Getting to know Eric Bluestine, author of The Ways Children Learn Music: Part I

Eric Bluestine shares his journey from vibrant public school music educator to private piano instructor, delving into the lessons learned along the way. The conversation focuses on adaptability in teaching methods, the importance of Music Learning Theory, and Eric's experiences writing a foundational book for music educators.

• Eric’s transition from public education to private lessons
• Reflecting on the challenges faced in music teaching
• The limitations of traditional page-by-page learning
• Strategies for engaging young students in music
• Introduction to Music Learning Theory and its significance
• The process of writing "The Ways Children Learn Music" 
• Encouragement to rethink teaching practices in music 
• Importance of fostering listening skills in students 

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Introduction to Audiation-based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano

Ready to learn more about audiation-based piano instruction and Music Moves for Piano? Visit Music Learning Academy for online courses, webinars, and resources.

Want to dive into audiation-based piano instruction? Check out Music Moves for Piano by Marilyn Lowe.

Transcript

00:00:04 Krista Jadro

Eric Bluestine is an esteemed music educator and author. Eric taught elementary general music in the school district of Philadelphia for 35 years. He earned his PhD in music education from Temple University and is perhaps best known for his influential book, The Ways Children Learn Music, An Introduction and Practical Guide to Music Learning Theory.

00:00:24 Krista Jadro

He continues to share and write his ideas on his blog, the Ways Children Learn Music. Enjoy Part one of two episodes with Eric Bluestine. Welcome to Keys to Music Learning. I'm Krista Jadro of Music Learning Academy. 

00:00:51 Hannah Mayo

And I'm Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano. 

00:00:55 Krista Jadro

Join us as we discuss common goals and challenges in the Piano Studio and offer research-based ideas and solutions to guide every one of your students to reach their full musical potential with audiation. We are back in 2025 with our guest, Eric Bluestine. We are delighted to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us. 

00:01:18 Eric Bluestine

Well, thank you. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. 

00:01:22 Krista Jadro

Could you start just by telling the listeners a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do, and about your music background? 

00:01:29 Eric Bluestine

Wow. Well, I recently retired from teaching general music with the Philadelphia Public Schools. I was there for 35 years. I'm a veteran teacher. And now that I'm retired, I'm figuring out what I want to do with myself. And I've started teaching private piano lessons again. And I have to kind of learn how to do that because the last time I did that for real was several decades ago. 

00:01:57 Eric Bluestine

And my way of teaching back then, I mean, I know I'm rambling now, but that's okay. My way of teaching back then was the way I was taught. Let's open a book and start reading. And I know it's not the greatest, but you know, every, every good boy does fine worked for me. And so why not teach that way for everybody? And of course, it's not the greatest approach, and we know that. So I'm sort of figuring out, taking one step at a time, figuring out what to do. And I'm now the proud owner of Marilyn's book. It came in the mail two days ago and I've been looking through it and it'll take months and months and months to assimilate. I know that. And I may have a jump on it because I already know something about MLT, so that part of it will not be difficult. 

But piecing that together with piano pedagogy, where my brain is sort of enmeshed in, you open a book and you start reading. And then when the song is done, you turn the page. And then when the song is done, you turn the next page. And it's basically a page-to-page approach to teaching. And when the book is done, you move on to the next book. You know, when book A is done, you move on to book B. And then you just keep climbing and climbing and climbing. And that always struck me as kind of like climbing up one path of a mountain. And yes, you're ascending, but there's a whole mountain that you're not exploring. And you're proud of yourself because you're climbing up this one very narrow path of this mountain. And there's maybe all sorts of other sides of the mountain that you would do well to explore. 

00:03:35 Eric Bluestine

So as a teacher, I kind of want to figure that out now that I'm in my 60s and I'm raring to start a whole new chapter. But anyway, I was a teacher for 35 years and parts of it were wonderful. Parts of it were a little more challenging in ways that I didn't anticipate. But I'm very proud of what I did. It's a big mountainous legacy that I can look back on with a lot of pride. 

00:04:05 Hannah Mayo

You said you taught elementary general music, and was that in a K through 5 program? 

00:04:12 Eric Bluestine

It started out as K through 5, which I loved, and then it grew to K through 6, 7, and 8, which I did not opt for. I'm not a big fan of a single school going K to 8. That never struck me as a good idea. My kids, when they were going through school here in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, their approach was kindergarten through fourth grade. 

