Music learning is a lifelong process. There are always more difficult patterns to learn, more difficult discriminations to make, more difficult melodic twists. There is always the choice of moving forward through Sound, Syllables, and Symbols, or broadening any one of the three S’s by adding more difficult content. We are going to move forward to Symbols, assuming “core facility” in Sound and Syllables.

The dictionary defines the word “facility” as “readiness or ease due to skill, aptitude, or practice.” The beauty of this definition as applied to music learning is its honoring of practice as well as skill—experience as well as mastery, musical input as well as musical output. “Core facility” in music learning is a function of experience as much as it is the ability to precisely perform musical content.

“Core facility” might be described as the basic aural grid work or sound structures in the musical mind, within which rhythm and tonal fall in place—make sense to the musical mind. At the level of Sound, “core facility” includes a sense of meter and sense of tonality—with musical input as much a measure of that facility as musical output. “Core facility” with syllables includes the attachment of syllables to that sense of meter and tonality, demonstrating the musical mind’s reflecting on its own rhythm and tonal knowing and its greater command of its “core facility” with sound, using rhythm and tonal syllables to voice its awareness of rhythm and tonal knowing—still with musical input as much a measure of the facility as musical output. “Core facility” with Symbols includes an understanding of “how notation works” to represent one’s “core facility” in sound and syllables through notation—the facility, whether in musical input or musical output, to navigate notation.

“Core facility” in rhythm through Sound, Syllables, and Symbols can be accomplished through long term Immersion and Interaction with macro beats, micro beats, and divisions, with occasional more difficult patterns, through Duple, Triple, Unusual Paired and Unusual Unpaired meters. Once that facility is in place, the musical mind can make sense of more difficult rhythm content within a given level AND move on to the next “S.” “Core facility” in tonal through Sound, Syllables, and Symbols can be accomplished through long term Immersion and Interaction with tonal segments that include the characteristic tones of the tonality and spin around the tonic and dominant pitches in at least Dorian, Mixolydian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Aeolian tonalities, which easily carries over to Major and Minor. Once that facility is in place, the musical mind can make sense of more difficult tonal content within a given level AND move on to the next “S.”

“Core facility” provides for audiation to move from Sound, to Syllables, to Symbols, while providing for continued and expanded learning at each level. “Core facility” in Sound, Syllables, and Symbols equip children to absorb more difficult content when they are no longer under our tutelage—“practicing” greater facility. The basic structures will be in place at each level for new content to fall into place, whether that content comes through our classes, general or instrumental music, private instruction, the conservatory, or the garage band.