Singing and Social Identity in Young Children.

A range of studies suggest that singing activities with young children can have a beneficial impact on other aspects of their development. However, there is little research examining the relationship between young children's singing and their developing social identity. In the current study, data were captured of young children's singing and social identity as part of a larger-scale, longitudinal evaluation of the nationwide Sing Up programme in England. Participants were 720 children aged 5-8 years old. The assessment of young children's singing ability employed an established measure and was undertaken individually. With adult support, the children were also asked to complete a simple questionnaire that focused on selected aspects of their social identity, both in general terms and also related to singing. Key themes embraced their attitudes to singing (at home, in school and in informal settings), singer identity (emotional engagement with singing and self-concept), and perceptions of self (self-efficacy, self-esteem, social integration). Comparative data were collected from young children of a similar age outside the programme. Findings suggested that the programme had a positive impact on children's singing ability, both overall and including the youngest children. The data analyses suggest that children could be identified as either "pupils with positive singing identity" or "pupils with less positive, or still developing singing identity." Overall, pupils with a more positive singer identity-irrespective of Sing Up-related experience-tended to report more positive attitudes toward singing at school and other settings, had higher perceived levels of self-esteem and social integration, as well as more positive evaluations of their singing ability. Furthermore, the research suggests that successful participation in high-quality singing activities is likely to have a positive impact on young children's singing ability and, by implication, such positive singing development will also be associated with aspects of self that are related to contexualised singer identity and their sense of social inclusion.

Orchestrated Sex: The Representation of Male and Female Musicians in World-Class Symphony Orchestras.

This study examines the representation of male and female musicians in world-class symphony orchestras. Personnel of 40 orchestras of three regions, the UK, Europe, and the USA, and distributions of men and women across the four orchestral departments, strings, woodwind, brass, and percussion, are compared. Significant differences in representation between orchestras of the three regions are reported. Practices adopted by orchestras when appointing musicians to vacant positions are reviewed and numbers of males and females appointed to rank-and-file and Section Principals are compared. Career patterns of male and female musicians are also compared. Increases in numbers of women appointed to orchestral posts in the last three decades are compared with increases in the proportion of women in the general workforce. The data of orchestral membership are then compared with the numbers of young people receiving tuition on orchestral instruments retrieved from a large national database (n = 391,000 students). Implications for the future of male and female representation in orchestral personnel are then considered.

The Developing Female Chorister Voice: Case-Study Evidence of Musical Development.

The human singing voice changes throughout the lifespan and there are gender-specific variations that need to be taken into account. Life changes in terms of voice are different for females and males and this paper concentrates on the female singing voice in the context of choral singing. Case-study data from three choristers are presented relating to the changing female voice during puberty as part of a longitudinal study of female choristers in a major English Cathedral Choir School. In addition, discussion is presented on important considerations with respect to the female choral singing voice with a particular focus on specific choral aspects during rehearsals and performance.

Using Beatboxing for Creative Rehabilitation After Laryngectomy: Experiences From a Public Engagement Project.

Laryngectomy is the surgical removal of the larynx (voice box), usually performed in patients with advanced stages of throat cancer. The psychosocial impact of losing the voice is significant, affecting a person's professional and social life in a devastating way, and a proportion of this patient group subsequently must overcome depression (22-30%) and social isolation (40%). The profound changes to anatomical structures involved in voicing and articulation, as a result of surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy (separately or in combination with one another), introduce challenges faced in speech rehabilitation and voice production that complicate social reintegration and quality of life. After laryngectomy, breathing, voicing, articulation and tongue movement are major components in restoring communication. Regular exercise of the chest, neck and oropharyngeal muscles, in particular, is important in controlling these components and keeping the involved structures supple. It is, however, a difficult task for a speech therapist to keep the patient engaged and motivated to practice these exercises. We have adopted a multidisciplinary approach to explore the use of basic beatboxing techniques to create a wide variety of exercises that are seen as fun and interactive and that maximize the use of the structures important in alaryngeal phonation. We herein report on our empirical work in developing patients' skills, particularly relating to voiced and unvoiced consonants to improve intelligibility. In collaboration with a professional beatboxing performer, we produced instructional online video materials to support patients working on their own and/or with support from speech therapists. Although the present paper is focused predominantly on introducing the structure of the conducted workshops, the rationale for their design and the final public engagement performance, we also include feedback from participants to commence the critical discourse about whether this type of activity could lead to systematic underlying research and robustly assessed interventions in the future. Based on this exploratory work, we conclude that the innovative approach that we employed was found to be engaging, useful, informative and motivating. We conclude by offering our views regarding the limitations of our work and the implications for future empirical research.

