across the curriculum, to one-off incursions. Conditions consistently affecting provision ranged from leadership support to a community’s view of the arts. Programs regularly relied on individuals passionate about arts to go beyond their paid roles, yet this frequently jeopardized sustainability. Overall, the approaches identified, and conditions affecting their sustainability, reveal a lack of value for school arts at policy and administration levels. This lack of value is not demonstrated in the provision of other traditional school activities like math or literacy, which begs consideration by policymakers and school administrators.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic review of research literature about feedback in music. We employed the Preferred Reporting Systems for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method to systematically review literature about feedback in music education and music psychology from the first identified article in 1973 to November 2021. We identified a total of 4,499 records using our inclusion criteria, of which a total of 153 were identified as relevant for further analysis. We documented percentages and frequencies for publications over time, type of publications, sampling location, methodology, and topic. We also employed recent conceptions of feedback to categorize the type of feedback studied. Results suggest the extant literature in music may be outdated and lack methodological rigor. Most studies did not provide a working definition of feedback and were largely confined to teacher feedback. Music researchers have primarily studied feedback in relation to learner’s behavior rather than their cognition or affect. Consequently, feed-back (as opposed to feed-up or feed-forward) represents the overwhelming focus of this literature. This review highlights the need for more in-depth, nuanced, and empirically robust studies on feedback in music education and music psychology.

“Playing with feeling” is central to music making and is referred to more formally as playing with “expression.” This chapter organizes expressive playing into three components: Knowledge (K); Performance (P—the act of making music in an expressive manner); and Affect (A—the reception of the music by the listener) (KPA). Knowledge is paramount for the musician seeking to understand and improve their capacity to play music expressively, and the chapter catalogues the scientific and psychological literature that provides insight into the knowledge component. Notation, skill acquisition, proprioception, and extramusical knowledge types are discussed. This is followed by a presentation of the sources of musical expression knowledge—individual, situational, cultural, and universal. The author then critiques key theories of musical expression, contrasting the idea of musical expression arising from deviation or modulation of the norm against the empirical but contradictory evidence that optimal musical expression is perceived when a performance is the most average (prototypical). Finally, individual differences in musical expression are discussed, with the proposal that some individuals may prefer to understand musical expression through a performance stance, while others in terms of an affect stance, with both stances being simultaneously possible. The KPA process model of musical expression presents a convenient way for the musician to better understand how to perform from a performance science perspective, without losing the nuances offered by approaches offered by philosophy, pedagogy, and intuition.

Singing ability is a complex human skill influenced by genetic and environmental factors, the relative contributions of which remain unknown. Currently, genetically informative studies using objective measures of singing ability across a range of tasks are limited. We administered a validated online singing tool to measure performance across three everyday singing tasks in Australian twins (n = 1189) to explore the relative genetic and environmental influences on singing ability. We derived a reproducible phenotypic index for singing ability across five performance measures of pitch and interval accuracy. Using this index we found moderate heritability of singing ability (h 2 = 40.7%) with a striking, similar contribution from shared environmental factors (c 2 = 37.1%). Childhood singing in the family home and being surrounded by music early in life both significantly predicted the phenotypic index. Taken together, these findings show that singing ability is equally influenced by genetic and shared environmental factors.

The widespread cancelation of cultural events during the early 2020 stages of the COVID-19 pandemic led professional performing musicians across the world to experience an increasing economic fragility that threatened their health and wellbeing. Within this "new normal," developing countries have been at a higher risk due to their vulnerable health systems and cultural policies. Even in such difficult times, the music profession requires musicians to keep up their practicing routines, even if they have no professional commitments. This is because high level technical and expressive skills are crucial to sustaining a music career at a high performance level. However, it could be expected that not all musicians might have had the same engagement with music practice during lockdowns. In this study, we studied the experiences of 309 professional classical musicians based in European and Latin American countries with different levels of performing experience to examine their passionate (or lack thereof) engagement with music practice. Through the mixed methods combination of multigroup invariance and narrative analyses, we identified distinct profiles of musicians who displayed more harmonious or more obsessive passion orientations before and at the peak of the pandemic. We observed that musicians with higher levels of harmonious passion in particular were more capable of sustaining their practice at the peak of the pandemic and that these musicians were mostly located in Latin America-a paradox, considering that cultural politics supporting the careers of professional performing musicians and entrepreneurial education in Latin America are lacking to a great extent, especially in comparison with the European context. We explain this in terms of the "forced" self-management embraced by musicians in Latin American countries who want to engage with music practice both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic even if the music profession does not generate enough revenue for t

