Modal dissonance: An analysis of children's invented notations of known songs, original songs, and instrumental composition

This study is an exploratory observation of the strategies employed by a gr oup of musically naive and pre-literate kindergarten children to notate fam iliar canonic songs, and original compositions for voice and/or instrument. This study was undertaken to ascertain if a tentative typology of young ch ildren's invented notations proposed in a previous study (Barrett, 1997) tr ansferred across another group of musically naive kindergarteners, and to e xtend the previous study by including the notation of known and original so ng material. Whilst the notations generated through the recording of origin al instrumental works in this study were largely representative of the typo logy suggested in the previous study, when young children generated notatio ns for known and original songs, a 'modal dissonance' could be discerned in the strategies they employed. The findings of this study suggest that whil st musically naive and pre-literate children are able to record musical dim ensions of their instrumental compositions such as instrumentation, dynamic s, patterning, and pitch direction, when the element of text is introduced through the use of lyrics (canonic or original), young children's notationa l focus is primarily concerned with lyric content with little or no referen ce to musical dimensions. It is suggested that the imposition of text masks children's capacity to represent their musical understanding.