Effect of Harmonic Accompaniment on the Development of Music Aptitude and Singing Achievement

¶ … Harmonic Accompaniment on the Development of Music Aptitude and Singing Achievement The rationale of the scrutinize was to investigate the effect of xylophones harmonic accompaniment on the tone realization and tone improvisation of young children[aged eight].It provide the children cognitive development, multiple intelligence emphasis on music and bodily kinesthetic intelligence which will involve auditory, visual and kinesthetic stimuli.

It entails rhythmic development, music amptitude which test the effect of harmonic accompaniment on music development and music amptitude children vocal development and finally the effect of harmonic accompaniment on singing achievement.Even though result based on research on singing achievement between the children which had song instruction with a root melody accompaniment had no significant on tone attainment according to Gordon's (1982)IMMA, there was significance effect on singing achievement between children who received song instruction with root melody accompaniment.Xylophones which comes from a Greek word 'xylon'meaning wooden sound.It is from percussion family of musical instrument which is believed to have originated from Africa and Asia but now found around the continents.

Cognitive development is the making up of ideas processes, these include making decision of your own, solving a problem and remembering through different stages of human being.Piaget's theory (1896-1980) of cognitive development analyze how children respond to their natural environment .As Atherton (2010) continues to build on Jean Piaget theory, he describes a child's knowledge as composed of schemas which are modified by complementary processes that assimilation and accommodation.In this stage which fall under the concrete operations stage according to Jean Piaget, children have the ability to think and relate by use of logical and coherent action.This makes children aged eight to be in apposition to identify and relate the sounds from xylophones to improve their music this gives the tonal variation.He agues that it is an a trial for one to balance between assimilation and accommodation (equilibration).He came up with the stages of cognitive development based on Peaget's theory; Sensory motor stage (infancy); in this stage there is no use of symbols but intelligent is showed by motor activity.Permanency of objects they get at seven months.Interllectuals and few language is developed.

Pre-operational stage (early childhood); intelligent is showed through symbols, mature languages.Thinking is egocentric, none logical, not irreversible. Concrete operational stage (elementary and adolescence); there is conservation of weight, volme, mass, number, area, liquid and lengh.Intelligent relation is of objects in logical and manipulation Formal operational stage (adolescence and adulthood); Intelligence is through abstract in use of symbols.They are egocentric.

According to Howard Gardner in 1983,in his theory he says that intelligence as once described in IQ test do not explain cognitive abilities in all aspect from children .It tells that as children takes more time in learning a simple concept may understand deeper the whole concept than children who learn faster especially in mathematics (multiplication).This has brought different reaction because most psychologist look at it that differentiation about the concept of intelligence is not backed up by the practical significance of the approaches from the theory.From the recent cognitive and document which states that the far to which children posses various types of mind makes them perform, understand, remember and learn in various ways.According to Howard, logical mathematics analysis, musical thinking, language, spatial representation and an understanding of other individuals.

If one cannot reach the agreement in the strength of these intelligence the intelligent are invoked and used in combination to perform other tasks.He says that from these differences affects the learning system that takes all to be taught with the same resources in one way so that equivalent testing is done to the learner.Our system of education is greatly biased to logical quantitative modes, assessment and linguistically.The learnig ways (types of intelligence); Musical; a child brings out sensitivity to sounds and rhythm due to love of music, they learn best with background music.They learn well in lesson which is changed to lyrics with tools like radio, multimedia, musical instrument.

Interpersonal is where children enjoy and share with others, they have sympathy. They learn best in seminars, group activities, E-mail, video .Visual Spatial is whereby the child knows a lot about the environment, drawing physical imagery and their resources are charts and photographs. Linguistic is now the use of words by children for efficacy; they make stories or poetry and even reading with their resources being computer, books and games.

While visual helps children to get concrete concept on spatial relationship, Sounds helps the children to know the difference on verbal sound and non-verbal such as music, while bodily kinesthetic assist children in using body sensation to acquire concepts while engaging in activities like dancing etc. Logical mathematics children are interested in patterns and experiments ends up performing well in arithmetic.

