International Orff-Schulwerk Symposium 2006

Elemental Music and Dance Education in Interdisciplinary Contexts

Salzburg, 6-9 July 2006
Music Learning Theory
Prof. Edwin Gordon in dialogue with Andrea Sangiorgio

A.S. Edwin E. Gordon is Research Professor at the University of South Carolina.
He is widely known as a researcher, teacher, author, editor and lecturer.
Through extensive research in the psychology of music, Professor Gordon has
made major contributions in the study of music aptitudes, the development of
audiation (music thinking), music learning theory, tonal and rhythm solfege,
and music development in infants and very young children.
He will introduce some of the basic ideas of his Music Learning Theory.

E.G. I want to start out by just making two statements. I am primarily a researcher, but
I've been involved in teaching because that's the best way to get my research done. I
don't want you to think that I come to you offering a method. I'm not trying to tell you
how to teach. My Music Learning Theory and Audiation is not a method, it's a collection of
research facts. I tell you what I have learned from research and then you take whatever
I give you and adapt it to your own personality and to your own teaching style. The
second thing I'd like to say is that, no matter who will be talking to you, nobody knows
everything. Nobody has the whole truth. So I'm giving you whatever truth that I know
and I hope you'll use it wisely.

Language learning and Music learning
Let's think about language: when you learnt your native language you started with a
listening vocabulary, you learnt how to listen. You listened for about a year while persons
spoke and you became acculturated to the language. Your second language was a
speaking vocabulary: you learnt to speak what you heard. Listening was extremely
important. Your third vocabulary was communication: you began to ask questions and to
answer questions. Your fourth language was reading, your fifth language was writing.
Now, that's language.
Although music is not a language, the process of learning language and learning music is
the same. I'd like to go through and explain what happens musically from a research
point of view. To begin with, children listen: what does that mean? They hear many
many songs sung to them by other humans at least in the most ideal way of learning.
The more songs they hear, the better their listening vocabulary will develop. What we
have found is that the more difference they hear, the better their vocabulary develops. If
they hear too much sameness, their vocabulary will not develop very well. So, when we
teach very young children we sing to them in a variety of tonalities - major, minor,
dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aolian, etc. and meters duple, triple and many
different unusual meters - because the more that they hear the better their vocabulary
develops. Our research indicates that if we keep doing the same thing over and over
again, just major or duple meter, their listening vocabulary shrinks: we call this
overlearning.
So, what research suggests to us is to expose children in listening the first one or two
years of life to as many tonalities as possible. More difference, the better it is. This is also
true with rhythm. For example, we work with them in duple meter and also triple meter,
but the important thing is that they hear both duple and triple and then we can get to 5
International Orff-Schulwerk Symposium 2006 2
"Musi Learning Theory" Edwin Gordon in dialogue with Andrea Sangiorgio

