NT: I’d like to start by hearing about how you first were introduced to Music Learning Theory. When and how did you meet Dr. Gordon, and what was it about his work that inspired you to learn more?

BD: I am indebted to another giant of 20th-Century music education, Richard Colwell, who in 1988 or so included a unit on Dr. Gordon’s ideas in a research course during my doctoral studies at the University of Illinois. I wouldn’t characterize Dr. Colwell as an advocate of MLT principles, but I give him credit as a professor phenomenally knowledgeable about music education—at the time he had read every dissertation in the field, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that is still the case today at age 95 or so—for recognizing Gordon as an important and influential thinker, and hence appropriate to introduce to budding music education scholars.

At the time I had ten years of experience as a high school band director. My bands played well, but aside from above average success in developing improvisation skills in my jazz band I wouldn’t characterize my teaching as deviating much from the typical band paradigm of “see the note, push the button.” Despite having earned a reputation as an effective band director I remember having a sense that my field was missing something important about genuine and comprehensive musicianship. So, encountering Gordon’s ideas about audiation, and how to guide its development, was a revelatory experience, and motivated me to learn more.

My initial explorations went only as far as Gordon’s Learning Sequences in Music, which covers all the theory but doesn’t delve much into practical application. So as a next step I decided to go to the source himself! Early in my time as an assistant professor of music education at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque I served as Collegiate Vice-President for the state music educators association, and I was successful in persuading the board to fund a one-day slate of clinic sessions by Dr. Gordon for the coming All-State In-Service Conference. I then “cold called” Dr. Gordon, and he agreed to make the trip to our far-flung outpost.

His sessions at that January 1993 conference were fascinating and informative, and attracted quite a lot of interest from New Mexico music educators. Over the next 20 years came three-day summer workshop appearances at UNM by Gordon (four), Richard Grunow (four), Chris Azzara (five), Cindy Taggart, and Butch Marshall. These events were well attended, and I believe they had a positive impact on the nature and quality of music teaching in New Mexico. My own expertise and practical MLT teaching skills during these years grew further as a result of these sessions and also through attendance at two GIML PDLCs in Ambler, Pennsylvania, and an instrumental workshop in Wisconsin with Dick Grunow.

So my MLT education was not typical of my generation of Gordon followers in that I was never a formal student of Dr. Gordon. But during his visits to New Mexico and at other events I was fortunate to spend many hours discussing music teaching and learning with him. Similar interactions with the other clinicians noted above and MLT leaders such as Colleen Conway, Maria Runfola, Alison Reynolds, Diane Lange, Beth Bolton, and Wendy Valerio enhanced my knowledge, skills, and perspective. And my understanding of MLT in practical application benefitted immensely from a visit to Lansing, Michigan in 2006 in which I observed three of Cindy Taggart’s stellar graduates—Heather Shouldice, Jennifer Bailey, and Jill Reese—teaching brilliant MLT-based lessons to elementary school students.

My participation and visibility in MLT circles led to GIML leadership positions, including a presidential term in 2004-07. Shout out to Maria Runfola, with whom I worked closely in guiding GIML through some rough waters at the time. My term culminated with the first GIML conference in 2007 in Dayton, Ohio. Conference Chair Diane Lange gets most of the credit for the great success of that event. Since then it has been gratifying to witness the growth of GIML, in membership but also in the range and sophistication of its activities. The future of MLT looks bright, indeed!

NT: Do you have any funny or interesting stories about knowing Dr. Gordon that you can pass on, especially for those of us who never got to meet him?

BD: I’ll mention one experience. During one of his summer visits I drove Dr. Gordon to Sandia Crest, 10,700 feet overlooking Albuquerque. He was quite taken by the view, mentioning that it was his only trip to the top of a mountain. I’m glad I had the presence of mind to get a photo of the two of us:

 NT: Can you talk about your experiences as a music educator before using MLT? How did applying MLT principles change your practice? What did you notice about your students’ growth that changed after implementing these ideas into your teaching practices?