Abstract: Synesthesia is a rare neurological condition that occurs more frequently in populations of artistic professionals, with many well-known examples in music. For musicians with synesthesia, their musical journey and development are shaped by the way they connect music and sounds with color, shape, taste, or any other perceptual modality. This chapter therefore attempts to provide information on the impact of synesthesia on music performance by describing musicians’ lived experiences and highlighting the multiplicity of experiences and behavioral outcomes of this group of artists. Six key features are reviewed: preference for specific musical styles, choice of repertoire or music listening, compositional choices, choice of instrument or instrumentation, musical interpretation, and instrumental technique. By studying the impact of synesthesia on various aspects of music performance and describing the lived-world experiences of a unique section of the musical population, the chapter provides both synesthete and non-synesthete musicians with insights into this condition and the range of perceptual responses to music that musicians experience, and what synesthesia may reveal about musical development more generally.

In the past 2 years our world has experienced huge disruptions because of COVID-19. The performing arts has not been insulated from these tumultuous events with the entire music industry being thrown into a state of instability due to the paralyzing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we examined how classical professional musicians' ability to cope with uncertainty, economic struggles, and work-life interplay during COVID-19 was influenced by various factors that affect a crucial part of the development and sustainment of music careers: musicians' practice. We analyzed responses to an online survey of 309 classical performing musicians from 41 countries in Europe and Latin America across three pandemic stages: immediately before the pandemic, during the pandemic, and when vaccines were being made available and lockdowns were being reduced or lifted. Structural equation modeling indicates relationships between perceptions of threat at the peak of the pandemic and the musicians Self- or External-Based Motivation for the three periods in which respondents were asked to reflect. Findings suggest that musicians who are more internally self-motivated seemed to be more resilient to the pandemic threats and more capable of managing their practicing routines, whereas more externally motivated musicians experienced a reduction in their dedicated time to practice during lockdown. We suggest pedagogical and policy implications, as well as future lines of research that are oriented toward supporting professional musicians in assessing and understanding their motivational drives so that they can cope with situations that disrupt their professional lives.

In this article, we systematically reviewed the research literature dealing with expectancy-value motivation theory within music contexts. Employing the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) approach, a total of 1,120 records were retrieved and examined, with 110 eventually included in the analyses. Frequencies/percentages were generated for research output in 5-year time periods, type of publication, sampling locations, and methodologies. Summaries of all 110 records were provided; content analyses on topics covered were also conducted. Findings indicated a clear increase in research interest over the past 15 years with quantitative methodologies being twice as prevalent as qualitative approaches. While the vast majority (97.7%) of quantitative research employed self-report questionnaires, the most common form of qualitative data collection was interviews (59.1%). Salient topics covered included students’ expectancy-value beliefs across music and other school subjects, continued music participation, intentions to pursue a career in music, and parental influences.

The toolkit of strategies that help individuals adapt their behaviors to break through, feel energized, and perform successfully collectively embody the concept of being a self-regulated learner. This toolkit of strategies is what this chapter is about, and its purpose is to help musicians more skillfully infuse ideas and principles from the self-regulated learning literature within their musical development. These strategies encompass the ability to monitor one’s own thoughts and actions, navigate and control your own emotions especially when you feel frustrated or anxious, and focus your efforts to select the most efficient solutions that will enable you to perform at your personal best. Put another way, becoming self-regulated in the mastery of music involves being able to recognize a challenge, understand the scope and nature of this challenge, focusing your motivation to deal with the challenges, enacting strategies and plans to overcome the challenge, and evaluating your progress toward overcoming the challenge. Self-regulated learning is not a mental ability or skill, but instead a way of mastering musical learning by drawing on and applying a number of self-directive processes that allow musicians to transform their mental abilities into skills. Examples are provided of the self-regulated learning microanalysis technique that are designed for performing musicians who are trying to take more control of their own development and proactively work toward achieving their personal best.

This chapter surveys research dealing with musical potential, musical giftedness, and musical talent to dispel some of the myths and misconceptions about the nature and scope of musical development. It addresses the issue of whether we are all born musical, before exploring ways of how to define and explain musical potential, giftedness, and talent. Attention is given to debates about the extent to which there are individual differences in musical potential, and the complex interactions between genetic and environmental factors that can help explain this concept. Environmental, intrapersonal, and developmental processes acting on the realization of musical talent are each discussed separately, with a final section rounding this explanation off to provide a framework for understanding talent development in music. The chapter shows that music is a universal feature of our human design and that virtually everyone can successfully engage with music, if they so choose. For musicians who wish to take their talent development to a much higher level, the topics covered provide greater awareness of what exactly is taking place on the road to developing expertise, from the earliest stages of learning right through to the types of transformational achievement that distinguishes the world’s leading musicians.

