Learning Sequences in Music: A Contemporary Music Learning Theory (2012 Edition)

by Edwin E. Gordon

Overview

Learning Sequences in Music: Skill, Content, and Patterns is a milestone in music education. This book is perhaps the most provocative exploration ever written of how we learn music, from infancy to adulthood, and what we should do to teach music more effectively.Revised, expanded, and completely rewritten for this eighth and final edition, Professor Edwin E. Gordon's continued research reaffirms his place as perhaps the world's principal thinker and researcher in music education. Early controversial ideas championed by Gordon have now been widely accepted in the field: the importance of standardized tests, the crucial role of early childhood music education, and the fundamental need to teach audiation as a precursor to music reading.Professor Gordon continues to present a feast of ideas in this new edition, combining the latest experimental and observational research in music learning with his own experience teaching students of all ages. Topics covered include: the state of music today, audiation, individual differences, aptitude, readiness, and measurement and evaluation.This book is a monumental achievement sure to be read and reread by generations of music educators to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781622773329
Publisher:	G I A Publications, Incorporated
Publication date:	02/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	452
Sales rank:	901,293
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Edwin E. Gordon was known throughout the world as a preeminent researcher, teacher, author, editor, and lecturer in the field of music education. After receiving bachelor's and master's degrees in string bass performance from the Eastman School of Music and a second master's degree in education from Ohio University, Gordon attended the University of Iowa, where he earned a PhD. As a professor of music, he held the Carl E. Seashore Chair for Research in Music Education at Temple University, where he was presented with both the Lindback and Great Teacher Awards. Gordon also taught at the University of Iowa and the State University of New York at Buffalo. At the University of Iowa, he became general editor of Studies in the Psychology of Music, and the school honored him with their Distinguished Alumni Award. He was also named a Herb Alpert Visiting Scholar at the Berklee School of Music.Gordon's five most well-known books are The Psychology of Music Teaching, Learning Sequences in Music, Introduction to Research and the Psychology of Music, Rhythm: Contrasting the Implications of Audiation and Notation, and A Music Learning Theory for Newborn and Young Children. Among the seven standardized tests he developed are the Musical Aptitude Profile; Primary, Intermediate, and Advanced Measures of Music Audiation; Iowa Tests of Music Literacy; Instrument Timbre Preference Test; and Harmonic and Rhythm Improvisation Readiness Records.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

AUDIATION

Audiation is integral to both music aptitude and music achievement. However, it functions differently in each. Audiation potential cannot be taught. It is a matter of music aptitude which comes naturally. By providing children and students with appropriate knowledge and experiences, they can be taught how to audiate; that is, how to use inborn audiation as determined by their music aptitude and to maximize acquired music achievement as determined by quality of their environment. Because all students do not share the same innate capacities, it is only with collective grasp of characteristics of audiation, music aptitude, and music achievement teachers and parents realistically become aware of how best to render responsibilities in meeting individual musical needs of all children and students in terms of audiation and music learning theory. Everyone can learn how to audiate but it takes longer with age. And level of music aptitude, of course, will be an influential factor.

Sound itself is not music. Sound becomes music through audiation when, as with language, we translate sounds in our mind and give them meaning. The meaning we give to these sounds will be different depending on the occasion as well as different from meaning given them by any other person. Audiation is the process of assimilating and comprehending (not simply rehearing) music momentarily heard performed or heard sometime in the past. We also audiate when we assimilate and comprehend in our minds music we may or may not have heard but are reading in notation or composing or improvising. In contrast, aural perception takes place when we are actually hearing sound the moment it is produced. We audiate sound only after we have aurally perceived it. In aural perception we are dealing with immediate sound events. In audiation we are dealing with delayed music events. Moreover, compared to what is often called musical imagery, audiation is a more profound process. Musical imagery casually suggests a vivid or figurative picture of what music might represent. It does not require assimilation and comprehension of intrinsic elements of music as does audiation.

