all 15 to 16 years old, from an advanced music class. Students that had a reasonable level of sight reading ablity
were invited to join the evaluation by their teacher. The
experiment consisted of thirty short eight-bar exercises,
of which fifteen where of the large size and fifteen of the
small size. Each size category had a set of exercises that
ranged in difficulty and contained either pitch or rhythmic
errors. At the end of the set of exercises the participants
filled out a questionare indicating how hard they found
the two differing sizes were to read from, and which one
they would prefer to learn or perform from. They were
also given the opportunity to comment on either size, the
experiment and computers in music in general.
For each task, the participant can either make a correct
error identification, miss observing an error (false negative), or incorrectly find an error (false positive).
Overall we found that the number of correct identifications of pitch errors (average 11.8 out of 15) was statistically significantly worse (p < 0.002) than those for
rhythm errors (average 14.6 out of 15).
However, there was no significant difference between
the number of correct error identifications between the
large and small score sizes - although participants performed marginally worse on the smaller scores on average. For false positives (detecting a non-existent error)
there was also no significant difference, although the average for the smaller scores was marginally higher. A similar effect was observed for false negatives for rhythm.
From this we can conclude that relatively small scores
(about 75% of the size of normal printed scores) can be
read reasonably accurately on a computer screen. However, the results from the questionnaire show a marked
preference for the larger sized score as it was the easist
to read. The preference of size, in the area of difficulty
in readablity, showed a significantly higher result for the
larger images, giving a reliable result (Wilcoxon Signed
Ranks Test, Z[15] = 3.38, p < 0.000363).
Thus, while the participants can cope with small music
surprisingly well, it can require more concentration and all
else being equal, they would prefer a "normal" size. For a
digital music stand this bodes well, as smaller images can
be used, for example, when the performer is familiar with
the music and only needs to refer to it occasionally.
4. CONCLUSION
Our experiments have explored the two conflicting goals
of minimising page turning effort and maximising the legibility and readability of images on a digital music stand.
The page turning evaluation study carried out gave some
insight into determining musicians' preferences for various methods of page turning. An interesting result of
this study showed that scrolling is the hardest page turning method to use on a digital music stand, which highlights how unusual this application is since scrolling is
very common on GUI editing systems, including notation
editors. There seems to be a preference for the musician
to be in control of when changes occur, and so a simple
foot pedal or button is likely to be suitable for most needs.
The experiment to determine how well students could
read large and small scores on a computer screen found
only insignificant differences between presenting music in
two different sizes, which were (respectively) smaller and
larger than conventional paper music. However, they did
express a significant preference for the larger music.
In practice there is a useful tradeoff available between
the size of the image that is displayed and the frequency
with which page turns must be made. Even fairly small
displays can be acceptable for some situations, and it is
likely that in general musicians will use enlarged displays
with frequent page turns for practising, and as they become more familiar with the music, move to a smaller
image with fewer page turns which is more suitable for
a performance.
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