The Effect of Instructor's Major/Instrument on Student Melodic Imitation Scores and Tone Quality

Abstract

Scores obtained from the Intermediate Ear to Hand Test (Dickey & Froseth, 1991) were used to compare melodic-imitation and tone-quality scores between students who played the major instrument of their classroom instrumental music instructor and students who played a different instrument. Data were collected from 20 instrumental music classrooms that included eighth-grade students in the third year of instrumental music instruction. Students who played the major instrument of their instructor obtained statistically significant higher scores on overall performance quality when compared with students who did not, but the effect size was quite small, and there were no effects for the melodic-imitation or tone-quality components of overall performance quality.