Listening skills have been conceptualized as the brain’s ability to perceive and analyse music, heard aurally. Pratt (1990) states, ‘Aural perception is self-evidently indispensable in musical activity’ (p. 1) and Karpinski (2000) concurs, suggesting that, without aural skills, musicians are ‘usually condemned to thinking about music, without learning to think in music’ (p. 4). Listening skills help people sing or play music, to improvise and compose, and to identify elements of music such as rhythmic features, scale patterns or chord progressions. When allied to an ability to read music, they enable performers to hear mentally, what they see in the score.
Listening skills can be assessed. The music General Certificate in Secondary education (the main public examination for 16-year olds in England) requires students to notate melodic pitches: given a score which contains the melody with one or more bars missing, the candidates are asked to listen to the music and to notate the missing bars. (The rhythm of the missing notes is provided, above the stave.) My research aimed to help a group of students to do this better, by using computer technology. My research question was, ‘how can I teach students the listening skills necessary to notate the music they hear?’
Computer technology is widely used in music education and can enable teaching methods to move from a teacher-centred approach to ‘a more interactive and learner-centred approach’ (Ho, 2004). Good use of music technology can increase student motivation and enable them to make better use of their time (Mills and Murray, 2000). It can encourage critical responses to music, heard aurally (Greher, 2004). I hoped it might assist students, learning to notate the music they heard.