Why Rote Songs Are Not Enough

            In his notorious debate with Gordon, Bennett Reimer (1994) 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 described functional tonal and rhythm patterns as the “vitamins” of musical content. His comparison is apt as far as it goes, but let’s push it along. Patterns are vitamin pills; Beethoven Symphonies are nutritious meals, exquisitely prepared. What about teacher-composed songs and chants? I think of them as meal replacement bars. They provide temporary nutrition, vitamins, fiber; they’re better than nothing, and they fill you up on long road trips. But human-made, synthesized nutrition bars cannot, in the long term, replace real, natural food. Let’s not pretend they can.

            And the same is true for teacher-composed songs.

            I don’t believe my students have adequately learned to audiate minor tonality just because they’ve learned functional patterns along with a few rinky-dink rote songs in the minor mode I made up in my car while driving to work. 

            Like this one …

 

   Tchaikovsky was one of the greatest melodists of all time. But you’d never know it by listening to my bastardization of his melody from Swan Lake. So that you may compare the two, here is Tchaikovsky’s melody in its original form:

            On the plus side, my tune checks all the boxes: The range (from C sharp to B natural) is narrow enough that kindergarten through 2nd grade children can sing the song easily while they rock front and back; the phrase structure is a serviceable parallel period in the minor mode.

            And what was my “inspiration”? I needed a front-and-back rocking song in minor/triple. It’s that simple. So I thought about it for 5 minutes, remembered this tune by Tchaikovsky, simplified it (by removing the exquisite hemiola rhythms in the woodwinds), threw in some descriptive lyrics, and there you have it. Yes, the “Front and Back” song serves educational purposes—tonal, metric, kinesthetic—and serves them well. And yet for all that, my tune (in contrast to Tchaikovsky’s) is rinky-dink rubbish.

TRADITIONAL MLTer: I’m assuming, Eric, that you’ve composed many songs for your students, especially those in Kindergarten. Do you really want to call your compositions “rinky-dink?” Why put yourself down that way? And why are you so skeptical about the value of rote songs? Simply sing the “Front and Back” song with students while engaging with them in the movement activity; then teach functional patterns in the context of minor, and then return to the rote song by asking students to sing the resting tone. There’s your whole-part-whole process. Students are audiating the minor mode. A job well done. Finished.

            To which I respond with a full-throated no! My students have not arrived at the final whole, just because they can name the tonality of my song or sing its resting tone. Despite the MLT predilection to isolate musical elements from each other, tonality does not exist in a vacuum. How we audiate patterns in major tonality (in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, for instance) is pushed and pulled by the musical elements that surround those patterns.

            Let me show you what I mean. What follows is a deep dive into the development section of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, 1st movement. Before we go toe to toe with Beethoven, I want to clarify a few things: We can’t expect our pre-school or lower elementary students to understand a Beethoven Symphony with the same depth that high school or college students can bring to it; but surely, we don’t expect our students to remain at the acculturation stage of preparatory audiation. As students emerge from babble, and understand music better, they need greater musical “nourishment” than rote songs and patterns can provide. In my units on Genre, tempo, vocal register, and Dynamics, you can find dozens of sound files and lessons that take elementary students far beyond acculturation. Eventually—as you’ll see in the next section—students will be able to audiate complex musical ambiguities not found in short, monophonic rote songs.

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Bernstein Analyzes Beethoven

            In his lecture series, The Unanswered Question, Bernstein (1976) discussed the following 24-bar passage from Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, 1st movement, mm. 151-174.

FIGURE 1. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, 1st movement, measure 151-174

            No one can explain musical ambiguity in Beethoven as well as Bernstein, so I will yield the floor to him (with a few abridgments). Before I let Bernstein go on at length, I must mention two things: First, Bernstein’s descriptions, though fascinating, are a bit hard to follow, so I’ve created Tables 1 and 2 below to help clarify his analysis. Second, in his discussion, Bernstein refers to the following repetitive motive (shown in Figure 2) as the “jaunty” motive.

