Entre a expressão e a técnica: a terminologia do professor de canto - um estudo de caso em pedagogia vocal de canto erudito e popular no eixo Rio-São Paulo

Pós-graduação em Música - IA

The Effect of Attentional Focus on Singing Voice Quality: Towards the Interdisciplinary Experimental Investigation of Singing Pedagogy

Instructional methods employed by teachers of singing are mostly drawn from personal experience, personal reflections, and methods encountered in their own voice training (Welch & Howard, 2005). Even in Academia, singing pedagogy is one of the few disciplines in which research of teaching/learning practice efficacy has not been established (Crocco, et al., 2016). This dissertation argues the reason for this deficit is a lack of operationalization of constructs in singing, which, to date has not been undertaken. The researcher addresses issues of paradigm, epistemology, and methodology to suggest an appropriate model of experimental research towards the assessment of teaching/learning practice efficacy. A study was conducted adapting attentional focus research methodologies to test the effect of attentional focus on singing voice quality in adult novice singers. Based on previous attentional focus studies, it was hypothesized that external focus conditions would result in superior singing voice quality than internal focus conditions. While the hypothesis was partially supported by the data, the researcher welcomed refinement of the suggested research model. It is hoped that new research methodologies will emerge to investigate singing phenomena, yielding data that may be used towards the development of evidence-based frameworks for singing training.

Prevalence of vocal problems in portuguese primary and secondary shool level teachers

This study compared the prevalence of vocal problems in two Portuguese groups: 73 teachers that use their voice as professional tool (teachers’ group) and 73 non-voice professionals (control group). It also identified the risk factors that contributed to teachers’ group voice problems. A questionnaire was applied to both goups in order to obtain information about vocal health, hygiene and behavior, professional activity and general physical health. Statistical results revealed that the teachers’ group presented a higher prevalence of vocal problems than the control group: 52% reported hoarseness, 46.6% vocal fatigue and 45.2% vocal discomfort compared with 31.5%, 20.5 % e 28.7%, respectively. Environmental factors (eg., smoke and cold temperatures), vocal abuse and upper respiratory pathologies (e.g., colds, laryngitis and pharyngitis) seemed to increase teachers’ voice disorders (p-value < .05). In conclusion, the absence of vocal pedagogy in the curricular plan of teachers’ higher education associated to poor working environmental conditions and professional voice demands explained the higher prevalence of vocal problems in teachers’ group.

The pomegranate cycle : reconfiguring opera through performance, technology & composition

The Pomegranate Cycle is a practice-led enquiry consisting of a creative work and an exegesis. This project investigates the potential of self-directed, technologically mediated composition as a means of reconfiguring gender stereotypes within the operatic tradition. This practice confronts two primary stereotypes: the positioning of female performing bodies within narratives of violence and the absence of women from authorial roles that construct and regulate the operatic tradition. The Pomegranate Cycle redresses these stereotypes by presenting a new narrative trajectory of healing for its central character, and by placing the singer inside the role of composer and producer. During the twentieth and early twenty-first century, operatic and classical music institutions have resisted incorporating works of living composers into their repertory. Consequently, the canon’s historic representations of gender remain unchallenged. Historically and contemporarily, men have almost exclusively occupied the roles of composer, conductor, director and critic, and therefore men have regulated the pedagogy, performance practices, repertoire and organisations that sustain classical music. In this landscape, women are singers, and few have the means to challenge the constructions of gender they are asked to reproduce. The Pomegranate Cycle uses recording technologies as the means of driving change because these technologies have already challenged the regulation of the classical tradition by changing people’s modes of accessing, creating and interacting with music. Building on the work of artists including Phillips and van Veen, Robert Ashley and Diamanda Galas, The Pomegranate Cycle seeks to broaden the definition of what opera can be. This work examines the ways in which the operatic tradition can be hybridised with contemporary musical forms such as ambient electronica, glitch, spoken word and concrete sounds as a way of bringing the form into dialogue with contemporary music cultures. The ultilisation of other sound cultures within the context of opera enables women’s voices and stories to be presented in new ways, while also providing a point of friction with opera’s traditional storytelling devices. The Pomegranate Cycle simulates aesthetics associated with Western art music genres by drawing on contemporary recording techniques, virtual instruments and sound-processing plug-ins. Through such simulations, the work disrupts the way virtuosic human craft has been used to generate authenticity and regulate access to the institutions that protect and produce Western art music. The DIY approach to production, recording, composition and performance of The Pomegranate Cycle demonstrates that an opera can be realised by a single person. Access to the broader institutions which regulate the tradition are not necessary. In short, The Pomegranate Cycle establishes that a singer can be more than a voice and a performing body. She can be her own multimedia storyteller. Her audience can be anywhere.

