I studied for several years with Dr. Gordon, the man who coined the term audiation. His ideas about how we learn to be musical handily refuted my undergraduate training in music education. It also profoundly affected my musicianship as I learned how much I did not audiate. This was at once confronting and exhilerating. To this day, I still grapple with how children best learn music. My continuing professional development is almost entirely due to the distinctions in music development and Gordon’s sequence of music learning I began digesting over 20 years ago.
This blog post is probably longer than any should be (7 pages?). Who said, “Had I had more time, I would have made it shorter.”? If you can’t make it to the end or you’d like to skip it, you can learn about audiation from a podcast, go here: http://bit.ly/d2Cydi
Also see a short video of audiation in action here: http://bit.ly/f2dpIe
What follows is a transcript of the #musedchat with my comments inserted.
Paragraphs with NO ** are where I copied and pasted the transcript.
**Paragraphs that start with ** are my comments.
**Your comments and questions are most welcome. I love professional disagreement. It’s helpful to me to continually reconsider any position I’ve taken. My Twitter and email are at the end.
The #musedchat transcript begins here:
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What is Audiation?
The #MusEdChat participants started the chat by defining and describing what is audiation. Audiation is a complex subject that has many definitions. Most musicians and music teachers define audiation by saying it is inner hearing.
**Inner hearing was insufficient to Gordon’s thinking when describing the process of audiation. Hearing is physical. Audiation is not physically hearing. In fact, it can occur without any external stimulus at all. I believe that Kodaly used the term “inner hearing” to describe what audiation has evolved to be. It was a bold first step in the psychology of music understanding. Gordon expounded on this idea using an extraordinary amount of research, both observational and experimental.
The #MusEdChat participants disagreed and said that definition of audiation is not specific enough.
**The definition of music audiation is defined by the man who coined the term, Dr. Edwin E. Gordon, in his seminal book titled, “Learning Sequences in Music.”
There are 8 types of audiation which include
1) listening to,
2) reading, and
3) writing music (both familiar or unfamiliar music)
4) recalling and performing music from memory (necessarily familiar music)
5) recalling and writing music from memory (necessarily familiar)
6, 7 and 8 consist of creating and improvising music while performing, reading, and writing (all necessarily unfamiliar music).
**Gordon describes 6 stages of audiation. These are theoretical and thus cannot be proven. Rather, they are detailed descriptions of the possibile psychological processes that occur when one audiates music.
**The stages go from momentarily retaining an “after sound,” through making sense of the essential tones/beats, then comparing these to a reservoir of patterns stored in your “musical memory” or past experiences, to the eventual prediction (in audiation) of what will occur next in the music. These stages cycle through as one engages in audiation. Sometimes, only the first or second stage is attained (as perhaps the first time I listened to Balinese gamelon). At other times, one could predict quite accurately and cycle quickly through the 1st through 6th stages frequently and easily. Take a second and audiate “Twinkle, Twinkle.” Hopefully, that comes easily. Now, audiate “Twinkle” in minor and moving in 7/8. Ah ha. If you stopped to try to count out the rhythm, that’s is music theory, and not audiation. If you had to run to the piano to play it in minor, that is theory or imitation or something else, but it is not audiation. Perhaps the reason I like jazz and Stravisnky is that my predictions don’t always match what comes next in the music. I like the feeling of being tricked some of the time. I don’t enjoy the tonal aspects of dodecaphonic music as my predictions fail all too often.
**Analogies can be helpful if you don’t have time to read and digest the first chapter in “Learning Sequences.” Here are two:
1) Thinking is to language what audiation is to music.
If you do not understand the language you are listening to, reading or writing, you are not thinking in that language, or if you are, it may only be at a cursory level.
2) Visualization is to the eye what audiation is to the ear. If I asked you to visualize a purple dog, your power to take that image from your mind and render it on canvas would represent your depth of visual understanding or power to visualize. I would bet that Monet’s purple dog is more vivid, or has more depth of understanding of the elements of art—line, form, perspective, contrast, color, etc.—than the purple dog most of us visualized.
**Of course, at some level, analogies fail and music or art can become a matter of what one likes or not. Gordon’s point about audiation relative to music appreciation is that without audiation, appreciation has less depth and is probably all but superficial.
**A child who reads a story and only sounds out the words does not understand the story. An artist who visualizes before she draws or paints is matching her mind’s artistic eye to what she is about to create.
**When you listen to a foreign language that is unfamiliar to you, you cannot think in that language. Eventually, you retain some sounds, or even words, and later phrases. Later, you begin to give meaning to some of what you heard in the past (distant or immediate). Audiation works the same way in music.