00:04:39 Eric Bluestine

And then you move on to a fifth and sixth school, where everybody is basically fifth grade, sixth grade. Then you move on to a seventh grade and eighth grade school, and then you move on to high school. The only thing that would be missing in an environment like that is that older kids can mentor younger kids and they have a chance to act as leaders in that way. 

00:05:03 Eric Bluestine

But that's an easy fix. It's much easier to fix that problem than it is to fix the problem of so many different age groups and a thousand kids all coming together in this really combustible environment, which very often it turned out to be. So that was tough. But my favorite grade, my favorite. I love the little ones. I love teaching preschool. That was fun. But boy, is it tiring. You have to go with every flow and every current. It's sort of like trying to tap dance in the ocean, you know, and you're trying to jostle your way around and the waves are buffeting you every which way. 

00:05:43 Eric Bluestine

And children want to go here and they want to go here and you have this plan and you have to continually adjust to them and which is what they need, of course. But boy, at the end of the half hour or 45 minutes, you're exhausted. And it's wonderful. But I might be too old for that kind of stuff. 

00:06:01 Eric Bluestine

I have a four and a half year old piano student and I'm sort of bringing back all my early childhood stuff with her and singing in lots of different modes and chanting in different meters. And the parents are a little bit surprised by what I bring. It's, you know, I've had her for three lessons now and each lesson is getting a little bit more involved with activities. 

00:06:20 Eric Bluestine

And now we're up to about nine or 10 different activities in the single lesson. And pretty soon I'm going to hope to get up to about 14 or 15 different activities in a single lesson and just keep it moving, moving, moving. Yeah. My favorite grade, I think was third grade because those kids were old enough to follow directions and do things that you wanted them to do, but they weren't so old that they were jaded. Sing patterns. Sure. Rock back and forth to macro beats. You got it. Whatever you want us to do, we're here to please you. And that was their attitude. And so I taught so much to the kids in end of second grade, third grade, and beginning of fourth grade. After that point, it's a challenge and you have to figure out how to reach them, you know. But third grade was easy and fun. 

00:07:13 Hannah Mayo

I love third graders too. Yeah. And for the same reasons. They, they've gotten to a point where they're really hanging onto the information and you can build every single week. But they're not too cool. 

00:07:28 Eric Bluestine

That's right. They're not too cool for school. Yeah. They're still open to learning stuff and trusting and they've still got that in them. 

00:07:37 Krista Jadro

Well, you have a huge head start, Eric, with understanding Music Moves for Piano. Not only because of your understanding of Music Learning Theory, but also just what you were saying about early childhood music. And Hannah and I would love to start Keyboard Games with the four year olds. And Hannah, I think even has some three year olds now that she's starting with Keyboard Games. And so much of what you just said, lots of modes, singing in different tonalities, chanting and moving in different meters, creative activities, really following the flow of the student being prepared to be flexible with your lessons. It's almost impossible to go in with a specific lesson plan with a four year old, but when you know your goals and when you know the theory and when you know preparatory audiation and how to engage the child, then lessons can be so successful and so rewarding for the teacher and for the student too. 

00:08:29 Eric Bluestine

Absolutely. 

00:08:30 Hannah Mayo

And speaking of your Music Learning Theory, or MLT as we'll often refer to it, your background there, can you tell us about when you and MLT met and what that whole discovery process was like for you? 

00:08:47 Eric Bluestine

Wow. Okay. Well, let me back up even further than that. I. When I graduated from high school, I was accepted to Oberlin College, but not the conservatory. And I thought, well, I'm so involved with music and music is so much a part of everything I do. And every hour of every day is spent listening to music and trying to remember what my piano teacher taught me when I was 10 or 11. I stopped taking lessons, but I still played a lot. I still plunked and banged around on the, on the piano. And I thought Oberlin would be a great compromise. I would study, you know, real subjects, you know, not music, but something, something that I could use with the rest of my life. 

00:09:34 Eric Bluestine

But I might still be able to talk with musicians. Well, it didn't quite work out that way. I spent all my time in the conservatory library and, and I didn't spend a whole lot of time in my regular classroom. Didn't do very well academically, and my parents were naturally very upset. Now that I'm a parent, I would have been upset also. I see that. But at the time I was very frustrated. Couldn't they see that music was growing and growing and growing inside me and I had to do something about it? Well, I went to the conservatory folks, and I said, you know, I want to join your team. I want to be part of this conservatory. 

