**Myth:** Once kids can decode notation and drill technique, fluent music-making will emerge when you smush the two together, blind date style.
**Truth:** Reading & technique aren't separate tracks that merge like a rickety railroad junction. They need to be developed in tight, loving conversation from the start — with rich audiation doing the matchmaking.
---------------------------------------
Curious persons,
I've been thinking about this a bit lately, as one does when summer break has this old educator excitedly digging through old materials searching for overlooked gems (but finding only stacks of sight-reading schmutz that looks like they were designed by committee in Roswell; circa 1947).
Long ago, I wrote plenty about tonal learning, rhythm learning, and muscle learning as somewhat distinct domains. Fair enough, I hope, for discussion purposes. To be sure, once I even said too much & kerfuffles ensued. hic sunt dracones!! But in the real world of helping grow musicians, Tone & Time & Tech are in constant dialogue. Especially when notation joins the chatroom. {are those still a thing?}
Please allow me to explain with a little story that...apologies in advance...might feel painfully familiar:
Little InsertNameHere has been “reading” music for a couple of years. Now, while he's still dandered at his parents for naming him like an Elon Musk Kid, he can also spit out the names of lines and spaces faster than I can say “Every Good Boy Does Fine” (a phrase the predates even me, and which I now utter only with air quotes & dripping w/sarcasm). His scales are clean. His etudes have the right number of notes. Hand him a new piece, however, and the room fills with the music equivalent of someone trying to read Shakespeare while sounding out every syllable.
Why? Likely because we taught him to decode notation's squiggles directly into finger movements, as opposed to letting those squiggles trigger comprehended musical thoughts (Valerio's "audeas") that THEN tell muscles what to do. We inadvertently inculcated a precise typist when we wanted to nurture a conversationalist who happens to use an instrument.
.
**Sidebar 1: The Tone Texting Analogy Strikes Again**
Long, long ago in a galaxy far away, I compared playing an instrument to tone-texting. Here's the TLaomDR (Too Long ago old man Didn't Read) on that one: Our musical mind has something urgent to say — a phrase, a groove, a feeling — and our muscles are just the eager *but slightly dim-witted* messengers trying to keep up. If the mind’s message is fuzzy (likeliest culprit: improperly stocked audiation) the muscles get contradictory instructions and everything locks up or comes out wrong. Notation should be reminders of musical messages deeply audiated, not moment-to-moment surface-level finger-pattern assembly instructions.
Muscles are automatons. They learn indiscriminately via repetition. They simply do what they've done; not understanding nor caring about right or wrong, graceful or clumsy, musical or unmusical. Repeated motions program our automatons, thus making our muscles mirror the resplendent, compelling audeas efflorescing from our abundant musical minds or the lackluster, uninspired, undifferentiated glop dribbling from our non-Gordonized grey matter. Either way...our muscles care not.
The pioneering psychologist William James investigated body movements that are actuated without volition, i.e. movements we don't have to think about (an example would be the way you gesture with your hands as you speak). James said "Every mental representation of movement awakens, in some degree, the actual movement. And it awakens it in a maximum degree whenever it is not kept from so doing by an antagonistic representation present simultaneously in the mind."
That last bit means means two things. One, fuzzy conception or fear sends our muscles contradictory excitatory *and* inhibitory signals simultaneously..... aaaaand. ... Hello. Tension City!! Population: me in most of my performing youth along with the vast majority of other young learners. But James' quote also means that at the pinnacle audiation becomes gesture *cue angelic harps/choir aahs*
BTW: audiation becomes gesture city was population me maybe once: Sophomore Recital, FSU; circa 1989***
.
**Sidebar 2: How Reading Actually Works (Another Quick Refresher)**
True reading — whether language or music — is about looking at squiggly symbols, hearing them sound fluently inside your head, comprehending their meaning and character, and predicting what’s likely coming next. It's emphatically *not* naming notes or calculating durations like a math problem. (I covered this *merely 16 years ago* in *Reading Readiness Readdressed*.
.Soooo, How do we "YahooPersonals.com" reading and technique together without creating little decoding robots? Read on!
