Teaching with Technology

Perception of Choral Blend Among Choral, Instrumental, and Nonmusic Majors using the Continuous Response Digital Interface

 By Basinger, Lynn, Killian, Janice N.

Journal of Research in Music Education, Dec. 2007; vol. 55: pp. 313-325

 I chose this article to report because of its eye-catching title. While every human being has their own learning strategy, I believe that musicians and nonmusicians may approach music with different aspect, especially when they are “learning” and “performing”.

According to the authors, the concept of choral blend is often adjudicated but seldom researched. Voice matching to achieve choral blend (placing specific voices next to one another to achieve a blended sound within a section) is frequently recommended. The authors asked participants comprised of vocal, instrumental, and nonmusic majors to move a continuous response digital interface dial to indicate judgment of blend quality while listening to voice-matched choral groupings.

 According to the authors, this technology allows monitoring of participants’ responses continuously while they are listening. The continuous response digital interface (CRDI) measures responses along a continuum much like a Likert scale and allows examination of responses across time. The authors continue that response can be examined continuously through the music event. Results of this study seem to indicate that there can be some agreement about the blend of certain groups of singers. Results may be summarized as follows:

 1. There was general agreement regarding what constitutes good and bad blend within voce-matched excerpts. Apparently these participants used CRDI to indicate their understanding of blend without further definition.

 2.  Respondent training appeared to affect rating consistency. The correlations between repeated excerpts were highly positive for vocalists but less consistent for others. Vocalists listened longer before making a judgment. Few group differences in judgment magnitude appeared, but general tendencies toward good blend judgments were evident.

3.  Few apparent differences among the three groups appeared regarding the magnitude of responses. CRDI ratings were of greater magnitude for good blend.

The authors claim that the CRDI has been used successfully to identify a consensus of opinion regarding terms such as aesthetic response left purposefully unidentified by researchers. Based on this precedent, the researchers speculated that the CRDI might be particularly useful in examining a complex construct such as choral blend.Such diverse musical constructs as preference, aesthetic response, tone quality versus intonation, and tempo modulation are but a few of the studies using the CRDI to measure temporal musical events. However, the authors point out that this research can be challenging since choral blend involves differing opinions regarding the definition of blend. This lack of concurrence may result in a possible confounding between perceptions of blend, balance, and choral tone quality and the effect individual preferences may have on such terms.  Yet this is an outstanding tool for vocal ensemble to monitor and correct their vocal quality and sounding even without a “conductor”.