Gender and Music Composition: A Study of Music, and the Gendering of Meanings.

In this study claims that music communicates gendered meanings are considered, and relevant literature is reviewed. We first discuss the nature of meaning in music, and how it is constructed and construed. Examples of statements of gendering in the literature are cited, and the problems identified by writers who have questioned their validity are considered. We examine the concepts underlying terminology that has been used in inconsistent and contradictory ways. Three hypotheses are posed, and tested by means of two listening tasks. Results are presented that indicate that gendering is not inherent in musical structures, but is contributed to the perceptual event by the listener.

Using singing to nurture children's hearing? A pilot study.

This article reports a pilot study of the potential benefits of a sustained programme of singing activities on the musical behaviours and hearing acuity of young children with hearing impairment (HI). Twenty-nine children (n=12 HI and n=17 NH) aged between 5 and 7 years from an inner-city primary school in London participated, following appropriate ethical approval. The predominantly classroom-based programme was designed by colleagues from the UCL Institute of Education and UCL Ear Institute in collaboration with a multi-arts charity Creative Futures and delivered by an experienced early years music specialist weekly across two school terms. There was a particular emphasis on building a repertoire of simple songs with actions and allied vocal exploration. Musical learning was also supported by activities that drew on visual imagery for sound and that included simple notation and physical gesture. An overall impact assessment of the pilot programme embraced pre- and post-intervention measures of pitch discrimination, speech perception in noise and singing competency. Subsequent statistical data analyses suggest that the programme had a positive impact on participant children's singing range, particularly (but not only) for HI children with hearing aids, and also in their singing skills. HI children's pitch perception also improved measurably over time. Findings imply that all children, including those with HI, can benefit from regular and sustained access to age-appropriate musical activities.

Tuning Features of Chinese Folk Song Singing: A Case Study of Hua'er Music.

OBJECTIVES: The learning and teaching of different singing styles, such as operatic and Chinese folk singing, was often found to be very challenging in professional music education because of the complexity of varied musical properties and vocalizations. By studying the acoustical and musical parameters of the singing voice, this study identified distinctive tuning characteristics of a particular folk music in China-Hua'er music-to inform the ineffective folk singing practices, which were hampered by the neglect of inherent tuning issues in music. METHODS: Thirteen unaccompanied folk song examples from four folk singers were digitally audio recorded in a sound studio. Using an analyzing toolkit consisting of Praat, PeakFit, and MS Excel, the fundamental frequencies (F0) of these song examples were extracted into sets of "anchor pitches" mostly used, which were further divided into 253 F0 clusters. The interval structures of anchor pitches within each song were analyzed and then compared across 13 examples providing parameters that indicate the tuning preference of this particular singing style. RESULTS: The data analyses demonstrated that all singers used a tuning pattern consisting of five major anchor pitches suggesting a nonequal-tempered bias in singing. This partly verified the pentatonic scale proposed in previous empirical research but also argued a potential misunderstanding of the studied folk music scale that failed to take intrinsic tuning issues into consideration. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that, in professional music training, any tuning strategy should be considered in terms of the reference pitch and likely tuning systems. Any accompanying instruments would need to be tuned to match the underlying tuning bias.

Singing and social inclusion.

There is a growing body of neurological, cognitive, and social psychological research to suggest the possibility of positive transfer effects from structured musical engagement. In particular, there is evidence to suggest that engagement in musical activities may impact on social inclusion (sense of self and of being socially integrated). Tackling social exclusion and promoting social inclusion are common concerns internationally, such as in the UK and the EC, and there are many diverse Government ministries and agencies globally that see the arts in general and music in particular as a key means by which social needs can be addressed. As part of a wider evaluation of a national, Government-sponsored music education initiative for Primary-aged children in England ("Sing Up"), opportunity was taken by the authors, at the request of the funders, to assess any possible relationship between (a) children's developing singing behavior and development and (b) their social inclusion (sense of self and of being socially integrated). Subsequently, it was possible to match data from n = 6087 participants, drawn from the final 3 years of data collection (2008-2011), in terms of each child's individually assessed singing ability (based on their singing behavior of two well-known songs to create a "normalized singing score") and their written responses to a specially-designed questionnaire that included a set of statements related to children's sense of being socially included to which the children indicated their level of agreement on a seven-point Likert scale. Data analyses suggested that the higher the normalized singing development rating, the more positive the child's self-concept and sense of being socially included, irrespective of singer age, sex and ethnicity.