00:10:14 Eric Bluestine

I'm spending all my time in here anyway, and I'm listening to Schoenberg and Renaissance music and I'm doing all this. I'm signing out more records. We had records back then and sometimes tapes. There were no such things as CDs back in those days, we had records, vinyl. And I mean, I was signing out, I was going to the listening library and signing out more records than, than music majors were. They were avoiding the listening library. They were getting away from the practice room as, as often as they could because that was their life. That wasn't my life. I wanted it to be my life. So I said, well, I want to join your conservatory. That's it. I just want to be part of it. 

00:10:54 Eric Bluestine

Well, do you actually play an instrument? They wanted to know why. So I took piano lessons. And I said, well, when was the last time you had a real lesson? When I was 12. But I like to play. Can I join? They said, no, we're not a music school. We're a conservatory. We're above that. That was the message that they sent. They were very polite about it, but. And I said, well, can I at least play for you? And they said, well, you know, can you play some Chopin? I said, well, I remember the last thing I worked on was this beautiful B minor waltz (Eric sings). I don't have perfect pitch, but that, that feels like F sharp to me, and it's a lovely thing. 

00:11:38 Eric Bluestine

And they said, well, that's. That's something. You know, they knew that that wasn't the most difficult or the most impressive piece, but I still love it. It's a gorgeous piece to play. And I said, I can play some of the two part inventions. I love playing Bach. And they just sort of snickered. But I did play for them. And they said, well, thank you for coming in. Basically we’ll give you 15 minutes of our precious time to hear you play. And they said, thank you, but no thanks. We're a serious conservatory. We have standards to uphold. And that was basically it. And I said to my parents, I have to leave. 

00:12:13 Eric Bluestine

As much as I wanted to go to Oberlin to be a part of everything that was happening, this wasn't the place for me. I have to come back to Philadelphia. I just have to come back and figure out what I want to do. Well, my parents said, why don't you try Temple University? It's right in the neighborhood. Just try it. There's nothing to. It's right here. It's not a conservatory, but I'll bet they have a music school. I'll bet they have some. There are some music classes you can take while you're figuring out what you really want to do. Take some music classes. Because that's what you seem to love and that's what you devote all your time to. So I met with Roger Dean, who was a lovely, lovely man, an absolutely lovely man. I still credit him for performing the beat function syllables more musically than anyone I have ever heard in my life. He had this really deep, rich, sonorous bass voice. 

00:13:10 Eric Bluestine

And when other people would go (monotone voice) “Du-de Du-de Duta-deta Du-de” he would say shake his head in class and correct us by going, oh, no, no. It must (with much expression, Eric chants using the beat function syllable system).” And then he would come in with… (Eric continues to chant expressively). And that's how I learned how to do it. I learned how to be all sorts of loosey goosey and make my voice go up and down and up and down with all sorts of inflection because of Roger Dean. Anyway, I met with him and he said, well, we're not a conservatory, we're a music school. 

00:13:57 Eric Bluestine

I had taken some theory classes at Oberlin. I should mention that because my parents said, well, if you're really that gung ho and we want you to get good grades, maybe you'll get a good grade if you just take a music class and get it out of your system. So I took some music theory classes and am I allowed to say this? Am I allowed to say I was not just good at it? I was the class star? 

00:14:20 Krista Jadro

Absolutely. 

00:14:21 Eric Bluestine

I was the class star. I was showing everyone else how to write Baroque counterpoint, they said, “what’s this syncopation?”, you know, it's resolved from seven to six. It's the easiest thing in the world. And these three twos just. It's so easy. Don't you have it in your ear? Haven't you been listening to Glenn Gould since you were nine? I mean, we all have, right? You know, come on. I mean, I grew up with the well tempered synthesizer and Wendy Carlos. I know how Baroque music's supposed to sound with all these different voices interweaving. Just write like Bach. What's so hard about it? 

00:15:00 Eric Bluestine

It was hard for them, but it was not hard for me. And the theory teacher was very impressed. And he was one of the people who said, I love you to death. Eric, you have to get out of here because the conservatory will never accept you and somebody has got to accept you. You've got too much inside you not to be accepted. So go with my blessing, go with the A+ I'm giving you. Go with my recommendation and get out of here. Conrad Cummings, a wonderful theory teacher who made every lesson like a ride on a magic carpet. His big thing was creativity and not improvisation, although that would have been nice, but composition. Here's a progression and I want you to modulate to the subdominant. And it's due Thursday, okay? So take this bass line and write this gorgeous melody that you're going to come up with over it. And if you want to fill in some inner voices, some alto and tenor things, that's up to you. 