@michellek107 said “In order to be true audiation that inner hearing must have some meaning attached to it.”
**The power to give meaning to music is an excellent short hand definition of audiation.
@Zweib7 agreed saying that context and meaning is a big concept that many overlook when attempting to define audiation. A great way to better understand audiation is by comparing it to art. @richardmccready said “In art, visualization is being able to see in your mind and in music audiation is being able to hear music in your head without hearing it out loud first.”
Richard’s statement is correct regarding types 2 and 3. Additionally though, one can be audiating music just physically heard (type 1).
@lovedrummin said “To me audiation is when you can look at music and hear and understand it before even putting out any sound.”
**Another good example. This is type 2.
@DrTimony said “Audiation is a just a name given to what students already do.
**I have to disagree. Many students do NOT already do this. Many do, but children who play out of tune are not audiating tonally or harmonically. They probably don’t understand the tonal and harmonic contexts inside which they are performing.
What we are talking about here is calibrating what they already do.”
**Some are only imitating. Worse, some are pushing buttons and blowing air. If they are not audiating, we need to be bringing them through the stage of music development they are in. Some children (and adults) are still in music babble or a stage of pre-audiational development (See “A Music Learning Theory for Newborn and Young Children.”). They don’t know that they’re not in tune, or not on the beat. They are not aware of what tonality or meter they are in.
The Gordon definition of audiation seems to encompass all of the qualities of audiation that the #MusEdChat participants suggested. The Gordon definition of audiation says “Audiation takes place only when we hear, comprehend, and internalize music for which the sound is no longer or may never have been present.”
**This is Gordon’s succinct definition. The implications of it laid the foundation for a working definition of music aptitude and also for Music Learning Theory, especially skill learning sequence.
Audiation in Relationship to Sight Reading and Solfeggio
Next the chat shifted to discussing how audiation is related to sight reading and solfeggio. Most of the chat participants agreed that audiation and sight reading are not correlated.
**One can be sight-reading and audiating. In fact, they should be. Unfortunately, most are not. We instead are deciphering the code, much like the child who sounds out the letters or words and thus misses the story.
Your students can be a great sight reader, but still not be audiating in their head.
**I’d say, good imitator or perhaps good being relative to others. Either that or you’re short changing yourself as you were actually audiating, or partially audiating what you were reading.
@brandtschneider said “some students can sight read very well, but they have no idea about what they are singing. Instead of knowing what they are singing they are just doing the mechanics.”
**I call these individuals technicians, not musicians. Harsh, I know. This is how I was trained through college. To my mind, it’s shameful.
@lovedrummin said “I was a fantastic sight reader when I was growing-up, but never truly audiated until after I started teaching.”
**You and the rest of us probably have an above average to high level of music aptitude. Because of that, we taught ourselves how to audiate. This happened despite the traditional theoretical approach to music instruction most of us received.
Next the chat shifted to discussing audiation in correlation to solfeggio. Kodaly, Orff, and Dalcroze all claim that solfeggio facilitates the inner ear which would lead to solfeggio helping with audiation. @Dianawinds456 agreed saying “Teaching solfeggio and sight reading by example with help improve the performance of our students. Solfeggio and sight reading is all about singing before you play, which I believe is a big part of audiation.” The majority of the #MusEdChat participants believe that solfeggio does not help with audiation and that it may actually hinder developing the skills of auditation. Most of the chat participants said that they have never used solfeggio and that has never been a hinderance in reading or audiation. @richardmccready said “I learned how to audiate by having good sight reading skills and from singing the notes on the page. I could never hack solfeggio, but I am still able to audiate.” @DrTimony ended this portion of the chat by saying “I am not a fan of using solfeggio for reading or audiation. Solfeggio can be good for warmups and intervals, but it does not help to build audiation skills.”
Oh boy. I’m gonna get in some hot water now. I am going to challenge Richard and DrT now. Solfeggio (or I call it Solfege and I have no idea what the difference is, if any) ABSOLUTELY helps in teaching children to audiate, but it is a technique used at the 2nd level of Skill Learning Sequence. Let me break it down.