This chapter provides our explanation of why certain teachers are able to leave such a positive impact on their students’ love for performing music. It draws on the work of John Hattie, whose explanation of how to make learning visible details ten mindframes that have been shown through extensive research to explain successful learning and inspirational teachers. Because this chapter is placed within a book on music performance, our adaptation of these ten mindframes relates to how they might be relevant within the context of studio instrumental and vocal teaching that are typical in many music institutions internationally. The chapter argues that teachers of music performance will be in a much better position to cater to the needs of the diverse range of student abilities we observe in music institutions internationally if they apply the mindframes outlined in this chapter. When we recalibrate our teaching to focus on questions of why as well as what and how, we position ourselves to take on a much broader and more impactful role as a performer-teacher who really cares about students, who wants to spark their interest, who encourages them to live their musical dream, and who helps developing musicians exceed what they think is their full potential.

There are significant and long-lasting benefits when beginning instrumentalists are exposed to a sound-before-sign approach. Likewise, refinement of play-by-ear skills by experienced, proficient musicians can enrich their musicality and lead to benefits for other performance skills including playing by ear, playing from memory, sight-reading, and improvising. Improving play-by-ear skills improves all forms of performing, as musicians use inner hearing to build an aural database through the use of mental and aural imagery while playing by ear. A mental warehouse of aural templates and mental tools allows for more efficient processing of music visually, aurally, and kinesthetically. We support an integrated model of instrumental performance that is significantly enhanced by developing one’s abilities to play by ear. This approach fosters connections between eyes, ears, and fingers and allows musicians to advance their skills more efficiently and effectively to become more responsive performers. A versatile twenty-first-century musician is able to meet the demands of performing varied musics in varied contexts. We make specific recommendations for implementing playing by ear as a technique for contemporary practice.

The purpose of this article is to provide one prominent perspective from the research literature on a conception of feedback in educational psychology as proposed by John Hattie and colleagues, and to then adapt these concepts to develop a framework that can be applied in music performance teaching at a variety of levels. The article confronts what we see as a lack of understanding about the importance of this topic in music education and provides suggestions that will help music teachers refocus how they use feedback within their teaching. Throughout the article, we draw heavily on the work of John Hattie and his colleagues whose explanations on all facets of feedback, but especially those forms of feedback that are focused on ensuring students understand "where to next"-have had a huge impact on school education through various publications.

The eighty scholars from thirteen countries who prepared the fifty-four chapters in this handbook are leaders in the fields of music psychology, performance science, musicology, psychology, education, music medicine, science, and music education. They include academics who hold prominent positions in music institutions worldwide, emerging early-career researchers who have begun to make their mark through publications of international stature, and leaders outside the field of music whose work deserves to be adapted and applied within the field of music performance. Chapters provide a broad coverage of the area, with considerable expansion of the topics that most would normally expect to be covered in a resource of this type. In this way, the range and scope of the content is much wider than other publications by virtue of the inclusion of chapters from related disciplines such as performance science (e.g., optimizing performance, mental techniques, talent development in non-music areas) and education (e.g., human development, motivation, learning and teaching styles), as well as the attention given to emerging critical issues in the field (e.g., wellbeing, technology, gender, diversity, inclusion, identity, resilience and buoyancy, diseases, and physical and mental disabilities). The two-volume handbook is designed around eight distinct parts: Development and Learning, Proficiencies, Performance Practices, Psychology, Enhancements, Health and Wellbeing, Science, and Innovations.

This chapter synthesizes available information on music reading and highlights recent approaches to studying the acquisition of sight-reading expertise. We focus on factors contributing to fluent music reading: eye movement, perceptual skills, auditory skills, and memory. The eye movements of accomplished sight-readers are different from those of slow readers, with expertise measured by fewer and shorter fixations and longer saccades. Skilled sight-readers perceive larger rhythm and pitch patterns than slow sight-readers do, and base their prediction skills on their knowledge of musical styles. Strong auditory skills also play an important role in sight-reading. Fluent sight-reading involves fast retrieval of well-established motor responses from the long-term memory and suppression of irrelevant information in the working memory. We discuss a range of approaches to the acquisition of fluent sight-reading: rhythm training leads to greater rhythmic accuracy, familiarity with musical styles improves pattern recognition, and collaborative playing activities assist in maintaining pacing of a performance. A holistic training approach combining all three of these elements is described in the last section of the chapter. General and specific recommendations for ways musicians can improve their music reading skills are provided together with training strategies aimed at helping musicians become fluent music readers.