But you have to write an honor pledge at the bottom. And the honor pledge says, I have played this on my instrument, and I know what it sounds like. Don't just fill in the dots. This is not a crossword puzzle. This is not a game of anagrams. You have to know what you're writing. 

00:16:27 Eric Bluestine

Okay? And I mentioned that to Roger Dean, and he smiled and he said, in his deep voice. “Well, I hope those students had the readinesses for composition.” And I had no idea what he was talking about, because for me, readiness? You just jump in and do it. I mean, you know, of course. Of course you have the ear to do it because you've been listening and listening and listening for such a long time. Well, it turns out that a lot of the conservatory students weren't big on listening. They were big on playing, which is where my daughter is now. She's now at Temple University. She's majoring in vocal performance. 

00:17:05 Eric Bluestine

And Celia, what do you want to listen to. You want to listen to something with me? Well, I've got Taylor Swift on in the background, and I'm just sort of bopping around. Taylor Swift. That's nice. That's good. But there's a. There's a big, wide world out there. You know, there's this guy named Beethoven, and there's this jazz stuff and there's this medieval and Renaissance music that. Oh, you should. You would love. That's for a later time, maybe, but I guess you could describe me as a listener who is a begrudging performer. For me, listening is the thing. And I know that you can't have aural without oral, and you can't have oral without aural. The two have to go together in order for each one to be meaningful. I get that. But listening really is my love, and. And playing is growing in my appreciation. 

00:18:01 Hannah Mayo

I think there really is nothing quite like listening. And as a music student, I was not doing near enough listening to things outside the piano repertoire as a university student. But then later I really got into symphonies, particularly the Beethoven symphonies, but also Mozart and Mahler and all these symphonies. And I think the thing that got me into listening was noise canceling headphones, which are not cheap. So it was a long time. I had to save for these noise canceling headphones. And then I got them and I just wanted to listen to everything because you just go into this bubble of sound. And so if anybody is not listening enough, invest in some noise canceling headphones, and it might make you want to listen more. 

00:18:57 Hannah Mayo

And the experience is just top notch. But also, when you said the part about I hope they have the readiness for composition, that brought me right back to the first time I ever heard the word readiness at a PDLC from Jenny Fisher. And I was just so confused. 

00:19:18 Eric Bluestine

I was, too. That was exactly my reaction back in. In 1985 when I went to see the head of the department at Temple for the first time. Ready? What. What is he talking about? Readiness? You know, isn't it just something you do or you do it and you might fail at it? But, you know, the idea of building incrementally up to a point where you can succeed, I mean, I sort of knew that intuitively in general education that that made sense. I didn't know that there was such a thing that you could do in music that would help students succeed like that and would help me succeed in that way. That was a new thing. 

00:20:00 Krista Jadro

So it sounds like Roger Dean was kind of your introduction to Music Learning Theory. And then was Dr. Gordon there? Did you have classes on Music Learning Theory? Just kind of. What was that? Discovery process. 

00:20:15 Eric Bluestine

He was definitely at Temple at the time, and I did not meet him when I took my first class in MLT from Roger Dean, it was an undergraduate class. And I talked to Dr. Dean years later, he said, boy, he had to fight tooth and nail to get that class on the books. There was so much opposition, so much fighting, so much opposition. I said, it's a class. Why fight about it if it can help students learn and grow and become better teachers? There's nothing to fight about. To this day, I don't understand the opposition. I never did. But that's a whole other thing. 

00:20:53 Eric Bluestine

I had not met Dr. Gordon yet. I would meet him later, and he and I would have some very interesting conversations. I can just say that I got to meet him more through his audio voice than in real life, because I learn that way, and I don't learn through reading. And when I was taking the class in, it was January of 86, we were assigned his textbook. And this was the 1984 edition, which is not my favorite edition. My favorite editions of Dr. Gordon's book, the 1980 edition, when his mind was really exploding and he was exploring different thoughts. And the 1988 edition, when he was first coming up with the preparatory audiation stages, and they were fresh for him, and he had just come up with the sixth additional stage of audition, because before that there were only five stages of audiation, then there were six, and he had just come up with a sixth stage about musical form and development, and that was fresh and new. 