BD: I mentioned that my early years of music teaching didn’t deviate much from traditional practices. In more recent years MLT has had an enormous impact on my teaching. Although I haven’t had a band teaching assignment for many years, I’ve become very interested in, and comfortable with, teaching ear playing skills to instrumental students. Tonal syllables play a major role, and the circle of fifths is a helpful aid for dealing with instruments built in different keys. About ten years ago I recorded a lot of video footage of me teaching a group of middle school band students with no notation in front of them.

NT: Thank you for sharing videos of you working with students. There aren’t many examples of “out in the field” MLT teachers available. Seeing an expert working with kids will be tremendously helpful for so many teachers! Also, in my conversations with fellow music teachers, I’ve found that many secondary teachers think MLT is for elementary music and don’t always see the practical applications of using an audiation based approach in the instrumental world, particularly when contests and competitions drive so much of their curriculum. This is an incredible resource, so again, thank you! As the videos in your google folder are from a few years ago, are you still doing any teaching?

BD: I still give a few trumpet lessons and I implement a lot of singing, playing by ear, improvisation, and learning sequence activities. I also look for opportunities to include aural musicianship in executive skills work. For example, many brass players are familiar with the third study of Herbert L. Clarke, a basic arpeggio exercise notated in all major keys. I don’t see the point of including notation reading in such an activity so I teach it by rote using tonal syllables. I include instruction in the tonal functions used (tonic, subdominant, dominant) and the chords associated with each tonal function in a given key. I’ve gotten through all 12 major keys with some students. We also do the exercise in the relative minor keys, something not found in the Clarke book everybody else uses.

Most significantly, for 14 years starting in 2009 I had control of the undergraduate aural skills curriculum for music education majors at UNM. The curriculum and methodology, of course, were strongly influenced by MLT. Details would take up too much space here, but I can report I experienced much fulfillment and joy in teaching those classes. And I believe there was a significant payoff in the development of students’ audiation abilities, and their familiarity with aural skills teaching practices that differed from traditional approaches.

NT: As a graduate of your aural skills curriculum at UNM, I can attest that I also experienced much fulfillment and joy in taking your classes!  My situation was unique as your student because I went back to UNM for music education after a 10 year break in making music consistently. I remember being really nervous when I decided to return to school, particularly fearful of not being able to keep up with students who were fresh out of high school with consistent music classes.  While I didn’t fully yet understand the connection to the theory of MLT at the time, I found that your aural skills classes, while definitely challenging my musicianship, were not overly difficult. Of course, I put in lots of time with Audiation Assistant and did the work. I still remember the very first day of class, you taught us a tune, a bass line, stacked chords on top, and I was blown away that in one 50-minute class, such wonderful sounds were created. I knew I was in the right place. So, thank you!

BD: You’re welcome!

NT: Next, can you talk a little bit about your own work/research in moving MLT forward? For example, how you went about creating Audiation Assistant?

BD: Unsurprisingly, MLT figured heavily in my creative and scholarly work as a tenure track university professor. My first effort carried no weight in the “publish or perish” column but did amount to a significant service to GIML. In the late 1990s it occurred to me that MLT and GIML needed a website, so after securing approval from GIML leadership I established a website on a UNM subdomain; music.unm.edu/~audiate, I believe it was. That functioned as the GIML website from about 1998 to 2001, when giml.org was established.

Interestingly, almost all the material in the About Music Learning Theory and FAQ sections at the current website is what I wrote more than 25 years ago. For some time I have urged GIML leadership that the text needs updating and improving—and expanded input from more than just one guy!—but hey, GIML leaders are busy professionals, and that process has not yet taken place. Maybe sometime soon!

My first scholarly MLT publication was in 1999 in Music Educators Journal, a feature article about teaching audiation in instrumental classes. It marked the first time the term audiation appeared in an MEJ title. In it I urged instrumental music instructors to implement audiation principles in their teaching, but because of the immense challenges involved in teaching both audiation and instrumental executive skills I recommended that proceeding in baby steps, rather than “jumping right in,” would make sense in most cases.

