This Schola has kids as young as six singing Gregorian Chant and polyphony. They are musical, sing with comprehension, all in Latin. They will travel to Madrid to sing at World Youth Day at the Palacio de Deportes , the Toledo Cathedral, and the Convent of St. Teresa of Avila.

Anna Gawley, eleven year old singer in the Schola says, “I love singing chant because it is such a beautiful way to sing. – it is quiet and prayerful. I actually think it is easier to sing in Latin than in English mostly due to the limited vowel sounds.”

Anna’s mother Kristin is impressed with the teaching methods of the director, David J. Hughes, and constant improvement that has led them to be able to sing motets of William Byrd and polyphony of Mozart. “Since they start at a young age it is very easy for them to learn.  It is done incrementally so that they have a strong foundation but it isn’t long before they are singing some very complex pieces.”

Help them get to Spain. Purchase their CD, or if you are in Connecticut, attend their concert on Friday July 22. For ticket and CD info, or to make a donation, visit www.chantwith.us.

Audiation requires the ability to hear with discernment and “play back” what is heard or created inside one’s own head.

Singing and Moving: Teaching Strategies for Audiation in Children is an article published in the June 2009 MENC Journal. The author Allison Maerker Gardner defines AUDIATION above in her own terms.

Bridging the gap between music learning methods, this Suzuki teacher employs various strategies to enhance audiation in her general music and piano students.

“Listening skills are fundamental in my approach to teaching music to children. As a Suzuki instructor, I am always looking for ways to help my students listen more effectively.”

The author goes on to explain how she merges her Suzuki, Dalcroze, and Kodaly training with the Learning Theory of Dr. Gordon, along with the educational theories of Gardner and Piaget, to create a unique and effective technique, and defense of how audiation is an integral and necessary part of music education.

“This is my goal as a teacher: to endow my students with the necessary auditory skills that can take them wherever they choose to go musically. Their lives will surely be the richer for it, and so will those whose lives may be touched by them.”

Over the years, Music Learning Theory has become a method proven to coexist and compliment the more established and accepted methods of music education. More and more experts are incorporating and embellishing on the foundation Dr. Gordon has laid. John Feierabend and Chris Azarra are two of the pioneers to take Music Learning Theory and merge it with their own to create exciting contemporary methods.  Kathy Liperote, Music Ed professor at the Eastman School of Music sums up the metamorphosis:

One of the greatest challenges for those of us who received sight-before-sound music instruction, is breaking away from tradition and teaching in a way that was not a part of our own experience.  All teachers use a variety of teaching styles and procedures, but focusing on the early development of aural skills prepares students to read notation with an aural understanding of what is implicit in that notation. With the ability to think in sound, students can read music with comprehension by associating a new visual experience with a familiar aural experience-a sensible sequence, considering that music is an aural art. In the process, students also learn skills for improvisation, thus building their music-writing vocabularies.  An orientation to music through the ears puts students on a musical road most likely to lead them to their full potential as musicians.

 As music teachers broaden their horizons , they come to realize that all the major methods are complimentary and can only benefit students’ ability to become better musicians.

(MENC login required for link)

http://mej.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/95/4/46

This kid is gonna be an awesome musician! He already is! Rhythmically, he can audiate pulse and meter. He audiates melody, and picks up where he left off in the song. Now give him to a music teacher bent on note naming and turn him into a robot, and see how fast his ear deteriorates. He could get by his whole life without reading a note.  Instead of forcing it down his throat, teach him to read after he understands what he’s playing. Teach him chord function, and tonality. Teach him to improvise. Teach it like a language that he already speaks. Or would we put the cart before the horse?!

Lev Vygotsky, the Russian psychologist (and the originator of scaffolding), suggests that learning takes place spontaneously and that when we become conscious of what we have learned, we have reached a higher level of learning—gained greater control over our knowing. As audiation matures, it reflects on itself. It uses signs to represent itself, indicating its own consciousness of audiation, a higher level of music learning, a deeper level of musical understanding.

Audiation develops consciousness of its own knowing most efficiently through the use of tonal and rhythm syllables—a mirror that reflects audiation, a tangible model that functions as audiation. These signs are in the realm of audiation, but speak to both audiation and language. The syllables provide a bridge from audiation to thinking, a common language for communication between the two ways of knowing. Audiation flirts with the intellectual mind through syllables, but demands that syllables grow out of its own unique way of knowing rather than be imposed by the intellectual way of knowing.

As audiation matures in self-consciousness, tonal and rhythm syllables become the mediator to the next plateau of music learning—music reading and writing. Syllables serve as the link between the intangible audiation and the concrete notation until such a mediator is no longer needed. The musical mind and the intellectual mind become more intimately entwined in music reading. The thinking mind becomes the more aggressive suitor, engaging in a set of strategies for scanning print, finding cues that arouse audiation, and comparing cues with each other. Yet audiation dominates the encounter. They give and take, engaging together in a complex process of problem solving, through which they construct meaning.