00:21:58 Eric Bluestine

So he was really excited about that. And you could feel there was a kind of energy in those books. But I had to read the 1984 edition, and I'm not a good reader. I don't read textbooks well. I would much rather listen to something, get about 5% of it, go back to it, get about 10% of it, go back to it. And maybe by the 50th or 60th time that I've heard it. Well, by that time I would figure out what they were talking about. But reading, forget it. I can't do. So I read Gordon's textbook. I tried to. And I was at a loss for words about. I can't bring myself to understand any of this. I simply cannot understand. I told Dr. Dean, I said, I normally have a lot of trouble with textbooks, but I'm really having trouble with this one. And he said, you're not alone. Here are some audio tapes that might help. Well, I checked out one audio tape after another, after another after another, and I made copies of them, and I would listen to them. 

00:23:03 Eric Bluestine

I got hooked on these audio tapes, and by the time I was done listening to hundreds and hundreds of hours, that's just the kind of person I am. Kind of compulsive that way. I knew Music Learning Theory inside, it had become part of me. But there's something curious that happens when you have a kind of defiant personality and you hear something a hundred times or 200 or 500 times, you want to rewrite it, you want to rethink it, you want to challenge it, you want to question it, you don't want to agree with it. 

00:23:41 Eric Bluestine

Some people would hear it a hundred times, or they would hear the same song 100 times and say, oh, that's the way the Beatles have to go. And I love the predictability of it. Not me. I want to rewrite it, and I want to say, let's start from scratch and do it better. So I would think through all the things that Dr. Gordon was saying, and I would have questions. And the thing is, when you listen to lectures, he did a wonderful lecture series at the Sugarloaf Conference hall right outside the Morris Arboretum near Philadelphia. And they went from, I think, 1980 to 1988. And he would take questions from the audience, from the listeners. And sometimes he would get distracted, like I usually do. Sometimes he would start answering a question and then not quite finish answering the question. And then he would go off on a tangent. And then this is what happened in a 1981 lecture. He was talking about musical context or something like that, and he got cut off by someone else's question and couldn't quite finish it. 

00:24:42 Eric Bluestine

And I said, okay, well, that's too bad. In 1984 or 1985, someone asked him the same question, and then he finished answering it. So you almost had to know the 1981 lecture to be able to understand the 1985 lecture. Well, I did. That's the good news. So I didn't realize it before, but my head was like a balloon. And when I was teaching. I'm going to zoom ahead, if that's okay, to when I was teaching a lesson and I was observed by a music supervisor. And he was watching me. He knew that I was a pianist, or at least that was my instrument. So he expected me to be behind the piano a lot of the time. 

00:25:25 Eric Bluestine

And he was very surprised that I would play a little bit, get into the key and the tonality, and walk away from the piano and start singing a cappella. And then I would ask the kids in solo to sing a cappella. This was shocking to him. And they were doing it without even batting an eye, because this is what I had expected them to do. From kindergarten on, this is what we do. We sing. It's a singing classroom, and we sing for each other. And Mary sings for Bill, and Bill sings for Jane, and Jane sings for Peter, and Peter sings for Tommy. That's what we do. It's a round robin where kids in head voice teach each other to sing in head voice, in tune. 

00:26:08 Eric Bluestine

So another digression. I never sang in falsetto ever, because I knew that kids would be the best vocal model for other kids. And I still believe that there's no better teacher for children than children. And if you can get Mary to sing for Tom and Tom to sing for Bill and Bill to sing for Peter, all of a sudden, Mary and Peter and Bill and Tom have taught each other and that much better for it. 

00:26:34 Eric Bluestine

And their musicianship skyrockets. Well, this supervisor was watching all of this, and he came up to me afterwards and he said, does this have anything to do with Gordon? And I said, yeah, big time. And he said, well, I want to learn more about it. Most of the music supervisors you'll meet in Philadelphia are dead against this, but I'm curious about it. I don't know a lot about it. Can you recommend something? Is there a. A book? Is there a lecture series? I said, well, the lecture series are, you know, they're very good, but you have to listen to them for a long time to really absorb it. He said, I don't want that. Is there a pamphlet? 

00:27:10 Eric Bluestine

Something five pages, six pages long? And I said, well, not only is there no pamphlet, but that's impossible. I don't care how skillful the writer is, you cannot distill MLT in five pages. Darrell Walters, bless him, I hope we have a chance to talk about him more. He was wonderful. He was my PhD advisor and the best writer on MLT ever. He tried to distill the essence of MLT in one article. And he did a pretty good job. He did a pretty good job of it. But I said, if you really want to understand it, you're going to need a book. And he said, well, is there a book out there for me? I'm a rank and file teacher. I don't want to, you know, I'm not interested in pursuing a doctoral degree. I just want something where I can read it and understand it. Maybe in one night, maybe two nights, give me something. And I said, well, I could do that. I'll do it. I'll do it for you. Why not? You know? 