We audiate when listening to, recalling, performing, interpreting, creating, improvising, reading, or writing music. Though it may seem contradictory, we can listen to music and at the same time audiate music. Certainly you would agree you are automatically thinking about what has been said and predicting what will be said while at the same time you are listening to or participating in conversation. Listening to music with comprehension and listening to speech with comprehension involve similar operations. Further, as will be explained later about notational audiation, as you will begin to give meaning to words you are reading now only after you have read them, likewise you give meaning to music notation not as but only after you have seen it.

Audiating while listening to sound in music is much like simultaneous translation. Translation does not take place only between different languages. Each of us continually translates what we are hearing spoken in our own language into unique meaning. Talk to me and another person at the same time about any subject. What each of us perceives and brings away from the conversation is relative to our intelligence as well as knowledge and experience concerning the subject. Similarly, not until a short time after you hear sound do you audiate and give meaning to sound as music. Of course, you are also aurally perceiving and then giving meaning to additional sounds following in the music. Specifically, you are doing more than one thing at the same time when you are audiating. You are attending to and also comprehending music and, depending on your knowledge and experience, perhaps more. Why do persons readily agree this is the case for language but not for music? I suspect it is because we have grown so far removed from and uncomfortable with cogent music we are no longer able to apprehend its natural sequence.

Consider language, speech, and thought. Language is the result of need to communicate. Speech is the way we communicate. Thought is what we communicate. Music, performance, and audiation have parallel meanings. Music is the subject of communication. Performance is the vehicle for communication. Audiation is what is communicated. Although music is not a language, the process is the same for audiating and giving meaning to music as for thinking and giving meaning to speech. When you are listening to speech you are giving meaning to what was just said by recalling and making connections with what you heard on earlier occasions. At the same time you are anticipating or predicting what you will be hearing next based on experience and understanding. Similarly, when you are listening to music, you are giving meaning to what you just heard by recalling what you heard on earlier occasions. At the same time you are anticipating or predicting what you will be hearing next based on music achievement. In other words, when you are audiating as you are listening to music, you are summarizing and generalizing content of music patterns in the context you just heard as a way to anticipate or predict what will follow. Every action becomes an interaction. What you are audiating depends on what you have audiated. As audiation develops, it becomes broader and deeper and, thus, reflects more on itself. Members of an audience who are not audiating usually do not know when a piece of unfamiliar or even familiar music is nearing its end. They may applaud at any time or not at all unless they receive clues from others in the audience who are audiating.

Despite analogies drawn between language and music, it is well to emphasize music is not a language. Music has no words or grammar. Instead it has syntax, the orderly arrangement of sounds within context. It is interesting to speculate, however, whether language may indeed be a form of music. Also, consider the impact of using music as a verb as well as a noun. If it were a verb, audiation would then be implied and so perhaps the concept of audiation would not be needed. We would say confidently to someone, "Did you music that?" not vaguely and doubtfully, "Did you hear that?"

Through the process of audiation we sing and move in our minds without need to sing and move physically. We learn from the outside in, from the general to specific. Though we are capable of memorizing specific material without comprehending what we have memorized, we quickly forget it. That is the case with many young and older musicians as well who give recitals. They are encouraged to memorize notes but do not know how to audiate what they have memorized and are performing. Many Suzuki students, though they are fortunate to be taught to perform before they read notation, typically are not guided in crossing the bridge from imitation to audiation. As a result, they may never experience the joyful realization that audiation is excitingly circular in musical space, back and forth motion, and not at all like imitation and memorization which are boringly linear in physical space. Musical space occurs in audiation whereas timing in physical space is manifest in performance. Albeit, when students learn how to audiate, imitation and memorization become unnecessary. The experience of audiation becomes magical when compared to boredom and folly in memorization and imitation.