FIGURE 2: The “Jaunty” Motive

   Bernstein (1976, pp. 179-84) wrote:

What are we to say of the long strings of unvaried repetition [in this] development section? The profuse repetition could be a metaphor for the profuse repetition of Nature herself, the infinite reduplication of species. But [this is] not the kind of metaphor we are seeking. What is the musical metaphor to be discovered in that famous long passage of literal repeats? We will look at measures 151-174, the first 24 bars in a larger 92 bar structure. What is their metaphorical meaning—not in terms of jonquils and daisies, but of notes and rhythms? We know that the notes come from the “jaunty” motive, transposed to B-flat major, and played 4 times by the 1st violins. This is then literally repeated by the 2nd violins, doubled by [an oboe or flute] an octave higher. That makes 8 bars. The 8-bar segment is repeated and re-repeated with the same alternations of 1st violins as against 2nd violins plus a high woodwind; and it’s played 3 times in all—3 times 8 bars making 24 bars. That’s one way of looking at this episode, from an orchestral point of view. We perceive one of Beethoven’s intentions via his instrumental texture, the alternating high and low registers, and the 24-bar crescendo to a climax.

    In Table 1, I show what the 24 bars reveal from an orchestral point of view:

Table 1.

 

            Bernstein (1976, pp. 184-86) goes on to say that listeners may hear (audiate, in other words) this same passage in a completely different way.

Now let’s view the same 24 bars harmonically, and we find a very different story. Four bars of B-flat in the 1st violins, as before, repeated as before in the 2nd violins with the higher woodwind octave. Again [we hear] the 1st violins—that’s now 12 bars. And now a sudden switch of key to D major (bar 163) for 12 more bars. We’re still following the same instrumental pattern, mind you, but in this new key of D, which is maintained for 2 more repeats, finally [we arrive at the] climax. This has been a totally different construction of those same 24 bars—2 x 12: twelve bars in B-flat and 12 bars in D. Not at all 3 x 8, as we saw at first. In other words, there are 2 different substructures functioning simultaneously within the span of 24 bars. One substructure is the orchestral texture, 3 x 8; and the other is the harmonic rhythm, 2 x 12. And the simultaneous contradiction of the two creates one glorious ambiguity…out of what seemed to be merely 24 stupefying repetitions.

 

            In Table 2 below, I offer a side-by-side description of the 2 ways to audiate Beethoven’s 24-bar passage.

Table 2:

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Audiating Both/And and Not Merely Either/Or

            What did Bernstein and Beethoven reveal? Two things. First, a single phrase of music may embody different phrase structures. And second (and even more important for this discussion), conflicting musical elements can be equally true, and mutually supportive. Could it be that great works of music, works that have moved people across cultures and centuries, hold our interest because of the push and pull of built-in ambiguities? I believe so. But, I hear you asking, what about works of music that do not have conflicting elements? Can a single element in a piece of music be ambiguous? Can a monophonic melody be, for instance, tonally ambiguous?

Let’s have some fun with the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Is the opening melody (minus the harmony) in the major or lydian mode?

        Yes, I concede: You can reasonably audiate this melody in either major or lydian. But notice that the ambiguity in this case is either/or. Never would a musician audiate the “Star-Spangled Banner” in major and lydian at the same time. You choose one tonality to audiate, reject the other, and stick with your choice.

            In contrast, the Bernstein/Beethoven example above is a both/and ambiguity, and by that I mean the following: 1) orchestration and keyality are equally valid ways to understand Beethoven’s phrase structure; 2) those two elements, though they seem to conflict, are interactive; and 3) their interaction is aesthetically gripping precisely because they vie for our attention.

