Teach Music to Kids!

Rhythm Development in Young Children (and why I don’t teach the labeling of beat functions)

First, my core student population is 8 years old and younger. I teach children starting at birth, although I believe strongly that rhythm development begins earlier—at least three, maybe four or five, months earlier. During this time, the aural experience repetition of diverse rhythmic and stylistic repertoire is key. There is no rhythm content that should be off-limits with the relatively rare exception being pieces that have no consistent beat or meter. I wouldn’t necessarily avoid Chopin being played rubato, but I wouldn’t encourage it either. Twentieth century works whose composers actively sought to avoid conventional rhythms and meters would be something I would discourage. Any piece with too much subjective of meter (experts could disagree and both be right) would also be discouraged. 

 

On the other hand, the most complex content of some rhythm traditions, such as northern Indian tabla drumming, I believe would make for extraordinary acculturation. Rhythm repertoire represented in broad categories of traditional jazz, classical, blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, Latin, African, African diaspora, and other styles should comprise the meat of a child’s listening vocabulary, though important potatoes of Rock and Roll should certainly be included. Styles such as Rap, Hip Hop, contemporary R&B, and more do certainly have value. Still, they do not, in my opinion, typically and consistently provide what is an adequate foundation for a child’s rhythm listening vocabulary. The rhythm content simply is not broad enough without the inclusion of my A-list genres. Please understand that I already stated they certainly have value. Perhaps these lower and higher limits are self-imposed due to the level of my personal rhythm aptitude. I won’t deny that cultural bias, too, might play a role. (I’ve opened up a Pandora’s Box.) There are good and band exceptions in every kind of music. I adhere to this as gospel. As Duke Ellington said, "There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind." 

 

Regarding classroom teaching and rhythm learning, I always ask each child to perform (or just listen to) rhythm patterns individually that incorporate these beat functions in this hierarchical order: 

        A) macro/microbeats (starting at 9 months if they want to), 

        B) divisions (at 2 years old if they want to using ba-da-ba-da, not bah bah bah bah),

        C) elongations (whenever they show me they are imitating if not audiating divisions, as early as 2)

        D) pick-ups (whenever a few elongation patterns are imitated or audiated) 

        E) ties (whenever the above are being imitated consistently)

        F) rests - the most difficult patterns. I will try these to find the most rhythmically inclined child, but I’d rather acculturate them, or have them imitate and audiate A-E above. Rest patterns are just silently audiated bits inside all the above patterns.

 

Rhythm performance alone is not as important as movement alone. Said another way, encouraging a child to move has more value than having them perform rhythm patterns, especially early in life. Large body movements incorporating flow and weight are crucial to a child’s rhythm development. Continuous fluid movement (or CFM) is a major player in what I model for children and parents. But, I do not model CFM exclusively. (I don’t subscribe completely to the common CFM vocabulary I’ve seen. It’s typically far too limited and dynamically flaccid. [Ouch!]) I concentrate on modeling three elements—flow, weight, and space— while keeping a greater emphasis on flow. I move as expressively and as dynamically as possible. I conduct using my entire body, never shying away from being Bernstein, Ozawa, or Ormandy with legs and a full stage, not just upper body on a small podium. Simple and solid macrobeat movements I model keep flowing, moving between beats. Stillness, though, can be a valuable preparation for the next beat if prepared with movement and a demonstrative breath. Coordinating macro and microbeats simultaneously in the body is as important as rhythm pattern performance. Both are crucial.

 

Rhythm performance combined with movement is that much better. It is content and context happening simultaneously in a physical, objective reality. Further, helping children to feel form while audiating rhythm and moving is the holy grail. I lead function-feeling activities for the purpose of pure acculturation whereas moving rhythmically while performing rhythms has a different purpose of furthering rhythm performance audiation. (For example, the A section of an ABA piece is accompanied by locomotor move and the B is not.) These activities give children the opportunity to acculturate to form, a sort of longitudinal rhythm.

 

[Ideas for expansion.] Beat keeping is best done with the tongue or mouth first.