CDM onlus - Centro Didattico Musicale www.centrodidatticomusicale.it

and 7 and other unusual meters as soon as possible. Thus the listening vocabulary
develops very very much.
Now the second vocabulary I would say is what we call the speaking vocabulary, that is
when children begin to produce what they have heard. If we are going to sing to them
and expect them to sing back, we establish for them what we refer to as a context, i.e. a
tonality (you may also call it a mode), so that they can understand what I expect them to
sing. What do I expect them to sing? Well, I start out with very simple things which I call
tonal patterns. For example, when children learn how to speak language they can't begin
by reciting a poem. I think it's very foolish, at least from my research, to expect students
to learn a song or to create a song before they can do specific parts of the song that I
refer to as tonal patterns or rhythm patterns. In the same way you learnt words before
you could recite a poem, we find that children have to learn tonal and rhythm patterns so
that they can put those patterns together and produce a song or a lengthy piece.
So we first establish a context a specific tonality or meter and then have them get
the patterns, that we refer to as the content. Now we find that this works very well for
the speaking vocabulary. As soon as they learn to reproduce or produce the patterns, we
immediately put solfege to it. We find that using solfege syllables helps children keep all
of the patterns clear and discriminate among them accurately. We use tonal solfege with
a moveable do-system with a la-based minor. So, the resting tone for major would be
do, for dorian re, for phrygian mi, for lydian fa, for mixolydian so, for aeolian and
harmonic minor la. So they immediately identify the solfege with the sound of the
patterns and the context. We give them a context so that they can put the content, i.e.
the patterns, in the perspective.
We also work with them with rhythm solfege, using the beat function system that we
have developed over years and that is based on how rhythm is audiated, rather than
notated. For example we express duple meter with the syllables Du de, triple meter with
the syllables Du da di (for subdivisions we use the syllable ta). For unusual meters we
change syllable, for example a 5 would be Du be Du ba bi, a 7 Du ba bi Du be Du be, and
so on. Through solfege children acquire a wide vocabulary of singing and chanting at a
very early age.
Now the third language that I call communication referring to verbal language, in music
is called improvisation. It is extremely important that these music vocabularies develop
in the same sequence that language vocabulary develops. For example, you learn to
listen to your language, then you begin to speak and then at about two years old you
begin to answer questions and to ask questions. Now we find that in music if we
intersperse, if we put this third vocabulary improvisation in before reading, it just
makes a world of difference, because if they can improvise we can teach them to do
anything. When we teach improvisation we establish a context (for example, major), sing
a pattern to a child and then ask the child to answer with a different pattern, based on
the same or a different function (tonic or dominant).
We find that if we can get them to improvise, we really don't have to teach reading,
because we have solidified their audiation. Later on we can say to them, in the fourth
vocabulary, when they see notation, that those signs are just the way the sounds, that
they already know and actively produce, look like. In other words, they bring the
audiation to the notation, instead of trying to take meaning from the notation. What they
read, they can write. And that is the sequence of the way students learn.
By the way, one major concern to us is the use of movement in music learning, which is
essential. We refer to Laban's effort movements. We have seen that the proper sequence
is flow, weight, space and only then time. That is, to be able to maintain a consistent
tempo a child has to learn first to feel continuous, free flowing movement, then to feel
the weight in his/her body, to feel the movement in space (that visualizes the flow of
time) and only then will he/she be able to produce a consistent tempo.
International Orff-Schulwerk Symposium 2006 3
"Musi Learning Theory" Edwin Gordon in dialogue with Andrea Sangiorgio

CDM onlus - Centro Didattico Musicale www.centrodidatticomusicale.it

Audiation
Audiation is the ability to hear music and understand it without the sound being
physically present. It may be confused with imitation: being able to really audiate a
melody, for example, means more than just being able to reproduce it, but also to sing it
in another tonality or in another meter. Many children imitate and do not audiate. Many
adults as well as many music teachers can imitate, memorize, read or perform music
without really being able to audiate it. We have to find a way to get them more flexible,
so that they can audiate.
Audiation is to music what thought is to language. If you can't think I don't want to have
a conversation with you, it would be boring. I want to hear what you have to say, not
what I've said. Audiation is: I want to hear you do something different from what you've
heard.

Music Aptitude
Musical ability is often viewed in all-or-none terms: some are blessed with "talent",
others must do without. Recent research, however, reveals that music aptitude, i.e. the
potential to learn music, like all human characteristics is normally distributed in the
population. All persons have the potential to achieve in music. Relatively few have high
aptitude, a similar number have low aptitude, and the majority of persons fall
somewhere in the middle of the "bell curve" with average aptitude.
Music Learning Theory is unique among music teaching approaches in accounting directly
for students' differing potentials to achieve in music. By teaching to students' individual
differences, teachers lessen the risk of boring students with high potential and frustrating
students with lower potential.

Music teachers' judgments about students' musical "talent" are often based significantly
on musical achievement, rather than on the potential to achieve. It is not uncommon, for
example, for students of average aptitude to achieve at a high level as a result of a rich
musical background and dedicated effort. Only a valid music aptitude test can distinguish
between actual achievement and the potential to achieve further. Because many students
with high music aptitude have not had the opportunity to achieve in music, a music
aptitude test can reveal musical potential that might otherwise remain unknown to those
students and their teachers. It is NOT the purpose of aptitude testing to identify students
for inclusion or exclusion in music activities. All children have the right to a
comprehensive musical education. Music aptitude testing helps music teachers meet the
unique needs of each student.

