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 the 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.

Excerpts include observations of audiation that led to the evolution of the tonal syllables used in your online course. Theory informs practice, while practice informs theory. Some of the excerpts address music reading as well as syllables, underscoring the conflict between traditional tonal syllables and audiation. Monitoring our own audiation can be valuable in better understanding children’s audiation. It may not provide answers about children’s audiation, but it can raise questions that guide us in our search with children.

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Excerpts from Issue 3—Spring, 1990

Dear Colleagues,

To develop my students' audiation has been a challenge. To develop my own audiation has been an even greater challenge. It is not easy to overcome years of traditional music instruction and college music theory courses. How many times I have wondered if skills in improvisation would ever be mine, and if I would ever master tonal syllables. Why was I still unsure of the syllables on the minor dominant patterns I delivered to the children? Why did I have to go back to my imaginary keyboard to figure them out? Syllables are supposed to broaden my under-standing not challenge me with mental gymnastics. I could create tonic and dominant patterns on a neutral syllable but felt learning-impaired with tonal syllables. I was audiating the patterns but imitating the syllables. For me, tonal syllables were still an external system, yet I found rhythm syllables bonded to the sound.

Trying to better understand my own audiation as well as that of my students, I turned to books on language. Like a kaleidoscope, these books provided an abundance of fresh perspectives on the process of audiation. The interaction between reading, experimenting with my own audiation, and exploring in the classroom took me on an exciting adventure. These letters are but a brief travelogue of my journey.

The greatest insight into my learning disability with tonal syllables came in the realization that the verbal level of audiation is not one of associating syllables with audiation, but one of representing audiation with syllables. The consistency yet versatility that we call the internal logic of syllables, is in audiation. Syllables have a corresponding external logic that reflects the wonder of audiation. They are a metaphor for audiation. The challenge of syllables is not to "learn syllables," but to represent audiation with signs.

The need to represent thinking is basic in man. We use signs to give meaning to experience. The "unsound" practices of referring to an imaginary keyboard, notation, or instrument are attempts to represent our audiation, to reflect on our perceptions, to interpret our experience. Like a photograph, syllables allow us to look at ourselves; to look at our audiation. They are the means by which we know what we know. They provide a perch from which to view our audiation, a perspective which in itself defines the higher level of music learning. The beauty of tonal and rhythm syllables is that they not only provide feedback, but feedforward. They allow us to reflect on our audiation, providing a representation that we can in turn represent in notation.

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One of the most fruitful experiments this semester was to view recorder fingerings as a metaphor for syllables. Both are a system of signs that represent audiation. I was more adept at the tactile representation than the verbal. How did I know automatically what fingerings would "re-present" my audiation of a simple melody? Might the diatonic nature of the melodies have some significance? Might rhythm be a factor?

I have always found that I do my best audiating while driving. With my conscious mind occupied, audiation flows. When I try consciously to audiate, I trip all over myself. Exploring minor tonal syllables diatonically while driving, not only did I find that the syllables were beginning to flow, but I realized that I was intuitively combining rhythm with tonal. I was creating melodies with tonal syllables as I did with fingerings on the recorder. If I tripped on a syllable, I would go back and correct it, much as I might have corrected a fingering.

Intrigued by this experience, I began exploring various tonalities diatonically with rhythm, with and without syllables (I did a lot of driving). I found that I was able to spontaneously create songs on a neutral syllable in any given tonality. These songs were not the belabored songs I usually constructed when I was consciously trying to write a dorian or phrygian song, nor were they bound by diatonic patterns. They were lovely, flowing melodies that rose from an endless spring within.

Rhythm had become a sandbox in which I could play with my sense of tonality. It allowed me to punctuate, to express my sense of tonality. My audiation of the essential tones and characteristic tones that define a tonality was realized in flight. That is, they came alive in rhythm.

Adding tonal syllables, I experienced the phenomenon Gordon describes as the child perceiving one tonal pattern with different rhythm patterns as different tonal patterns. I did not know some of the tonal patterns that I had learned at the verbal level without rhythm, when they were in the context of rhythm. I found that I gave greater tonal meaning to those patterns when they were in the context of many different rhythms and meters. The changing rhythms served as a backdrop for the unwavering tonality. Hearing and creating successive tonal patterns in a tornado of rhythm, I became more aware of the essence of what was being tossed around. My attention became riveted to tonal syllables, as they were the anchors amidst the storm.