Coordinating the voice with rhythmic movement. Rhythmic coordination sequencing.

 

Why I don’t teach beat functions beyond macro- and micro-beats. 

So, say that I have had some children at the 99.99 percentile, (and I’ve had a few in my 30 years since BGE  [Before the Gordon Era]) who can perform and create all of the above by the time they’re 6 or 7. I have never felt compelled to teach them the labels of the beat functions. I just didn’t use the terms divisions, elongations, ties, upbeats, and rests. There was no present need. It wasn’t going to help their audiation. Neither were there questions from the children or the sense of them missing something by not having the labels.

 

Unlike beat functions, the label of a tonal pattern as tonic or dominant is specific. Labeling a rhythm pattern as one with divisions is not specific enough. And what of patterns with many different beat functions? I don’t feel that we’re given them any more meaning to rhythm than by performing it accurately and expressively. That one pattern has macro, micro, and elongations and that another has micro, elongations and divisions does not give you but cursory information relative to the musical meaning of the rhythm pattern itself. Labeling a pattern doesn’t bring any more understanding to the rhythm pattern itself. On the other hand, tonic and dominant functions can be audiated. Divisions cannot (or may I don’t) until you make them specific by putting them into a rhythm pattern that includes divisions. . .or maybe also has macrobeats, or microbeats, or both, or rests, or ties, etc., included with the divisions. A pattern of only divisions is like a pattern of only macrobeats—that is, not useful except at the Theoretical Understanding level of Skill Learning Sequence. 

 

These are my initial thoughts. This is a first draft with a few hours of editing. The writing is not the best. I hope it is clear.

 

Responses are most welcome.

Music notation: its limits—and potential ill effects

Can we notate in music a Stephane Grappelli solo accurately?( http://bit.ly/StephGrap ) The notes? Mostly. The rhythm? Partially. The style? Less likely. The tiny slides between notes, the rhythmic feel, and subtle expressive elements? Impossible. Absolutely impossible. The best anyone can do with notation would be to put something down that would remind the music reader of some of the basic elements mentioned above. All of he rest must come from audiation—the part that is in your head that cannot be well represented in notation: subtleties such as tonal nuances, phrasing, and most expressive elements. These would be just a few of the differences between your interpretation and mine, say, of a beautiful ballad. What you bring to the party—from all your past listening experiences that inform your choices—will be different from what I bring. Given this, notation falls horrendously short of representing music—that is with the exception of tones and some rhythm. If you never heard Stephane Grappelli play, your rendition wouldn’t match up much. Besides, what would be the point of putting into notation something Mr. Grappelli never had to read in the first place? If you can’t play it first by ear, then the notation serves only as a shortcut—a detour, actually—for you to develop your own musicianship.

Let’s look at this a different way: When you read a book, do you hear the author’s voice in your head? Is it different than my interpretation of the author’s voice? Do the letters and words actually convey all of the intention of the author? 

Consider most elementary school bands and your experience of listening to them. Their intonation is not well developed to put it nicely. The children have been taught to play notes, push buttons and blow air. Does their rendition of the piece of music groove? Or does it sit lifelessly? I believe we have taught them to count the beats and not feel what’s in between—where the music really lives.

Some adults say of themselves that they are not musical, but then I hear them perform. “Wow, that was really moving and beautiful. How can you say you’re not musical?” They answer that they don’t know the notes (names of notes) or the theory (like how many verbs did you just read in the last paragraph), or, more often than not, they don’t know how to read the notation. To me, this is simply absurd. Listen to Erroll Garner ( http://bit.ly/ErrollGarner ), and tell me why he should need to read what he’s playing. The truth is that he doesn’t know how to read and write music. Yet, many fine jazz musicians call him a musical genius.

Now, this is not to say that reading notation—with understanding—is not valuable. We would not have symphony orchestras to play some of the world’s finest music. Many rock and jazz bands rely on written music. Most probably do not. When they do, the notation reminds them of what it is they can already audiate. They can “think the music” in their minds. If you can do that, then I say that you are musical—whether you can play, sing or read music or not! And think about this for a bit: Musical listeners are actually half of the equation. Otherwise, for whom are musicians performing?

