Basic Voice Check – a Diagnostic Tool for the Singing Class

Abstract

Although singing has long been the most important part of general music education in Switzerland, there are big differences in the quality of music teaching at the lower secondary school. The basic voice check was conceived as a diagnostic assessment tool to initiate a teaching development that also takes up self-acting and cooperative forms of teaching in singing lessons in order to counteract a didactic monoculture. The aim of the test is to gather basic information on the development of the voice of young people. A first form of the test was performed in different classes. The evaluation showed that an application of the basic voice check with the whole class was not effective, as many students showed hardly any abnormalities and there was a lack of a common language and the necessary know-how among teachers, which made a revision of the concept unavoidable. In the second part of the text I will describe how a browser-based test system is to be created which, on the one hand, enables direct and individual feedback in the browser in order to make the students independent and enable self-directed learning, and, on the other hand, provides data in the form of audio recordings for feedback from peers and teachers. The necessary know-how for the teachers must then be presented on the platform with examples, which will hopefully lead to a common language for the voice development at the lower secondary school.