It was only in relation to the agitation of rhythm that I began to perceive the internal logic of my own tonal audiation. The more I varied the rhythms and meters as I created my own songs on tonal syllables, the more the syllables bonded with the sound. I was finally beginning to apprehend tonal syllables as I had rhythm syllables and recorder fingerings—as a property of the sound they represent.

While focusing on tonal syllables, my spontaneous songs became rhythmically more interesting. I found that I was able to improvise in various meters, including unusual unpaired meter, which had always been difficult for me. Tonal syllables, like driving, occupied my conscious mind, freeing rhythm audiation.

Experimenting further, I created melodies on rhythm syllables. My attention was then drawn to the rhythm syllables and the internal logic of my rhythm audiation, and my tonal audiation became a free spirit. Ironically, it was unusual unpaired meter with syllables that gave me the greatest freedom tonally. In each tonality, I used tonal functions I didn't know I knew. 

Intrigued by the fact that the less conscious my efforts to audiate, the better I could audiate, I began to explore movement while spontaneously creating songs. With my conscious attention on Laban's basic actions, I had to trust my audiation to fly by its own wings. And fly it did, as it dipped and soared like a graceful bird.

One factor that became apparent throughout my explorations was the importance of creating my own melodies. With or without tonal or rhythm syllables, or movement, somehow the learning was in the creating. The power of my audiation was released in my own expression. Ready-made songs, even those I had previously written, were like TV dinners. The experience of singing a composed song didn't begin to compare in energy, artistic expression, or personal satisfaction to that of creating my own spontaneous melodies that grew out of the context of my life and the wellspring of audiation.

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Excerpts from Issue 5—Winter, 1991

Music notation has always intimidated me. The decoding strategies I learned to employ had nothing to do with audiation. I could not sight-read, nor could I notate my own songs without a piano to find the pitches. If a calculator could have helped me notate the rhythm, I would have used it. Now with greater audiation skill and spontaneous songs to notate (Issue 3), I am beginning to develop a new relationship with notation.

For the first time in my life, the notational system makes sense. That crazy staff that stumped me for years with its key signatures and impossible intervals has become a natural outgrowth of my audiation. I find myself moving from one tonality to another and from one keyality to another, undaunted, when all of a sudden, the lines and spaces get in my way and I go back to old habits.

Much like the optical illusion in which we look at the drawing one way and see a vase, and look at it another way and see a face, audiation and notation present an "audiational/optical illusion." When my audiation is in the foreground, so to speak, I can notate my songs with ease. When notation comes to the foreground, I go back to manipulating notation externally. During those fleeting moments when audiation dominates my transaction with notation, I am fluent in the natural language of notation.

Time signatures and bar lines become insignificant when audiation is in the foreground. After writing the rhythm of a song in unusual unpaired meter, I added the bar lines and seven-eight time signature, only to realize that had I been given the song to read prior to my writing it, I would have stumbled all over the rhythm notation.

Although the vase and face seem to flip back and forth during both my reading and writing, audiation dominates my attempts to write and then read my own music, whereas notation dominates my attempts to read and write the music of others. Further, I find my reading skills developing more by writing music than by reading music.

When I am writing my own music, I start with my own meaning. My task is to represent my meaning in notation. I cannot lose sight of the vase, as I am trying to draw a vase. Reading what I have written, I see a vase, as I know I drew a vase. While writing my own music, I find a oneness with notation. I feel within myself the need and the capacity for notational audiation and I find the internal logic of the system.

I have not yet experienced the same oneness with notation while reading the music of others. Given any piece of music, I am faced with notation. I then have to go beyond notation to meaning. Notation is not something we have to learn, it is something we have to learn to transcend.

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During my intermittent reign as master of notation, I bypassed tonal syllables. Ultimately, I should be able to write without syllables, but I bypassed them out of frustration rather than competence. I found the staff to be within the mother tongue, yet found the syllables to be a foreign language. I could automatically find the appropriate lines and spaces to notate my songs, yet I could not "find" the appropriate tonal syllables.