The multi-faceted phenomenon of audiation tacitly serves music reading, listening, and composing, but finds its own voice in performance. Audiation generates tuneful and rhythmic performance, in-tune singing and playing, steady tempo, stylistic interpretation, and musical expression. Audiation delivers the life and breath, and the breadth of music.

Dr. Gordon

From interview: http://www.comechildrensing.com/pdf/other_articles_by_MEP/2_A_Conversation_with_Edwin_Gordon.pdf

Teachers, do we believe this to be true? Is Dr. Gordon saying anything that is new? He’s been around long enough now, that we should be somewhat familiar with his sequence and its hierarchy. Listen first, babble like a baby, and that involves creativity too, then apply the labels, synthesize and then notate. Our standards focus on creating, performing and responding.  We also know that when our students create, they are using the higher order thinking skills that enable success in so many areas. Go to the full interview for more info.

www.rizzrazz.vox.com

http://rizzrazz.vox.com/library/post/music-learning—something-to-consider.html“>

Traditional music education puts note reading high on its list of priorities. Despite the lack of the ability of many children to sing in tune or to move rhythmically and with style, we teach them to decipher the code of musical notation. “F is the first space. A whole note gets four counts. Etc.” Furthermore, we complicate the process of music making by teaching executive skills to them at the expense of teaching musicianship. “Push this button down to get this note. Tap your foot. Sit up straight.” The last thing the student is being directed to do is to make a musical product.

If you draw an analogy to language learning, it’s as if you’re asking a toddler who does not have command of his/her language to learn the alphabet as a way to make him literate. Or consider this question: Ever hear a child read every word of a paragraph and then when you ask him to tell you about what he read and he can’t tell you? Where’s the comprehension? It was in the thinking (or lack thereof) that accompanied the reading. With music, all the necessary skills are for naught if there is no musical “thinking.” Understanding music doesn’t come as a byproduct of traditional instruction. It’s fundamental and must be taught.

Can we learn to focus on this as a priority in our music teaching?

Aptitude, specifically music aptitude, is one’s innate rhythmic and melodic talent and potential for musical growth.

Assessment is the act of evaluating, appraising, and/or estimating the features, qualities, performances and needs of individuals.

How do these three relate?  Through development of audiation, students learn to understand music. This is our ultimate goal as educators: to bring our students to understanding, and higher order thinking. Knowing our student’s aptitude gives us a starting point to gauge instruction and form our assessments. Assessment, in all its forms, is about setting the benchmark, and then measuring growth.

There are specific concepts that are necessary for music comprehension. Is it how many quarter notes equal four beats? Or that the note on the second line of the treble staff is G? Indeed, there is a correlation between music and math and spelling, but not at its core. Fundamentally, music is about hearing. Music is sound; the notes on the page representative of that sound. If the students can’t process the sound they have labeled, they do not truly comprehend the music.  As music educators, many assess the ability of students to note name, or make up a rhythm sentence that equals four (and rarely three). Audiation starts at the foundation, just as language learning starts with hearing and imitating, and links concepts just as the alphabets links letters to form words.   

Musical Memory

Audiation is to music what thinking is to language. When listening to speech, we organize the sounds in our head to comprehend the words and ideas being spoken. The musician or listener hears the music, retains what he has just heard, gives meaning to the sounds, and predicts what will come next, based on his prior knowledge of those patterns of sound. The bigger the musician’s musical vocabulary, the more advanced the audiation process. All students have the ability to audiate, based on their aptitude and experiences.

Setting the Benchmark

Talent, specifically measurement of musical talent, is an elusive concept. Music aptitude, however, is not quite the same. It’s the potential to learn music, and all students possess this potential to varying degrees. An assessment cannot truly be valid without the benchmark of student potential. To set this benchmark, the place where we begin to assess learning, we start with the innate potential of the student to learn and comprehend music. This is the doorway to differentiated instruction. The most useful tool to set this benchmark is Dr. Gordon’s Musical Aptitude Profile. This simple aptitude test can be given to any grade level from kindergarten through college. It comes in age and aptitude-appropriate versions.

Evaluating with Knowledge

Responsive teaching in music begins with knowing the individual student’s true music potential. “Measuring” talent requires an inexact science of guesswork. Measurement of music aptitude leaves no room for speculation. A responsive teacher knows the student’s exact capabilities, can teach to those capabilities, and realize when the student has grown beyond those initial capabilities. When music students are engaged at their individual learning level, students will take risks, because the frustration level is low.

The Three A’s

Using the sequential yardstick of aptitude and audiation to form meaningful assessments gives greater credibility to our music programs. Measuring for aptitude removes the guesswork and allows for accurate differentiated instruction. Teaching students to audiate immerses them in much more than note naming and rhythm addition. Then when the time comes to name those notes and form those rhythm sentences, students will have experienced them in numerous and varied settings, and experienced their true meaning in relation to other notes and rhythms, giving meaning to those concepts.