Once a student is audiating, we should increase the size of his tonal and rhythm vocabularies. Agreed? Later, we should help his understanding of tonal and rhythm contexts, and to differentiate among these tonalities and meters. The first level of Learning Sequence is the Aural/Oral level. Basically, listen first and perform back. This level should begin only after a child has emerged from music babble and it is accomplished by singing tonal patterns on a neutral syllable, preferably “bum” or rhythm patterns chanted on a neutral syllable, preferably “bah” and asking a child to perform them back. Once a large number of patterns are accurately performed back in solo by most of the children, you are ready to move to the next level of Skill Learning Sequence called Verbal Association. This is when you put tonal syllables and rhythm syllables (solfege) to the patterns that the children have already learned to audiate. Why do such a thing? ALL of the psychology papers suggest that, just as in language, you will not be able to remember as many “things” if you don’t have it attached to some type of verbal associate. All or most of the things you see around you have names in language. Without those names, you could never remember as many things. When you add verbal associates to tonal patterns or to rhythm patterns, you are making it easier for children (adults and music teachers alike) to expand their vocabularies even further and to make connections in language (and draw inferences if they can) about the patterns they know how to audiate. They are then able to not only increase their tonal and rhythm vocabularies even further, but also name tonalities and functions. Bringing language into the fold after having taught a sufficient number of patterns at the Aural/Oral level of learning, cements what it is students have learned to audiate at the previous level.
**Ok, kill me if you want. I’m ready for it. Bring it on.
(You’re brave if you got this far. It’s better than reading the book I’ll tell ya.)
How to Teach Audiation
Next the chat participants shared ideas on how we can teach audiation to our students. One way is by using Conversational Solfeggio created by Feierbend who studied under Gordon. Conversational solfege is a watered down version of Gordon’s Music Learning Theory. Conversational solfege helps students become independent musical thinkers **[Audiators]** by using an ear-before-eye approach to music literacy. The goal of conversational solfege is to create fully engaged, indpendent musicians who can hear, understand, read, write, compose, and improvise. Many of the chat participants who have used conversational solfege said they have found a huge difference in the musicality of their students because they are audiating. Another way to teach audiation is to emphasize active listening. @michellek107 said “Listening needs to begin in Kindergarten even if it is not in the curriculum. I believe that there never can be enough emphasis placed on listening.”
**Listening begins in the last trimester before birth. By 3 years old, the importance of the acculturation a child receives cannot be overstated.
Teaching improvisation is another great way to help students improve their audiation skills. @brandtschneider said “In my ensembles we do a lot of silent band performances as students sing and play. I hold out one hand for out loud and the other hand for in head.”
**Improvisation (and creativity) is the next to last inference level of learning in Gordon’s Learning Sequence. The last leve is music theory, something that Gordon says should be avoided so that the thinking and analytical brain (outside of audiation) can stay our of the way of children’s ability to audiate. Improvisation (and creativity) is the hallmarks of the best music education. We improvise in language all the time, why not in music as much? Probably because we lack enough vocabulary as a readiness to improvise.
Audiation can also be taught in classes such as music technology by using a sequencer window. @lovedrummin said “When teaching audiation it is important to keep it simple and practical. Too often audiation is so technical and students don’t get anything out of it.” In order to help our students get better at audiation we need experience, experimentation, calibration, and regular practice.
**Teaching audiation is a function of understanding Skill and Content Learning Sequence and if you don’t follow it’s general prescription, you are likely making it more difficult for children who do not have a high level of music aptitude. You can, as I do, jump among levels of learning sequence, but It’s important to spiral back to the level which has not yet been mastered to give everyone—despite their level of music aptitude —the opportunity to succeed at the skill level you jumped away from.
Importance of Audiation
The #MusEdChat participants ended the chat by discussing the importance of auditation. Audiation is an important skill for students to learn in order to become more musical. @lovedrummin said “I have become a much better musician over the past three years since I began audiating.” It is especially important that we start teaching audiation in the primary grades. Instrumental students usually make less mistakes when they audiate and hear the music before they try playing. It is vital that we teach our students to hear first. It is also important for us to teach them to hear the whole ensemble sound not just their individual note. @brandtschneider summed up the chat by saying “As music teachers our mantra about auditation should be think, hear, breather, and then play.
**I’d say, if you’re not teaching children how to audiate, you are not teaching them to be musical. It is like teaching a language without teaching thinking. It is like teaching about a Cezanne painting without using your eyes. To me, it is that critical to music education and yet, I was never trained in it until I stumbled upon Dr. Gordon in my graduate studies. Then I was seriously bad at it for the years I tried to use it in the classroom. I only got better as I taught it for the last 22 years. I consider myself somewhat competent now and still make plenty of errors. In the end, the children’s musical achievement speaks for itself.
Also see a short video of audiation in action here: http://bit.ly/f2dpIe
You can learn more about audiation from my podcast here: http://bit.ly/d2Cydi
@rizzrazz on Twitter