My audiation functioned differently when writing rhythm. I welcomed rhythm syllables. Perhaps the blank staff provides a pre-fabricated visual metaphor of tonal audiation—a picture with the parameters of tonal audiation. In contrast, there is no blank visual metaphor of rhythm audiation provided for me to write on. Just as there are keys to push on the piano for tonal, but no keys to push for rhythm; there are lines and spaces to fill for tonal but none for rhythm. I create the parameters of rhythm audiation with rhythm syllables—the verbal rather than visual metaphor. When using rhythm syllables, macro and micro beats become as ever-present aurally as the staff or keys on the piano are visually.

Notation provides a support for tonal audiation that it does not provide for rhythm audiation. Yet syllables provide a support for rhythm audiation that they do not provide for tonal audiation. The very nature of rhythm syllables verbally reinforces the constant audiation of macro and micro beats and the relation of melodic rhythm patterns to macro and micro beats, whatever the melodic rhythm. Tonal syllables, on the other hand, do not verbally reinforce the constant audiation of resting tone and tonal functions in relation to the resting tone, except when the functions and resting tone are part of the melody. Rather, tonal syllables require that we maintain the resting tone in audiation, whatever the melodic line. Tonal syllables demand greater audiation than do rhythm syllables.

There are some contemporary views of language that challenge the traditional assumption that writing is a second-order representation—that is, that writing is a representation of speech, which is a representation of thought. The newer views present writing as an alternative form of language. Perhaps syllables and notation are not hierarchical, but alternative ways to represent audiation. Perhaps the bridge to notation is simply a metaphor of audiation—a verbal or visual representation that allows us to reflect on our own audiation. The most accessible rhythm metaphor may be verbal and the most accessible tonal metaphor may be visual, possibly tactile. Both syllables and notation are necessary, however, as syllables give musicians a common language with which to verbally communicate and notation gives musicians a common language in print.

Music learning theory is very convincing in its argument that syllables provide the readiness for notation in both tonal and rhythm. My rhythm audiation gives music learning theory a vote of confidence. My tonal audiation, however, wonders how it might respond—given a solid aural/oral foundation—if syllables were presented with the visual rather than with the aural—that verbal/visual labels be given for the aural—the verbal being sung, of course. As tonalities and keyalities change the visual, the verbal/aural bond would strengthen. Similarly, instrumental fingerings presented with syllables label the aural with a verbal/tactile label. As tonalities and keyalities change the tactile, the verbal/aural bond strengthens.

As I look through my kaleidoscope at the developing hypotheses, I can give a lot of reasons why I may be on the wrong track. Yet by observing my audiation interacting with such speculations, I can better understand my audiation, the wisdom of music learning theory, and the audiation needs of my students. Right or wrong, each hypothesis leads to new insights. Whether notation is a direct representation of audiation, or whether it is mediated by syllables is not the question. The question is what can be learned about audiation by exploring both hypotheses.

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The recent evolution of music education has been somewhat parallel to the recent evolution of language education. A new focus on how children learn has led to new dimensions in the teaching and learning of both music and language. Both disciplines are finding many of the traditional teaching approaches to be in direct opposition to the way children learn.

Through the research of Edwin Gordon, music education is becoming aware of the process of music learning and its likeness to learning language. Ironically, recent research is bringing language education closer to Gordon's concept of audiation, though in relation to language. Contemporary language educators profess that reading is not decoding and that reading and writing are both generated from meaning—that it is only the conventions of teaching reading that separate print from the child's understanding. Emilia Ferreiro and Ana Teberosky, in their book, Literacy Before Schooling, state, "In reading we utilize visual and nonvisual information. The visual information comes from the arrangement of letters on the printed or handwritten page, but the nonvisual information comes from readers themselves. The essential non-visual information is the reader's linguistic competence."

The new learning theories of language acquisition, reading acquisition, and writing acquisition serve as a metaphor for the study of audiation. Similarly, Gordon's music learning theory could serve as a metaphor for the study of language. Both disciplines are sitting on the edge of exciting advancements that are very closely related and can only be multiplied by greater interaction between the two disciplines.

Literacy Before Schooling provides an exceptional account of children's natural development toward reading and writing without formal schooling. Children invent their own hypotheses about the relationship between print and speech. These hypotheses evolve in a predictable sequence that leads to reading and writing.

