Evaluating Musical Skills

Hello guys, I'm back now. Long time no see this blog hahaha. This time I'll share something to you but it's little bit different because I use English in this page. But never mind. it's only once probably.
Now I will share about "Evaluating Musical Skills" in a book. That's "The Teaching of Instrumental Music". Check it out.

EVALUATING MUSICAL SKILLS

In the majority of K-12 schools, music was for many years thought of primarily as a performance skill. This is natural because music depends on performance, but other skills must also be de Veloped if performance is to lead to a lifelong interest in music. Chiefly, these other skills fall into two categories: reading skills and auditmy and auditmy-vz‘sual skills.

Performance Skills

Any number of vehicles exist for assessing performance skills. The most familiar of these are private lessons, sectional rehearsals, daily rehearsals, tryouts or challenges, concerts, contests, and festivals-in short, any type of student performance. These vary in value because group situations of any type increase the difficulty of objective measurement of individual performance skill. In order to avoid a subjective judgment, the teacher should use a list of specific objectives. For example, objectives for performance may include the following: (1) production of good tone throughout the pitch and dynamic ranges; (2) the ability to change tone quality to suit the music; (3) accurate intonation; (4) a pitch range sufficiently wide for the level of music played; (5) dynamic range from pianissimo to fortissimo; and (6) accurate and rapid use of one’s hands and fingers. Each of these objectives can be measured on a point scale, ranging from 0 to 25 or more. When ratings are made using multiple anchor points (terms) such as pom; good, excellent, and superior, the student can more easily understand the expected standard. Some teachers expect instrumentalists to be able to sing as well as play their parts. This is an excellent suggestion for music that is in a reasonable singing range.

Surprisingly, performance skill, which receives much teaching emphasis, has had little attention from test makers. It is an on-demand task in teacher~constructed assessments. Only one performance test is in print, the Watkins-Famum Performance Scale, which is available for wind, string, and percussion instruments. In this test, fourteen graded melodies of sixteen bars each are given to the performer to play. These range from the easiest type to one of nearprofessional grade. Performers are graded on the number and type of errors they make.
EVALUATING MUSICAL SKILLS

In the majority of K-12 schools, music was for many years thought of primarily as a performance skill. This is natural because music depends on performance, but other skills must also be de Veloped if performance is to lead to a lifelong interest in music. Chiefly, these other skills fall into two categories: reading skills and auditmy and auditmy-vz‘sual skills.

Performance Skills

Any number of vehicles exist for assessing performance skills. The most familiar of these are private lessons, sectional rehearsals, daily rehearsals, tryouts or challenges, concerts, contests, and festivals-in short, any type of student performance. These vary in value because group situations of any type increase the difficulty of objective measurement of individual performance skill. In order to avoid a subjective judgment, the teacher should use a list of specific objectives. For example, objectives for performance may include the following: (1) production of good tone throughout the pitch and dynamic ranges; (2) the ability to change tone quality to suit the music; (3) accurate intonation; (4) a pitch range sufficiently wide for the level of music played; (5) dynamic range from pianissimo to fortissimo; and (6) accurate and rapid use of one’s hands and fingers. Each of these objectives can be measured on a point scale, ranging from 0 to 25 or more. When ratings are made using multiple anchor points (terms) such as pom; good, excellent, and superior, the student can more easily understand the expected standard. Some teachers expect instrumentalists to be able to sing as well as play their parts. This is an excellent suggestion for music that is in a reasonable singing range.

Surprisingly, performance skill, which receives much teaching emphasis, has had little attention from test makers. It is an on-demand task in teacher~constructed assessments. Only one performance test is in print, the Watkins-Famum Performance Scale, which is available for wind, string, and percussion instruments. In this test, fourteen graded melodies of sixteen bars each are given to the performer to play. These range from the easiest type to one of nearprofessional grade. Performers are graded on the number and type of errors they make.

Reading Skills

Reading skills are one of the keys to pleasure in musical participation. When players can un~ derstand the musical page by themselves without direction from the teacher, they can learn new music on their own, play in ensembles, enrich the family music circle, and in general enjoy musical freedom. In sight-reading, the student should see more than the notes. Assess~ ment should note awareness of the key signature, all accidentals, dynamic markings, accents, and phrase and tonguing (or bowing) markings, and recognition of the phrase so that proper articulation is observed. A teacher-constructed assessment can include a single piece of unfa~ miliar music or exercises of graded difficulty, as long as there is sufficient variety of musical el~ ements and styles to include all items to be assessed.

Auditory and Auditory-Visual Skills

The third area of skill is auditory discrimination. Included are those skills that depend on the car’s relationship to the fingers and the eye and the ability to visualize what is being heard and to hear inwardly what is seen on the musical page. It differs from sight-reading in that an instrumentalist may successfully sight-read music without hearing inwardly what is read. Auditory-visual skill is what the sight-singer uses to hear the music inwardly before singing it accurately. Objectives for auditory-visual skill include the ability to visualize simple melodies, intervals, and phrases heard and, conversely, to inwardly hear these when seen in the score. They also include the ability to recognize the tonal center and modulations, commonly used chords, and unexpected harmonies; to remember melodies adequately for following simple formal structure; to follow parts other than the principal melody; and to recognize timbre and texture. Strategies such as the syllable system are often used as teaching devices. Auditory-visual skills are commonly measured by tests requiring the student to follow short musical items (usually four or eight measures) in a score and to determine where the score differs from the musical items played. There are standardized test of this type as well as tests that measure only auditory skills.

Sources :
The Teaching of Instrumental Music - 4th edition (Richard J. Colwell & Michael P. Hewitt)
http://journal.student.uny.ac.id
http://e.library.uny.ac.id/
http://library.uny.ac.id
http://uny.ac.id