00:28:08 Eric Bluestine

And I started writing and I kept writing and I kept writing and writing and writing. And it was the first time that I had used a computer for real. Back in my day in the Stone Age, we had electric typewriters and made a word processor that could actually backspace and erase. That was huge. We didn't need white out to erase what we wrote on the page. The computer, the word processor did it for you? Well, I was using a computer for the first time, this thing called Microsoft something or other. And it had maybe a half a gigabyte of memory in it. And there was this big box, and I was learning how to type and use the computer. 

00:28:49 Eric Bluestine

And anyway, I started writing my book in May of 1994. Finished it. I wanted to finish it by the end of the summer so that I could have something to present to him at the start of the school year. And I finished writing this manuscript in the third week of August. I met my deadline and I was all ready to present it to him. And I called the district office, and I said, what happened to him? I won't mention his name, but I said, where is he? Oh, he left the district. Yeah. He told us he was just frustrated with the bureaucracy and he couldn't get done what he wanted to get done. So he left teaching altogether. He's now working for this corporation. And I said, he left the field. He was the only one who was interested. He was the only one who was interested in MLT at all in Philadelphia. And he's gone. And I had this manuscript. 

00:29:43 Eric Bluestine

What do I do with this? So it was in my apartment. And I was taking a class with Dr. Gordon that September, and I had already taken one class with him before. So he knew me. I was the guy who. He used to joke. I was the guy who would always shake my head like this. I would always shake no. And he would mention something about verbal association or some rule that he came up with. And I would say, that doesn't sound right. Or I just think to myself, that doesn't sound right. And my displeasure would show on my face. 

00:30:12 Eric Bluestine

And he would say, oh, there's Eric again, shaking his head. That was what Dr. Gordon would say a couple of times in the semester. Oh, there's Eric shaking his head again. Well, he knew me, and he got a kick out of the fact that I would sort of push back gently. And we were talking at the beginning of the first day of class, and I said, hi, Dr. Gordon. How are you? He said, oh, Eric, nice to see you. I'm so glad you're taking my class again. How was your summer? I said, it was very eventful. He said, oh, what did you do? Well, I challenged myself. I wrote a book. And he said, really? That's quite ambitious. What's the book about? 

00:30:45 Eric Bluestine

And I said, it's funny you should mention that. It's about you. It's all about you. It's about MLT. He said, really? You wrote a book about Music Learning Theory? I said, well, I wrote it for a colleague who's no longer in Philadelphia. And he left because he couldn't stand the bureaucracy. 

And he couldn't stand. He nodded. He said, oh, I know how that feels. I know how that feels. I don't blame him for leaving, but very much like to read your manuscript if you want to present it to me. I'd be very curious to read it. He had that very. I don't know if you've ever heard Dr. Gordon talk. He sort of had a very raspy voice. And he would say very quietly, things like this, and certain persons would be interested in reading it. And he always said persons. He never said people, certain persons might be interested in reading. So I said, well, I'd love to show it to you. 

00:31:31 Eric Bluestine

So I made a copy and I brought him the copy. And that was a Monday class, I think a Monday, the next Wednesday. Two days later, he accosted me. He came charging at me, and I didn't know he had it in him to do that because he was always so gentle. And he charged at me and he said the first words out of his mouth were, I have to take issue about what you wrote about partial synthesis. That was the first thing he said to me. Not what an achievement or boy, thank you for producing this. But he said, no, I have to take issue with what you wrote about partial synthesis. He used the expression take issue with, which was like a cannon going off. It was. It was very dramatic, the way he said it in that low undertone. 

00:32:15 Eric Bluestine

But you could tell that he. He was not entirely pleased. But he and I were talking and he said, are you against the level altogether? He said, no, no, not. Not at all. Not. Not at all. I think it's crucial. I think the name could be. I think we could. 

00:32:30 Eric Bluestine

Let's have some fun. Let's play with the name a little bit, because the name might not be the best name. But he said, well, I thought that you wanted me to get rid of that level altogether. Oh, no, not at all. Not at all. He said, well, you need to think that through. But in the meantime, you know, let's send your manuscript off to GIA and see what they think. Well, they liked it and they said, we think that it will be a valuable contribution and that some people might prefer it as an intro to MLT. Some people might actually find this helpful, at least as helpful as the audio tapes as an intro. 

