Letters On Music Learning offer reflections on music teaching and learning at the Come Children Sing Institute from 1989-1995. The fourteen issues are available in full as an e-book. Excerpts presented here are from early issues addressing the classroom evolution of some of the practices in your online course.
The Come Children Sing Institute provided a unique laboratory for the study of the process of music learning. Children from birth through thirteen filled an extensive preschool program and children’s choral program for eleven years. Many children were in attendance from early childhood throughout their grade school years. This provided the opportunity to witness long-term growth, spanning the full range of the development of audiation from infancy through music reading and music performance, while developing and field-testing method, techniques and materials with both long-term and beginning students at every age.
Extensive study with Edwin Gordon led to reflections on his work in Letters On Music Learning, sometimes supporting, sometimes challenging his views, respectfully leading to a different model of tonal audiation with a new tonal syllable system and a different approach to music reading—all of which are addressed in Letters On Music Learning. The many years of wonderful discussion and mutual challenge with Edwin Gordon took place before his music learning theory became the capitalized Music Learning Theory, before the Gordon Institute for Music Learning or certification was established, and before there was an early childhood curriculum in his name.
Several of the excerpts presented here address the practice that began with Gordon’s model of presenting rhythm patterns without tonal and tonal patterns without rhythm. Children’s response supported Gordon’s premise that rhythm is learned best without tonal. Children of all ages, however, consistently demonstrated that tonal is learned best WITH rhythm. These excerpts from Letters On Music Learning offer bits and pieces of reflections and observations of music learning with young children during the process of this discovery. Theory informs practice, while practice informs theory.
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Excerpts from Issue 1—Fall, 1989
We have only begun to tap the audiation potential of the child. There is so much to explore. The uncertainty inherent in a new exploration with children is part of the joy and challenge of teaching. We often have to babble in the classroom with a new idea to understand where it might fit into the learning process. Just as audiation guides the student to develop instrumental technique, so does the understanding of music learning guide the teacher to develop teaching techniques.
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"Who wants to sing with Resting Tone Rabbit?" As very young children accepted my invitation to sing the resting tone in response to major or minor tonal patterns, I noticed that many children sang the resting tone more precisely after a dominant pattern than after a tonic pattern. I would have predicted that it would be easier to sing the resting tone if my pattern ended on the resting tone. The children seemed to relate better to their own sense of tonality than to the model in front of them.
A creativity/improvisation activity also brought a most unexpected response. A number of three through five year old children who only approximated my tonal patterns in games of echoing, tuned their own patterns precisely in this activity, even if their own patterns were those they had only approximated in the echoing activity. Having to deliver their own patterns put them more in touch with their own audiation than did imitating my patterns.
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Excerpts from Issue 2—Winter, 1989
The following article was written for a local music educators' organization. Their challenging request—a one-page article on early childhood music and Gordon's music learning theory.
From The Mouths of Babes…….
Eighteen month old Carolyn sings a minor song without words tunefully. Twenty month old David plays a phrygian resting tone in tune on the open tone of the recorder. Two year old Michael plays macro and micro beats precisely on a drum in duple or triple meter. Two year old Matthew sings the resting tone in response to minor tonal patterns. Two and a half year old Kristen sings dorian and Lydian songs in tune. Three year old Lauren improvises tonal patterns in minor tonality. Three year old Katie sorts major and minor tonal patterns into tonic and dominant functions. Four year old Christopher sorts rhythm patterns into duple, triple, or unusual paired meter. Five year old Tommy improvises rhythm patterns in triple meter.
Very young children are wired for music development. The sooner we tap into this natural ability, the more we can develop children's musicianship and the more we can learn about music learning.
The process of music learning has been elegantly defined by Edwin Gordon and even more elegantly demonstrated by children. Infants' attention to tonality and meter is observable at three months old. One year old children are enchanted with tonal and rhythm patterns. Three year olds are more in touch with resting tone than most twelve year olds.
