The Use of Virtual Musical Instruments in Timbre Recognition Training

Abstract

The article describes research conducted on children and teenagers in Youth Palace in Olsztyn, Poland. The research was conducted for one school year in two groups: experimental and control. It relates to the practical use of virtual instruments in timbre ear training, which was applied during additional keyboard classes. The time reserved for weekly tests and teaching several timbres of musical instruments recognizing was quite short, so that each attempt took around 7 minutes. The experiment time was strictly limited due to curriculum of Keyboard classes, which required to be fully realized. In that case, experiments had to be conducted in a way, which would not affect the classes. Purposeful use of virtual instruments in teachers’ work in the context of timbre recognition, increases the effectiveness of the educational process, so that children obtain very good results in recognizing different instruments’ timbres in contrast to the control group. It should be assumed, that the certain time spent on musical instruments timbre recognizing would cause way greater skill growth of research group. Data obtained clearly indicates the importance of education conducted in this way, due to its affection on timbre consciousness shaping.