With appropriate models of print, children learn to read by writing. Their invented spellings are rooted in their maturing concepts of literacy and reflect their developing awareness of the relationship between speech and print. Further, young children, fluent in speech, do not conceptualize a word or sound as a unit, nor do they relate speech to print in a one to one correspondence. They are guided by their own meaning rather than by print conventions. The child grows toward syllabification, but he may represent different syllables identically. In a Spanish example cited in the book above, "AO" was used to represent the word "palo," and again to represent the word "sapo." Yet the children read their own writing appropriately in context. "The subjective intent of the writer counts more than objective differences in the result for children at this level."

The authors' research findings stimulated many questions about reading and writing music. Does the young child, fluent in tonality and meter, conceptualize a pattern as a unit? Does the one to one correspondence between sound and symbol conflict with the child's audiation? Will the child learn to read music most efficiently through reading or writing?

The children were excited about reading, as I introduced the notation of rhythm patterns they knew in syllables. They demonstrated greater audiation, however, while writing. It appeared that notation took on greater meaning when the children attempted to write their own patterns. My patterns served as models, but the children did not copy mine. They created their own.

The children obviously notated their audiation of macro and micro beats. Similar to the Spanish example, many represented different meters with the same notation yet read their compositions appropriately in the meter they were audiating. Most children notated macro beats with quarter notes, usually without dots, and micro beats with two or three barred eighth notes, whatever the meter. No child showed an awareness that he might have written two barred eighth notes but read three, or vice versa. As with language, the children did not relate sound to symbol in a one to one correspondence. They did not audiate individual durations and therefore had no need to account for such in notation. Nor did they have a need for bar lines. Seventh graders showed no greater awareness of print conventions than did first graders. The children's notation was not a function of maturity or graphic skill, but one of audiation.

As children develop from speech to print without formal instruction, they represent subject and verb in their writing. They do not perceive articles or conjunctions as meaning to be represented. Yet, in our print conventions, articles and conjunctions receive as much space and attention as do the more meaningful subject and verb, confusing the child's meaning.

Similarly, in the rhythm examples, children clearly demonstrated their audiation of essential tones by their consistent representation of macro and micro beats in notation. Divisions/elongations, however, though subordinate to macro and micro beats in audiation, often appear more elaborate in notation. Here, too, the child's meaning is at risk.

I have only begun to explore with children the many questions about reading and writing music stimulated by the work of Ferreiro and Teberosky. It is our challenge as educators, as it was theirs, to become observers of learning. There is a great deal of data about audiation to be found in the eyes and bodies of children and in their innocent attempts to represent their audiation in notation. May the work of these researchers inspire music educators to trust that the young child will be driven to reading and writing music by his own developing audiation, and to design ways to stimulate and monitor that journey so that we can better understand the development of music literacy.

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Excerpts from Issue 6—Spring/Summer, 1991

The young child teaches himself to read language by inventing and revising his own hypotheses about the relation between speech and print (Issue 5). Similarly, I continue to teach myself to read music through audiation by developing hypotheses about the relation between audiation and notation. Like the child, I have to develop new hypotheses when the old ones fail me. I share with you some of those invented and revised hypotheses in the interest of identifying the strategies the musician uses to bring meaning to notation.

During the spring semester, a couple of old Ottman sightsinging books became my basal readers. While singing the easy exercises, I found myself decoding notes by their placement on the staff. In the keys of C, G, D, and F major, I could readily determine solfege syllables by the lines and spaces. Once upon a time that strategy allowed me to pass the required college sightsinging test after three tries. When the Ottman exercises moved to other keys, however, and to minor tonality, my strategy no longer worked. I was forced to create a plan of action that would determine both the tonality and keyality of the song. The key signature, by itself, was not sufficient. I found myself looking to the notes and then to the key signature to determine the tonality and keyality of the exercise.

This strategy had to be revised further when various clefs were introduced. With alto and tenor clefs, my absolute cues were gone. I didn't even know the names of the lines and spaces. A song in alto clef with a key signature of four flats had the tonic on the second line. What note was that? What key was I in? What tonality was I in? How could anybody read in this clef? The clef and key signature were a greater hindrance than help.