Young children have so much to teach us about knowing music through sound rather than through words. They make it very clear that tuneful singing is the expression of tonal knowing, and that rhythmic movement is the expression of rhythm knowing, just as speech is the expression of language knowing. As non-verbal children indicate that they do not want one doll but another, they communicate that they do not relate to individual pitches, notes, or beats, but to tonal patterns within a tonality and rhythm patterns within a meter. Similarly, young children attend more to songs without words in various tonalities and chants without words in various meters than they do to the charming songs and chants with words we have assumed to be appropriate for the very young.
We must adjust music teaching to accommodate music learning. We aspire to develop the whole child through music education—stimulating language, movement, self expression, and self esteem. Ironically, the parts of the whole that have been most neglected are the child's musical needs.
Ask Carolyn for help in understanding Gordon's music learning theory. Ask David, Michael, Katie, or Kristen. They won't be able to tell you what Gordon is talking about, but they will show you what he means.
[Note: Later experience demonstrated that infants' attention to tonality and meter is observable from birth.]
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The power of the resting tone can become manifest in movement. The "resting tone squat" makes the resting tone as tangible in movement as macro and micro beats.
Occasionally between tonal patterns I playfully moved to a squat and sang the resting tone. The children imitated, enjoying the game and the anticipation of the squat—that is, the anticipation of the resting tone. Eventually, all I did was squat and the children would squat and sing the resting tone. They began to experience the power of their own audiation as they tried to beat me to the resting tone. In the context of both tonal patterns and songs without words in various tonalities, children responded to the squat by "moving to the resting tone."
During various pieces of choral literature, children through ninth grade responded to my occasional squat by squatting and singing the resting tone. Their intonation improved as they became more tangibly aware of the resting tone in the context of choral literature. The abruptness of the squat focused wandering minds back to the resting tone and involved the whole body in tonal audiation.
Toddlers, as well as infants in their mothers' arms, appeared to delight in both the movement and the resting tone. Three year olds repeatedly squatted gleefully and sang the resting tone as I continued to interrupt their songs without words in various tonalities with an untimely squat.
The children's response suggested that they unconsciously audiate a resting tone, and that their joy in moving to the resting tone squat reflects their joy in bringing unconscious audiation to consciousness—through movement.
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Two and a half year old Bradley is blind. He is extremely musical. Bradley's consistently tuneful and rhythmic performance is always accompanied by movement. Bradley "sees" something to which we are blind.
Two and a half year old Michael is severely hearing impaired, yet he exhibits the “audiation stare" even from across the room. It is as if the tonalities and meters connect to something within him, bypassing his hearing impairment.
What is the relation of audiation to hearing "that is not physically present?" Although Michael has very little speech and very little control of his voice, he has sung the resting tone in response to tonal patterns. He also attempts to coordinate his body with macro beats.
Michael puts into perspective the relationship between vocal technique and aural input. His hearing is impaired; his voice is not. Yet, his attempts to communicate hardly resemble speech. Michael has been deprived of the necessary input to use his voice meaningfully. Students who are deprived of the necessary tonal input cannot use their voices tunefully.
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During the past semester, I have had the privilege of working with a master teacher—a group of twenty-two five and six year olds. The children taught me more than I taught them. Since each of these children had been with me for at least three years, they were quite developed. As we continued classroom activities with no expectation for precision, they began to function as an ensemble. How does the development of audiation in pre-school manifest itself in ensemble performance?
This bumper crop of fledgling choristers has taught me that the majority of skills we try to develop in a children's chorus can be accomplished by the time the children reach kindergarten. These children maintain pitch without a piano—they audiate tonality. Their audiation of macro and micro beats propels every song they sing. Their heartfelt expression of text complements their heartfelt expression of line and movement. Their lovely little sound is developing without attention to vocal technique. A choral musician emerges from the young child who has been taught to audiate.
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Might sustained movement be the common thread in the success of the jump
(Issue 1), the resting tone squat, and a number of other tonal movement activities I had been exploring? As this question presented itself toward the end of the semester, a whole new dimension opened. I am sharing my present views with you, looking forward to further exploration next semester.