So, there are many many things we should be thinking about in terms of music learning,
of music aptitude, of improvisation.
But the most important thing is that good music teaching whether it is piano,
classroom music, choir should be sequential. We should know where we're beginning:
we start with listening before we start performing, we teach improvisation before
reading, we teach free flowing movement before musical time, and whenever we
introduce anything to children we establish context, so that they can put the content into
the proper context.

In this sense Music Learning Theory is not a method, but it does explain the proper
sequence through which we learn music.
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"Musi Learning Theory" Edwin Gordon in dialogue with Andrea Sangiorgio

CDM onlus - Centro Didattico Musicale www.centrodidatticomusicale.it

A.S. You were talking about patterns. When we listen to or make music we have
to have two things in mind: the context i.e. a tonality or a meter and the
content i.e. the series of tonal or rhythm patterns that can be produced
according to that specific context. Would you give us an example of how you
practise it?
E.G. Ok, let's say I want to teach dorian. Before I teach dorian patterns I start out by
singing or improvising a dorian song while moving all the time with continuous flow. So I
establish a context. Then I would sing the tonal sequence (5-6-5-4-3-2-7-1, in dorian la
ti la so fa mi do re) and I would start proposing patterns based on the most important
degrees of that tonality (in dorian I IV VII). It is very important to pause and ask the
students to breathe and then to sing the pattern. The pause helps them to process the
music and to audiate it, rather than imitating it. That's the way I teach content within
context.
With rhythm it is the same thing: I may start improvising/performing one or more
rhythm phrases and then I would start proposing rhythm patterns in the same meter and
tempo as the phrases. It is very important to keep moving with continuous flow while
performing the tonal or rhythm patterns, because this helps students to audiate.

A.S. In the Orff-Schulwerk approach we stress the importance of creativity and
improvisation. In the Music Learning Theory, also, beyond reproduction the
students' active production of music plays a meaningful role: would you explain
your perspective on creativity and improvisation and how you foster their
development?
E.G. I have to start saying that I make a distinction between creativity and
improvisation, as I conceive them. They are not separate, but they are on a continuum.
Creativity leaves to students complete freedom in the musical expression, it is primarily
exploration. Improvisation involves more restrictions: a possible example might be that I
first sing a series of tonal patterns in major - tonic, dominant and subdominant functions
then sing a pattern to the student, and ask him/her to answer with a pattern that is
different from mine. That's improvisation. The same happens with rhythm: the students,
instead of imitating the teacher's pattern, answer with a different one.
In the '50s I was the bass-player of Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa. All of my
improvisation was harmonic, as it is usual in jazz. With my students we start taking turns
improvising with the voice basing on an harmonic progression (such as I I V I in
major) which is sung in parts by the group. The progressions we use may become more
complicated and introduce new functions, according to the students' skills. We may
recognize that a same harmonic progression can be the base of different tunes. Being
able to audiate harmonically, to hear the changes in the chords, is necessary to
improvise. Harmonic improvisation is what we find to be the answer and the wonderful
goal that we have in mind.

A.S. So you start from 0 with newborns and you develop their audiation skills
until later on they are able to improvise harmonically. The ultimate goal is the
ability to speak the language of music the way jazz musicians do.
Now, what are the necessary skills for music teachers? What do we have to
learn as teachers?
E.G. Well, the first thing you have to do is to learn how to audiate these tonalities and
meters yourself and to feel the chord changes. You just have to develop your sense of
tonality for all these different "modes" or "tonalities", as I prefer to call them. Different
tonalities have different chord sequences: major and minor have I IV V, but dorian,
mixolydian and aeolian have I IV VII, phrygian has I II - VII, lydian I II V. You
can learn to audiate the different functions of each tonality. You just need four persons:
International Orff-Schulwerk Symposium 2006 5
"Musi Learning Theory" Edwin Gordon in dialogue with Andrea Sangiorgio

CDM onlus - Centro Didattico Musicale www.centrodidatticomusicale.it

three persons sing a sequence of chords, a fourth person starts improvising on these,
and you take turns improvising.

A.S. So, the first task of the teachers is to learn to audiate, that is to listen,
recognize, comprehend and produce actively different tonalities and various
patterns in these tonalities.
E.G. Yes, to establish context so that you can do the patterns.

