Audiation for Beginning Instrumentalists

My research topic is elementary music methods in teaching beginning band.  Some of the questions I need to answer are what are the different methods used in elementary music and in beginning band, what are their differences and what is the "gap" between the methods used in elementary music when transitioning to traditional band methods.


The article is about a middle and high school band director who uses the Gordon method to teach her students, especially in the beginning band stages. The author personally started out her early education in instrumental music teaching herself music by ear and focusing on tunes rather than the playing long tone and resting that is often the focus in beginning band methods.  Through her personal experience and teaching methods she found that Gordon’s Music Learning Theory was more effective for herself and her students. I did not particularly learn anything about the research process in this article, as it was more of an article for teaching than substantial research, but the information is useful for my topic. I wanted to find an article that focused on using elementary methods in the beginning band instruction, as that is my topic. The article is very strong with how it addresses the method used by Gordon to teach beginning instrumentalists. However, the article is somewhat lacking on how the method compares to the “traditional” style of instrumental music learning.

References
Liperote, Kathy A. (2006). Audiation for Beginning Instrumentalists: Listen, Speak, Read, Write. 
Music Educators Journal, 93(1), 46-52.


This article helps to contribute to my understanding because it gives me a starting of the background research that I need to understand the different methods and this article uses what is called the Gordon method, which is the closest so far for creating an accurate bridge for the transition from general music to a band music program.