It appears that sustained movement is as important to tonal audiation as it is to rhythm. Further, it appears that tonal requires a particular kind of movement, different from rhythm movement. Sustained rhythm movement involves relaxed, free-flowing movement. Sustained tonal movement, on the other hand, involves more deliberate energy, greater thrust. It was illuminating to observe that if a child did not move appropriately while singing tonal patterns, he did not sing precisely. If he couldn't do it with his body, he couldn't do it with his voice.
A pom pon and a scarf serve to demonstrate the difference between rhythm and tonal movement. A pom pon allows air to flow through the streamers as it is moved. A scarf, on the other hand, when thrown, resists the air and then cradles it—or is cradled by it. The free-flowing movement of the pom pon represents sustained rhythm movement. The thrust of the scarf into the air represents sustained tonal movement. Perhaps the difference between sustained rhythm movement and sustained tonal movement is a difference in the interaction between muscles and breath. Perhaps breath sustains the muscles with rhythm movement, whereas muscles sustain the breath with tonal movement.
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Duple Cookies
Utensils needed: Empty mixing bowl, two wooden spoons, rolling pin, flat something for cookie sheet, closed something for oven, a child's imagination, a playful teacher.
Teacher begins making cookies by stirring in "some ba ba ba, ba ba ba" (duple sequence). Teacher may then add a little _____ (duple pattern), perhaps a cup of _____(duple pattern), and a spoonful of _____ (duple pattern), all the while stirring and chanting in meter. Each child takes a turn stirring the batter, adding his own duple ingredients. Teacher adds duple patterns as needed to maintain consistency of dough.
Turn dough out onto floor. Sprinkle with syllables. Using rolling pin, roll cookie dough on macro beats, chanting patterns with syllables. Each child rolls dough, chanting his own patterns with syllables.
Shape cookies while chanting and place in oven to bake. Go on to another activity. When the cookies smell done, they are ready to eat. Children place their orders for cookies. Some children will want du de du de, du de du de cookies. Others will prefer du ta de ta du, du ta de ta du cookies. Still others will want their cookies plain –ba ba ba, ba ba ba. Triple ingredients may be substituted for duple.
[Note: Rhythm syllables are presented at a later point in development than is covered by your online course.]
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Excerpts from Issue 3--Spring, 1990
I had reached new dimensions in my own audiation. Five teachers of varied backgrounds were each validating my experience. Were those new dimensions part of the phenomenon of audiation, or the phenomenon of serendipity? I turned to the children for answers.
The children's chorus, like the teachers, had been saturated with the various tonalities and meters and had at least a couple of years of experience with Learning Sequence Activities. Proud of my new skill, I began improvising on a neutral syllable in mixolydian, involving the group in movement. I casually suggested that a couple of the children try singing their own songs while the group continued moving. Not only did those two surprise me with their spontaneous mixolydian songs, but so did the next ten. The first grader was as fluent in mixolydian as the eighth grader. Out of the dozen or so children who tried creating their own songs, only two were not fully in the tonality.
My grade school students were already competent in a skill I had just developed. What surprises might the preschool children have in store? They, too, have been saturated with the various tonalities and meters, as well as major and minor tonal patterns and duple and triple rhythm patterns. They usually found it difficult to echo my patterns. Would they find diatonic patterns easier? Would they be confused if I combined tonal and rhythm? How would I teach them to create their own songs rather than attempting to imitate mine?
The children were freed by diatonic patterns with rhythm. They were never so willing to respond tonally, and they were never so tuneful. Their own four beat melodies in a given tonality were their immediate response to mine.