 Please leave your thoughts and share as you wish.

Learning music is good for what? Research says. . .

Well, you'll have to read it for yourself. (See links below.)

 

Or, in the meantime, just hear this:

 

My take on all the research I've read is that there are indeed solid relationships between music and non-musical skills.  The problem is establishing clear causality. All of these studies could be seen as a very promising reason for why to study music or play an instrument.

 

Unfortunately, the research is replete with flawed research design, misinterpretations of data, and exaggerated implications of research findings. Most important to me, and probably to many of you, is that music is worth it for it’s own sake. Many great musicians cannot read music or know theory. In improvisational music, parts of the prefrontal cortex actually are best shut down. There is also this anecdote about a 40-year-old man who cannot tie his shoes and is socially a 4-year-old, and yet, upon first hearing can immediately imitate a Fats Waller composition he’d never heard before from beginning to end. No social, math, language skills got developed there. The outliers may tell more truth than the middle 68%. (I’m a bit of a Gladwell fan, though still skeptical of some of his work.)

 

All that said, still, the preponderance of the evidence is moving in a positive direction toward illuminating benefits of music education. Having read much of this type of literature—many high level research studies by prestigious universities some published in respected peer reviewed journals—my belief is this: 

 

People who have the innate nature to be musical—coupled with a rich interactive musical environment at the earliest stages in life—become musical. Period. 

 

Then, later on, because of how music is taught (e.g., a whole note = 4, 1/8 note in cut time = 1/16, You have to be good in math or you won’t jump through that hoop!), or because music probably helped brain development in a variety of ways in early and late infancy (rich webs of synaptic connections grown across areas of the brain not otherwise stimulated),  those connections are then there to be used in a multiplicity of ways that may make a difference in the development of a variety of non-musical skills. [Bad sentence, but not rewriting this now. Eesh.] Daniel Levitin makes a compelling case in This is Your Brain on Music, and A World in Six Songs. He is both thoughtful and imaginative. I’d like to think he’s right. He's also a good story teller but he didn't attribute  some of his writings (where he should have) to the greatest researcher in music psychology, Dr. Edwin Gordon. 

 

In the end, if we keep selling the value of music for the sake of the development of non-musical skills, we are selling ourselves out and doing a serious injustice to our profession in the long run, let alone to the children who have exceptionally high music aptitude and yet are low performing in many or most other subjects. Why is there no societal push to have studies that justify how learning Math helps English, or on how Science helps xxx? I find the current climate troublesome and to top it off, it is widely perpetuated by NAfME and the NAMM Foundation. NAMM's recent brochure does not include anything on how music education contributes to one’s ability to be musical. I find this completely out of whack.

 

Rant over. Here are some links to studies you might be able to use. 

The last paragraph comes closest to my way of thinking. The 'Rasmussen' quoted in the last piece interestingly is NOT me. I just searched for it and found out it is me!! It's from forever ago. PBS got it from ???

 

Attachments and links:

(The download links are all PDF files.)

 

Music and language learning: 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17943015

 

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Correlation between music and math: 

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1869#1

 

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Music Lessons, Emotional Intelligence and IQ

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/mp.2011.29.2.185?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

 

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Music Training and Second-Language English Comprehension and Vocabulary Skills in Indian Children

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12646-013-0180-3

 

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Musicians use both sides of their brains more frequently than average people

 

http://phys.org/news/2008-10-musicians-sides-brains-frequently-average.html

 

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Early Musical Training and White-Matter Plasticity in the Corpus Callosum: Evidence for a Sensitive Period

 

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/3/1282

 

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Download WLTP Brochure-2

Download Susan-hallam-music-development_research 

Download 2004-costa-giomi

Download Neu-25-3-378

Download KrausChandrasekeran_NRN10

Download Diw_sp0591

Another I cut and pasted.