This chapter begins by discussing prominent learning theories that contextualize development and then drills down to individual components that are relevant to learning to perform music. Developmental factors, such as distinguishing giftedness from talent, predispositions to learn, sensitive and critical periods, and perceptual abilities are discussed. A section on physical maturation provides information on how to match students with instruments, including factors influencing these choices such as motor development, teeth alignment, sex differences, and gender biases. We strongly advise against using so-called standardized measures of musical aptitude to predict future success and detail some of the ways these types of measures are flawed. In the final section dealing with practical applications, we return to the broader definition of readiness as a “healthy state of mind” to provide a set of principles that can be used to guide the types of environments, approaches, and beliefs that we believe best cater for the individual needs of each child. One of the main points we stress is that there are no definitive rules for when a child is ready to learn an instrument or voice. Determining readiness is highly contextual and will vary from child to child.

In this study, the robustness of an online tool for objectively assessing singing ability was examined by: (1) determining the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the tool; (2) comparing the task performance of web-based participants (n = 285) with a group (n = 52) completing the tool in a controlled laboratory setting, and then determining the convergent validity between settings, and (3) comparing participants’ task performance with previous research using similar singing tasks and populations. Results indicated that the online singing tool exhibited high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .92), and moderate-to-high test-retest reliabilities (.65–.80) across an average 4.5-year-span. Task performance for web- and laboratory-based participants (n = 82) matched on age, sex, and music training were not significantly different. Moderate-to-large correlations (|r| =.31–.59) were found between self-rated singing ability and the various singing tasks, supporting convergent validity. Finally, task performance of the web-based sample was not significantly different to previously reported findings. Overall the findings support the robustness of the online tool for objectively measuring singing pitch accuracy beyond a controlled laboratory environment and its potential application in large-scale investigations of singing and music ability.

For many music students, the transition to university-level studies can be a time characterized by high levels of stress as they adjust to academic standards and the challenges of demanding performance assessments. Given this context, this study investigated the impact of stress on students’ well-being, specifically the facet of subjective vitality, defined in the literature as a feeling of energy and aliveness. Our focus was to explore whether certain psychosocial traits would moderate the negative effects of stress on vitality. Working from an empirically derived conceptual model, our central hypotheses were: (a) that stress and self-oriented perfectionism would be negatively related to vitality, whereas adaptability and quality of peer relationships would be positively related to vitality; and (b) that the relationship between stress and vitality would be moderated by students’ self-oriented perfectionism, adaptability, and quality of peer relationships. Participants were 293 undergraduate and graduate music majors from university schools of music and conservatoires in the United States and Australia. Findings revealed that stress was a significant negative predictor of vitality, but self-oriented perfectionism was not. In addition, both adaptability and quality of peer relationships were significant positive predictors of vitality. However, neither self-oriented perfectionism, adaptability, nor quality of peer relationships moderated the effects of stress on vitality. These findings are discussed with regard to practical recommendations for helping students deal with the stressors in their environments and potential theoretical avenues to explore through future research.

The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to describe university music students’ perceptions of competitiveness, perfectionism, and teacher control in conservatory-style learning environments, and (2) to test a theoretical model of a network of relationships among perceptions of competitiveness, perfectionism, teacher control, quality of motivation, and intentions to pursue a career in music. Participants were undergraduate and graduate music majors from schools of music in the Midwestern United States and Australia. Results revealed that commitment to a career in music was strong, autonomous motivation orientations were more strongly endorsed than controlled motivation orientations, reports of teacher control and socially prescribed perfectionism were weak, whereas reports of competitiveness were strong. Path analyses indicated that those with stronger career intentions also have stronger autonomous motivation orientations and perceive their teachers as more controlling.

Previous research has shown that musical self-efficacy is one of the predictors of academic achievement, but few studies have analyzed the function of social support in the construction of musical self-efficacy. In this study we analyze the relationship between three sources of support perceived by music students - parents, teachers, and peers - and their influence on levels of self-efficacy for learning and for public performance. We analyze three groups of students under the hypothesis that relationships among those variables can vary with age and the level of education. A total of 444 students enrolled in six Spanish music schools, two music universities, and four advanced music schools, completed the Social Support Scale for Music Students, as well as the General Musical Self-Efficacy Scale. Results reveal significant relationships among the aforementioned variables, with considerable variation according to academic level. For the youngest students enrolled in advanced music schools (conservatorios profesionales), the role of parents and teachers was crucial, especially for predicting self-efficacy for learning, which, in turn, is the best predictor of self-efficacy for public performance. For the 16-18-year-olds enrolled in the same advanced music schools, their peers play a particularly relevant role in reinforcing their self-efficacy for learning. Social support had a negligible influence on the self-efficacy of university-level students, but they did experience a strong relationship between self-efficacy for learning, on the one hand, and public performance, on the other. We interpret these results in view of potential long-term careers in music, relating them with a series of different agents.

