Relationships Among Children's Music Audiation and Their Compositional Processes and Products

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among music audiation, I the processes of composition, and the musical characteristics of songs composed by 9-year-olds. Subjects (N = 40) were given the Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation and were asked to compose a song on a synthesizer during a 10-minute period. A pair of independent judges analyzed recordings of the composition periods to determine the amount of time subjects engaged in exploration, development, repetition, and silence. Another pair of judges analyzed the music composed by the subjects for cohesiveness (tonal and metric), pattern use (melodic and rhythmic, repeated and developed), and extensiveness (length and pitch range). Audiation was found to be positively correlated (p < . 05) with the compositional processes of development and silence and was negatively correlated with exploration. Audiation was positively correlated with the songs' tonal and metric cohesiveness and developed rhythmic patterns, and negatively correlated with the songs' pitch range. The process of composition was related to the products' cohesiveness, pattern use, and extensiveness.