Cereb Cortex. 2012 Dec 12. [Epub ahead of print]

Twelve Months of Active Musical Training in 8- to 10-Year-Old Children Enhances the Preattentive Processing of Syllabic Duration and Voice Onset Time.

Chobert J, François C, Velay JL, Besson M.

Source

Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives, CNRS - Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille Cedex 3, France.

Abstract

Musical training has been shown to positively influence linguistic abilities. To follow the developmental dynamics of this transfer effect at the preattentive level, we conducted a longitudinal study over 2 school years with nonmusician children randomly assigned to music or to painting training. We recorded the mismatch negativity (MMN), a cortical correlate of preattentive mismatch detection, to syllables that differed in vowel frequency, vowel duration, and voice onset time (VOT), using a test-training-retest procedure and 3 times of testing: before training, after 6 months and after 12 months of training. While no between-group differences were found before training, enhanced preattentive processing of syllabic duration and VOT, as reflected by greater MMN amplitude, but not of frequency, was found after 12 months of training in the music group only. These results demonstrate neuroplasticity in the child brain and suggest that active musical training rather than innate predispositions for music yielded the improvements in musically trained children. These results also highlight the influence of musical training for duration perception in speech and for the development of phonological representations in normally developing children. They support the importance of music-based training programs for children's education and open new remediation strategies for children with language-based learning impairments.

 

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Improved Test Scores
A study published in 2007 by Christopher Johnson, professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, revealed that students in elementary schools with superior music education programs scored around 22 percent higher in English and 20 percent higher in math scores on standardized tests, compared to schools with low-quality music programs, regardless of socioeconomic disparities among the schools or school districts. Johnson compares the concentration that music training requires to the focus needed to perform well on a standardized test. 

Aside from test score results, Johnson’s study highlights the positive effects that a quality music education can have on a young child’s success. Luehrisen explains this psychological phenomenon in two sentences: “Schools that have rigorous programs and high-quality music and arts teachers probably have high-quality teachers in other areas. If you have an environment where there are a lot of people doing creative, smart, great things, joyful things, even people who aren’t doing that have a tendency to go up and do better.”

And it doesn’t end there: along with better performance results on concentration-based tasks, music training can help with basic memory recall. “Formal training in music is also associated with other cognitive strengths such as verbal recall proficiency,” Pruett says. “People who have had formal musical training tend to be pretty good at remembering verbal information stored in memory.”

Being Musical
Music can improve your child’ abilities in learning and other nonmusic tasks, but it’s important to understand that music does not make one smarter. As Pruett explains, the many intrinsic benefits to music education include being disciplined, learning a skill, being part of the music world, managing performance, being part of something you can be proud of, and even struggling with a less than perfect teacher. 

“It’s important not to oversell how smart music can make you,” Pruett says. “Music makes your kid interesting and happy, and smart will come later. It enriches his or her appetite for things that bring you pleasure and for the friends you meet.”
While parents may hope that enrolling their child in a music program will make her a better student, the primary reasons to provide your child with a musical education should be to help them become more musical, to appreciate all aspects of music, and to respect the process of learning an instrument or learning to sing, which is valuable on its own merit.

“There is a massive benefit from being musical that we don’t understand, but it’s individual. Music is for music’s sake,” Rasmussen [NOT ME, Oh, it IS ME!! from forever ago. PBS, where did you get my quote??]  says. “The benefit of music education for me is about being musical. It gives you have a better understanding of yourself. The horizons are higher when you are involved in music,” he adds. “Your understanding of art and the world, and how you can think and express yourself, are enhanced.”

 

 As always, I'd love your thoughts. 

 

Importance of jazz in early childhood music

I share this quick email I sent to a colleague who asked about the "importance of jazz as a component of early music education"

 

Hi, 
Glad to meet you.

 

I'll do a short spiel here to try to answer your question. It's really not rocket science. It doesn't need to be science at all when it comes to how children learn. [I have a very science-based understanding of how children learn though. When I boil it down, it becomes common sense, and most of the common sense I've come to is that we don't know how best to teach children. Still, some major tenets get revealed in good research and my observational work of over 20 years with children ages birth to 8+.]

