Music students’ perceptions of experiential learning at the moot audition

ABSTRACT

The music industry is built on a system of expert evaluation focused on sound, but the foundations are challenged by recent research, which suggests that sight trumps sound. This presents a challenge to music educators, who train the next generation of expert performers and listeners. The aim of this study is to investigate students’ perceptions of the moot audition as experiential learning in tertiary music education. Auditioners experienced live performances (blind and sighted) and then three audiovisual presentations (audio-only, visual-only and audiovisual). This student panel discovered the challenges of applying evaluation criteria and considered the way in which they might evaluate performances with specific musical ensembles in mind. The audition scenarios challenged students’ listening acuity for performance and performer evaluation, and confirmed the importance of visual cues in music performance. Students became cognisant of the importance of sound and sight in their own performance preparation and engaged with real-world applications of recent perceptual and cognitive research in music performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Music performance
• music perception
• auditions
• music assessment
• experiential learning
• audiovisual integration
• extramusical communication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributor

Helen F. Mitchell is Senior Lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. She studied music at Oxford University then moved to the University of Sydney, where her PhD focused on singing pedagogy, acoustics and perception. As Australian Postdoctoral Fellow, her research tracked the impact of singing training on the development of the singing voice. Her recent work investigates audiences' perceptions and descriptions of individual performers, through sound alone and through an audiovisual fusion of sensory information. She is currently focused on developing new ways to incorporate multisensory music training to prepare music students for critical listening and evaluation of music performance.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Office for Learning and Teaching [grant number SD14-3629]. Support for these reports/publications/activities has been provided by a grant (SD14-3629) from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd, an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. The views expressed in these reports/publications/activities do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council or the Australian Government.