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Gordon music learning theory


Gordon Music Learning Theory is a model for music education based on Edwin Gordon's research on musical aptitude and achievement in the greater field of music learning theory. The theory is an explanation of music learning, based on audiation and students' individual musical differences. The theory uses the concepts of discrimination and inference learning to explain tonal, rhythmic, and harmonic patterns.

Audiation is a term Gordon coined in 1975 to refer to comprehension and internal realization of music, or the sensation of an individual hearing or feeling sound when it is not physically present. Musicians previously used terms such as aural perception or aural imagery to describe this concept, though aural imagery would imply a notational component while audiation does not necessarily do so. Gordon suggests that "audiation is to music what thought is to language." His research is based on similarities between how individuals learn a language and how they learn to make and understand music. Gordon specifies that audiation potential is an element of music aptitude, arguing that to demonstrate music aptitude one must use audiation.

Gordon describes that audiation occurs when an individual is "listening to, recalling, performing, interpreting, creating, improvising, reading, or writing music." Audiation while listening to music, he describes, is analogous to the simultaneous translation of languages, giving meaning to sound and music based on individual knowledge and experience.

Gordon also emphasizes that music itself is not a language as it has no words or grammar, but rather has syntax, an "orderly arrangement of sounds, and context."

Gordon differentiates different varieties of audiation and categorizes them into 8 types and 6 stages.

In addition to outlining types of audiation, Gordon also differentiates between stages of audiation

To describe how students learn music, Gordon outlines two main categories of learning based on his research on audiation: discrimination learning and inference learning.

Discrimination learning is defined as the ability to determine whether two elements are same or not the same. Gordon describes five sequential levels of discrimination: aural/oral, verbal association, partial synthesis, symbolic association, and composite synthesis.

Gordon describes that the most basic type of discrimination being aural/oral, where students hear tonal and rhythm patterns and imitate by singing, moving, and chanting patterns back to the instructor. Students listen in the aural portion of discrimination learning, while performing represents the oral portion. At this stage, students use neutral syllables to perform tonal and rhythm patterns.

After students are more able to audiate and perform basic rhythm and tonal patterns and become comfortable with imitating songs and chants in introduced tonalities and meters, Gordon explains the next step is verbal association, where contextual meaning is given to what the students are audiating and imitating through tonal or rhythm syllables (such as solfege or the names of concepts students may be audiating through tonal patterns such as tonic and dominant).


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