The purpose was to investigate the career realities and occupational concerns of successful full-time performing instrumentalists. Four research problems were formulated; (1) the establishment of a demographic profile of musicians who perceived themselves successful; (2) the determination of the musicians' career realities; (3) the determination of the musicians' occupational concerns; and (4) a comparison of the relationship of the demographic profile to the career realities and occupational concerns. A pilot study was used to develop a questionnaire and an interview schedule. The sample for the main study was chosen by the questionnaire and consisted of twenty musicians, five each in the musical categories of jazz, classical, commercial and pop. To resolve research problem one, the questionnaire also collected general demographic data. Research problems two and three were fulfilled by an interview schedule based upon career realities and occupational concerns cited in previous sociological studies. The realities and concerns were either confirmed or refuted by each interviewee. The career realities were role conflict, career contingencies, musical labels, life style, hierarchies, audience relationships and environment. The occupational concerns were mobility, status, entrapment, personal contacts, dependency, security, competition, economic issues, working conditions, travel requirements, appearance, management control, auditions, maintenance of skills and training …

The present study sought to confirm melodic expectancy patterns discovered in a previous investigation and to determine whether data would be affected by altering the rhythmic condition of the stimuli. The three problems of this investigation were to study expectancies generated by two-note stimulus intervals of equal duration; the expectancies generated by stimulus intervals presented with a long-short rhythm; and the expectancies generated by stimulus intervals presented with a short-long rhythm. Fifty subjects were asked to sing what they believed would be the natural continuation of the melody begun by a two-note stimulus interval. The stimulus intervals were grouped in rhythmic sets, one set of neutral-rhythm stimuli, one set of long-short stimuli, and one set of short-long stimuli. The interval from the second note of the stimulus interval to the first sung note was transcribed as the generated expectancy response interval. The data were examined in two basic ways, using response data as a whole and examining data for each stimulus interval separately. A third method of data evaluation concerned harmonic triads occurring in the response data. Both when considering response frequency as a whole, and when considering response data separately for each melodic beginning, no significant difference associated with …

The purpose of this study was to provide, through systematic investigation, empirical data to support or reject the assumption that auditory stimulation by discrete pitches evokes consistent muscle responses in the extrinsic laryngeal muscles. The study was an electromyographic investigation of specific upper and lower extrinsic laryngeal muscles as stimulated by two specific pitch stimuli. The responses were evoked by auditory stimulation, without vocalization. From these findings, it was concluded that a direct relationship exists between specific pitch stimuli and specific extrinsic laryngeal muscle responses. It was concluded that these responses likely exist in the general population.