Evaluation of a Didactic Proposal for the Auditory Identification of Musical Harmonic Intervals

The research problem was defined as the difficulty experienced by first year professional grade students of Catalan Music Conservatories when attempting to aurally identify musical harmonic intervals. The main objective of the research was to create, experiment with and evaluate a didactic proposal that enabled students to achieve, through the teachinglearning process, the proposed didactic objectives and thereby, at the end, improve their performance regarding auditory identification of musical harmonic intervals. The research sample consisted of 138 first year students from six Catalan Conservatoires divided into one experimental group (n=70) and one control group (n=68). A mixed approach research method was adopted using: – Class journals and interviews aimed at the teachers of the experimental group with the purpose of obtaining information on the success of the assimilation of the predicted didactic objectives during the course of the teaching-learning process. – Learning control tests aimed at the whole sample student body and designed in accordance with a quasi-experimental approach; the mentioned tests were carried out before and after the application of the didactic proposal in order to measure the students’ performance at the end of the process. The main results were as follows: The evidence showed that, during the course of the teachinglearning process, the students overall achieved the proposed didactic objectives. At the end of the process, an improvement in the students’ performance was confirmed; since significant statistical differences could be observed between the two groups, being the experimental one the most successful.