Musicians, seeking stress relief and vocal/instrumental enhancement, often turn to the Tomatis Method of sensori-neural integration training, based on the interdependence and interaction between hearing and listening, psychological attitude and speech and language. The paucity of impact studies on musicians, despite its acclaimed efficacy, has prompted the current multidisciplinary pilot study, involving a two group, pre-post experimental design. Listening aptitude, psychological well-being and vocal (voice) quality were assessed in availability samples of culturally diverse young, adult musicians (n=28), recruited from two tertiary institutions and assigned to a control group (n=10) and an experimental group, consisting of sub-experimental group one (n=10) and sub-experimental group two (n=8). Reasonable preprogramme group equivalence was established between the two sub-experimental groups and the control group. A Tomatis programme of 87.5 half hour listening sessions and concomitant counseling was completed by the total experimental group (n=18). Results indicated practically significant enhancement of: (i) listening aptitude on the Listening Test and (ii) psychological well-being, in terms of reduced negative and increased positive mood state (vigor) on the POMS in both sub-experimental groups, together with enhanced behavioural and emotional coping in sub-experimental group 1 on the CTI. (iii) Vocal enhancement, perceived both by singer-participants in both sub-experimental groups and a professional voice teacher, culminated in (iv) distinctly enhanced musical proficiency in 28% of all programme participants. Despite indications of multimodal enhancement, further research, necessitated by current methodological limitations, remains a prerequisite for achievement of definitive results.
Tarryn-Tanille Prinsloo (PhD) is a Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst™ and lectures part-time on Body pedagogies in Live and Digital Performance studies at the University of Pretoria. Her interests include the relationship between the camera and the moving body and intermediality among different mediums. She has written five feature film screenplays, all produced in South Africa.Marth Munro (PhD) specialises in bodymind and voice in behaviour and performance. She is a Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst™, and Master Teacher of Lessac Kinesensic Voice and Body Training®. She is also a Certified NLP Business, Executive and Life Coach, Qualified Sound Therapist, Qualified Hatha Yoga Teacher and a Bio-, Neurofeedback practitioner. She is a professor extraordinaire at the Drama Department, University of Pretoria. She teaches Performance voice, movement and acting. She has taught in South Africa, United States of America, Finland and Croatia. She facilitates workshops in business communication and emotional competence. She still finds time for various artistic endeavours and practice-based research publications.Chris Broodryk (PhD) lectures Drama and Film Studies at the Drama Department of the University of Pretoria. He has published articles and book chapters on Afrikaans and South African cinema, and he has delivered conference papers internationally on the same topics, addressing the failures of multiculturalism and the exploring the notion of political cinema in a South African context. His research interests include the intersection of psychology, theology and film, as well as the Digital Humanities and social media studies.
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