Thomas J. West Music

The following is an article written by guest author Elaine Hirsch.

"Audiation" is a word coined for a concept in music learning theory by Professor Edwin E. Gordon to describe the cognitive process of experiencing music in the mind, without hearing the actual music as auditory stimulation. Gordon likens audiation to thinking in language. It's not the same as hearing, listening, or actual auditory perception, but requires students to internalize the rhythmic and tonal qualities of sound.

Gordon's theory is fairly complex, but doesn't take an online PhD to grasp.

 Music learning theory describes the process of learning to understand music in five stages, the same five stages through which children progress when learning to listen, speak, read, and write. Like other noted music teachers such as Shinichi Suzuki and Zoltan Kodaly, Gordon believes music is learned the same way as language.

From Listening to Learning



Infants hear words spoken and begin to distinguish different sounds and assign meaning to them. This is the development of what's called a listening vocabulary. Children then begin to imitate sounds by babbling as the first step toward acquiring a speaking vocabulary. Next comes actual speech, starting with words children have heard many times. By age three children begin improvising and experimenting, rearranging familiar words into unfamiliar sequences. Throughout the whole process they're still continuously listening: speaking and listening reinforce and strengthen each other.



Most children don't begin learning to read until age five or six, after they've been listening and speaking for several years. The reading vocabulary is founded on familiar words from the speaking vocabulary. A writing vocabulary is formed as children learn to express ideas using written words. The final stage is developing the structural vocabulary or theory of language: grammar and parts of speech.



The analogous stages of music learning are listening, imitating rhythms and melodies, singing or making sounds with instruments, reading and writing musical notation, and finally learning music theory. The more young children are exposed to language and music, the easier they'll find the process of learning them. This is the premise of music learning theory and preparatory audiation. Central principles of the teaching method are a focus on patterns, contrast, context, and rhythmic movement.

Concepts of Audiation



Patterns occur in both rhythm and tonality, and are analogous to words in language. Contrast teaches what a thing is by comparing it with what it is not. Examples are major vs. minor vs. modal tonality, or duple vs. triple vs. compound meter. Context, just as with language and reading, places patterns in their surroundings to derive and add meaning. Chord progressions are an example of placing tonality into a context.

Rhythmic movement doesn't have a true analogue in language. It's taught by having students move in various patterns to get a physical sensation of rhythm. Three music learning sequences make up the entire approach: skill learning sequence, tonal content learning sequence, and rhythm content learning sequence. Within each sequence there are stages of discrimination learning and inference learning.



Discrimination learning is by rote, and students learn to tell the difference between various patterns of rhythm or melody. That is, they're being consciously taught. Inference learning occurs conceptually after students have mastered discrimination learning. At this stage they begin to learn on their own as they recognize patterns and connections between and among previously learned ideas and songs.

Paying Dividends

Gordon's music theory is a means of developing musical aptitude among children. According to the Gordon Institute for Music Learning, the six stages of audiation are:

• Momentary retention
• Initiating and audiating tonal patterns and rhythm patterns AND recognizing and identifying a tonal center and macrobeats
• Establishing objective or subjective tonality and meter
• Consciously retaining in audiation tonal patterns and rhythm patterns that we have organized
• Consciously recalling patterns organized and audiated in other pieces of music
• Conscious prediction of patterns

Although Gordon's methods of audiation are structured in a hierarchical manner – each stage prepares a musician for the next – musicians of all levels, especially ones in secondary education, will find the stages of learning useful in their pursuits. For example, recognizing harmonies and chord progressions are both qualities developed while “initiating and audiating tonal patterns and rhythm patterns”. Understanding tonality will provide musicians with a basis for composing music. Although Gordon's methodology is geared towards students in elementary education, the techniques will pay dividends for any aspiring musician down the line.