Faculty: Recent Research

Music Education research activities and seminars

John Kratus, professor of music education at MSU, investigated ways that various melodic configurations on an instrument can affect how children compose. The project involved asking 48 fourth graders to compose a song on xylophones set up with different numbers of bars and tonalities. The results indicated that the children who composed on xylophones with more bars spent more of their composing time trying to explore the instrument - instead of actually composing - and were therefore less able to remember the songs they had composed. Students composing on xylophones with harmonic minor were more likely to end on the tonic (the keynote) than were students who composed in the pentatonic scale (a scale with five tones to the octave). The research suggests that novice composers should begin composing in a diatonic mode with a more restricted set of pitch options. An article on this research was published in the Winter 2001 issue of the Journal of Research in Music Education.

And the beat goes on… It looks like kids from a number of different countries around the world prefer music with a heavy rhythmic beat. MSU Professor of Music Education Albert LeBlanc led an international team of researchers to measure the music listening preferences of middle school aged children in five countries. The group used a listening preference test that featured jazz, popular, and classical music excerpts that were split into two categories: heavy and light beat. It was found that a heavy beat was favored by the students in every country. He presented his study, entitled "Effect of strength of rhythmic beat on preferences of young listeners in Brazil, Greece, Japan, Portugal, and the United States," at the 19th biennial research seminar in Gothenburg, Sweden, August 3-9, 2002. His was one of 30 papers selected from a worldwide competition for presentation at the seminar. The papers were published by Gothenburg University in a book entitled "A World of Music Education Research."

On another research note, Kratus is currently involved with the Special Research Interest Group in Music Creativity, in which he was elected chair, a position he will hold through 2004. The research group is an international organization of scholars interested in research on creativity in music. Kratus' duties will include dissemination of research results on this topic, and organizing presentations for the Music Educators National Conference.

Kratus is also coordinating the Michigan Honors Composition Concert, which will be held at the 2003 Michigan Music Educators In-Service Conference. The concert will feature original compositions written and performed by K-12 students from across Michigan.

Saturday Seminars

The Music Education area hosted two Saturday Seminars for music educators in 2001-02. The seminars are part of a continuing series of workshops and services to provide music educators throughout Michigan with the latest ideas and techniques in music education.

The first workshop was held December 8, 2001, entitled "Teaching Composition in Elementary and Middle Schools." Kratus engaged the audience of music educators in a variety of composing techniques and showed them how to teach their own students to compose. Teachers had a chance to employ their own creative abilities by composing sound pieces in small groups, and performing for each other.

On February 23, 2002, Dr. Edwin Gordon, professor of music education at MSU, taught a Saturday Seminar entitled "An Introduction to Music Learning Theory." Gordon gave an overview of his learning theory for teaching music literacy, which emphasizes the development of audiation in children. He then provided the teachers with some techniques for teaching tonal and rhythm audiation.