            How does all this fit with Gordon’s stages of audiation? At Gordon’s 4th stage of audiation, we reassess our first impressions of the tonality, keyality, meter, and form of a piece of music—but when we do so, we focus on one element at a time. At stage 5, we compare one piece with another, but we still focus on a single element, tonality perhaps. One glaring omission in Gordon’s theories is that he never accounted for musical elements working in tandem. Could there be a stage of audiation, one that Gordon did not consider, in which we audiate two or more elements that conflict with each other, but are equally compelling and, on a deep level, mutually supportive (as in the Beethoven example above)? I think so, and I’ll write more about it soon in a future blog post: Form, Flux, and a New Stage of Audiation.)

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Conclusion

           And now I can loop back around to why rote songs are not enough. Rote songs serve music education in the short-term (like a protein meal-replacement bar), but they’re inadequate for our students’ musical “nutrition” in the long-term. It’s not just because Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony is a masterpiece, while Bluestine’s “Front and Back” song is a far cry from one. Beethoven surrounded his major tonality with keyality, form, timbre, texture, phrasing, dynamics, rhythm patterns, tempo, and meter. And those elements may conflict with each other, the way orchestration and harmonic rhythm were in conflict in the passage Bernstein analyzed; and such conflict—orchestration telling us one thing, harmonic rhythm telling us something else— is what makes a piece worthy of serious study.

            In teacher-composed songs there are rarely either/or conflicts, and never both/and conflicts. My composed songs—typically short, monophonic melodies—feature musical elements that neither contradict each other, nor develop over long periods of time. Under these conditions (and restrictions), conflicts and ambiguities simply cannot arise.

            And if students never grapple with musical ambiguities, they will never deeply understand the final whole of whole-part-whole. What’s more, our students will not learn to understand pieces beyond Stage 4 and 5 of audiation. Instead, they will be trapped in a musical world where elements develop in isolation, never in tandem. To sum up, if we expose our students to nothing but patterns and short songs, we stunt their musical growth, and forfeit the key music education goal of teaching students to audiate multifaceted works.

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Bernstein, L.  (1976).  The unanswered question:  Six talks at Harvard.  Cambridge, Massachusetts:  Harvard University Press.

Reimer, Bennett and Gordon, Edwin. (1994).  “The Reimer/Gordon Debate on Music Learning:  Complementary or Contradictory Views?”  MENC National Biennial In-service Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Audio Tape Stock #3004, ISBN 1-56545-052-3

Whole-Part-Whole: Its Meandering Path To Prominence

Introduction

            A few days ago, Eric Rasmussen and Beau Taillefer uploaded an Audiation in the Wild podcast episode called Whole-part-whole and Chaining. They start the podcast with Beau casting a wide net.

BEAU: Eric, maybe you can help me out. I forget who contributed the idea of whole-part-whole to Music Learning Theory, because I don’t believe it was Gordon himself.

ERIC: You know, I’m not a hundred percent sure.

            Gentlemen, you’ve come to the right place. Please let me add my impartial perspective.

            The whole-part-whole learning process in general education is, of course, far older than Gordon’s Music Learning Theory. It’s basic to learning, a foundation of good teaching, and it works like this: You introduce kids to a “whole” of something, just to give them a quick, drive-by view; then you dig into the “parts,” by relating those parts, somehow, to the “whole” the kids started with; and finally, you come back to the same whole the kids started with, but now they understand it with greater sophistication.

            But this post isn’t about general education, or even the wide field of music education. It’s about the whole-part-whole learning process in MLT. So let’s return to the question: Who first contributed the idea of whole-part-whole to MLT? The answer is simple.

            I did.

            Which is mostly not true, but it contains a grain of truth. Actually, it was Darrel Walters — which, as attributions go, has a lot more truth behind it. But to make this claim credible, I must go deeply into MLT history.

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What is the Whole-Part-Whole Process?

