Identification of ear for music at children is not only the answer to a question whether it is worth teaching the child to music, musical education in itself does not harm anybody. To a degree musical abilities in general and ear for music in particular are peculiar to all people, except having total deafness from the birth. Identification of extent of development of ear for music helps to plan musical education of the child.
Unfortunately, entrance tests at many music schools quite often turn into evident demonstration of how it is impossible to diagnose ear for music. To the child suggest to sing separate notes which the teacher sings on the tool, to define aurally whether the teacher at the same time sings one note, two (interval) or three (chord).
At such diagnostics about ear for music it is possible to obtain not enough information. The child can "not get" to the necessary notes not because he does not hear but because he is not able to operate the voice. And, above all – similar methods have very remote relation to music.
Ear for music and other abilities
In musical activity, whether it be the composition of music, execution or perception of music, musical abilities are shown in a complex therefore the isolated diagnostics of separate abilities is doomed to failure. And ear for music in itself – the phenomenon the difficult, including set of elements. It both sound high-rise hearing, and timbre, and dynamic, hearing absolute and relative. The main carrier of sense in music is sound altitude, and not the height of a single sound, but a combination of sounds, various on height, matters. Their ratio develops in a system – a harmony which allows to perceive a combination of sounds of different height as expression of a certain sense. This ability is called LVL feeling and represents one of ear for music bases. Music is developed in time, and the spatial coordinate (sound height) cannot be considered in a separation from the temporary coordinate (rhythm), therefore, diagnostics of LVL feeling to be combined with identification of rhythmic feeling. Semantic perception of height of a sound and musical rhythm finds expression in active manifestation of ear for music – abilities to form abstract musical and acoustical representations in the form of the melody abstracted from timbre statement and kept in such look by memory.
Diagnostics methods
One of the best ways to reveal musical abilities of the child – to suggest it to sing the song. It will be complex manifestation of musical abilities in vigorous musical activity. Accompanying the child on a musical instrument, it is possible to track as it reacts to accompaniment: whether correlates a rhythm whether gets to tonality and if does not get – whether tries to correct it, "looking for" voice the necessary sounds. It is necessary to apply additional methods to specification of results. For diagnostics of LVL feeling it is possible to play two options of a melody – with the steady termination and unstable. Let the child will choose what of these melodies is finished and what wants to be continued. For diagnostics of rhythmic feeling it is possible to play a number of musical fragments with various rhythmic organization (march, the waltz, the Pole) and to suggest the child to move randomly to a step to music. To reveal ability to abstract musical and acoustical representations, it is necessary to strum on the melody tool which the child for certain heard many times ("In the forest the fir-tree", songs from animated films, etc. was born) and to suggest the child to call them. Such identification of musical abilities in general and ear for music in particular is as close as possible to real musical activity, and in it its efficiency.