Two through five year old children created their own spontaneous phrases in major, minor, dorian, mixolydian, phrygian and lydian. Two flaming red songbird puppets, Sing-a-Song and Sing-a-Long, provide a model of the kind of activity that brought such response. Sing-a-Song sets up the tonality and meter. After a demonstration (not explanation) of the two puppets taking turns singing their own four macro beat melodies in a given tonality, the teacher becomes Sing-a-Song, and a child becomes Sing-A-Long. Sing-A Song begins with a four-beat melodic phrase, and Sing-a-Long follows with his. Back and forth the puppets communicate in song. After a child has sung several times in his conversation, another child becomes Sing-a-Long.
In dialogue, the children played with their own audiation, exploring what they were trying to say. LeWanda, a kindergartener, began in her usual non-tuneful manner. As she continued in the playful conversation, she attempted to vary her pitches, though they sounded unrelated. Still, she continued intently as if she were searching for meaning. Sing-a-Song innocently maintained his model, allowing her to explore her own audiation. LeWanda found her own meaning and proceeded to improvise beautifully in dorian. This regularly non-tuneful child created dorian phrases that were more interesting than mine. [I use the term "improvisation" more freely than Edwin Gordon. I refer to spontaneous creating within the parameters of both tonality and meter as improvising.]
Four year old Nora is a very tonal child. While in duple meter, Nora created beautiful, lyric melodies in dorian. Trying to better understand the independence of tonal and rhythm skills, I interrupted our duple interchange, established triple meter, and began creating a dorian song in triple. Nora responded with more beautiful dorian lines, but she was neither in duple nor triple meter. She was babbling in rhythm, but could not be shaken from her beloved dorian.
Adam, a four year old who had not previously responded tunefully, improvised in dorian with the birds. The following week, Adam improvised in phrygian in duple meter, but when attempting phrygian in triple meter, this rhythmic child went back to his non-tuneful manner.
Nicky, a rhythmic, rambunctious four year old who has been with me since infancy, was generally inconsistent in his response with tonal patterns. When he was tuneful, it was usually within the fifth of the audiation range, and the top end of that range would likely collapse, as would his interest, before we finished his turn. His first experience with improvisation rivaled a jazz musician. His major melodies flowed with exciting rhythms that he punctuated with movement. Rhythm propelled his dormant sense of tonality, sending him freely and frequently up to the D an octave above middle C. He didn't want his turn to end and his manner made it clear that he didn't need my square phrases in his jazz. In phrygian, Nicky's body tried to similarly move his melodic lines, but his eyes told of tonal challenge as he babbled tonally, though in rhythm. This time he needed my phrases to help him find his way around phrygian. His little body continued to move rhythmically as if he were trying to start his tonality engine. He got it running, as his delightful phrygian improvisations were as well-tuned as the engine.
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The differences in the full gamut of children's responses appear to loosely follow a developmental pattern. In each of the tonalities, the least skilled children on the developmental spectrum responded with an unrelated pitch, usually with some rhythmic variation. As they moved up the range of development, they responded with the resting tone, and then on and around the resting tone, again with some rhythmic variation. Particularly interesting to me was a response that might be described as a whine in the tonality. The response was obviously in the tonality, usually starting with the resting tone, but the pitches were not discrete. Moving along in the spectrum of responses, the more developed children repeatedly delivered one or two favorite patterns, always around and including either the tonic or dominant pitch. These children usually delivered patterns they had heard in class, but their bird was not echoing mine. The most developed children moved freely in the tonality by step and by skip, often creating patterns that had not been heard in class, and spicing their response with interesting rhythms.
Looking back at my responses to the various developmental levels, I found that I intuitively related to the individual child's level of development. With the child whose response was an unrelated pitch, I tended to deliver phrases with tonal and rhythm variety. To the child hovering around the resting tone, my bird delivered melodic fragments around and including either the tonic or dominant pitch. In response to the child who whined in the tonality, Sing-a-Song imitated the child's whine, but with discrete pitches, helping the child to say what he was trying to say. When a child repeated his favorite patterns, I tended to limit my patterns, both tonally and rhythmically, hovering around either the tonic or dominant pitch. My deliberate response was like a mother communicating with a child who speaks in two word sentences. With the more developed children, Sing-a-Song initiated a friendly exchange of phrases with increasing tonal and rhythm complexity. With the most developed children, I moved to eight beat phrases, which the children followed with their own extended phrases. As Vygotsky puts it, "What the child can do in cooperation today, he can do alone tomorrow."