00:33:06 Eric Bluestine

And. And they published it. And that was a huge thing for me because I got some wonderful feedback. I'm still getting wonderful feedback about it. And by the second edition, I had thought through partial synthesis. I came up with my own name for it, which I've since changed even now, which I can talk about. But I rewrote it, tweaked it a little bit, and it's something I'm very, very proud of. 

00:33:36 Krista Jadro

Wow. So I have so many questions. I don't know if you saw me, like, writing all these notes. First of all, I would like to thank three people. I'm going to put it out there in the universe. I would like to thank that professor that you had at Oberlin that said, get out of here and go do music, Conrad Cummings. 

00:33:50 Krista Jadro

I would like to thank him. I would like to thank your Temple professor who gave you those lecture series so that you did not have to rely on the textbook and you could listen to Gordon and absorb it in the way that you were best able to. 

00:34:03 Eric Bluestine

Yeah, that was Roger Dean. Yeah. 

00:34:05 Krista Jadro

I think he sounds like an amazing person. 

00:34:08 Eric Bluestine

He was. 

00:34:08 Krista Jadro

And then also that music supervisor, even though he left, I would like to thank him for putting that bug in your ear that, that. That people needed something a little bit more digestible so that they could understand what Music Learning Theory was all about. And I know I told you this already, but your book. I was a little intimidated with you coming here today because your book played such an enormous part in my understanding of music learning theory in 2002 when Dr. Burton gave us that book to read. And I seriously did read it pretty much every year because it would just remind me of things. 

00:34:44 Krista Jadro

And of course, once you are teaching and experiencing and you know, when you go back to something, you just get more out of it. And I felt like every single time that I revisited your book, I brought more understanding to it. So I just got more out of it. It. And I still am recommending that book to teachers now to read because it really is a wonderful introduction to Music Learning Theory, and it sits on my bookshelf proudly and it will always be there. So thank you to those people and thank you to you. 

00:35:15 Eric Bluestine

You're very welcome. Thank you so much for telling me that. That's great to hear. 

00:35:19 Hannah Mayo

I would also like to tell you that I have purchased multiple copies of your book because I purchased the first one so that I could read it. And then when a colleague or a younger teacher who was open to some fresh ideas would come along, I would let them borrow it. And then I would eventually say, you know, why don't you keep it? 

00:35:41 Hannah Mayo

And then I would buy another copy and then that would happen. I think that's happened at least two and maybe three times because it is so much more user friendly. And that's not to dismiss any of Gordon's work, but his work is so, so heavy, and it's great to get there eventually but it's also nice to open the door with something that's a little more user friendly. 

00:36:05 Hannah Mayo

And recently, we know of another podcasting piano teacher who put your book The Ways Children Learn Music on her summer book club reading list. And she did an episode about it, and you could tell it really rocked her world in a good way. 

00:36:28 Eric Bluestine

Well, that's great to hear. It was. It was a project that just started almost on a dare. You know, I want something readable. Is there anything out there? And I said, no, there isn't, but I can write it for you. I'll write it for you. And it's funny, I had also been along with studying MLT. T that tine, my heroes were Leonard Bernstein in music and a fellow named Rudolph Flesch, who is not involved with music at all. But he writes the way he talks, and he writes about how to write the way you talk, and he talks about language density. And it's interesting. Dr. Gordon and I had some very interesting conversations not long before he left Temple. And he was saying to me, This was just before the second edition of the book came out. Well, the first edition was still out there in the late 90s, and it must have been 95, 96. 

00:37:38 Eric Bluestine

And yeah, I'm going back a ways. And he and I were talking about vocabulary, and he was talking about how he just couldn't accept the fact that people said, well, the vocabulary is too difficult. And I said, Dr. Gordon, you're right. Your instincts are right. And I was very upfront with him. I said, what makes your book difficult? 

00:38:00 Eric Bluestine

What makes any book difficult? Any book difficult is not the words. It's the white space on the page in between the words. And he sat back in his chair because he had been thinking about audiation space for a long time. Space audition. And he'd been thinking about in between space in music for a long, long time. And I said, well, think about that in terms of language too. If you leave white space for the reader's thoughts, they won't think it's difficult. They will breeze through it as if the words were coming off the page. You want to set them up for notational audition. And you have to learn how to do that if you. 