Notation was getting in the way of my reading. I was attending to the visual rather than to audiation. Diatonic passages were more difficult for me to read than arpeggioed passages, as I was relating the consecutive pitches of the diatonic patterns to each other visually, trying to derive the appropriate syllables from the syllable sequence rather than through audiation. With arpeggioed passages I relied more on audiation.

Being forced to invent more useful strategies, I began to attend more to audiation than to the visual. The less I took the notation literally, the more fluently I read, whatever the key signature, clef, tonality or keyality. It became apparent that music reading is only incidentally visual.

While reading rhythm exercises, I eventually developed the strategy of ignoring the time signature and looking to the notes for a visual grouping that indicated meter. I began reading exercises in time signatures like 3/16, 12/8, and 9/2 with ease. Rhythm reading that once challenged my mathematical abilities was no longer dependent upon fractions, but on audiation. Further, I found no confusion in audiation as to the inconsistency of the notation. My audiation didn't question why eighth notes were micro beats in 6/8 time, yet divisions of micro beats in 3/4 time. Audiation was consistent. The visual was inconsequential.

The more the parameters of time signature, meter, key signature, keyality, tonality, and clef changed, the better I read. That is, the less I could depend on the visual, the more I had to depend on audiation; the less I attended to the surface structure, the more I could get beyond it.

With tonal and with rhythm, I seemed to be apprehending visual patterns separate from patterns in audiation. Further, I experienced the difference between discrimination and inference learning in my own reading. It was as if I were first perceiving a visual pattern and then either recalling it as one I had previously associated with a pattern in audiation, or generalizing in relation to the visual and in relation to audiation to give meaning to the visual pattern that was not yet part of my reading vocabulary.

Although I was reading tonal and rhythm simultaneously, I was processing the two separately. I attended most to the one that was the greatest challenge at any given time, though I felt most secure when I was in command of the rhythm, as if rhythm were a cueing system for tonal reading.

While visually relating pitches to each other and durations to each other, I was referring to tonic and dominant pitches tonally and macro and micro beats rhythmically, both visually and in audiation. With more complex exercises, I found myself attending more intensely to tonic and dominant pitches or macro and micro beats, both visually and in audiation. The more the complexity of the exercises demanded my attention to visual patterns, the more I also attended to patterns in audiation. The intensity forced my audiation to become so focused that sound, syllable, and symbol became one.

My visual process mirrored my audiation process, reflecting Gordon's stages of audiation. I was relating visually to the essential pitches and durations I was audiating. I was attending to visual patterns as well as to aural patterns. I was aware visually of the tonality and meter I was audiating. I was relating to music I have experienced in the past, both visually and in audiation, and I was predicting both visually and in audiation what was coming next.

After two degrees in music education and more than twenty years of teaching music, what a joy it was to finally begin to read music.

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"Meta-linguistics" and "meta-cognition" refer to our awareness of our own language and thought processes. Tonal and rhythm syllables are the "meta-language" of audiation. It is through syllables that we verbalize our own audiation process—that we express our awareness of our own tonal and rhythm knowing. With words we talk about audiation in the context of language. Syllables allow us to address our own audiation process in the context of sound.

Through syllables the child becomes conscious of the audiation skill he spontaneously developed at the aural/oral level of learning. As we deliver syllables to the child, tonal syllables are saying in sound rather than in words, "Notice your tonal audiation. You are attending to a resting tone, and throughout this tonal example you continue to audiate that resting tone." Rhythm meta-language communicates in sound rather than in words, "Notice your rhythm audiation. You are maintaining an ongoing beat and its divisions. Notice that the rhythms in the examples can get pretty fancy and you still maintain the meter."

Language provides proper names for tonalities, meters, and functions, but meta-language provides the "proper" names for such in the context of audiation. Minor tonality with syllables is a tonality the child knows in sound, now with the characteristic syllables that tell him that this is the tonality in which his audiation continues to go to "la" as the resting tone. Triple meter in syllables is a meter he knows in sound, now with the characteristic syllables that tell him that this is the meter in which his audiation maintains "du da di, du da di."

Aurally, syllables bring audiation to consciousness; orally, they allow us to verbalize our cognitive awareness of our own audiation process.

There is a difference, however, between becoming conscious of audiation through syllables and becoming conscious of syllables. When we use syllables to make audiation conscious, the child becomes aware of what he can already do. When we focus on the syllables, the child becomes conscious of an external system imposed on his audiation rather than becoming conscious of his audiation. Learning takes place when the child becomes conscious of what he can already do.

