Protocols

Choice of song material

Song materials were as listed below (Table 4.3). Each comon song had the same melody line, but was sung in thr native language. Most of songs in the list above (Table 4.3) are commonly known and sung in both countries. Exceptions were “Darumasanga Koronda” in Japan and “Humpty, Dumpty” in the UK. “Darumasanga Koronda” is a children’s traditional Japanese warabeuta game song. “Humpty, Dumpty” is a popular nursery rhyme in England. Sometimes, it is spoken as rhyme and sometimes it is sung. In England, a few different versions of song recordings exist.

JAPAN: Sakurai Kindergarten, 3-6yo Japanese speaking children - Kirakiraboshi (Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star)

- Itomaki no uta (Wind a Bobbin Up)

- Shiawasenara tewo tatako (If You’re Happy and You Know It) - Abc

- Darumasanga koronda

UK: Old Oak nursery, 3-6yo English speaking children

- Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star - Wind a Bobbin Up

- If You’re Happy and You Know It - Abc

- Humpty Dumpty (singing and story telling)

Table 4.3 Song materials for the recordings in each country

“Wind a Bobbin Up” (“Itomaki no uta” in Japan) started with a similar melody line, but the rhythm is different in the Japanese and English versions. The latter half of the song was completely different between the two countries. Therefore, this song was not included in the analysis. As a result, two common songs; “Twinkle, Twinkle” (“Kirakiraboshi” in Japanese) and “If You’re Happy and You Know It” (“Shiawasenara tewo tatako” in Japanese) were chosen for nPVI analysis.

“Twinkle, Twinkle” (“Kirakiraboshi” in Japanese) was chosen as the sung material because it has exactly the same rhythm in Japanese as the English version in a

written music score (Figure 4. 1 and 4. 2). The expected nPVI values of this song, which were calculated from an analysis of the music score, was 22.22 in both language versions. The structure of this song is also suitable for nPVI analysis because each phrase is written in exactly the same rhythmic pattern and repeated five times.

Figure 4.1 “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” music score from “The Big Book of Nursery

There was background information provided in “Our English Songs 1 (Teacher’s Edition)” (1971 Nakajima, Fumio et. al. Eds. ELEC 財団法人英語教育協議会 Tokyo).

“Unlike an oral tradition children’s song, this song’s composer is clear. This song first appeared in “Rymes for the Nursery” (first published in 1806, and reprinted 27 times over 30 years) written by Ann and Jane Tylor, who were sisters. As is indicated in this book, Jane Taylor (1783-1824) was the composer of this song. Althoghu this song is now extremely well known, this famous song was eliminated

from “The Puffin Book of Nursery Rhymes”（1963）edited by Mr. and Mrs. Opie.

Presumably because it was seen as a modern creation.

This song is often made into parody, especially ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!/ How I wonder what you’re at!/ Up above the world you fly/ Like a tea-tray in the sky’ by Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland) which was famous as a parody masterpiece.”

Figure 4.2 “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” music score from “Our English Songs 1 (Teacher’s Edition)”

Figure 4.3 “Kirakira Boshi (Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star)” music score from “Zoku

Figure 4.4 “Kirakira Boshi (Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star)” music score from “Youjino

Utato Rhythm” (Ongakunotomosha, 1984)

“If You’re Happy and You Know It” (“Shiawasenara tewo tatako” in Japanese) also has the same rhythm in both language versions, except at the end of the third phrase.

Therefore, the expected nPVI values were slightly different between the Japanese and English versions (103.59 vs. 105.46). These two songs were ideal songs for comparison because of their internal design. “Twinkle, Twinkle” had successive eighth note

rhythms, whereas “If You’re Happy” had dotted rhythms; one began on a downbeat and the other began on an upbeat. However, the latter song has several versions of writing style in published music score in English. Commonly in Japanese and in English the style of the notation is in dotted rhythm (see figure 4. 5 And figure 4. 6).

Figure 4.5 Japanese music score of ‘If You’re Happy And You Know It’ from a songbook: “Kodomonouta 200” (Childsha, 1975)

Figure 4. 5 illustrates the Japanese version of the common song “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and is written in a dotted rhythm, with a repetition of the pairs of a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note.