00:38:46 Eric Bluestine

If you want to, if that's your goal. Those are skills that you can learn. And Flesh was a linguist who was a big fan of that, and he was a pioneer in that field. If you read his stuff, it's like magic for someone like me, who has difficulty reading, I never have difficulty reading his stuff. 

00:39:06 Eric Bluestine

I imagine that it's after dinner and he and I are sitting on a couch and we're talking, and he had maybe, let's say Flesch, had maybe one or two drinks, and he was real relaxed. And I don't drink, but I'm just listening. And he's going on and on about the universe and talking about politics and talking about linguistics and talking about science and music and art and anything that comes to his mind. 

00:39:32 Eric Bluestine

And this brilliant guy is just talking to you and having this after dinner conversation. And he's doing it in such a relaxed way that you're following every word that he's saying and you're hanging on every word, and you just want to say, keep talking, keep talking. Because I'm absorbing everything. Just keep talking. 

00:39:51 Eric Bluestine

That's what it's like reading Rudolph Flesch's books. I hear his voice through the page. And I said to myself, I want to learn how to do that. I want to tap into my own speech rhythms. I want to tap into that so that when people read my stuff, they're not burdened and they're not bogged down. 

00:40:11 Eric Bluestine

I want it to feel like they can hear my voice through the page. And I learned how to do that. And I'm getting better at it. It's a skill. It's like audition. It takes a lifetime. But it's a real goal of mine. And it's not something that happened accidentally. It was very deliberate. It was very deliberate and very on purpose. And I had a nice experience not too long ago with Eric Rasmussen, who you may know, he's a friend of mine, and he and I were talking about, you know, phonemes and morphemes and that there was a blog post that I wrote about that that had to do with my dissertation. 

00:40:46 Eric Bluestine

And he said, Eric, I really want to understand what you're saying, but I can't make heads or tails out of it. And I said, Eric, that's not your fault. It's my fault. As soon as I get off this conversation, I'm going back into that post and I'm rewriting it from scratch. I'm just rewriting it completely. Because if you can't understand me, if you can't hear my voice through it, and if you're not following the train of my thought, I messed up. I have to do better. I have to do better because I don't want anyone ever to say that about my writing. That's the last thing I want people to say. 

00:41:19 Eric Bluestine

I want people to say, I read your book or I read your blog. I really enjoyed it. I followed every word. I really enjoyed it. I don't agree with it, but I really followed it. And if Eric, who's brilliant and super smart, if he couldn't make heads or tails out of it, that told me that I needed to go back to the drawing board, because that's a priority of mine, and it's not a priority of every writer, unfortunately. 

00:41:45 Hannah Mayo

And you've just made me wonder. Speaking of “I don't agree with it.” Going back to the ways children learn music, did you ever get any pushback? I mean, I know you got loads of positive feedback just from us sitting right here now, but did you ever get anyone who pushed back on the ideas in that book? 

00:42:07 Eric Bluestine

Well, it’s interesting. That partial synthesis chapter just keeps haunting me. I mean, that's the stuff that I get pushed back a lot up on. And if I think that I'm right or partly right. You can be partly right. I'm allowed to be partly right and partly wrong. That's true, too. But I will rethink something if someone comes up to me. 

00:42:30 Eric Bluestine

In the last GIML conference, someone came up to me quickly, and I didn't get his name, and I really should have because it was a very brief conversation, but he wanted to know. He said, Eric, I read your stuff, but I want to know what you mean by chunking. Do you mean what I do when I practice? 

00:42:50 Eric Bluestine

I take chunks and I put these chunks together in chunks. I said, no, that's not what I mean at all. I mean, taking an unwieldy mesh of information and smushing it into something that is compressed, where the basic information is retained, but you smush it into something very potent and very powerful that you can use, like, almost like a piece of coal or carbon that over immense time and heat, is pressured and compressed into a diamond. 

00:43:19 Eric Bluestine

That's what I mean by chunking. And he said, well, that's not what I got at all. If you mean compression, you should just say that. And I said, you know, where were you 20 years ago when I was writing this? Okay, I'll go up and you know, in the evening after dinner, when I have a second, I'll go up to my computer and I'll write a blog post about that. So chaining, chunking became chaining, compressing, because I think he was right. 

00:43:45 Krista Jadro

There was just so much to talk about with Eric that we had to divide it into two episodes. Stay tuned for part two where we talk more about partial synthesis, Eric's blog, and also his new journey into piano teaching. If you are not already a member of our Facebook group, please join us at Introduction to Audition-Based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano. Thanks so much and we'll see you soon.