The Björling 'Opera' : A children's Nursery Academy and an Italian Conservatory in Miniature

The aim in this chapter is to develop a deeper understanding about the informal Björling 'School' in Sweden. Contextually the example is related to the micro history of opera education contributing to the macro perspective illuminating a provincial example of the concept of domestic opera schooling. The specific focus was on Karl David Björling (1873-1926), the teaching parent of the Swedish tenor Jussi Björling (1911-1960) and his brothers Gösta and Olle.   The Björling family model of opera schooling belongs to the classical canon of domestic home education which was common during the epoch. The phenomenon is also within the field of opera singing an important reference to the historical context of the Nordic opera history of vocal education.   The uniqueness concerning the Björling School seems to be the rigorous and exceptionally early training. David Björling’s pedagogy was rooted in earlier German theories of musical upbringing. It's clear from his results that he was familiar with the neo-humanistic ideal on which reformed music education was based. Of a specific interest is the term Gesang als Unterricht as a concept for developing childrens musical and memorising capacities.   Conceptually the roots of the Björling model are in the eighteenth-century Romantic view of prodigies and their abilities. The extensive touring is connected to the promotion of wonder-children, and David Björling’s educational style to the conservative Master-pupil tradition.   David Björling's vocal ideal was a part of the contemporary debate about “The decadence of the singing art”, and seems to have its roots in an older Italian tradition. There are recurring similarities between his educational methods and the didactic principles of the Lamperti School: Enjoying a revival around the late 1800s and early 1900s, it has been called the natural or the national school. Nevertheless, through authentic experiences and gramophone recordings the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso became David Björling’s pedagogical role model.

Shared Insights: A Survey of Postsecondary and Adult Men's Chorus Directors

The following dissertation focuses on the all-male chorus context. Through a survey of university, GALA and adult affiliated community chorus directors on the specific challenges – vocal pedagogy, rehearsal techniques, auditioning, and repertoire – of the TTBB chorus, valuable insights were gathered from participating directors that serve to supplement existing literature available to directors.

Self-perception, complaints and vocal quality among undergraduate students enrolled in a Pedagogy course

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Aquecimento e Desaquecimento Vocal em Estudantes de Pedagogia

Introduction: the voice is one of the main features of interaction between teacher and student. As teachers, future teachers are also risk population for the development of dysphonia and may be subject to protective intervention. Purpose: to evaluate the effect of a vocal warm-up and cool-down procedure at Pedagogy students. Method: A quasi-experimental study, pre-posttest without a control group, with fourteen Pedagogy students at a public university, participants of a short course. The analysis was performed by a self-assessment visual analogue scale of 10 cm, considering aspects related to the body and voice. The protocol was implemented in three steps: pre-test, post warm-up and post cool-down, and it was calculated the averages of the variables of discomfort and compared the measurements before and after performing each procedure. It was used the the Wilcoxon signed-rank statiscal test, adopting a significance level of 5%. Results: there was less discomfort with statistical significance after the vocal warm-up (p=0.002) and cool-down (p=0.001), with greater magnitude in both aspects related to voice. Conclusions: The vocal warm-up and cool-down have positive effects on the perception of students and should be taught to future teachers in order to prevent vocal disorders. The vocal cool-down, poorly researched, should not be passed over vocal health practices since its purpose showed obvious improvement in the investigated group.

Digital scholarship and pedagogy, the next step : cultural science.

There are two aspects to the problem of digital scholarship and pedagogy. One is to do with scholarship; the other with pedagogy. In scholarship, the association of knowledge with its printed form remains dominant. In pedagogy, the desire to abandon print for ‘new’ media is urgent, at least in some parts of the academy. Film and media studies are thus at the intersection of opposing forces – pulling the field ‘back’ to print and ‘forward’ to digital media. These tensions may be especially painful in a field whose own object of study is another form of communication, neither print nor digital but broadcast. Although print has been overtaken in the popular marketplace by audio-visual forms, this was never achieved in the domain of scholarship. Even when it is digitally distributed, the output of research is still a ‘paper.’ But meanwhile, in the realm of teaching, production- and practice-based pedagogy has become firmly established. Nevertheless a disjunction remains, between high-end scholarship in research universities and vocational training in teaching institutions; but neither is well equipped to deal with the digital challenge.

Technological barriers to learning : designing hybrid pedagogy to minimise cognitive load and maximise understanding

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) provide great promise for the future of education. In the Asia-Pacific region, many nations have started working towards the comprehensive development of infrastructure to enable the development of strong networked educational systems. In Queensland there have been significant initiatives in the past decade to support the integration of technology in classrooms and to set the conditions for the enhancement of teaching and learning with technology. One of the great challenges is to develop our classrooms to make the most of these technologies for the benefit of student learning. Recent research and theory into cognitive load, suggests that complex information environments may well impose a barrier on student learning. Further, it suggests that teachers have the capacity to mitigate against cognitive load through the way they prepare and support students engaging with complex information environments. This chapter compares student learning at different levels of cognitive load to show that learning is enhanced when integrating pedagogies are employed to mitigate against high-load information environments. This suggests that a mature policy framework for ICTs in education needs to consider carefully the development of professional capacities to effectively design and integrate technologies for learning.

Taking a 'reality' check : expanding pre-service teachers' views on pedagogy and diversity

The outcomes of a two-pronged 'real-world' learning project, which aimed to expand the views of pre-service teachers about learning, pedagogy and diversity, will be discussed in this paper. Seventy-two fourth-year and 22 first-year students, enrolled in a Bachelor of Education degree in Queensland, Australia, were engaged in community sites outside of university lectures, and separate from their practicum. Using Butin's conceptual framework for service learning, we show evidence that this approach can enable pre-service teachers to see new realities about the dilemmas and ambiguities of performing as learners and as teachers. We contend that when such 'real-world' experiences have different foci at different times in their four-year degree, pre-service teachers have more opportunities to develop sophisticated understandings of pedagogy in diverse contexts for diverse learners.