**Studio or Classroom Practical Ideas**
1. Audiation First, Always. Before any new notation, ensure students can hear and sing the patterns, the tonality, the meter, the character, sing it in neutral syllables, improvise with it, move to it. Only after it lives vividly in them do you show them what it looks like on the page. Notation then becomes like Sonny & Cher: “icons that sing” [© Malanga, 2009], rather than button-pushing runes to be decoded.
2. Short, Rich Patterns Over Long, Sterile Exercises. Give them brief, musically meaningful chunks (tone patterns & chord duplets in various modes, rhythm patterns in multiple meters) that they can audiate, sing, then play. Again, once they can play it from audiation, show the notation and watch their eyes light up when the squiggles match what they already *know*. This is where reading and muscle learning exchanged boutonnières [*homecoming dance flashback*].
3. Error-Friendly Repetition. Suzuki was right about our automatons — practice makes *permanent*. So make the early repetitions full of musical thought, not mechanical drilling. A few perfect, thought-filled repetitions beat 50 tense, half-understood ones.
4. Prediction Games with Notation. Once they’re reading short patterns fluently, cover up parts of the score and have them predict (and play) what comes next based on tonal/rhythmic context. This mirrors real reading and keeps the musical mind in the driver’s seat instead of the eyes or fingers.
.
**Tangential Rant (if you know me, you knew at least one was coming)**
Can we please retire the idea that “technique class” and “theory/reading class" should be separate fiefdoms? They reinforce each other beautifully when the musical mind is the boss. Students with rich audiation rarely suffer the worst technical problems because their muscles don’t have to guess.
Recall that Billy Joel hired someone else to play his own classical piano works, not because he lacked audiation, but because his technique lagged in comparison to his conception. So, when The Piano Man needs a piano man to play piano, man! Technique. Is. BIG. [*Tom Hanks' chopsticks dance flashback*]
But, the reverse problem (great fingers, empty head) is far more common among our young learners... and far more heartbreaking when they eventually quit.
.
**Another Big But** (Hey! Sir Mix-a Lot is a perfectly contemporary reference!) *cough cough*
Of course there are times when targeted technical work is necessary. Posture, hand position, embouchure centering, efficient movement — these matter. But they should serve musical thought, not substitute for it. Technique without audiation is expensive finger wiggling. Audiation without decent technique begets frustrated musicality. Marry them properly and you get music making that can even eclipse wedded bliss.
..
**Final Thought**
Developing musicians isn’t about stockpiling isolated skills until some magical day when they all suddenly work together. It’s about teaming a teeming audiation with a fluent body AND the page from early on. Reading and technique should be dancing partners, not awkward strangers at the prom.
So, what have you found that works (or doesn’t) when trying to get reading and technique to make nicenice together? I’m genuinely curious — and always ready to steal good ideas learn from you.
Cheers,
:-)
Ron
-----------------------
Personal Note: Gordon remains my North Star, but Seigfried Engelmann is elbowing in. The more we align our teaching with how the mind actually works (and those Twin Titan Iconoclasts have gobs to offer in that area) the less we have to rely on myths, decoding drills, or sheer brute-force repetition. Check out giml.org and zigsite.com if you haven’t already.
***Really Personal Note: Yes, I know the audio and video don't align, When mom passed in August I found a moldering VHS of one of my recitals. Took it to a shop. That was the best they could do. But, HERE'S THE ALMOST TOO ON THE NOSE UNPLANNED--I swear--TIE IN: you hear the sound before my muscles deliver it. Audiation precedes automation. Just as it should be!!! LOL
PS Let the dialogue continue!! What have you found works (or doesn’t) when trying to get reading and technique to play nice together? I’m genuinely curious — and always ready to steal good ideas learn from you.
PPS Is YahooPersonals.com still a thing? Hell, are PS's even still a thing?? [*checks Ask Jeeves*]
PPPS Yes, I actually typed the :-) up there without even thinking. Crikey. I'm ancient.
*le sigh* Frenchy existentialist sigh. 🎹
