Regulation of Emotions to Optimize Classical Music Performance: A Quasi-Experimental Study of a Cellist-Researcher

Using a music microanalysis protocol to enhance instrumental practice

The strategies that enable musicians to adapt their behaviors so that they can break through, feel energized, and perform well collectively distinguish what it is to be a self-regulated learner. These strategies range from one's ability to monitor thoughts and actions to being able to navigate and control one's emotions, especially when feeling frustrated or anxious. Given the challenges of the music profession, it becomes imperative for teachers to equip their students with the necessary skills to self-regulate their own actions, feelings, and thinking so that they are eventually able to cope with the demands required of a contemporary professional musical career. In this study, we focused on the self-regulatory engagement of four master's level cellists who were enrolled in a prominent European higher music education institution. Our data comprised self-regulated learning-based diary-reports that describes the students' practice of self-chosen, especially demanding passages as they prepared for a public recital. Results depict differences between the musicians according to the efficiency of their practice leading up to a formal public recital.

Feedback in Music Performance Teaching

The purpose of this article is to provide one prominent perspective from the research literature on a conception of feedback in educational psychology as proposed by John Hattie and colleagues, and to then adapt these concepts to develop a framework that can be applied in music performance teaching at a variety of levels. The article confronts what we see as a lack of understanding about the importance of this topic in music education and provides suggestions that will help music teachers refocus how they use feedback within their teaching. Throughout the article, we draw heavily on the work of John Hattie and his colleagues whose explanations on all facets of feedback, but especially those forms of feedback that are focused on ensuring students understand “where to next”—have had a huge impact on school education through various publications.

Oral Tradition as Context for Learning Music From 4E Cognition Compared With Literacy Cultures. Case Studies of Flamenco Guitar Apprenticeship

The awareness of the last 20 years about embodied cognition is directing multidisciplinary attention to the musical domain and impacting psychological research approaches from the 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) cognition. Based on previous research regarding musical teaching and learning conceptions of 30 young guitar apprentices of advanced level in three learning cultures: Western classical, jazz, and flamenco of oral tradition, two participants of flamenco with polarised profiles of learning (reproductive and transformative) were selected as instrumental cases for a prospective ex post facto design. Discourse and practice of the two flamenco guitarists were analysed in-depth to describe bodily issues and verbal discourse on the learning practice in their natural contexts. Qualitative analysis is performed on the posture, gestures, verbal discourse, and musical practice of the participants through the System for the Analysis of Music Teaching and Learning Practices (SAPIL). The results are organised attending: (a) the Embodied mind through differential postures and gestures of flamenco participants that showed a fusion among verbal, body language, and musical discourse with respect to the musical literacy cultures; (b) the Embedded mind and a detailed description of circumstances and relationships of the two flamenco participants, and how music is embedded in their way of life, family and social context, and therefore transcends musical activity itself; (c) the Enactive mind, regarding the active processes that make differences between the reproductive and the transformative flamenco apprentices, then tentative relationship are observed in the discourse of each apprentice and the way in which they practice; finally, (d) the Extended mind through the bodily, technical and symbolic tools they use during learning. Flamenco culture of oral tradition made use of listening, and temporary external representations instead of notational, but also the body played a central role in a holistic rhythm processing through multimodality, such as singing, playing, and dancing. Conclusions point out the embodied mind as a result of the culture of learning reflected through the body and the gesture in instrumental learning.