From the content involving bodily kinesthetic, the key element of the bodily kinesthetic, intelligence is the ability to use one's bodily movement skillfully and capacity to skills in objects touching.This involve how to use xylophones to produce music with the correct tonal variation.It also contains a sense of timing, ability to train responses to be as reflexes, a proving sense of purpose of physical doing.This makes these children to learn more effectively when they use xylophones by involving their muscular movement (playing it) making them to enjoy music by singing making them learn best because they remember through verbal memory.

From the continent of musical, it goes with the ability to sense rhythm, sounds, tones and the musical itself.For children to have excellent pitch they always have high musical intelligence, sometimes absolute pitch and this makes them in a position to help them achieve their singing and music aptitude According to Gordon Institute for Music Learning (GIML)music aptitude like talent which one might have should be given to achild at early stages of their life.Music aptitude which is spread among different population, everyone has the ability to succeed in music.People have different aptitude, few have low and high aptitude while majority have neither high nor low but are average in aptitude.Since distinctive method of teaching is used achild finds it difficult to succeed in music.These children of average aptitude receives a lot of tonal content plus rhythmic content more than children of low aptitude and ones of high aptitude receives a lot of content than average ones.This makes teachers to avoid boring children and not to stress others.

Music aptitude can also be measured but with only valid music aptitude test.Ones talent cannot be determine by ability to achieve but on significant music achievement.This is because children gets different rich musical and devoted efforts.However children cannot be judged through aptitude testing to be excluded or included in music activities, all children have a right to education to music though it helps to cater for the need of every child by the teacher.It is essential to consider the level of the learner to identify the correct music aptitude test.

Research which has been done about the development and stabilized music aptitude shows that music aptitude is developed at young stages of life.

Though at birth aptitude of the child tend to be inmate, it can vary upto age of nine depending of the effectiveness and diversity of the music experience the child have.Past nine years a child is not able to achieve in music more than one's previous music aptitude.It important that children gets lots of best quality of formal instruction and informal assistance in music for them to identify their ability to music accomplishment in the stages of their life.It is important to have informal music experience before reaching five years old.

There are two types of music aptitude;stabilized and development.Music aptitude is also multidimensional, and the document has addendums which are;improvisation, types of stages of auditory, music learning theory and orientation intentionality as component of creative.As a child is taught using the xylophones they tend to develop musical aptitude at this level (eight years).This makes achild to relate the sounds produced by xylophones with the music so that a comprehensive tone realization and tone improvisation is achieved.

This brings us to different types of music aptitude tests that can be done by the teachers to identify the type learner are being taken care of. According to Gordon (1997) theory we have two major ones; the first being the complete IQ Test which is checking how smart one is from the mind, the complete aptitude Test involves intelligence whether in words or numbers.

Others are Test of analytical skill which test drawing skills, The Acuity skill test involve simple repetition activity, The Technical Skill Test is how one can technically and mechanically feel things and Verbal Reasoning Test; it involves word reasoning The theme of the research on effect of harmonic accompaniment or instruction on music developmental music aptitude children vocal development was to find the effect of harmonic accompaniment to the children on tonal improvisation.Some main aim of the research were;to find if age affect tonal improvisation performance of children at different grades;find if increasing root melody accompaniment to instruction of the song affect the use of harmonic rhythm and changes tonal improvisation.For comprehensive music curriculum there must be improvisation.through that children can express their feeling and thoughts on music.The child should be in apposition to express themselves by words.Due to instruction children are able to: improve pattern of tones (Balasko 1987);used harmonic purposes and retain tonality and key while improvising (Giulbault2004);coming up with music that have musical structure; retain meter and steady beat (Kalmer 1987) Guilbault's research was to find out if root melody accompaniment is added to instruction of the song which may interfear with tonal improvisation children.It further pointed those children who finds song instruction with melody of the root accompaniment; used implied harmonic purposes and retain tonal and key when improvising.

Journal of research in music education says that a child applies ability and function of harmonic to retain key and tonality while improving xylophones.Kalmer and Balasko (1987) analysed pre-school children when making xylophones with local available materials and playing it to identify the number of responses and ideas.

