Learning Sequences in Music: A Contemporary Music Learning Theory 2012 Edition/G2345 Hardcover – August 11, 2011

This book is not easy to read. Edwin Gordon clearly was a genius, but you have to put the work in - he doesn't make it easy for you (to give you an example, for some reason the word "the" seems to have been omitted from many sentences in the book. I have no idea why)However it gets 5-stars from me because it stands conventional music teaching on its head, based on 30 years of research, and, to put it bluntly, in my opinion, Edwin Gordon was right about many things, such as:Moveable do based on a La-based minorDu-ta-de-ta rhythm syllablesThe central importance of audiationThe need to delay instrumental teachingThe need to delay learning to read musicThe sight before sound principleThe need for aptitude testing in music educationI could go on...Don't buy the books that proport to be a bite-size introduction to Gordon's ideas. Buy this book and roll your sleeves up for a difficult, but extremely enlightening read. If you're serious about teaching music RIGHT you need this book. I wish I had read it years ago.To get a general idea of Gordon's ideas, search for a series of videos on youtube entitled "Edwin E. Gordon Music Learning Theory Overview"

If you are seriously interested in pondering Music Education methodology, you will love this profound resource. Allow ample time to read a sentence and consider what it means. I highly recommend this study to those who seek to refine their conception of instructional delivery via the music classroom.

IMO, this book would benefit from a rewrite. If not a rewrite, then a deep edit pass. Gordon's writing is very far from adequate. It's elliptical for one thing, requiring the reader to insert words as they go (if they can figure out what's missing), in order to parse it. It omits hyphens, articles ("the"/"a"), commas, and more, which really slows down the (or at least this) reader. To me, it comes across as amateurish, very awkward, and very alien-sounding.Also, again IMO, Gordon seems not to have correctly analyzed nor understood some fundamental realities of music. He repeatedly draws analogies between "understanding" music and "understanding" human language. That alone is a serious Achilles' heel in any inference he makes based on that parallel, because those two kinds of understanding are *very* different. When it comes to human language, both authors and consumers understand it in such a way that they can reason about it consciously. With music, on the other hand, everyone can understand music well enough to enjoy it when they hear it, even if it's done unconsciously. This is the blessing of the human brain: that we can *all* understand and enjoy music. If you happen to be talented or educated enough, then you can raise that understanding and enjoyment of music from the unconscious to the conscious level, and you can then reason out loud about the music you hear/compose. But Gordon's analysis of what I've just described is entirely different (and, ultimately, wrong). On the one hand, he recognizes that a small set of folks are talented/educated enough to properly understand and reason consciously (and out loud) about music. So far, so good. But then he writes that the inability of regular folks to be able to explain *why* they like a piece of music suggests that they're only enjoying it emotionally due to its tone and/or dynamics. Which is incorrect. And it's like arguing that if you can't explain the physics of trajectories then you can't catch a ball. Gordon doesn't seem to acknlowedge that there are qualitatively different levels and layers to the working of the brain.Anyway, the obvious difference between language and music, and the levels of consciousness in which those two things function, explain why most folks (not people working at the level of a trained and experienced musician) tend to latch only on to the lyrics in music that they like. They think of themsvels as singing the lyrics, rather than thinking of themselves as singing the melody. And they praise and debate about the lyrics, because those are things they can reason about, instead of the music, which they can enjoy only subconsciously and not verbally.And Gordon says 'tonality' when he means 'modality', thereby needing to invent the term 'keyality' to serve where 'tonality' should. I've described only the tip of the iceberg of issues with this book here, but I feel that even this tip is enough to seriously rethink whether you want to approach it, and whether you'll get value from it.It's a very disappointing, hard-going book.

He is extremely thoughtful and thorough in this theory of how kids learn music. I haven't made it all the way through yet but there's a lot to digest.

I am a professional musician, not an academic. My education is in "classical" music performance. When I got out into the real world my education wasn't very helpful. My first clue as to why came with my discovery of Victor Wooten's book *The Music Lesson*. That book probably had all I needed to know, but I had a hard time either understanding or accepting the message.EE Gordon's book *Learning Sequences in Music* bridged the gap for me. It is basically a summary of his research in the developmental psychology of music - for a popular audience. Where *The Music Lesson* gave me a window to the nature of music, Gordon gave me a roadmap to the skills I wanted to acquire and enhance.I read both those books in a single summer a few years ago and that time is one of the big milestones in my life. Things are a lot different for me after that summer. From LSM I was able to assess my current level of development, organize more study/practice, and generally proceed with music, when I had previously been stalled for years.I will say that there is an easier book if you just want the gist of LSM. It is Eric Bluestine's *The Ways Children Learn Music*. Bluestine is a busy elementary music teacher who has studied Music Learning Theory and used it to inform his own pedagogy - he also has a lovely touch at the typewriter. Dr. Gordon was from a time when people read more and could sustain concentration much longer. Additionally, he was not particularly gifted in the art of prose. OTOH LSM isn't meant for entertainment, and by all other criteria this book is well-written. I do admit that studying this book is a project - definitely not a beach read.Also I should point out that LSM - and most of Music Learning Theory - does not constitute a method. It is a finding in psychological research. It doesn't tell you what to do, but rather informs your choices of methods by telling you exactly what skills constitute musical proficiency, and the natural order in which people acquire those skills.Gordon's achievement was the scientific proof that people learn music syntactically. In a short Amazon review it's hard to convey how important this is - maybe you have to have suffered through a long, unproductive music education like I did to appreciate it. This discovery is on the order of the proof of a heliocentric model of celestial bodies. Gordon's work convincingly refutes unproductive, wrong-headed dogma that has plagued the academy for a long time and prevented untold generations of people from fully experiencing music.I was just thinking about this book this morning - that's what brought me here - reflecting on how much it helped me in my life. I thought maybe I would drop Dr. Gordon a note and thank him for his courageous work (he had a very difficult academic career because his discovery upset the status quo). I just read that he died in December.Music is an integral part of human life, yet currently huge swaths of cultures descended from the Renaissance suffer because of misinformation regarding how people learn music. Gordon's work ensures that the scientific fact of music learning sequence has a fighting chance, which should eventually result in the restoration of this basic human activity to many millions of currently impoverished lives.I hope that someone will see this review and, if not actually read *Learning Sequences in Music*, at least take the trouble to understand Dr. Gordon's work and what it means to music students of the future, from undergrads learning music theory to the children they will go out and instruct.

Impossible to read and comprehend

This is the most important book that has been written on music education. I've read this book many times & written hundreds of practical lesson plans that follow the learning sequences presented in it. Amazing book. It has improved my teaching and musicianship more than any other music book I've ever read & that is a substantial list.

Aún estoy leyéndolo, pero pienso que es el mejor libro y la mejor explicación sobre el proceso de aprendizaje musical y cómo favorecerlo.