..read more

In his notorious debate (1994) with Gordon, Bennett Reimer was right, sort of. He chastised Gordon for focusing too heavily on songs and patterns to the almost total exclusion of … how shall I describe them?… masterpieces. He was wrong to suggest that MLT must work this way, but I think he discerned a disturbing trend. All MLTers agree that functional, contextual patterns are the indispensible “part” of whole-part-whole. But rote songs? In at least one respect, I’m different from my MLT colleagues. I never drank the rote song Kool-Aid. Darrel Walters once described function ..read more

Here is the latest version of a Meter Discrimination listening test I began writing many years ago. I constructed this test before Covid, administered it once, threw out poorly discriminating items, revised it, shortened it, administered to a new group, got decent difficulty and discrimination numbers, shortened it some more, reordered the items to spread the difficult items around; and in 2020, I was all set to administer it again to a new group of students so I could obtain reliability estimates. Then Covid struck. I’m using the test this year with my 4th graders to fulfill a Philadelphia Sc ..read more

A colleague recently asked me about “Gordon syllables.” She got that they were beat-function syllables, but she had a more basic question: What do they sound like when you perform with them? Here is a brief audio clip during which I perform rhythm patterns with beat-function syllables. I don’t go into much explanation about how they work. I mostly just perform. MLTers have uploaded many excellent videos on Youtube showing how to perform patterns with these syllables. Each MLTer seems to have their own performing style. I first heard these syllables performed back in 1986 by Roger Dean, former ..read more

It’s been a busy first month of school. What can I do to unwind, relax, clear my head?  The answer is all too clear: Write a tonality test.  It’s finished, at least in its initial form.  In final form, the test will be much shorter.  (It’s 18 minutes long, even with no verbal instructions.) Please take a moment to listen to each example.  I’ve included commentary after the music, and I intend to write more extensive commentary after I wake up from a long, deep sleep. ________________________________________________________________________________________ ..read more

I’m reading a very interesting facebook thread right now about music literacy. Here is my response to some of the ideas on that thread. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Dr. Gordon wasn’t perfect. He made several notable mistakes, in my opinion. Usually the mistakes involved his swinging too far in the opposite direction of a problem. Teaching reading as nothing more than symbolic recognition is a problem. Naming notes with devices such as “Every good boy does fine,” and calling that reading is a problem. And by the way, Gordon was wrong ..read more

You're currently a free subscriber. Upgrade your subscription to get access to the rest of this post and other paid-subscriber only content. Upgrade subscription ..read more

            Many, many, many years ago I had the worst student teacher in the world—at least in my world. This person (who will remain nameless, ageless, and genderless for the remainder of this blog post) could do nothing right. This person could not match pitch; this person displayed poor rhythm, had only meager piano skills; this person yelled at students frequently, always “ran out” of songs and activities to teach, taught music notation to my kindergarten students, and informal guidance activities to my 6th gr ..read more

            If you’re like most people reading this post, you have not yet read Edwin Gordon’s monograph The Manifestation of Developmental Music Aptitude in the Audiation of “Same” and “Different” as Sound in Music. (G.I.A., 1981). I didn’t read it for a long time either—not because I resisted it, but because I just couldn’t get my hands on it. For years, it was unavailable.             This monograph always loomed in a dusty corner of my mind. “Someday I’ll find a copy and dig i ..read more

From Partial Synthesis to Chaining/Compressing Twenty-three years ago, I wrote that MLTers should change the name “partial synthesis” to something else. I gave the following reasons. The name “partial synthesis”: scares music teachers new to MLT, turns them off to it, makes them feel stupid, drives them away; reveals nothing because every level in the skill-learning sequence is partial, and every level is a synthesis; fails to reveal what actually happens at this skill level. While we’re on the subject, what does happen at this skill-level? MLTers are likely to give an answer something like ..read more