Figure 4.6 English music score of ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’ from a songbook: “This Little Puffin” (Penguin Books, 1969/1991)

In Figure 4. 6, the common song was written with exactly the same rhythm pattern as the Japanese version. However, in some music books, the song is written in a different way (see Figure 4. 7, for example).

Figure 4.7 The beginning part of music score ‘If You’re Happy And You Know It’ from a songbook: “The Big Book of Nursery Rhymes & Children’s Songs” (Amsco, 2004)

In figure 4. 7, the song is written in equal-timed notes, successive eighth notes, with the indication of a “Swing” rhythm at the beginning of the score. In actual singing, this song has been repeatedly sung in a 2:1 ratio (triplet) rhythm. This commonly happens in Japanese warabeuta songs. Koizumi stated that 3:1 ratio dotted rhythm basically did not exist in warabeuta (Koizumi, 1984). The 3:1 ratio is turned into 2:1 ratio in singing, and this bouncing rhythm does not normally exist in warabeuta, nor in traditional Japanese music. An exception may be caused by actions or lyrics which have particular

letters (e.g. ん、っ、ー; which easily become weakened morae). English versions of

this song might be sung in a 2:1 ratio rhythm, not in 3:1. This may explain why several ways of music notation exist in published songbooks.

Expected nPVI values were calculated, therefore, in three different ratios; in 3:1 dotted rhythm, 2:1 bouncing/shuffle rhythm, and 1:1 equal-timed rhythm (Figure 4. 8)

Figure 4.8 A phrase from the song “If You’re Happy and You Know It”, and its nPVI values calculated in possible ratios of the tone length, 3:1, 2:1 and 1:1

Expected nPVI values were calculated from music notations. They were 118.80 in 3:1 ratio dotted rhythm, 84.44 in 2:1 ratio bouncing/shuffle rhythm and 15.87 in 1:1 ratio equal timed rhythm. All the nPVI values in this study were slightly larger than the values which were calculated by a nPVI culculator on a website (Normalized Pairwise Variability Index, http://www.nsi.edu/~ani/npvi_calculator.html). This occurred because the nPVI value of this study was culculated by using an Excel sheet where formula was made by hand. The website did not exist when the author was carrying out this analysis. However, the ratio of the all values would not be changed with this Excel formula culculation. Therefore, the results of the data analysis would be appropriate for following analysis, results and considerations.

As a trial, I tried to encourage children to sing common songs in syllables. But this did not work effectively. Singing “la” was problematic for young children, as L

was difficult to pronounce. Every child hesitated to sing “ma” also, but “la” and “ta” were more successful for them. Singing “Twinkle, twinkle” in sol-fa seemed much easier for them, once they had become used to it.

Recording process

Japanese children aged 3yo to 6yo were asked to sing the focus songs in Japanese. The recording session was undertaken in Japan during, 2004 and 2006 at a private

kindergarten. English children of the same age groups were asked to sing the same songs in English. The recording was made at a state school’s nursery in London during 2004 and 2005. The same recording equipment was used for all the recording sessions. Sound recording, used a Mini Disk recorder (SONY portable MiniDisk recorder MZ- N910) and a pin microphone (Audio-Techinica stereo microphone AT9901 ). Video recording was also made in Japan. This was not for the analysis itself, but to catch students’ names (children were in uniform with a name tag) and to follow the situation for each recordings. Therefore, in some cases, Japanese children put the pin microphone on their chest and sang in front of the video camera. In such cases, ethical permission had been granted in advance. This happened at their request. They enjoyed being filmed. Mini Disk (MD) recordings were converted to audio files (wav, 44.1 kHz, mono) using SoundStudio2. Then, selected examples (chosen for recording quality) were segmented into each tone/note by hand using WaveSurfer. The vowel-onset was chosen in this analysis to calculate rhythmic timing as the onset of interval duration following previous specialist research (Sundberg, 2004; Sundberg, 1989).