TY  - UNPB
PB  - UCL (University College London)
UR  - https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10189552/
M1  - Doctoral
ID  - discovery10189552
N2  - The current study explores Chinese Primary school children?s singing behaviour. N = 1,539 singing
performances were collected from N = 1,193 children aged from 6+ to 11+, drawn from six schools
in Hunan Province, China. All participants sang three songs: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Donkey (a
Chinese nursery song), and Happy Birthday, with vocal products analysed against two existed rating
scales: the Singing Voice Development Measure (SVDM) scale and the Vocal Pitch-Matching
Development (VPMD) scale. Older participants and girls tended to have more developed singing
behaviour than younger participants and boys. Urban children and children from higher-income
families tended to show better singing behaviour. However, the differences by sex, geographic
location and income were reduced for the oldest participants. Compared with English data collected
from the National Singing programme Sing Up reported by Welch et al. (2009a), Chinese participants
and English children (who did not receive Sing Up training) showed a similar level of development
across different age groups. In addition, a smaller cross-section (n = 134) of participants? singing
performances were analysed using a newly created system of note-by-note pitch analysis, called the
Melodic Analysis for Pitch-Matching (MAPM) system. It was found that there was a significantly
positive correlation between scores measured by the MAPM system and related scores measured by
the main VPMD scale. By using the colour characteristics of the MAPM system, it was found that
participants tended to make fewer key changes with increasing age during the Primary school
period. There was a significant negative correlation between the number of keys used to sing a song
and the related scores of vocal register use. Furthermore, the vocal pitch-matching accuracy tended
to decrease with increasing size of musical intervals. Older children tended to match larger musical
intervals more accurately. Five common pitch characteristics were revealed by the colour
characteristics of the MAPM system. (i) For a target song starting with a tonic, participants? selfselected starting pitch was generally one to two semitones sharper than the model. (ii) Participants
tended to repeat their pitch errors when vocally matching similar melodic phrases within a target
song. (iii) When vocally matching a wide upward musical interval in a target song, they tended to
match the first pitch of the interval sharply. (iv) Participants were more accurate in singing a high
target pitch if approached within the melody by a small interval. If the high pitch required a large
upward interval (such as an octave), they tended to be much less accurate in replicating the high
pitch target. (v) When vocally matching continuous upward pitches toward a lift point, many
participants tended to match them flat, and tended to be sharp when matching descending
patterns.
TI  - Primary School Children?s Singing
Behaviour in Hunan Province, China
N1  - Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).  Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms.  Access may initially be restricted at the author?s request.
Y1  - 2024/03/28/
A1  - Lu, Can
AV  - restricted
EP  - 340
ER  -