DO PERFORMANCE MUSICIANS NEED ACOUSTIC EDUCATION?

In music, acoustics is the physical underlying phenomenon and vehicle of music production, performance and composition. Performance musicians around the world (and specifically in the UK) complete their extensive musical training without basic understanding of the fundamental acoustics concepts behind their practice, making their instruction arguably incomplete. Through quantitative and qualitative methods this novel and extensive study explored and evaluated the perceived value, suitability and attitudes towards the initiative of introducing basic acoustic ed- ucation in performance music training in the higher education in the UK. It was conclusively shown that the vast majority of the performance music education community, believe that such introduction would be highly beneficial and they would agree with an actual implementation. However less clear accord was found at this early stage on the proposed duration, methods, in- tegration and implementation routes. Prospective benefits, drawbacks and barriers were identi- fied by the large sample of participants if the introduction were to be implemented. The con- vincing findings of this study will serve to bring the identified knowledge gap to the attention of the relevant education field, influence curriculum change, and to serve as the foundation to the design and development of the next phases of this education initiative