A model for violin education based on ethnic Turkish melody and motifs

ABSTRACT The primary goal of the research in this dissertation is to develop a model for violin education based on ethnic Turkish melody and motifs and to evaluate the success of this model (referred to as "the model" throughout) in violin skill development of student subjects. In order to develop the content for this model, the Turkish Folk and Classical Music archives of the TRT (Turkish National TV) have been scanned for those pieces using the Huseyni Maqam, a characteristic of Turkish music culture, with time signatures of 2/4, 3/4 and 3/8. Among the pieces found, we have scanned specifically for particular motifs and elements that could be used towards education of the fundamental violin techniques. As a result of this investigation, we have identified certain melody and motifs that could be used towards violin education in terms of developing the following skills: ● Right hand techniques: detache, legato and staccato ● Left hand techniques: ○ first, second and third positions and transition among these positions ○ trill and agility. Then, going through these melody and motifs, we organized and distilled them into 22 etudes with the intent of bringing together the complementing elements in each. The data used to evaluate this research has been collected using the following methods: ● Quantitative: Collected from the results of the Violin Performance Observation Form determined by 5 experts ● Qualitative: Collected from the responses of the semi-structured interviews with the student subjects. The subjects placed in the experiment arm (n=10) of this research are chosen among the students of the Adnan Menderes University Music Education department with different levels of seniority. The research was conducted during the fall term of 2014 -2015 academic year as a single arm pretest-posttest study. This arm has been asked to study using the model for 1 hour for 14 weeks. At the end of the study, a group of 5 experts evaluated the students' progress by viewing their pretest and posttest videos. Then these evaluations has been loaded into and analyzed using the SPSS Statistics 21 software. Our results indicate with statistical significance that the students in the experiment arm using the model have made meaningful progress in terms of all those technical skills which were emphasized by the model. Keywords: Violin Education, Turkish Ethnic Music, Violin Education Model, Violin Performance.