Individual and Age Properties of Beginning Singers and Their Influence on the Process of Vocal Skills’ Formation

Abstract

The article examines the influence of individual and personal properties of junior and teenage pupils, which significantly affect the ontogenesis of musical abilities and their singing training. It was noted that taking these factors into account should lay the foundation for teaching singing to pupils of different ages. In teaching singing to elementary school students, attention is focused on the fact that, due to the adverse influence of the musical environment, a significant proportion of children develop a so-called «partial brake», which becomes an obstacle to the spontaneous and natural mastery of the skills of repeating the simplest melodies, and with it, to the development of pitch hearing, harmonic sense, musical memory and internal auditory images. The internal and external factors of these inhibitory processes are characterized, which include the peculiarities of children’s temperament and behavioral tendencies and their combination with habits that are formed in them as a result of pedagogical mistakes and family circumstances that negatively affect the process of realizing their speech and intonation potentials. Two types of temperament and the peculiarities of their manifestation in the process of teaching singing students are distinguished, namely: choleric temperament with a preference for the excitatory state of the nervous system and melancholic temperament with a characteristically weak type of nervous system and a preference for inhibitory processes. These properties often lead to the emergence of problems in the individual at the initial stage of musical development and negatively affect their condition throughout life. The external signs of their manifestation are the condition of the muscular body, the peculiarities of speech and communication, tending to the corresponding behavioral style. In the first case, the student’s excessive activity, general muscle stiffness, the need to quickly switch attention and the inability to concentrate it on the performance of tasks, the inability to act on the advice (instructions) of an adult are characteristic. For children with impaired tone of the nervous system, an overly relaxed, «flabby» muscle state is typical, which negatively affects the lack of support in the process of sound production and sound conduction, increased fatigue, slow formation of conditioned reflexes, which are the basis of the motor-singing skills formation. Keywords: individual and age psychological properties; development of musical abilities; singing lessons; vocal skills; students of different ages.