Gender and the performance of music.

This study evaluates propositions that have appeared in the literature that music phenomena are gendered. Were they present in the musical "message," gendered qualities might be imparted at any of three stages of the music-communication interchange: the process of composition, its realization into sound by the performer, or imposed by the listener in the process of perception. The research was designed to obtain empirical evidence to enable evaluation of claims of the presence of gendering at these three stages. Three research hypotheses were identified and relevant literature of music behaviors and perception reviewed. New instruments of measurement were constructed to test the three hypotheses: (i) two listening sequences each containing 35 extracts from published recordings of compositions of the classical music repertoire, (ii) four "music characteristics" scales, with polarities defined by verbal descriptors designed to assess the dynamic and emotional valence of the musical extracts featured in the listening sequences. 69 musically-trained listeners listened to the two sequences and were asked to identify the sex of the performing artist of each musical extract; a second group of 23 listeners evaluated the extracts applying the four music characteristics scales. Results did not support claims that music structures are inherently gendered, nor proposals that performers impart their own-sex-specific qualities to the music. It is concluded that gendered properties are imposed subjectively by the listener, and these are primarily related to the tempo of the music.

Intonation and expressivity: a single case study of classical western singing.

Previous studies have shown that singers tend to sharpen phrase-peak tones as compared with equally tempered tuning (ETT). Here we test the hypothesis that this can serve the purpose of musical expressivity. Data were drawn from earlier recordings, where a professional baritone sang excerpts as void of musical expression as he could (Neutral) and as expressive as in a concert (Concert). Fundamental frequency averaged over tones was examined and compared with ETT. Phrase-peak tones were sharper in excited examples, particularly in the Concert versions. These tones were flattened to ETT using the Melodyne software. The manipulated and original versions were presented pairwise to a musician panel that was asked to choose the more expressive version. By and large, the original versions were perceived as more expressive, thus supporting the common claim that intonation is a means for adding expressivity to a performance.

Is there potential for learning in amusia? A study of the effect of singing intervention in congenital amusia.

Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder of musical perception and production. Much research has focused on characterizing the deficits within this special population; however, it is also important from both a psychological and educational perspective to determine which aspects of the disorder may be subject to change because this will also constrain theorizing about the nature of the disorder, as well as facilitating possible future remediation programs. In this small-scale study, a professional singing teacher used a broad-brush intervention approach with five individuals diagnosed with congenital amusia. The compensatory elements were designed to enhance vocal efficiency and health, singing technique, musical understanding, pitch perception, and production. Improvements were observed in most individuals in perception, indexed via the Montreal Battery for the Evaluation of Amusia scale subtest and in the vocal performance of familiar songs. The workshop setting gave a unique opportunity for observation and discussion to inform further investigations of this disorder.

Are real-time displays of benefit in the singing studio? An exploratory study.

This article reports on an exploratory research project to evaluate the usefulness or otherwise of real-time visual feedback in the singing studio. The primary purpose of the work was not to optimize the technology for this application, but to work alongside teachers and students to study the impact of real-time visual feedback technology use on the students' learning experiences. An action research methodology was used to explore the benefit of real-time displays over an extended period. The experimental phase of the work was guided by a Liaison Panel of teachers and academics in the areas of singing, pedagogy, voice science, speech therapy, and linguistic science. Qualitative data were collected from eight students working with two professional singing teachers. The teachers and students acted as co-researchers under the action research paradigm. Teachers and students alike kept journals of their teaching and learning experiences. Singing lessons were observed regularly by the research team, coded for teacher and student behaviors, and all co-researchers were interviewed at the mid- and endpoint of the project. The use of technology had a positive impact on the learning process, and this is evidenced through case study data.

WinSingad: a real-time display for the singing studio.

This paper describes the nature and implementation of a specially-designed integrated real-time display that is undergoing evaluation as part of a recently funded innovative pilot project to investigate the relative usefulness of computer displays in the singing studio. Following previous work that suggests that simple displays of a small number of analysis parameters are generally likely to be the most effective, the system makes available a range of complementary analyses that are plotted against time. These relate to: fundamental frequency, spectrum, spectral ratio, and vocal tract area. These can be viewed singly, multiply or in combination using a panel based design within the PC Windows environment, known as WinSingad. The algorithms used are described and the displays themselves are illustrated with results gained from the pilot phase of the research to indicate their potential usefulness.