The effects of two instrumental score preparation approaches on the error detection ability of student conductors

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two score preparation approaches, (extended analysis time and extended analysis time and recorded examples) on the on-podium error detection ability of beginning undergraduate conductors. The subjects, forty-seven undergraduate music majors from two midwestern universities, were randomly assigned to a control group or one of the two treatment groups. The testing procedure followed was pretest-posttest control group design. The effects of the independent variables, the analysis approaches, on the dependent variable, on-podium error detection ability, were analyzed using a one-way analysis of covariance ($\propto$ =.05) with pretest scores serving as the covariate. No significant difference was detected. On-podium error detection abilities were not effected by the score preparation approaches under consideration. Additional analysis revealed errors in tone were easier to detect than errors in articulation for the extended analysis treatment group