THE IMPORTANCE OF INSTRUMENT RECOGNITION IN MELODIC DICTATION: AN EXPERIMENTAL COMPARISON FOR VIOLIN, FLUTE AND QANUN

Abstract

Dictation as a subfield of musical writing is an important pillar of music education. It is possible to say that writing musical dictation, which can be considered a study of defining voices at musical level, has a long history in the curricula of music education institutions. In the first dictation studies at the Paris Conservatory, while musical passages were initially dictated by students hearing vocals, the organ was later used instead. Since, the main instrument in this study has become the piano. Experimental studies related to the use of other instruments instead of piano within the scope of dictation studies show that, if sufficient education is provided, the use of any instrument in dictation studies is possible with no negative effect on student?s performance. This study was designed with the assumption that when a music student writes dictation with his or her individual instrument, it is more advantageous than the use of other instruments. However, said student can successfully dictate on unfamiliar instruments if necessary training is given. The study has a weak experimental design as it was completed with pre-test/post-test and no control group. The study group consisted of 10 students studying in their 2nd and 3rd years in the Spring 2018-2019 academic year in the Department of Music Education at Mugla Sitki Kocman University Faculty of Education. In selection of the study group, the 2nd and 3rd year student grades received in the Musical Hearing, Reading and Writing course the previous semester were taken into consideration. In the pre-test, post-test and educational work, dictations were asked via violin, flute and qanun and the questions were selected from the literature of these instruments. After the pre-test, training was conducted for 4 weeks, one hour per week for each instrument, and the post-test questions were asked. As a result of the study, it was seen that the students were more successful in dictations written with violin in the pre-test study than with other instruments. However, this difference was closed in the post-test after the training study with students demonstrating success with the violin as well as with flute and qanun.