Musicians' Learning Perceptual Skills Using a Computer-Based Teaching Machine
W. Jay Dowling · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1972
As part of a university program in innovation in instruction, music students in an introductory ear training course learn to reproduce tonal patterns using a computer-based teaching machine. The kinds of patterns involved are intervals of two tones, brief melodies, simultaneous combinations of tones in chords, and chord progressions. The basic procedure involves presentation of a stimulus pattern by the computer. The student then attempts to reproduce the pattern on a keyboard. The computer provides feedback and presents another pattern. Problems can be graded for difficulty and are designed to complement classroom experience in the course. The computer, a Hewlett-Packard 2116B, produces tone patterns directly through a digital-to-analog converter using a 3-kHz sampling rate. This sampling rate was chosen to provide sufficient frequency resolution and bandwidth for the musical pitches employed, while at the same time leaving the computer able to attend to other users in a time-sharing system. The advantage of digital synthesis of tones lies in flexibility in choice of waveform and pitch scale. Students respond on an electronic organ keyboard monitored by the computer. The computer keeps a complete record of stimuli presented and students' performances. It is expected that this tool will prove to be of great value to both the teaching of perceptual skills of music and for studying the psychology of learning those skills.