Audiation Assistant was a drill and practice computer program for learning sequence activities. The idea for it came readily to me, as I had developed a computer-based harmonic intonation discrimination program for my doctoral dissertation. I showed a prototype to Dr. Gordon, who approved the idea, and subsequently endorsed it to Ed and Alec Harris at GIA, who released the program in 1999. Tune Assistant, released by GIA in 2005, I billed as a tune resource. Both programs were modestly successful for 10 years or so until made nonviable by the sad demise of their development platform.

I recently released Tonal Assistant, a much improved and expanded successor to the tonal component of Audiation Assistant. It is available at thehearandknow.com.

NT: I’ve explored Tonal Assistant and found it to be a tremendously helpful tool. I hope this interview can encourage more people to use it to develop their own musicianship skills. Your contributions to GIML and moving MLT forward have been tremendous, not just through the website and audiation-building computer programs. Please share a little about your work with rhythm and rhythm syllables. I know you have delved deeper into understanding rhythm and rhythm syllables than any other MLT practitioner I’ve met, even disagreeing with Dr. Gordon. Share about where we need to keep going further in research in understanding rhythm. How can we continue evolving the theory to best help future generations of teachers and students grow their own musicianship?

BD: The disagreement you refer to is in regard to a 2005 MEJ article of mine. I have always been a big fan of the great majority of Dr. Gordon’s rhythm principles, but the prohibition against triple beat groups never made sense to me. I remember bringing up the topic in one of our many conversations about his ideas, and he said the reason for the prohibition is because children naturally audiate macrobeats in pairs. I replied that is an important factor to consider in designing appropriate teaching practices for children but not an appropriate basis on which to found a theory of how adults audiate rhythm. Further, the concept of the subjectivity of metrical levels—one person’s macrobeats could be another’s microbeats, and vice versa—is one of the great merits of Gordon’s rhythm theory, but I think he poses his own violation of it in disallowing the case of one person’s set of triple microbeats (du-da-di) being another person’s macrobeat group of three (du, du, du).

Needless to say I made no progress in dissuading him from his views. After the article was published, though, I was relieved when it didn’t result in damage to our friendship!

Since that time I’ve heard of no particular support for my position from other MLT leaders, so maybe I’m just wrong, but the disagreement does prompt a question I consider crucial: What becomes of the guiding principles of a movement after the passing of its founder? On more than one occasion I remember Dr. Gordon stating that he wanted MLT to be vibrant, flexible, and evolving after his time at the helm. An admirable vision, no doubt, but how do his successors carry it forth in a field established and fleshed out by a single towering figure? And how are those successors designated, and their authority for adding to or changing essential principles agreed upon and codified?  

NT: I was fortunate to attend the 10th GIML conference in July 2025 where the theme of the conference centered on remembering the past, discussing the present, and looking to the future of GIML and MLT. We had several panels discussing questions like you posed. Again, looking forward with more and new research seems to be a crucial piece to answering these questions. Partnering those of us who work with children every day with those who do the research will, hopefully, be next steps to keeping MLT “vibrant, flexible, and evolving.”

BD: It is reassuring to learn from Cindy Taggart’s interview in this series that revisions are underway to Learning Sequences in Music and the pattern register books. But will any changes be significantly substantive? Regarding rhythm my view is that the triple beat group intransigence leads to further LSM incoherence—intact beats? paired vs. unpaired beats? no examples from music literature of these notions?—that could be a turn off to musical and critically thinking persons who otherwise might be attracted to MLT. Substantive revisions to that or any other section of LSM would be a major step for GIML and MLT leadership, but perhaps we will eventually see such action.

NT: I agree! Some of Dr. Gordon’s writing is not easy to understand and revisions to his writing will definitely help. But even with some of these incoherences that can act as barriers to understanding MLT, Dr. Gordon’s work has taken root in the music education field. I see and hear more and more music teachers using the term “audiate” and “audiation,” which is the heart of MLT. And as long as there are teachers out there trying to teach others to audiate, GIML will keep moving forward!

I have one more big question for you. You spent the majority of your career fairly isolated from other MLT practitioners. Many current MLT teachers face similar circumstances where they are the only MLT-inspired educator in their district or area. What advice or suggestions do you have for folks in a similar situation? How can we encourage others to take a deeper look at MLT and advocate for teaching using these ideas?

