Reproduction and representation of musical rhythms of increasing complexity: insights from children's home settings

ABSTRACT

The aim of the study encompasses three primary objectives: (1) To examine the capability of children of varying ages to reproduce increasingly complex rhythms through hand-clapping and drumming; (2) To explore the ability of children of different ages to notate increasingly complex rhythms; and (3) To investigate the impact of age on children's invented rhythmic notations and their artistic ability to draw a person using the Draw-A-Person (DAP) Test. The participants comprised 42 children aged between 2.6 and 11.6 years old. Individual one-hour sessions were conducted in participants’ homes. Each session was divided into three parts: playing three rhythms of increasing complexity and length, inventing notations to represent each rhythm, and completing the DAP test. The study found age effects on all measures tested: rhythm reproduction competency, rhythm notations, and person depiction. The novelty of this study lies in its unique research in-situ setting and the administration of both graphic and audio-graphic tasks. The findings have implications for rhythm education, music literacy, and in-situ research in music education. They underscore the significance of adopting a multi-modal approach in music education to enhance music skills and foster artistic expression in children.

KEYWORDS:

• Rhythm reproduction
• representation of rhythm
• invented notation
• in-situ research
• artistic expression in children

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A Kibbutz (plural Kibbutzim) is an agricultural collective community settlement unique to Israel.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rivka Elkoshi

Rivka Elkoshi is a pianist, senior lecturer of music at Levinsky College in Tel-Aviv, Israel and supervisor of doctoral dissertations at Bar Ilan University, Ramt Gan, Israel. She has taught music at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and conducted workshops for music educators on behalf of the Education Ministry in Israel. Her specialty is research on music perception and musical literacy, piano pedagogy and the Orff method. She is a recipient of an Institutional Fellowship for her research on children's musical perception. She has served as manager at the Israeli Musicology society and presented internationally in a number of different countries. Her publications include piano compositions, a number of books on piano and Orff pedagogy, book chapters on audio-graphic representation, and articles on music perception and musical literacy in international British and American journals.