My quip: "Children know better how to learn than we'll ever know how to teach them. Ever."

Here's my try:
Simply put, if as a child—especially birth (or prior) to 3 years old—you were not acculturated in, or at least exposed to, a style of music, you will not develop a "listening vocabulary" for that style and henceforth will be less able or unable to do so later in life. The more enriched an early childhood music environment is, the more potential there will be for obtaining (listening and performing) with appropriate musical vocabularies later in life. Without listening to your mother speak in utero, or hearing her and others speak your native tongue, you will be hampered in developing language skills. That is to say, if you don't hear that language, it would be near impossible to speak that language, read or write, create or improvise in that language. You would not be able to even think in that language. It'd be like me listening to Mandarin. I hear the sounds just fine. Don't understand anything.

Same for music. If you're not exposed, then you won't develop a listening vocabulary from which you can develop a performing (including movement) vocabulary. 

I think that's as simple as I can make it.

Jazz, generally being the most complex on a number of levels, is a critical component of what I expose the children in my early childhood classes. The parents need it too, though!

I play Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bichet, Roy Eldridge, Dave Brubeck (Blue Rondo and Take 5), Paul Desmond (Take 10), Mills Brothers (Tiger Rag), Nina Simone (Here Comes the Sun), Lionel Hampton (Rag Mop), Fletcher Henderson, Django Reinhardt, regularly and repeatedly for children birth to age 8, but that's only because I don't teach older children.

I, of course, play classical, gospel, blues, big band, some kids music, Harry Bellafonte, but not much rock, and one gospel song that has a rap section (Take 6 - "Harmony" off of Join the Band). I'm still looking for more repertoire from all genres that is appropriate for young ears.

Criteria for such:
Length - 2 to 3:45 minutes long (I don't like to fade out. I want children to experience the WHOLE many times.)
Groove - a must
Timbral changes at least 5-6 times if not 20 during the cut.
Strong dynamic changes, if not enough of the former. Gabrieli works here.

 

[Please contribute your favorite repetoire for children below. Thanks!]

Feel free to ask questions. Or shoot me an email back. TeachMusicToKids@gmail.com.

Also, we've recently launched a campaign for a revolutionary music learning app. Check it out at http://igg.me/at/teachmusictokids 

Thank you!

Best,
Eric

 

Audiation - a response to the #musedchat Twitter chat

Background:

I studied for several years with Dr. Gordon, the man who coined the term audiation. His ideas about how we learn to be musical handily refuted my undergraduate training in music education. It also profoundly affected my musicianship as I learned how much I did not audiate. This was at once confronting and exhilerating. To this day, I still grapple with how children best learn music. My continuing professional development is almost entirely due to the distinctions in music development and Gordon’s sequence of music learning I began digesting over 20 years ago. 

This blog post is probably longer than any should be (7 pages?). Who said, “Had I had more time, I would have made it shorter.”? If you can’t make it to the end or you’d like to skip it, you can learn about audiation from a podcast, go here: http://bit.ly/d2Cydi

Also see a short video of audiation in action here: http://bit.ly/f2dpIe

What follows is a transcript of the #musedchat with my comments inserted.

Paragraphs with NO ** are where I copied and pasted the transcript.

**Paragraphs that start with ** are my comments.

**Your comments and questions are most welcome. I love professional disagreement. It’s helpful to me to continually reconsider any position I’ve taken. My Twitter and email are at the end.

The #musedchat transcript begins here:

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What is Audiation?

The #MusEdChat participants started the chat by defining and describing what is audiation. Audiation is a complex subject that has many definitions. Most musicians and music teachers define audiation by saying it is inner hearing. 

**Inner hearing was insufficient to Gordon’s thinking when describing the process of audiation. Hearing is physical. Audiation is not physically hearing. In fact, it can occur without any external stimulus at all. I believe that Kodaly used the term “inner hearing” to describe what audiation has evolved to be. It was a bold first step in the psychology of music understanding. Gordon expounded on this idea using an extraordinary amount of research, both observational and experimental. 

