11/16/25 no. 1 - The Role of Memory, Scaffolding, and Variety in Learning
- john koenig
- Nov 16, 2025
- 3 min read
These last few weeks I’ve had some special interactions with students from all walks of life that have made me think about how memory, scaffolding, and exposing ourselves to a variety of experiences helps us learn and sustain the motivation to learn over the course of a lifetime. Can I fit some of the most prescient points of these thoughts into two pages? Let’s see.
I’ve been struck by many students’ belief that learning is just memorizing a series of unrelated skills or facts to regurgitate in performance or on an exam. I don’t think of the learning I’ve done as “memorizing.” There are a handful of fundamental things I’ve memorized. Learning other skills has been built upon my memory of these fundamental ideas, and building upon fundamental memories reinforces the fundamental memories themselves. Learning doesn’t exist on a left-right, forward-back time continuum but on a multi-dimensional continuum where something new you learn informs something you already know, making that knowledge stronger while shooting off into infinite new pathways of learning. This sort of multi-dimensional learning framework is sometimes referred to as “scaffolding” knowledge.
Variety is key to creating strong learning experiences that expose us to new knowledge and allow us to find connections to build upon and reinforce knowledge. An example that has come up several times this week is the connection between Chappell Roan, Gloria Gaynor, and Beethoven. “Pink Pony Club” (Chappell), “I Will Survive,” (Gloria), and Beethoven’s Symphony no. 1 in C major all open with the same category of harmony (as does Taylor Swift’s “Elizabeth Taylor” but only the So Glamourous Cabaret Version. I’m not a Taylor stan at all, but my Spotify knows I like variety…). For me, remembering what harmony these tunes open with was not a parlor trick but was instead built upon a knowledge of the most basic harmonies composers use which is further built upon my memory of scale structures.
In fact, scales are one of the only things someone interested in music needs to memorize. If taught efficiently, learning scales isn’t as hard as some might have been led to believe. To learn scales, I believe you must also have the piano keyboard or a guitar fretboard memorized. Both resources help you see individual notes which helps with visualizing abstract concepts in theory. Many musical theoretical concepts rely on the distances between notes, known as intervals. The only interval that needs to be memorized is the half step. This is the distance from one key to the very next on the piano or from one finger on a fret on a string to the very next on guitar. From there, you can figure out that two half steps make a whole step. This new knowledge hopefully draws on old math knowledge that two halves added together make a whole. And if you know whole steps and half steps, you can learn scales.
Scales are patterns of notes that contain a very specific order of whole steps and half steps. I prefer to learn 5-note scales first because it is easier. 5-note scales proceed from one note to the next, alphabetically, and only contain one half step, between the third and fourth letters of the scale. For example, visualizing a piano keyboard, we would think from C to D (skipping the black key, giving a whole step), D to E (whole step) E to F (half step), F to G (whole step). The ordered pitches CDEFG proceed alphabetically and follow the pattern whole-whole-half-whole, so that is your C major 5-note scale. This can be done on any one of the 12 notes on the keyboard, and you will get a 5-note scale based on that pitch.
I think these 5-note scales are all you really need to memorize. After that, you can start opening doors to new, varied learning experiences that will help build on and strengthen this knowledge. It takes time, but I think learning this way leads to more sustained motivation over the long run to keep learning. And after all, the student who learns slowly over 40 years will learn more than the student who learns a lot in 5 years and burns out.
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony no. 1 in C Major (Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, conductor)
Gloria Gaynor, “I Will Survive” (from Love Tracks, 1978)
Chappell Roan, “Pink Pony Club” (from Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, 2023)
Taylor Swift, “Elizabeth Taylor – So Glamourous Cabaret Version” (from The Life of a Showgirl + Acoustic Version)
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