A.S. And what about rhythm?
E.G. With rhythm we have macrobeats (we can play them with the feet). Macrobeats can
be divided into two or three microbeats (we can play them with the hands).
With our voice we can produce different patterns or longer phrases in many different
meters (we can start with duple and triple meter and then move on to unusual meters).
We have to feel simultaneously the macrobeats, the microbeats and the patterns upon
them.

A.S. How can we coordinate the use of patterns with the classroom activities?
If we want to teach children a dance, a song or an instrumental piece, how can
we introduce the patterns in relation to the materials we are using?
E.G. This is a complex question, I'll make just a quick example. I may sing for the
children a song [in which the A part is in major and in triple meter, and the B part is in
minor and duple meter] and then I ask them: are you audiating do mi so or la do mi? I
have them listen again to the melody and then I sing again patterns with tonal syllables
in major or minor. I use the patterns to help them understand the context. I might go
further and have them recognize what function the different patterns are based on,
whether tonic or dominant.
I want them to use this knowledge and listen intelligently, so that when I sing a song to
them they understand the context by audiating the solfege with patterns: they know it's
major or minor and they begin to know what the patterns are. They are able then to
recognize the change from major to minor.
I can also ask them: do you hear du de or du da di? I sing the song again and then I
might sing the rhythm of the melody of the A part using patterns with rhythm syllables.
They will be able to recognize that the B part of the song is in duple.
I just incorporate everything I taught them through Music Learning Theory into
classroom activities. If all I am to teach are the patterns, that is not music. I have to find
a way to use what I've taught to make real music. That's why I do those things, so that
they can listen to music and perform it intelligently.

A.S. So your main goal is to develop the ability to understand music that's
audiation and the ability to understand the tonal and rhythm syntax of music.
For this aim you also developed a system of tonal and rhythm solfege. Would
you tell us something more about it?
E.G. About the tonal solfege I might say that John Curwen and Sarah Glover were the
ones in England who developed the moveable-do system. Zoltan Kodaly went to England
and learnt from them the system. From all the research that we've done there is no
better system for developing audiation than moveable-do with a la-based minor.
We have taken it and have extended its use to all modes. Audiation of various tonalities
is facilitated by associating a unique tonal syllable with each tonality (do with major, re
with dorian, and so on). The internal logic of interval relationship is always maintained
and just a few syllables suffice for all basic tonalities.

International Orff-Schulwerk Symposium 2006 6
"Musi Learning Theory" Edwin Gordon in dialogue with Andrea Sangiorgio

CDM onlus - Centro Didattico Musicale www.centrodidatticomusicale.it

A.S. And what about rhythm solfege? The beat function system you have
developed is undoubtedly one of your main contributions.
E.G. I was brought up with various syllable systems and just disagreed with most of what
I heard. So I devoted about fifteen years of my life looking for a better solution and I've
come up now with I think the twelfth revision of the rhythm syllables.
You see, with Kodaly it is, for example, Ta Ta TitiTa Tiritiri Tiritiri Titi Ta. The Kodaly
persons base syllables on note values: they say Ta Ta Titi Ta, where the third macrobeat
changes its name because it is an eighth and not a quarter. So they give rhythm syllables
names that are based on note values rather than beat function. In our system, for
example, instead of TaTa Titi Ta Tiritiri Ta we say Du Du Dude Du Dutadeta Du.
Macrobeats are always Du. In duple meter microbeats are always de: Dude Du Dude Du.
I see a big difference with what Kodaly does with rhythm syllables and what I do,
because my syllables are based on beat function and not on note values.
Kodaly teachers have to teach music theory and notation in order to explain the
syllables. They would use different syllables if they teach something in 3/4 and
something in 3/8. They would say in the first case Ta ta ta and in the second Ti ti ti. But
this has no sense and confuses children because it is the same sound expressed with
different syllables. On the contrary, we use syllables that are based on how rhythm is
audiated, not notated. There are many Kodaly teachers in the U.S. now that are
switching over and are using the beat function syllables.
For triple meter we use the syllables Du da di. When we go to a 7 we change the d to a
b: Du ba bi Du be Du be. This way we can distinguish a triplet in a duple meter in which
the lenght of the macrobeats remains the same (Dude Dudadi) from a 5, where the
lenght of the microbeats remains the same (Dube Dubabi). And this is all without music
theory, all without notation, it is just audiation. This solfege system is very
comprehensive, accounting unambiguously for virtually any rhythm, whether easy or
difficult. Any pattern in any meter has its own unique syllables, which facilitates the
ability to distinguish between different patterns, functions, and meters.