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of using a self-directed practice diary on conservatory pianists’ self-regulated learning tendencies. We sought to determine whether the implementation of a self-directed practice diary based on the three-phase model of self-regulated learning would lead students to gradually demonstrate more self-regulated learning tendencies across a semester of practicing, and if the type and quality of their self-regulated learning tendencies varied as a function of performance ability. A marked and consistent improvement in metacognitive monitoring skills was observed across the semester for all seven participants. Variations between lower and higher ability students were most pronounced in the Forethought stage, with higher ability pianists reporting fewer goals and strategies and higher self-motivational beliefs than their lower ability counterparts. In the Performance phase, higher ability students invested more effort in help seeking and structuring their practice environment, and lower ability students reported more self-instruction. In the Self-Reflection phase, higher ability pianists reported being more focused in the practice session. Suggestions for further refinement of the technique to improve musicians’ ability to master their learning and achieve their personal best are provided.

The situational context within which an activity takes place, as well as the personality characteristics of individuals shape the types of strategies people choose in order to regulate their emotions, especially when confronted with challenging or undesirable situations. Taking self-regulation as the framework to study emotions in relation to learning and performing chamber music canon repertoire, this quasi-experimental and intra-individual study focused on the self-rated emotional states of a professional classical cellist during long-term sustained practice across 100-weeks. This helped to develop greater awareness of different emotions and how they vary over artistic events (9 profiled concerts and 1 commercially recorded album). Data analysis included traditional psychometric measurements to test the internal consistency of the time series data as well as the relationship between variables (artistic events). The study mapped the cellist's flexible regulation of 17 different positive and negative emotions empirically linked to learning and achievement while practicing within the social context of performing music publicly at a high level. Findings arising from the study help with understandings of how to support musicians to maximize their artistic potential by reducing emotion dysregulation and strengthening the types of adaptive methods that enable them to manage their own emotions.

Vitality is the feeling of being alive, vigorous, and energetic, and is an important indicator of overall motivation and wellbeing. Studio music instruction holds rich potential for creating feelings of vitality through close relationships, the potential for developing skills, and a shared endeavor of artistic expression. But they also have the potential to deplete vitality – through controlling teaching, a poor quality relationship, or harsh criticism from the teacher. The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships among student and teacher behavior, rapport, and students’ experiences of subjective vitality in the context of university-level applied performance lessons. Participants were six undergraduate instrumental music majors and their teachers located at universities in the United States and Australia, who were selected because they provided the highest (three participants) and lowest (three participants) scores on a measure of subjective vitality completed immediately following a studio music lesson. A lesson was recorded for each student-teacher participant pair, coded for the frequencies of 35 lesson behaviors, described with a qualitative contextual commentary, and rated for evidence of rapport and physical proximity. Clear differences emerged between the high and low vitality lessons with regard to questioning, feedback, modeling, student performance, and student talk. Teachers of high vitality students spent most or all of the lesson within close proximity to their student, and showed stronger rapport than teachers of low vitality students. The findings suggest that students’ vitality may depend on important differences in styles of teacher-student engagement and the quality of student-teacher relationships.

Performing at the very highest levels requires rigorous preparation before the important performance. Musicians and especially music students encounter many challenges when preparing themselves for an important musical performance. This study sought to identify and analyze the context-specific temporal organization and self-regulation efforts that music students employ during their preparation period. Conservatory musicians were recruited from an Australian University Conservatorium. Thirteen conservatory musicians aged between 19 and 21 years (M = 19.6; SD = 0.76) participated in the study. All musicians, through an elicitation interview, were asked to recall and reconstruct their preparation period, leading up to a performance exam. Elicitation interviews provided access to music students' experiences by describing their general preparation. The results showed that conservatory musicians go through different phases (Phase 1: Choosing a piece; Phase 2: Piece discovery; Phase 3: Piece interpretation; Phase 4: Performance preparation). Self-regulatory efforts to prepare for a music performance exam vary from one musician to another. Organizational and disorganizational competencies, specific self-regulatory skills, seem not to be exploited by conservatory musicians. Also, during their preparation, most music students prefer technical and musical work than challenges such as playing in front of the public. Emotionally, conservatory musicians go through pleasant and unpleasant emotions depending on the phase of their preparation. Our results show that music students could benefit from advice on how to organize their preparation period well before an important performance takes place. Implications for conservatory musicians and teachers are discussed.

