Effects of musical experience on singing achievement

An investigation was conducted on song performance and melodic pitch matching skills of three groups of adults who had different type and level of mask background. The instrumentalists had received formal music training but had little choral experience; the choristers had not received any formal college music training but had substantial choral experience, and a control group of musically untrained college students who had neither received any choral nor formal instrumental music training beyond school general music education during childhood. All subjects were evaluated on their performance to maintain tonality in song performance and accuracy on echo-sing melodic patterns. Results suggest that the extent of choral experience and formal instrumental music training have different effects on different types of criterion singing tasks. For melodic pitch-matching task, the instrumentalists performed significantly better than both the musically untrained control group and the nonmusic-major choristers group. In contrast, the nonmusic-majors who had choral experience performed significantly better in song performance tasks than both the instrumentalists and the musically untrained group. Tints, personal musical experience appeared to have different effects on singing achievement. The findings also imply that informal music training, such as choral singing, might be considered analogous or even superior in fostering musical growth under certain song performance context.