Alex Schuetrumpf

15 February 2015
Article Review #2
Rohwer, D., & Polk, J. (2006). Practice Behaviors of eighth-grade instrumental musicians. Journal of Research in Music Education. 54(4), 350-362.
Rohwer and Polk or the University North Texas wrote this study to better understand the practice behaviors of eighth-graders. This study does not apply to vocalists or keyboardists. This information would be beneficial to directors to understand whether or not his students know how to practice efficiently or even correctly. This may be a skill that the director has to teach his students.
The authors sought to answer three questions. What is the relationship between the practice strategies that students employ, their idea of what their strategies …show more content…
The holistic practicer favored playing through a passage without stopping to correct errors. The analytic practicer stopped at difficult portions of the music to fix them. Half of the participants were holistic (33) and half of the participants were analytic (32). There were to sub-categories for each of the kinds of practices.
The holistic practicers were broken into corrective and non-corrective. There were 16 non-corrective practicers. The non-corrective students would play though the passage continuously without fixing and errors. Some of these practicers only fingered though the passage without playing. Of these non-corrective holistic practicers, the average first performance score was 15.63 and the average second score was 16.00, yielding an increase of .37
There were 17 corrective practicers. The corrective students played through the passage until the approached a difficult section, in which the restarted again. Some mistakes were not were not as noticeable, the students continued over them. The average first performance score was 21.47 and the average second performance score was 24.76, yielding a 3.29 …show more content…
They tended to repeat each portion 1 to 4 times. Different practicers practiced each portion differently. Some changed articulations, some changed tempo, and some simply fingered though the parts. The average first performance score was 22.42 and the average second performance score was 28.47, yielding an increase of 6.05.
Each participant employed an average of 2.57 different methods of practicing. The also discovered that some students could vocalize the methods of practice they used. Some could not describe the method of practice they used. Some even vocalized methods of practice that they did not even use. They determined that the reason the some student vocalized the wrong method or could not vocalize a method at all was due to age level.
This is an important study to directors because directors religiously stress the importance of practice, however, they do not always know how their students actually practice. This study can give director a better idea of how there students practice. With this knowledge, the director can teach his students how the best ways to practice different kinds of passages. This can improve the ensemble as a