The aim of this paper was to investigate if a general consensus could be established for the term “musician.” Research papers ( N = 730) published between 2011 and 2017 were searched. Of these, 95 papers were identified as investigating relationships of any sort connected with a musician-like category ( e.g., comparison of musically trained vs. non-musically trained people), of which 39 papers detailing comparative studies exclusively between musicians and non-musicians were analyzed. Within this literature, a variety of musical expertise criteria were used to define musicians, with years of music training (51% of papers) and years of music lessons (13% of papers) being the most commonly used criteria. Findings confirm a general consensus in the literature, namely, that a musician, whether or not selected a priori, has at least six years of musical expertise (IQR = 4.0–10.0 years). Other factors such as practice time and recruiting location of musicians were also analyzed, as well as the implications of how this definition fits in relation to the complexities surrounding the construct of the musician. The “six-year rule,” however, was robust overall.

Over the last 2 decades, 5 skills relating to visual (performing rehearsed music, sight-reading), aural (playing by ear, playing from memory), and creative (improvising) aspects of music performance have been defined and investigated. To date, however, there has been little research investigating the relationship between these 5 aspects of performance on general musicianship, and none using psychometric measures. The aim of this study was to empirically investigate this relationship through the use of the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI). With the exception of ‘Sight-reading,’ results show that all skills were correlated with musical sophistication, with the ‘Playing by Ear’ skill having the highest correlation (explaining 47.0% of the variance). Further analysis with individual Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index subscales revealed specific interrelationships and attributions to Western art music-making practices. For example, the Performing Rehearsed Music skill was predicted by the Musical Training, Emotions, and Singing Abilities subscales; Playing by Ear was predicted by the Active Engagement and Singing Abilities subscales; and Improvising was predicted by the Active Engagement subscale. Only Sight-Reading had no significant predictors. The implications for each skill toward current musical training methods is highlighted and discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Personal perceptions of self-efficacy are particularly relevant in the field of music performance, which is oriented toward the outward expressions of one’s own ability through public performances. Within this context, a number of personal variables, including social support and performance anxiety, have been shown to be associated with musical success and are therefore relevant for research that seeks to understand the four sources of self-efficacy (mastery experiences, vicarious observation, verbal persuasion, physiological states) that are integral components of Bandura’s (2002) Social Learning Theory. Previous research, as well as observed differences among musicians associated with educational level (preuniversity) and gender (male/female), underpins the context of this study, which presents evidence regarding the factors that are capable of mediating perceptions of self-efficacy for musical performance. Specifically, the main objectives of this study were to more clearly understand relations between social support, public performance, musical performance anxiety, and self-efficacy using structural equation modeling and to compare these results according to gender. A battery of questionnaires was submitted to 359 preuniversity Spanish music students. Results highlight the relevance of family support for self-efficacy in public performance: directly and mediated through musical performance anxiety. The role of teachers and peers appeared to be relevant only for boys and was mediated through performance anxiety. Public performances lead to a greater degree of musical self-efficacy, but only in girls. Further research shall be required in order to improve pedagogical methods and help teachers increasingly individualize their teaching.

Typical musicians devote most of their time to blocks of physical practice and mistake-avoidance, as opposed to mental preparation, desirable difficulties, and strategies that strengthen self-efficacy and autonomy. For this reason, teachers try to steer students away from mindless drill and towards self-regulated learning strategies. Yet, both the scientific and pedagogical literature lack guidelines for developing musicians that are supported by empirical research. This exploratory study with 14 musicians was designed to capture what they planned to practice, as well as what they actually did in the practice room, in order to assess the level of repetition and innovation intended and carried out. A questionnaire captured the musician’s self-reported intentions (cognitions), behavior, and emotions during practice. The questionnaire accompanied a self-recorded video of a practice session of the participant’s choice. Evaluation of the questionnaire and videos provided evidence that participant’s own ratings of the effectiveness of their practice supported their belief in the importance of repetition. The evaluation scores of these students’ practice sessions by two independent raters, in contrast, indicated that varied strategies were more beneficial with regard to individual progress than habitual repetition.

