LAUSR

Past research has shown that musicians who are skilled at playing by ear use harmonically oriented integrated cognitive strategies, whereas beginning ear players tend to use more simplistic and fragmented approaches. In this study, I explored whether developing ear players can be moved toward more advanced cognition by directing their attention to the underlying harmonic properties of a melody they are learning. In this mixed-methods study, 28 university music majors participated in an experiment in which they learned a melody in two conditions: (1) exclusively by ear, unaided by any visual stimuli, and (2) by ear but with a chord chart representation of the melody’s phrase structure and chord progression. Upon completion of the experimental task, I interviewed each participant, prompting them to report their thought processes while learning the melodies. Transcripts of participants’ verbally reported thoughts were analyzed qualitatively for emergent themes. Quantitative results showed that the presence of the printed chord changes led to greater facility in ear playing among participants who measured in the middle range of vernacular musicianship, but not those in the low or high ranges. Qualitative analysis indicated that greater facility in ear playing came as musicians incorporated clues from the printed changes into their goal image of the melody they were learning to make their mental representation more harmonically substantive and instrumentally useful.