The #MusEdChat participants disagreed and said that definition of audiation is not specific enough. 

**The definition of music audiation is defined by the man who coined the term, Dr. Edwin E. Gordon, in his seminal book titled, “Learning Sequences in Music.”

There are 8 types of audiation which include 

1) listening to, 

2) reading, and

3) writing music (both familiar or unfamiliar music)

4) recalling and performing music from memory (necessarily familiar music)

5) recalling and writing music from memory (necessarily familiar)

6, 7 and 8 consist of creating and improvising music while performing, reading, and writing (all necessarily unfamiliar music).

**Gordon describes 6 stages of audiation. These are theoretical and thus cannot be proven. Rather, they are detailed descriptions of the possibile psychological processes that occur when one audiates music.

**The stages go from momentarily retaining an “after sound,” through making sense of the essential tones/beats, then comparing these to a reservoir of patterns stored in your “musical memory” or past experiences, to the eventual prediction (in audiation) of what will occur next in the music. These stages cycle through as one engages in audiation. Sometimes, only the first or second stage is attained (as perhaps the first time I listened to Balinese gamelon). At other times, one could predict quite accurately and cycle quickly through the 1st through 6th stages frequently and easily. Take a second and audiate “Twinkle, Twinkle.”  Hopefully, that comes easily. Now, audiate “Twinkle” in minor and moving in 7/8. Ah ha. If you stopped to try to count out the rhythm, that’s is music theory, and not audiation. If you had to run to the piano to play it in minor, that is theory or imitation or something else, but it is not audiation. Perhaps the reason I like jazz and Stravisnky is that my predictions don’t always match what comes next in the music. I like the feeling of being tricked some of the time. I don’t enjoy the tonal aspects of dodecaphonic music as my predictions fail all too often.

**Analogies can be helpful if you don’t have time to read and digest the first chapter in “Learning Sequences.” Here are two:

1) Thinking is to language what audiation is to music.

If you do not understand the language you are listening to, reading or writing, you are not thinking in that language, or if you are, it may only be at a cursory level.

2) Visualization is to the eye what audiation is to the ear. If I asked you to visualize a purple dog, your power to take that image from your mind and render it on canvas would represent your depth of visual understanding or power to visualize. I would bet that Monet’s purple dog is more vivid, or has more depth of understanding of the elements of art—line, form, perspective, contrast, color, etc.—than the purple dog most of us visualized. 

**Of course, at some level, analogies fail and music or art can become a matter of what one likes or not. Gordon’s point about audiation relative to music appreciation is that without audiation, appreciation has less depth and is probably all but superficial. 

**A child who reads a story and only sounds out the words does not understand the story. An artist who visualizes before she draws or paints is matching her mind’s artistic eye to what she is about to create.

**When you listen to a foreign language that is unfamiliar to you, you cannot think in that language. Eventually, you retain some sounds, or even words, and later phrases. Later, you begin to give meaning to some of what you heard in the past (distant or immediate). Audiation works the same way in music.

@michellek107 said “In order to be true audiation that inner hearing must have some meaning attached to it.” 

**The power to give meaning to music is an excellent short hand definition of audiation. 

@Zweib7 agreed saying that context and meaning is a big concept that many overlook when attempting to define audiation. A great way to better understand audiation is by comparing it to art. @richardmccready said “In art, visualization is being able to see in your mind and in music audiation is being able to hear music in your head without hearing it out loud first.” 

Richard’s statement is correct regarding types 2 and 3. Additionally though, one can be audiating music just physically heard (type 1).

@lovedrummin said “To me audiation is when you can look at music and hear and understand it before even putting out any sound.”

**Another good example. This is type 2.

 @DrTimony said “Audiation is a just a name given to what students already do. 

**I have to disagree. Many students do NOT already do this. Many do, but children who play out of tune are not audiating tonally or harmonically. They probably don’t understand the tonal and harmonic contexts inside which they are performing.

What we are talking about here is calibrating what they already do.”