In his books, Thought and Language, and Mind in Society, Lev Vygotsky heralds the importance of the adult's role in helping the child to accomplish those things he cannot yet do by himself. Jerome Bruner, in Child's Talk, describes the intuitive interaction between mother and child in spontaneous peek-a-boo games and how it relates to language development. The songbirds embody both views. Sing-a-Song playfully interacts with competence just beyond that of the child, feeding new growth with greater challenge, providing for the child's developing communication—in song.
Most important in the audiation conversation of the song birds, is the fact that the child is creating his own music. He is making his own meaning from the raw material we have provided. He is speaking/thinking/singing/audiating for himself.
There is an intimate relationship between language and music. Edwin Gordon has often said that we learn music the way we learn language, and his Learning Sequence Activities point toward conversation as a model. Witnessing the power of music dialogue with young children, I am drawn to Susan Langer's speculation that speech developed from song, and William S. Condon's statement that "language is a music." Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we learn language the way we learn music.
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Excerpts from Issue 4—Fall, 1990
The rhythm-movement connection is a never-ending source of wonder. A particular group of youngsters taught me about rhythm audiation through their movement. Most of the children in the class celebrated their second birthday during the fall semester. All had been involved in the program since birth, and each attended an older sibling's class as well as his own during his first year. Their two year old temperament never ceased to be amusing, and their developed musicianship never ceased to be amazing.
With teacher and student face to face, holding hands, rocking from one foot to the other on macro beats and then alternating the extension of right and left arms for micro beats, these two year olds were competent in duple, triple and unusual paired meters. They led me in movement. They lifted their little legs differently as they rocked in unusual paired meter, accommodating the uneven macro beats. And, they were as competent in the meter when the first macro was divided into three micros and the second into two, as they were when the first macro was divided into two micros and the second into three. Their ease in movement with uneven beats in either grouping of micros confirmed Gordon's contention that we audiate both groupings as one meter.
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The power of music dialogue continues to present itself (Issue 3). It serves the continuum from music babble to improvisation. As master and apprentice converse in four macro beat melodic segments, the master maintains the tonality and meter and provides a model for the apprentice.
Developing through music dialogue is much like developing in language. When we attend to an infant, we talk to him. He responds in his non-verbal manner, yet we continue to include him in the conversation as if he were a full participant. He is. When he begins to babble, we interact with him as if he were conversing with us. He is. When he begins to put words together, we extend his brief statements to help him say what he is trying to say. We respond to "Da wok" with "Yes, Daddy is going to work."
Similarly, in music dialogue, we converse musically with a child. If he babbles, we maintain the tonality and meter and continue to include him in the conversation. As he tries to relate to the tonality, we support his efforts, helping him to say what he is trying to say in the tonality.
A mother communicating with her young child validates the child's very being. By her manner, she indicates that she believes he has something to say. She makes an effort to understand him and she rephrases what he is trying to express. She focuses her attention on him, accepts his development with pride, and patiently encourages his growth.
The mother provides what Jerome Bruner in his book Child's Talk calls "scaffolding"—a temporary support structure for the child's developing language. Like training wheels, she assists the child in his efforts until he develops sufficiently to function without her. Similarly, through music dialogue, the teacher provides scaffolding for the child's developing sense of tonality and meter.
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The Evolution of Music Dialogue
Little children are perfect learners. If my teaching is not appropriate, no amount of persistence or creativity will make it right for learning. I have to change what I am doing, not change the children. When teaching is right for learning, children are spontaneous, expressive, playful, enthusiastic, cooperative, and most musical.
For several years I struggled to get little children to imitate my tonal and rhythm patterns. There is no struggle when teaching is right for learning. Something was wrong. I could design creative activities that enticed children to respond to my patterns, but I could not teach them how to imitate. They either did or they did not. The interaction itself did not facilitate their echoing my patterns.