The professional practice of classical music performers has been better understood and enhanced across the last two decades through research aimed at tailoring rehearsing strategies that support the development of a sense of self as an agentic and proactive learner. One approach focuses on helping students make use of various tools that can enhance their learning, particularly in terms of what they do, feel and think when practicing and performing music. This study expands literature on expertise development by embracing the idea that this line of research would benefit from additional studies where the researcher forms part of the research process as an active participant who generates data, especially when these researchers are "members" of the social world they study, and therefore have insider knowledge. Thus, this case study is focused on the first author, a professional cellist who is also a researcher in the educational psychology of music, as the only participant. It extends current research by providing a detailed longitudinal mapping of a professional cellist's preparation across nine profiled concerts in five countries of classical-romantic repertoire and a commercial recording that resulted from 100 weeks of dedicated practice. Anonymous feedback from the audiences and interviews with an expert musician who followed the concerts and the CD recording was also collected. For the data analysis, traditional psychometric measurements were applied to test the internal consistency of the time series data as well as the relationship between variables. In addition, the application of Leximancer analysis of the self-reflections allowed the researchers to probe self-regulated learning (SRL) and self-determination theory (SDT) processes in ways that uniquely mapped, over time, her differing motivations to perform at a high level. Specifically, we report that the cellist's psychological needs and her motivational resources changed across time within the social contex

This chapter presents a survey of research on the development and validation of a measure to assess instrumentalists’ ability to improvise music. It begins by framing efforts to distinguish between visual, aural, and creative forms of music performance, and the types of assessment tasks required to evaluate music performance improvisation. The chapter surveys a range of related measures that have been used to assess improvisational abilities in young developing musicians and provides a detailed description of the author’s own Test of Ability to Improvise (TAI) that he has used with beginning, intermediate, and advanced level school instrumentalists. Included also are examples of the instrumentalists’ improvisations and a discussion of the implications of the research findings for conceptions of musical development and practical applications within music education.

Instrumental and vocal music students in regional and remote areas of Australia are often significantly disadvantaged in their development by the lack of local teachers who specialize in the instrument being learned. The current rollout of National Broadband Network (NBN) across Australia offers the potential for overcoming this geographical disadvantage by providing specialist online tuition through videoconferencing. This article reports on an investigation of technical and pedagogical issues associated with synchronous online instrumental tuition. The outcomes from laboratory- and field-based trials included identification of optimal hardware and software delivery systems and pedagogical considerations for optimizing online instrumental learning.

The ability to sight-read traditional staff notation is an important skill for all classically trained musicians. Up until now, however, most research has focused on pianists, by comparing experts and novices. Eye movement studies are a niche area of sight-reading research, focusing on eye-hand span and perceptual span of musicians, mostly pianists. Research into eye movement of non-piano sight-reading is limited. Studies into eye movement of woodwind sight-reading were conducted in the 1980s and early 2000s, highlighting the need for new research using modern equipment. This pilot study examined the eye movements of six woodwind (flute, clarinet) undergraduates of intermediate-to-advanced skill level during sight-reading of scores of increased difficulty. The data was analysed in relation to expertise level and task difficulty, focusing on numbers of fixations and fixation durations. The results show that as music examples became more difficult the numbers of fixations increased and fixation durations decreased; more experienced players with better sight-reading skills required less time to process musical notation; and participants with better sightreading skills utilised fewer fixations to acquire information visually. The findings confirm that the efficiency of eye movements is related to instrumental and sightreading expertise, and that task difficulty affects eye movement strategies.

Highlighted within this chapter is a collection of best practices for encouraging student musicians to develop as self-regulated learners. Two model lessons are presented that are emblematic of the kinds of considerations, methods, and techniques that teachers may find useful for classroom applications with a variety of beginning, intermediate, and advanced performers. A brief discussion of selected aspects of self-regulated learning theory follows the model lessons and this is used as a framework for understanding the processes, skills, and dispositions that are characteristic of self-regulated music learners. We present the primary components of the theory with an eye towards practical application in the classroom. The chapter concludes with a commentary and analysis of the two model lessons and how these typify approaches to the teaching of musical self-regulation.

This chapter discusses self-regulated learning (SRL) in the context of music. SRL holds significant potential for increasing the efficiency of musical skill acquisition across all aspects of music performance instruction. It provides implications for how SRL might be adopted more widely in the music education domain. The chapter reviews selected research that has studied skill acquisition when learning to play a musical instrument. Autonomy has been examined as an important motivational antecedent to the use of SRL strategies in music. Research that clarifies more precisely how students develop into self-regulated musicians deserves special attention from music scholars who wish to draw upon and integrate some of the major developments in education into their own research. Adapting and expanding current theories on this issue and drawing on and integrating information from other areas of educational psychology will enable music researchers to develop more sophisticated theories of musical development that can be used to underpin future teaching and learning in music.