**Some are only imitating.  Worse, some are pushing buttons and blowing air. If they are not audiating, we need to be bringing them through the stage of music development they are in. Some children (and adults) are still in music babble or a stage of pre-audiational development (See “A Music Learning Theory for Newborn and Young Children.”). They don’t know that they’re not in tune, or not on the beat. They are not aware of what tonality or meter they are in. 

The Gordon definition of audiation seems to encompass all of the qualities of audiation that the #MusEdChat participants suggested. The Gordon definition of audiation says “Audiation takes place only when we hear, comprehend, and internalize music for which the sound is no longer or may never have been present.”

**This is Gordon’s succinct definition. The implications of it laid the foundation for a working definition of music aptitude and also for Music Learning Theory, especially skill learning sequence.

Audiation in Relationship to Sight Reading and Solfeggio

Next the chat shifted to discussing how audiation is related to sight reading and solfeggio. Most of the chat participants agreed that audiation and sight reading are not correlated. 

**One can be sight-reading and audiating. In fact, they should be. Unfortunately, most are not. We instead are deciphering the code, much like the child who sounds out the letters or words and thus misses the story.

Your students can be a great sight reader, but still not be audiating in their head. 

**I’d say, good imitator or perhaps good being relative to others. Either that or you’re short changing yourself as you were actually audiating, or partially audiating what you were reading.

@brandtschneider said “some students can sight read very well, but they have no idea about what they are singing. Instead of knowing what they are singing they are just doing the mechanics.” 

**I call these individuals technicians, not musicians. Harsh, I know. This is how I was trained through college. To my mind, it’s shameful.

@lovedrummin said “I was a fantastic sight reader when I was growing-up, but never truly audiated until after I started teaching.”  

**You and the rest of us probably have an above average to high level of music aptitude. Because of that, we taught ourselves how to audiate. This happened despite the traditional theoretical approach to music instruction most of us received.

Next the chat shifted to discussing audiation in correlation to solfeggio. Kodaly, Orff, and Dalcroze all claim that solfeggio facilitates the inner ear which would lead to solfeggio helping with audiation. @Dianawinds456 agreed saying “Teaching solfeggio and sight reading by example with help improve the performance of our students. Solfeggio and sight reading is all about singing before you play, which I believe is a big part of audiation.” The majority of the #MusEdChat participants believe that solfeggio does not help with audiation and that it may actually hinder developing the skills of auditation. Most of the chat participants said that they have never used solfeggio and that has never been a hinderance in reading or audiation. @richardmccready said “I learned how to audiate by having good sight reading skills and from singing the notes on the page. I could never hack solfeggio, but I am still able to audiate.” @DrTimony ended this portion of the chat by saying “I am not a fan of using solfeggio for reading or audiation. Solfeggio can be good for warmups and intervals, but it does not help to build audiation skills.”

Oh boy. I’m gonna get in some hot water now. I am going to challenge Richard and DrT now. Solfeggio (or I call it Solfege and I have no idea what the difference is, if any) ABSOLUTELY helps in teaching children to audiate, but it is a technique used at the 2nd level of Skill Learning Sequence. Let me break it down.

Once a student is audiating, we should increase the size of his tonal and rhythm vocabularies. Agreed? Later, we should help his understanding of tonal and rhythm contexts, and to differentiate among these tonalities and meters. The first level of Learning Sequence is the Aural/Oral level. Basically, listen first and perform back. This level should begin only after a child has emerged from music babble and it is accomplished by singing tonal patterns on a neutral syllable, preferably “bum” or rhythm patterns chanted on a neutral syllable, preferably “bah” and asking a child to perform them back. Once a large number of patterns are accurately performed back in solo by most of the children, you are ready to move to the next level of Skill Learning Sequence called Verbal Association. This is when you put tonal syllables and rhythm syllables (solfege) to the patterns that the children have already learned to audiate. Why do such a thing? ALL of the psychology papers suggest that, just as in language, you will not be able to remember as many “things” if you don’t have it attached to some type of verbal associate. All or most of the things you see around you have names in language. Without those names, you could never remember as many things. When you add verbal associates to tonal patterns or to rhythm patterns, you are making it easier for children (adults and music teachers alike) to expand their vocabularies even further and to make connections in language (and draw inferences if they can) about the patterns they know how to audiate. They are then able to not only increase their tonal and rhythm vocabularies even further, but also name tonalities and functions. Bringing language into the fold after having taught a sufficient number of patterns at the Aural/Oral level of learning, cements what it is students have learned to audiate at the previous level. 