According to Partchey's (1987) research was of unity, identifiable rhythm pattern, steady pulse and variety which are childs ability.Form, pitch, duration and intestify was done by Wig (1981).The outcome of the research by Guilbault (2004) found the additional root melody accompaniment to song instruction affects child tonal improvisation described that achild who got song instruction and root melody accompaniment stabilize the key and tonal along with implied harmonic functions on improvising importantly more than those who had not received instruction.It was only used for specific young ages population.

To identify whether there was pre-existing music aptitude children of first grade, second grade and third grade before treatment were used on the rhythm subtest and tonal of the Primary Measures of Music Audition (PMMA).This was done by (Gordon 1979).This was because of different on control group and treatment since children with lower aptitude may not have performed as the ones in high music aptitude (Gordon2007).This made the sub-test for tonal and rhythm of Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation (IMMA)which were done before treatment to fourth grade, fifth grade and sixth grade.For one had not been asingle student which had experience with improvising before, as it grow through sequenced learning The first learning of instruction is based on primary on music learning theory which involves orff activities.These are made up of instruction of tonal pattern,,identifying of tonal and rhythm pattern function, tonal and rhythm pattern instruction, singing, playing pitch and unpitched instrument, chanting amongst others.

Improvisation activities involving control and treatment was made up of events containing tonic and dominant function pattern in major and harmonic minor tonalities which were either same or different;exploitation events;conversational improvisation;using major and harmonic minor tonalities when singing new ending or changing part of known song.On the treatment group, the sixth grade class assigned one randomly but the rest of the grade first, second, third, fourth and fifth were assigned two per grade.They involved them in a root melody accompaniment which was presented by researcher when student sang pitch instrument;by student as researcher present s song;using voice recordings;by student when another one is presenting a song.The control group had one random assigned to first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth grade class where two random assigned to second grade class.Everything about singing was done in cappella.

The only different instruction which was being given to the students at the grades was use of root melody accompaniment other instructions was same.

When the test was done of the post instructional performance was that the results were there was no significance differences from PMMAandIMMMA composite aptitude scores between the treatment group and control in every level of gradesThe effect of harmonic accompaniment on singing achievement involves vocal development where the effect of diverse harmonic accompaniment has been based on the six grade students where the sub-test was administered.This is according to Petzold (1966).This is to check the potential to sing melodic fragment accurately.The research involved three accompaniment types: primary chords within simple chord progression, sustained single chords and secondary chords on inversion within complex chord progression.From not specific method of choosing,540 children were taken randomly.Three kinds of harmony test were created.

The first one, stimulus which was presented with a melodic line with harmonic accompaniment which the child was to hear and to react by singing the melodic piece presently heard.Without having the melodic line of the harmonic accompaniment, the child was to respond.The second one though like the first one, the child was to reply while not using harmonic accompaniment.The third one had neither response nor stimulus from harmonic treatment.

The research found easy chords of tonic, sub-dominant and dominant used had greater singing for children.According to Petzold (1996) children are able to sing perfectly when an accompaniment by easy (i),(iv) and (v) in his five-year longitudinal study.The analysis was that harmonic accompaniment offer the tonality and can be reinforce being aware of the singer of the tonal center of a song.This analysis is backed up by Gordon (1997) and Azzara (1999) in their research.This was different from Gordon (1982)research which involved music aptitude test and of the latest.From the latest research learning, playing and singing using xylophones (bamboo) is given a chance to the children.The research was taken to have 12 weeks music lesson plan from preface for reference for it had no lesson plan giving doubt whether all music instruction was given to the children.

From the research done by Sterling (1984) singing posture, vocal breathing training and vocal warm up had no instruction unlike present study had three minutes at the beginning of each lesson of vocal techniques as studied by Guilbout (2003).He considered additional root melody accompaniment as harmonic accompaniment effect on song instruction on the development of tonal aptitude, tonal achievement and tonal improvisation of first grade and kindergarten children.

The outcome showed that song instruction with a root melody accompaniment to developmental tonal aptitude and tonal achievement of young children had no importance.Because.