A.S. One last question in a wider perspective: what would you say are the
ultimate goals of the Music Learning Theory?
E.G. The ultimate goal of Music Learning Theory is not to produce great musicians. In
other words, there are many fabulous musicians that are walking around the United
States that can't find work. It's a tragedy. What we need are listeners who audiate. We
need intelligent audiences desperately. We don't need more performers, who nobody
wants to listen to. Unfortunately we have audiences who understand just very repetitious
music, that doesn't require any audiation, so they love it. Every conservatory in the U.S.
is making a big error by training performers and performers. What we need to do is start
training persons in every discipline to audiate, so that they can become a great audience
and teach their children to be a great audience.

- Questions of the participants

I am interested in the activities that you make with children from 0 to three,
and specifically if and how you involve the parents.
E.G. I usually have groups of about twelve children, accompanied by an adult person.
After three I just want the children to be there, the parents do not participate any longer.
Most of our parents cannot sing very well and have some troubles with rhythm and I try
to give them simple tasks that involve them actively without hampering what I'm doing
with children. I ask them to bring some blank cassettes and I supply tape recorders, so
that they can record what we do and the child can listen to the music any time at home.

International Orff-Schulwerk Symposium 2006 7
"Musi Learning Theory" Edwin Gordon in dialogue with Andrea Sangiorgio

CDM onlus - Centro Didattico Musicale www.centrodidatticomusicale.it

Do you use hand-signs like in solmisation?
E.G. No, I don't use hand-signs the way Kodaly persons do because we have found that it
is just another system of note reading. In other words, if I show them the signs they do
not audiate, they just read. They are reading my hands rather than notation. We have
found that if we use hand signs, children tend to keep looking at our hands and don't
audiate.

What percentage of the children who have had this kind of music training from
0 to 5 will be able to sing in tune and feel rhythm properly?
E.G. I never really counted them, but I would say that the majority of the children can
develop sufficient, good or excellent listening and performing skills. About a quarter of
them will not.
Do you have any reasons for this?
E.G. My opinion, which is not based on research, is that they might have low potential or
have a very poor home background, which does not support the child's musical
development, and that there are so many competing activities for children that they
begin to lose interest in music learning and prefer to do something else. I don't have any
hard facts on this, but I think it's probably due to those things. Our biggest problem are
the parents, who are often unmusical and at home don't sing at all or out of tune.

Can you give us an age for when children will learn to sing songs not only in
major and minor, but also in other tonalities?
E.G. There is no chronological age, there is a musical age. I would not say that children
are ready to do anything chronologically, it all depends upon their musical age.
But you said before that if we don't teach children from an early age we miss a
very big advantage. When is it "too late"?
E.G. Research indicates that music aptitude is developmental during the early years of
life. A child's aptitude at birth is innate. From one to three is the most productive time for
children. Somewhere at around three years old aptitude begins to level off and we can do
less and less in getting their aptitute to its birth level. Somebody said that children will
never be any smarter than at the moment they are born. From then on it's downhill, also
depending on the richness and diversity of musical experiences the children undergo.
What we can try to do is to bring their aptitude back to its birth level as soon as we can.
And the best time to do that is from birth to three. From four to five the possibilities
become less and less. At nine years old there is no more possibility to increase the
potential. This does not mean that you cannot teach a child after nine, but only that the
child's achievement cannot go higher than his potential at nine (by that time we call it
stabilized music aptitude). But you can still teach children quite a bit because most
children are not making the most of their potential.

High quality music experience in the early years is particularly important. Actually we
should have music in preschools everywhere. The professors at universities make the
most money and are given the most respect whereas preschool teachers are treated very
poorly. We have an inverted pyramid: if we had children taught in preschool very well,
we wouldn't need professors!

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