This research presents a new way of looking at children's musical understanding. Children in the study were asked to independently learn an unfamiliar Zulu song that had been recorded on audiotape. A total of 36 children, aged 6, 9 and 12 years, participated in the study. In each age-group, half of the children were learning to play a musical instrument. Their learning session included singing, making notations and playing a xylophone and drum. They were videotaped and their singing was transcribed and analysed. On the basis of the analysis an in-action mental model was identified, composed of learning strategies and mental musical organisations. Only the latter are presented in this paper. Many of the inaccuracies in the children's singing were found to be embedded in common patterns of musical organisation. Mistakes of this nature occurred in all groups, suggesting that they were not related to age or learning to play an instrument. Examples of children's singing errors are described here to illustrate how the mental musical organisations were identified.
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