Varieties of audiation

It would be difficult if not impossible to describe all ways and combinations of ways musicians audiate. For example, consider how drummers in jazz ensembles audiate melody when improvising solo and how conductors continually audiate intricate patterns of sound while guiding a symphony orchestra. Consider also how performers audiate differently when they interpret a piece of music as soloist and when performing in ensemble. Obviously, it is more difficult for ensemble players to audiate what other ensemble players are performing concurrently than to audiate their own part. However, whether elementary or advanced, vocal or instrumental, solo or ensemble, audiation is a matter of concentrating on one set of musical sounds while at the same time attending to or performing one or more sets of other musical sounds. When they are practicing and not audiating, musicians are conscious of what they are doing and they absorb music. When they are performing and audiating, musicians are unconscious of what they are doing and music absorbs them. Fine musicians know when they are audiating: it occurs when ears become more important than fingers and arms.

Some musicians are capable of audiating one piece of music while listening to or performing another. Other musicians are capable of audiating inner and lower parts of music while they are audiating its melody. Musicians who are truly improvising a melody may be audiating chords underlying the melody or a variation of another melody. Jazz instrumentalists, scat singers, and rap performers may audiate a phrase from one piece of music and substitute it for the original phrase in music they are performing. They, like some instrumentalists, may not be able to explain in technical or theoretical terms what they are audiating. Whereas most musicians who perform jazz through imitation can perform in only one style, those who audiate can comfortably perform jazz in two or more styles; for example, both swing and bebop. Composers who audiate, those who are not dependent on an instrument while composing, simultaneously audiate several components of music they are creating, such as melody, harmony, phrasing, and instrumentation. Great composers audiate just as fine artists "see in the dark." All capable musicians anticipate and predict in audiation what they expect to hear, perform, improvise, and create before they actually engage in listening, performing, improvising, and composing.

Notational audiation

Audiation of music notation is called notational audiation. Just as aural perception is different from audiation, decoding notation is different from notational audiation. If you give meaning to what you see in music notation before you perform it, before someone else performs it, or as you write it, you are engaging in notational audiation. However, one may read or write notation without audiating the music it represents. When that occurs the person is simply decoding symbols (individual written notes) and is not conscious of patterns and context that constitute the music. That would be akin to reading individual letters rather than words and making syntactical connections. Words and syntax, not recognition of letters of the alphabet, are bases of comprehension. The following excerpt may help prove the point.

Aoccdring to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mattaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not aed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Also, one can eat "ghotti" The alternate spelling and pronunciation of "ghotti" is "fish." The "gh" taken from "enough," the "o" from "women," and the "ti" from "nation."

To audiate notationally, one transcends print and audiates what music symbols represent. Notation is a "window" one sees through. Audiation is on the other side. A musician who audiates brings musical meaning to notation. A musician who cannot audiate can only take theoretical meaning from notation. For example, if instrumentalists cannot transpose without aid of notation or knowledge of music theory, they are "playing by notes" and lacking in audiation competence. Music notation is a collection of visual symbols intended to represent sound of music. Music theory attempts to define and explain the rationale behind use of those visual symbols and yet, at best, notation works like still photography whereas music flows like a motion picture. Audiation is understanding the flow of music. Whether or not one understands notation or music theory, there is value in audiating flow of music, and jazz and folk artists demonstrate that every day. Value of understanding notation and music theory without audiating, however, is questionable. Nevertheless, there are students in music classes who are taught that ritually. In fact, it may be reasonable to define common practice music theory as ignorance of audiation glorified and reduced to a system.

Notation and music theory are often taught to students as substitutes for audiation. Some teachers never think about audiation and those who do may not know how to teach it. Others know it is easier to teach notation and music theory than to teach students how to develop their audiation. Likewise, it is easier to teach students parts of speech than to teach them how to think. Fortunately, parents automatically and naturally model thinking for their children long before children enter school. The situation is not so fortunate with audiation. Apparently, reality of audiation is so remote in our culture, parents teaching their children to audiate is instead left to professionals if anyone long after the most precious time in a child's life to develop audiation potential has passed. Music literacy is no further from extinction than only one generation of adults not singing and chanting to newborn and preschool children.

