Maria Sandgren

How modes of instrumental practice are distributed in three musical genres and among vocalists and instrumentalists at music colleges

The present study investigates whether past and present instrumental practices differ across musical genres (jazz, folk music, classical music) and vocalists in relation to instrumentalists (N = 108). New findings were that vocalists and instrumentalists differed significantly in all practice experiences (p < .05–.001), whereas fewer differences were found across genres. In line with previous research, classical musicians engaged more in solitary practice than folk music and jazz musicians did (p < .001), yet jazz and folk music students practiced more in ensemble compared to classical musicians (p < .05). In addition, the results contrasted with the general view of solitary practice as a demanding and unpleasant activity, as all groups of music students found solitary practice to be a more positive than negative experience. Future studies are warranted to more closely and empirically investigate vocalists’ practice habits, and to examine how emotions are related to instrumental practicing in music education.

Exploring personality and musical self-perceptions among vocalists and instrumentalists at music colleges:

The aim was to investigate whether vocalists and instrumentalists (N = 108) would differ in personality traits, such as the Big five dimensions, competence-based self-esteem, and musical self-perceptions. The design involved both global and domain-specific features to more closely map similarities and differences between the groups. Results indicated that vocalists reported significantly higher levels of extraversion, agreeableness, and openness than the control group (p < .01–.05) but not musicians. The musical self-perceptions were explored using a qualitative method by asking the students to, in their own words, describe aspects of two categories of musical self-perceptions. For self-perceptions related to musical development, goal-orientation, personality, and expressivity were of most importance for both vocalists and instrumentalists, although personality ranked first among vocalists and third for instrumentalists. For self-perceptions related to musical expression in a performance, vocalists assigned most value to timbre, emotions, and musical ideas, whereas instrumentalists indicated dynamics, musical ideas, and timbre. In sum, global and objective measurements failed to discriminate well between vocalists and instrumentalists, whereas the qualitative study aimed at tapping domain-specific features was successful in embracing a large variety of musically related items and to differentiate between vocalists and instrumentalists.