In Thought and Language, Lev Vygotsky suggests that the very act of the child's becoming conscious of what he already knows establishes a higher level of learning. He maintains that spontaneous learning must precede conscious knowing.

Developing audiation at each level of learning is a matter of providing experiences that stimulate unconscious, spontaneous learning, and then through the meta-language of audiation, helping the child to become conscious of his newly acquired knowing.

At the partial synthesis level of learning, the child becomes conscious of his audiation in syllables. He becomes aware that his audiation consistently represents particular sound patterns with corresponding patterns of syllables—that his audiation of tonality and meter is now bonded to syllables.

Music notation serves as a higher level of the meta-language of audiation. Through notation, the child becomes conscious of the consistency of his audiation—the internal logic of his audiation and that of the corresponding syllables. When we introduce children to notation at the symbolic association level of learning, tonal notation says to the child, "Look at your tonal audiation. Every time you sing these patterns, 'la do mi, si ti mi, mi la,' you sing them in a consistent relationship to the resting tone and to each other. That relationship is represented here with 'la' on this line and those patterns in relation to 'la.' Notice that when 'la' is on this space, the patterns remain in that consistent relationship in your audiation, just as they do here.”

Rhythm notation is saying to the child, "Look at your rhythm audiation. Every time you sing 'du da di du, du ta da ta di ta du,' you sing those patterns in a consistent relationship to macro and micro beats and to each other. That relationship can be represented as it is here (notation in 6/8 time with dotted quarter note macros). Notice that when 'du da di du' looks like this (notation in 3/4 time with dotted half note macros), the patterns are still in that consistent relationship in your audiation, just as they are here."

Notation at the symbolic association level, like syllables at the verbal association level, should serve to help the child become conscious of his audiation rather than conscious of the representational system.

When the child is guided through notation to attend to his own audiation, he appears to view patterns in notation as analogous to patterns in audiation. "Du da di du" is a visual unit representing a unit in audiation. Similarly, "si ti mi" is a visual unit rather than individual pitches.

Up to this point, the child has not necessarily noticed that the patterns his audiation knows in syllables are made up of individual pitches or durations represented by individual syllables and individual symbols. He hasn't necessarily made the one-to-one correspondence between sound and syllable, or sound, syllable, and symbol. As adults we assume the one-to-one correspondence to be obvious rather than a developmental discovery. Further, we take for granted the one-to-one correspondence between sound and the tactile or visual with a musical instrument. In our well-meaning attempts to develop skills with syllables, music notation, and musical instruments, we frequently force children to the one-to-one correspondence prematurely, confusing their emerging music literacy.

The child does not audiate individual pitches or durations. He audiates patterns. At the verbal association and partial synthesis levels of learning, he becomes conscious of the skills he developed at earlier levels with patterns. In the context of singing or chanting patterns, he may imitate appropriate syllables corresponding to individual pitches or durations, but he has not necessarily discovered that individual syllables correspond to individual pitches or durations. The syllables of a tonality or meter become one with the tonality or meter and one with functions, but not necessarily one with individual pitches or durations.

For the child, it appears that "do fa la fa" when sung, becomes the name of the subdominant function much as "muffalada" is the name of a sandwich. And, "si ti mi," "mi ti si," and "mi ti mi" in sound are the same generic sandwich with or without mustard and whether the pickle or cheese is on top. That is, the child audiates the function, rather than attending to the placement of individual pitches within that function. The resting tone is the one individual sound/syllable correspondence that he does attend to, but the resting tone is the summation of his audiation of tonality.

It is likely that it is not until the composite synthesis level of learning that the child makes the one-to-one correspondence between sound, syllable, and symbol. At this level of learning he becomes conscious of what his audiation was doing at the symbolic association level of learning—consistently representing individual pitches or durations with particular individual syllables and symbols; while he is unconsciously learning to relate the individual pitches or durations to each other in audiation.

It is our task as music educators to provide experiences for the child that stimulate unconscious, spontaneous learning at each level of music learning, and to assist the child in becoming conscious of his knowing through the meta-language of audiation. The child will then teach himself to read music as audiation unfolds.