**Ok, kill me if you want. I’m ready for it. Bring it on. 

(You’re brave if you got this far. It’s better than reading the book I’ll tell ya.)

How to Teach Audiation

Next the chat participants shared ideas on how we can teach audiation to our students. One way is by using Conversational Solfeggio created by Feierbend who studied under Gordon. Conversational solfege is a watered down version of Gordon’s Music Learning Theory. Conversational solfege helps students become independent musical thinkers **[Audiators]** by using an ear-before-eye approach to music literacy. The goal of conversational solfege is to create fully engaged, indpendent musicians who can hear, understand, read, write, compose, and improvise. Many of the chat participants who have used conversational solfege said they have found a huge difference in the musicality of their students because they are audiating. Another way to teach audiation is to emphasize active listening. @michellek107 said “Listening needs to begin in Kindergarten even if it is not in the curriculum. I believe that there never can be enough emphasis placed on listening.” 

**Listening begins in the last trimester before birth. By 3 years old, the importance of the acculturation a child receives cannot be overstated.

Teaching improvisation is another great way to help students improve their audiation skills. @brandtschneider said “In my ensembles we do a lot of silent band performances as students sing and play. I hold out one hand for out loud and the other hand for in head.” 

**Improvisation (and creativity) is the next to last inference level of learning in Gordon’s Learning Sequence. The last leve is music theory, something that Gordon says should be avoided so that the thinking and analytical brain (outside of audiation) can stay our of the way of children’s ability to audiate. Improvisation (and creativity) is the hallmarks of the best music education. We improvise in language all the time, why not in music as much? Probably because we lack enough vocabulary as a readiness to improvise.

Audiation can also be taught in classes such as music technology by using a sequencer window. @lovedrummin said “When teaching audiation it is important to keep it simple and practical. Too often audiation is so technical and students don’t get anything out of it.” In order to help our students get better at audiation we need experience, experimentation, calibration, and regular practice.

**Teaching audiation is a function of understanding Skill and Content Learning Sequence and if you don’t follow it’s general prescription, you are likely making it more difficult for children who do not have a high level of music aptitude. You can, as I do, jump among levels of learning sequence, but It’s important to spiral back to the level which has not yet been mastered to give everyone—despite their level of music aptitude —the opportunity to succeed at the skill level you jumped away from.

Importance of Audiation

The #MusEdChat participants ended the chat by discussing the importance of auditation. Audiation is an important skill for students to learn in order to become more musical. @lovedrummin said “I have become a much better musician over the past three years since I began audiating.” It is especially important that we start teaching audiation in the primary grades. Instrumental students usually make less mistakes when they audiate and hear the music before they try playing. It is vital that we teach our students to hear first. It is also important for us to teach them to hear the whole ensemble sound not just their individual note. @brandtschneider summed up the chat by saying “As music teachers our mantra about auditation should be think, hear, breather, and then play.

**I’d say, if you’re not teaching children how to audiate, you are not teaching them to be musical. It is like teaching a language without teaching thinking. It is like teaching about a Cezanne painting without using your eyes. To me, it is that critical to music education and yet, I was never trained in it until I stumbled upon Dr. Gordon in my graduate studies. Then I was seriously bad at it for the years I tried to use it in the classroom. I only got better as I taught it for the last 22 years. I consider myself somewhat competent now and still make plenty of errors. In the end, the children’s musical achievement speaks for itself.

Also see a short video of audiation in action here: http://bit.ly/f2dpIe

You can learn more about audiation from my podcast here: http://bit.ly/d2Cydi

@rizzrazz on Twitter

drrizzrazz@gmail.com