            Our subject today is the whole-part-whole approach to learning. What is it? How does it work? Was it always built into MLT? And if not, when did it first infiltrate the MLT universe? In the 1st edition of my book (1995, p. 14), I described it this way:

WHOLE #1: Students learn a rote song, or they listen to a piece of music.

PART: Students hear and then sing or chant patterns (though not necessarily the same patterns found in the piece they’re studying).

WHOLE #2: Students return to the piece with a greater understanding of its structure.

            I mentioned in my book that no one ever wrote about the whole-part-whole process as eloquently (and now I’ll add the word lucidly) as Darrel Walters (1988, 1989, 1992). He described the 3 steps as 1) Introduction, 2) Application, and 3) Reinforcement.

            Later in this post, I’ll have more to say about Walters’s insights into whole-part-whole. For now, I’d like to zoom ahead to 2023 to show you how MLTers write about whole-part-whole today. 

            The next time you visit the GIML website, take a look at the passage about the Whole-Part Whole learning process. Here’s how you can find it: 1) Log on to the GIML website homepage; 2) hover over the words “Music Learning Theory” at the top; 3) then click on the word “Methodology” in the dropdown menu; 4) finally, scroll down. Just after the section called “Sequence,” and before the section called “Other Central Principles,” you’ll find a section about the Whole/Part/Whole Curriculum. Here is what you’ll find (in condensed form):

The Whole/Part/Whole approach (sometimes called Synthesis/Analysis/Synthesis) is a common way in education to organize students’ experience with content. The first whole stage (Synthesis) is an introduction, an overview that establishes basic familiarity with what the topic is about. The second stage (Analysis) consists of detailed study of the parts of the topic. On returning to the whole (the second Synthesis) students have a more sophisticated understanding of how the parts fit together to form a unified whole. 

Music Learning Theory provides an elegant Whole/Part/Whole approach to developing audiation. Songs and music literature are the “whole” part of the music curriculum. These are taught during classroom activities. Tonal and rhythm patterns are the “part” part, and are taught during learning sequence activities. Although learning sequence activities are the heart of Music Learning Theory, where theory is applied directly to music teaching practice, the main objective is to enhance the teacher’s ability to help students understand the music they study in classroom activities.

            Reading this makes me smile. In 2023, MLTers venerate whole-part-whole — along with audiation, aptitude, sequential learning, tonal and rhythm syntax, and early childhood development — as one of the pillars that holds up the MLT citadel. 

            I’m proud to say, with no trace of facetiousness, that I deserve a healthy-sized chunk of credit for this.

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 A Time Before Whole-Part-Whole: A Bit of MLT History

           Let’s take a trip back in time to 1968 when Gordon wrote his monograph How children Learn When They Learn Music. It’s a great read! So many MLT ideas — in early gestation — are in this book. Even then, Gordon was laser-focused on teaching children to understand tonality and meter. He had firmly decided on a beat-function syllable system and moveable DO with LA-based minor as verbal associations. He understood that children must have aural/oral training (though he didn’t call it that) before they learn to read and write music notation. He denounced music theory as an aid to help children understand music. He even included a section on teaching harmony and part-singing! 

            But back in 1968, Gordon had only rudimentary thoughts about how to teach students based on their levels of aptitude. He had not yet begun the pattern difficulty studies. He endorsed the vague skill-learning sequence of sound-before-sight, but he put forth no clear way to combine skills with content. Even the term “audiation” would not make its way into the world for another 8 years. 

            And he made no mention of the whole-part-whole process, which doesn’t surprise me: without patterns as the middle “part” of whole-part-whole, why would Gordon bring it up, or even think about it?

            Skip ahead a few years to 1971. Gordon expanded his 1968 book into the more scholarly and imposing book The Psychology of Music Teaching. Three new things stand out: First, he inserted long, detailed reference sections at the end of each chapter. Second, he added chapters on the history, nature, and use of music aptitude tests. And third — the most exciting — he showed, tentatively, how music teachers can apply Gagné’s (1965) general learning theory to music. Here, in chapter 4 of The Psychology of Music Teaching, we glimpse for the first time, Gordon’s brilliant mind in overdrive. 

