Influence of Aural Skills and Sight-Reading Skills on the Ability to Play Four Hands Piano

Abstract

This research was motivated by a number of students who had different musical skill backgrounds when entering their first semester of study and contracting the "Basic Piano" course at the Music Arts Education Study Program at the Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (UPI). This study aims to determine the influence of aural and sight-reading skills on four-handed piano playing. This research is applied research that uses a quantitative approach with the data obtained ex-post facto. The population in this study was 107 people, namely students who had contracted the Basic Piano course in the 2022 Music Arts Education Study Program. The research sample was 40 people, namely students who had used four-handed piano. The piano material comes from the book by Antoni Diabelli Op. 149 sections one through five containing duet or four-hand piano works. The independent variable is four-handed piano ability (performance), while the dependent variable is aural and sight-reading ability. The assessment instrument used was adapted from the standards of The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM). Data obtained from the assessment results were processed using IBM SPSS, by carrying out data normality tests, Anova tests, and regression. The results of data processing show that the Aural variable has an influence of 99.4% on four-handed piano playing, while the sight-reading variable has a 99.2% influence on four-handed piano playing. The results of this study indicate that aural and sight-reading skills significantly influence the ability to play the piano four hands.