Distinguishing audiation from imitation

Audiation, as opposed to imitation which is the preliminary step in developing audiation potential, are often confused. Imitation, sometimes called inner hearing, is a product whereas audiation is a process. It is possible and unfortunately too often the case to perform a piece of music by imitation without engaging in audiation. It is not possible to imitate and audiate at the same time. Learning by rote is not the same as learning with understanding, whether the subject be history, mathematics, or music.

Just as you can learn to say nonsense syllables, such as ah va di, or repeat a sentence in a foreign language and not give meaning to what you are saying, children can learn to sing a song by rote without giving it musical meaning; that is, without understanding context or content of the song. Those children are, of course, imitating but not audiating. That children's skill in imitation is more highly developed than their audiation becomes obvious when they are asked to sing alone. Observant teachers know although a group of children can perform a song in ensemble relatively free of errors, only one or two members of the group may be able to sing the entire song solo. When children are audiating, ensemble performances are no different for them than solo performances because in both cases they are simultaneously performing and recreating music in their minds. If, for some reason, they forget exact notes, they improvise convincing substitutes.

Imitation is learning through someone else's ears. Audiation is learning through one's own ears. Imitation is analogous to using tracing paper to draw a picture whereas audiation is analogous to visualizing and then drawing a picture. Imitation is like painting a canvas; it deals with both the essential and inessential. Audiation is like sculpture; it emphasizes the essential. Just as you must think for yourself, so must you audiate for yourself. You imitate when you repeat what you heard just a few seconds ago, which is immediate imitation, or when you repeat what you heard a while ago, which is delayed imitation. In either case, they are reactive responses and have only initial and limited value for learning because, unless we audiate what we have imitated, we soon forget it. This is so often the case, for example, with names and dates children learn in school. Audiation, however, is a different kind of learning because when we audiate we retain, instantiate, and "think about" what we heard seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or even years ago. Audiation is an active response. When we imitate we know what to perform next in familiar music by remembering what we just performed. It is a process of looking backward. When we audiate, however, we know what to perform next, without negating memory, by anticipating in familiar music and predicting in unfamiliar music what is to come. It involves forward thinking. What is audiated plays a formidable role in how we learn. What we audiate is never forgotten. It becomes a component of more complex audiation. In cognitive terms, the structure of audiation is deep and serves in background conception. The structure of imitation is superficial and serves simply as foreground perception.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Learning Sequences in Music"
by .
Copyright © 2012 GIA Publications, Inc..
Excerpted by permission of GIA Publications, Inc..
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Table of Contents

Preface,
PART 1 THE FOUNDATION,
Chapter 1: AUDIATION,
Chapter 2: MUSIC LEARNING THEORY AND IMPLICATIONS,
Chapter 3: MUSIC APTITUDES AND MUSIC ACHIEVEMENT,
Chapter 4: TONAL SOLFEGE AND RHYTHM SOLFEGE,
Chapter 5: SKILL LEARNING SEQUENCE,
Chapter 6: TONAL LEARNING SEQUENCE,
Chapter 7: RHYTHM LEARNING SEQUENCE,
Chapter 8: PATTERN LEARNING SEQUENCE,
Chapter 9: COMBINING SKILL, TONAL, RHYTHM, AND PATTERN LEARNING SEQUENCES IN LEARNING SEQUENCE ACTIVITIES,
PART 2 PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS,
Chapter 10: EARLY CHILDHOOD MUSIC AND MUSIC READINESS,
Chapter 11: COORDINATING LEARNING SEQUENCE ACTIVITIES WITH CLASSROOM AND PERFORMANCE ACTIVITIES,
Chapter 12: BEGINNING INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC,
Chapter 13: IMPROVISATION,
Chapter 14: MEASUREMENT AND EVALUATION IN MUSIC,
Chapter 15: MUSIC EDUCATION: NOW AND LOOKING AHEAD,
Afterword,
Glossary,
Bibliograpy,