Children frequently responded to my rhythm patterns with their own patterns in my meter. There was a bit of whimsy in their movement that suggested repeatedly the appropriateness of the interaction. I took my cue and devised activities that invited the children to create their own spontaneous songs and chants. The activities charmed the children, but they didn't take them anywhere. If a child was singing his own extended song, my guidance was an intrusion. Again, I could not facilitate learning.
New activities brought new insights. Donned with fire hats and a rope, a brigade of little firemen took turns putting out a fire by aiming the "hose" and chanting in triple meter. Caught up in pretending, the children were most apt to deliver their own patterns. When they attempted to imitate mine, they were not only drawn out of their make-believe, but out of their expressive response and spontaneous movement.
Baking "duple cookies" (Issue 2) introduced a new dimension as the children and I alternated adding duple ingredients to the cookies. The playful nature of the activity released the child's spontaneous chant, and my ingredients maintained the meter, guiding the individual child. The rhythm response of the children was far more developed than it was in any previous activity.
Still attempting imitation, I tried to get each child to chant a familiar chant as we painted the walls with dry paint brushes. I had never seen such musicianship in young children. Little bodies moved expressively as the children painted and chanted beautifully in the meter—their own patterns. The playful nature of the activity released the children's musicianship. Their lovely sustained movement with the ongoing meter, yet their need for intermittent support, scaffolding, suggested continued interaction with each child. The longer the interplay, the more precise a child's response became. Four year old Adam, lost in the playful activity, was chanting patterns that were more difficult than any he had heard in class. He was dialoguing with me.
In the playful rhythm dialogue, I could facilitate a child's developing rhythm response much like a mother facilitates her child's developing speech. As the children and I played in dialogue, they invariably delivered patterns I could not get them to imitate. And, they delivered those patterns with precision and with expression—neither of which was abundant in their echo attempts.
In Child's Talk, Jerome Bruner relates similar observations of young children developing language. Recording mother/child interactions and citing the incidence of imitation in the child's speech, he reports that there is an element of imitation but not direct imitation.
An exchange of tonal patterns with imaginary telephones was an attempt at tonal dialogue (Issue 2). My part of the conversation reinforced the tonality, guiding the individual child's response. The children sang their own tonal patterns, but they did not seem to have the reservoir of tonal patterns that they did of rhythm patterns. Nor were they as spontaneous with tonal patterns as they were with rhythm. The childlike expression of rhythm dialogue was missing. The children could not play with the tonal patterns. They played with the activity, not with the patterns.
I sported a McDonald's visor, inviting the children to place their orders at my music stand counter. The day's menu featured tonal patterns, with a resting tone special. The tonality was reinforced with each child's order as I repeated each order and offered other items on the menu. The children couldn't get enough of the activity. They returned repeatedly to place their tonal orders. However, their playfulness once again could not be expressed in the tonal patterns. Their bodies wanted to move whimsically, but tonal patterns elicited a belabored, "thinking" response rather than a spontaneous, childlike expression. The children's frustrated movement amidst the playful activity suggested that perhaps the children needed rhythm to make tonal audiation come alive.
With a toy microphone (without amplification), I became a star. I sang a four macro-beat diatonic melody, and like the TV interviewer, invited individual children's response. Into the microphone the children sang in my tonality and meter in the whimsical, playful manner of their rhythm dialogue. They were no longer "thinking" tonal patterns, but spontaneously creating their own melodies. Their reservoir of tonal patterns opened to match that of rhythm. Many delivered tonal patterns they had not heard in class.
Dialoguing with tonal and rhythm together, the children became their beautiful, musical selves. Their playfulness was not only in the imaginative activities, but in their musical response. Rhythm play was reflected in movement. Tonal play was embodied in rhythm. The children were "playing" their audiation instruments. In music dialogue, we "play music" with the children. The musicianship of the child is released in play.
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