BD: Comes with the territory, I suppose. New ideas are rarely quick to be widely adopted. Music teaching methodology tends to be conservative regarding change: “We’ve always done it this way, and the familiar ways have served us well.” And starting out as a lone voice doesn’t make matters easier. I suppose you just have to have assurance that if the ideas you’re asserting are compelling, and your communication of them effective, they will find fertile ground to take root in some cases under the right circumstances. And it’s important, of course, not to come across as judgmental, superior, or condescending regarding traditional practice. Humans tend to get their guard up when they feel their values are being attacked. 

NT: Yes! This is so important. I love Dr. Diane Lange’s work Together in Harmony where she discusses how Orff-Schulwerk and MLT aren’t so different. At the end of the day, all of us music teachers want to give our students a deeper understanding of music and experience the joy of community music making.

BD: A further likely barrier is that MLT takes more musical, intellectual, and pedagogical strengths to be implemented effectively. In a sense it’s harder work. But the demands are worth it! Many of us MLT folk can relate to Cindy Taggart’s anecdote in her interview about the lack of enjoyment and fulfillment she found early in her career in teaching music unmusically, and how MLT recharged her professional enthusiasm. Expressing such joy in your communicating about MLT—and modeling it in your teaching—can influence teachers who are ripe for such a transformation.

NT: I love this! Expressing joy is so important! Music making is fun and if we aren’t enjoying what we are doing, why are we doing it? 

What about you? What kept you moving forward with your own research and teaching practices despite not having local support? How were you able to stay connected and inspired to keep using these ideas when colleagues, co-workers, and even your students disagreed with or even criticized you?

BD: Well, I can never know for sure how much disagreeing or criticizing was going on out of my earshot, but very little disapproval has been expressed directly to me. Far more dialogue has been positive. More than one colleague has said to me words to the effect of “You know, Bruce, that Gordon stuff makes a lot of sense, but I’m an old dog and I just don’t think I’m capable of learning and applying those new tricks.” More typically, other students and workshop attendees have expressed not just approval of MLT principles, but have implemented to some degree such principles successfully in their teaching. 

NT: I am glad that you have had such positive feedback from your work.

BD: It is true that not many have “jumped right in.” In addition to geographic isolation (and my own inadequacies, of course) an impediment to my effectiveness as an MLT emissary, I think, is that my specialization has been instrumental music. If music education in general tends toward conservatism regarding change, instrumental programs—bands in particular!—can be especially hidebound. Having said that I have had a few brilliant graduates who have courageously and successfully taught beginning band from Jump Right In-The Instrumental Series. But like the peloton drawing back the breakaway in a bicycle race the wider lockstep band community has tended to cause these teachers to “ease back out.” But not entirely. They retain in their programs crucial MLT aspects such as singing, playing by ear, and improvisation.

A huge boost to the MLT scene in New Mexico was when Robin Giebelhausen, one of Cindy Taggart’s many Michigan State doctoral grads, joined the UNM music ed team in 2013 (search committee chaired by me!). In addition to being a brilliant and dynamic teacher, a factor in Robin’s favor was her association with the elementary music education community, one I consider more open to change than the secondary school performing group crowd. Her inclusion of MLT content in the elementary general music methods class was effective in building expertise, enthusiasm, and commitment among UNM students, several of whom have even taken GIML PDLCs. And a GIML Rocky Mountain chapter has formed in stunning time, even hosting a PDLC in 2024. Congrats especially to you, Natalie, for your inspiring leadership! 

NT: Thank you, Bruce! It has been a labor of love and so encouraging to see people learning about MLT here in New Mexico. I was so grateful to be a part of that. And while yes, Dr. Robin Giebelhausen’s time at UNM was tremendous in helping many, myself included, to understand and implement audiation-based teaching practices in our classrooms, ultimately we trace this back to you. It is because of your hard work, your perseverance, your love for music education, and your encouragement that GIML is alive and growing in New Mexico.