We survey three interlocking talent development models: a) the Differentiating Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT), the Developmental Model for Natural Abilities (DMNA), and their merging into a Comprehensive Model of Talent Development (CMTD). The authors use the CMTD framework to analyse the phenomenon of musical prodigiousness, defined as a quantitatively extreme level of talent (T component). We then explore the gifts (G component) that contribute to musical prodigiousness, as well as its typical developmental process (D component). Two types of catalytic causal influences are explored: intrapersonal characteristics (I component) and environmental influences (E component). Within each section, we briefly discuss the biological foundations of the various constructs. We finally integrate these five analyses into a dynamic developmental perspective and propose a tentative answer to the key question: “Which causal influences better ‘explain’ the early manifestation and development of musical prodigiousness?” In other words, “what makes a difference?”

What makes a prodigy? Although child prodigies can be found in various disciplines such as music, mathematics, chess, and art, the origins of exceptional talent remain highly controversial. Some have dismissed the notion of innate talent, arguing that prodigies benefit from strong parental, cultural, and environmental influences that help them develop their extraordinary abilities. Others emphasise the role of genetic influences on musical development and cite evidence that exceptional abilities are supported by inborn predispositions. And what role do cognitive processes, from memory to the use of imagery and language, play in such rapid and early talent development? The notion of prodigy reaches to the heart of questions about creativity, intelligence, development, and the relationship between nature and nurture. This ground-breaking book presents the first scientific exploration of musical prodigies, bringing together research from psychology, neurobiology, genetics, education, musicology, and ethnomusicology, to provide a thorough exploration of prodigious talent. With fascinating case studies of prodigies and their often complex transitions into adolescence and adulthood, this is a unique investigation of a remarkable phenomenon, for anyone interested in child development, music, and the arts.

This chapter examines YouTube as a medium for accessing the videos of young music performers. Comparisons of the characteristics of prodigy performances in the past and present are explored, and the challenges of young performers described in terms of the vast number of competing high-level performances that are currently available on the internet. Issues addressed include historical notions of the ‘Mozart-figure’, notions of popularity and commercial success, adult conceptions of child rearing practices and what is considered a “normal” childhood, and the degree to which prodigies can be conceived by adults as being able to perform emotionally and expressively at adult levels. The chapter explores some of the stereotypes and myths of the “music prodigy” phenomenon, and comments on the stark difference between how the general public typically classifies and defines music prodigies as opposed to scientific explanations of giftedness and talent.

This study extends an eight-country mapping exercise undertaken (McPherson & O’Neill, 2010; see RSME issues 2010-2011) to now include students’ motivation to study music within the Australian context. It sought to determine whether music learners (students learning an instrument or voice), might be more motivated to study academic subjects at school, and whether gender and socio-economic status (SES) affected student motivation to learn music at school. A total of 2,742 students from grades 5 to 12 completed a questionnaire based on Eccles’ and Wigfield’s expectancy-value framework. Data collected included ratings of competence beliefs, interest, importance, usefulness and difficulty for four subjects music, English, maths and science, and indications of whether the students were currently learning a musical instrument or voice (music learners) or whether they would like to if given the opportunity. There was an overall significant decline in competence beliefs, interest, importance, and usefulness across the school years, in contrast with increased task difficulty ratings across the school years. Music learners reported significantly higher competence beliefs, interest, importance, usefulness, and significantly less task difficulty than non-music learners. This advantage applied across all school grades for music, competence beliefs for English in upper primary and lower secondary school grades, and for maths in lower secondary grades. Although females reported music as more important and useful than males, their competence beliefs and task difficulty ratings were equivalent. Music was considered slightly less interesting for females than for males. The value of music as a subject declined significantly for upper SES students from upper primary to lower secondary schools. The greatest number of participants (40.8%) who expressed a desire to learn a musical instrument came from the lower SES category in upper primary school. This result for the Australian context is

This chapter proposes a spiral model to explain the development of the perception of emotion in music from infant to adolescent. Development begins with a “schematic” processing style (related to “absolutism”) which links emotion and music via automated responses to the environment, such as a startle to sudden loud sounds or attraction to infant-directed speech. The young child then moves into a period where veridical/one-to-one music–emotion connections are formed (related to “referentialism”) primarily as a result of exposure to cultural norms. The spiral then winds back toward an emphasis on schematic links, where children draw on their repertoire of musical experiences, and react at adult levels of emotion perception in music. The period of adolescence sees the spiral move back to a more individualized veridical processing focus, where pressures to become young adults and develop a personal identity drive the desire to form links with individual pieces and/or performers.