            But he makes no mention of the whole-part-whole process. 

            And now we move ahead 5 years. It’s 1976, and Gordon is about to become the world’s foremost thinker in music education. In 1976, he coined the term “audiation,” and he wrote the 1^st edition of Learning Sequence and Patterns in Music. And MLT was born. Gordon had replaced most of Gagné’s terms with his own:

            Verbal association remained Verbal Association.

            Chaining and Multiple-discrimination learning became Partial Synthesis.

            Concept learning became Generalization.

            Problem solving became Creativity.

            Principle learning became Theoretical Understanding.

            What about the aural/oral level? Is it rooted in Gagné’s principles as well. It seems to be an offshoot of stimulus-response learning. But no. It has no precedent in general learning theory, and is in fact, one of Gordon’s most inspired ideas. I’ll say more about this in a future blog post.

Anyway, it’s 1976/1977, and most of our MLT “old friends” have arrived. Gordon presented us with 3 learning hierarchies — skills, rhythm content, and tonal content. He explained how to combine skills with content. We see what a curriculum might look like, with sequential and comprehensive objectives.

            And how do patterns fit into all this? The first of Gordon’s pattern difficulty studies (1974) had already been published; another (1976b) was hot off the presses; and a third (1978) was nearing publication. Some patterns, it turned out, are easy to audiate; others are more difficult. What if music teachers linked students’ aptitude, somehow, with the audiation difficulty level of tonal and rhythm patterns? Students with low music aptitude could, then, perform the easy patterns and not grow frustrated; students with average and high music aptitude could perform the more difficult patterns and not grow bored. It was — and is — a novel and intriguing way to meet the individual needs of music students; and in a few years, Gordon would come up with a precise (perhaps too precise) way to do just that.

            What’s missing, still, is the whole-part-whole process. How many sentences does Gordon (1976a/1977) devote to it?

            None.

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The Turning Point

            Three years go by; it’s now 1980. Gordon has greatly expanded his book, and he writes about the whole-part-whole process for the first time. Here is what he has to say, his full treatment of this vitally important subject (1980, pp. 136-137):

In simplification, learning takes place in three steps: one gains a vague impression of the totality of a piece of literature, then specifically studies patterns, and finally interprets the piece of literature with precision.

            That’s it.            

            This is how the whole-part-whole process, a fundamental idea in education, entered the MLT universe — in two unremarkable sentences that most readers probably sped passed. Back in 1980, did Gordon’s students realize, did Gordon himself realize, these sentences marked a watershed moment in Music Learning Theory?

            I invite you to take your copy of the 1980 edition off your shelf (and I hope you all own a copy because it is, along with the one from 1988, the most interesting edition) and study pages 136-137. I think you’ll agree with me that Gordon neither precedes nor follows the 2 sentences quoted above with anything about whole-part-whole. These sentences stand alone.

            How did whole-part-whole, a throw-away idea in 1980, evolve into one of the most important principles in MLT today? Give me just a bit more time, and I’ll explain.

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The Most Important Gordon Lecture Ever!

            Four more years go by, and Gordon writes the 1984 edition of Learning Sequences in Music. He is putting the finishing touches on his first set of call-and-response exercises. And these exercises will forever be saddled with the grotesque, pompous, academically inflated name — “learning sequence activities,” a term every bit as ugly to my ears as that syrupy melody MLTers still use: So la so fa mi re ti do, which causes my ears to bleed every time I hear it.

            Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, it’s 1984 and Dr. Gordon is probably facing questions from students and colleagues about how pattern instruction relates to real music. He can give whole-part-whole short shrift no longer. Here is what he had to say (1984, p. 201):

In summary, learning takes place in three stages: 1) A student gains a vague impression of the tonality and meter of a piece of literature the [sic] he hears and performs, 2) He studies tonal patterns and rhythm patterns in that tonality and meter, but not necessarily the tonal patterns and rhythm patterns found in that piece of literature, and 3) Finally he is able to interpret that piece of literature with syntactical meaning.

            And that’s all he had to say about whole-part-whole in 1984. Or rather, it would be all he had to say, if not for a lecture he delivered at the 1984 Music Educators’ National Conference in Chicago. This lecture, to me, contains some of his greatest moments, mainly because the angry, snarky audience members simply would not let him off the hook. They challenged him; and he fought his way back. (If you can track it down, listen to the early childhood music lecture he gave at that same conference. The audience was noticeably hostile, but Gordon stood his ground.)

            At one point, during a lecture (1984b) called “The basis of music learning theory,” Gordon was asked about how parts and wholes relate to each other in music instruction. And he was ready. Here is an audio clip of his answer from that 1984 lecture:

            My hunch is, had the question not been raised, Gordon would not have brought up whole-part-whole in his lecture at all. And yet pattern instruction is pointless — pointless — unless those patterns (and the skills we connect to them) relate to real music. And by “real music,” I mean more than just rote songs; I mean the music of Beethoven and Bach and Gershwin and Art Tatum and Bobby McFerrin.

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Darrel Walters Expounds on Whole-Part-Whole

            We now move ahead to 1986. Gordon writes the first edition of Jump Right In: The General Music Series; and soon after, Darrel Walters (1988) writes a booklet called “Coordinating Classroom Activities and Learning Sequence Activities.” Walters, who was then a newly hired Temple University professor, had deep insight into MLT, and a clear and direct prose style.

            In his 20-page booklet (a length worthy of the topic, finally), Walters (1988) offered numerous examples of how to create and teach lessons that reinforce phrases, songs, and larger pieces of music — the final “whole” of the process. He suggested, for example, that teachers “illustrate form in a song being performed by demonstrating repetitions and sequences of tonal patterns.” (p. 13) He then applied this broad suggestion to each of Gordon’s skill levels. At the partial synthesis level, for instance, teachers can “explain the musical form by singing salient tonal patterns from repeated and contrasting sections, using tonal syllables, and label the form.” (p. 14)

            For the first time, MLT teachers saw how Step 3, the final “whole,” — the payoff — could work at each skill level; in fact, MLT teachers today can still gain insight from this booklet. Referring to it a year later, Walters (1989, p. 152) wrote the following:

The booklet … describes step-by-step techniques that the teacher can apply to the reinforcement of learning at Step III.

            Clearly, Gordon thought highly of the booklet Walters had written, and indeed, he seemed particularly fond of the specific reinforcement activities Walters had created: Gordon reworded them slightly, and then included them in the 1988 edition of Learning Sequences in Music.

            In short, no writer on MLT deserves more credit for shining a spotlight on the whole-part-whole process than Darrel Walters.

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My Contribution

            We are near the end of our journey. Let’s move ahead 6 years to the summer of 1994. I began writing my book in May and finished writing it by the 3rd week in August. An early task in the process was deciding on the topics and order of the chapters. The book needed a decent-sized introduction that spelled out for the reader what was to come. And I knew that the audiation chapter had to follow the introduction. And of course, chapters on aptitude, tonal syntax, and rhythm syntax had to appear soon after.

            But I kept thinking about Gordon’s 1984 MENC lecture, and about that questioner who wouldn’t let Gordon off the hook about parts and wholes. One of my goals in writing the book was to clear up misunderstandings about MLT: No, audiation is not the same as inner-hearing; no, MLT is not a method; and no, Gordon most certainly does not advocate a learning approach that moves from part to part to part to part, with a final “whole” seemingly never in sight.

            The task of bringing the whole-part-whole process to prominence was nearly complete, thanks to Walters who had done most of the heavy lifting. But one thing was missing: To show that whole-part-whole was incontrovertibly vital to MLT, I needed to devote to it an entire chapter — not a perfunctory afterthought buried in the middle of a textbook, and not even a skillfully written booklet — but a chapter, early on, up front, and in plain sight.

            Whole-part-whole was MLT bedrock, and I wanted to make bloody sure the world knew it.

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Coda

            In the whole-part-whole chapter in my book (1995), I mentioned, almost in passing, that my lessons are built on a whole-part-whole approach in many respects. In their podcast (which I mentioned at the beginning of this post, and which started me on this tirade if you recall), Beau and Eric talk mostly about whole-part-whole as an approach to practicing music. This shows just how versatile the process is.

            To finish this long post, I’ll let Walters (1988, p. 20) have the final word:

The activities suggested in the preceding pages … should not be the primary focus for one who has read this document. It is more important that teachers understand and appreciate the concept of the whole-part-whole approach to learning, that they remain continuously sensitive to the value of reinforcement in learning, and that they find as many ways as possible to capitalize on its power on behalf of students.

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Bluestine, Eric. 1995. The Ways Children Learn Music: An introduction and Practical guide to music learning theory (1st edition). Chicago: GIA 

Gagne, Robert M.  1965.  The Conditions of Learning.  New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Gordon, Edwin. 1968. (Re-issued in 2014 in its original form). How Children Learn When They Learn Music. Chicago: GIA. 

Gordon, Edwin. 1971. The Psychology of Music Teaching. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Gordon, Edwin. 1974. “Toward the Development of a Taxonomy of Tonal Patterns and Rhythm Patterns: Evidence of Difficulty Level and Growth Rate.” Experimental Research in the Psychology of Music: Studies in the Psychology of Music IX (1974): pp. 39-232.

Gordon, Edwin. 1976a. Learning Sequence and Patterns in Music. Chicago: GIA.

Gordon, Edwin. 1976b. Tonal and Rhythm Patterns: An Objective Analysis. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Gordon, Edwin. 1977. Learning Sequence and Patterns in Music (revised edition). Chicago: GIA. 

Gordon, Edwin. 1978. A Factor Analytic Description of Tonal and Rhythm Patterns and Objective Evidence of Pattern Difficulty Level and Growth Rate. Chicago: GIA.

Gordon, Edwin. 1980. Learning Sequences in Music: Skill, Content, and Patterns. Chicago: GIA. 

Gordon, Edwin. 1984a. Learning Sequences in Music: Skill, Content, and Patterns. Chicago: GIA. 

Gordon, Edwin. 1984b. “The Basis of Music Learning Theory.” [audiocassette]. Music Educator’s National Conference [MENC], International Audio Stats Educational Services: Los Angeles, Calif. [OCC Number / Unique Identifier: 12019891]

Gordon, Edwin E. and Woods, David G.  1986. Jump Right In: The Music Curriculum.  Chicago:  G.I.A.

Gordon, Edwin. 1988. Learning Sequences in Music: Skill, Content, and Patterns. Chicago: GIA. 

Gordon, Edwin. 2012. Learning Sequences in Music: Skill, Content, and Patterns. Chicago: GIA. 

Taillefer, Beau and Rasmussen, Eric: https://audiation-in-the-wild.simplecast.com/

Walters, Darrel L. 1988. “Coordinating Classroom Activities and Learning Sequence Activities.”  Chicago:  G.I.A. 

Walters, Darrel L.  1989. “Coordinating Learning Sequence Activities and Classroom Activities.”  In D. L. Walters and C. C. Taggart (Eds.), Readings in Music Learning Theory.  Chicago:  G.I.A. 

Walters, Darrel L.  1992. “Sequencing For Efficient Learning.”  In R. Colwell (Ed.), Handbook Of Research On Music Teaching And Learning.  New York:  Schirmer Books.