{"id":329,"date":"2016-03-03T16:32:47","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T16:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.community-choirs.co.uk\/?p=329"},"modified":"2016-03-03T16:32:47","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T16:32:47","slug":"audiation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.community-choirs.co.uk\/wordpress\/2016\/03\/audiation\/","title":{"rendered":"Audiation…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"brain-music-300x257\"Oh, that sounds so professional… \u00a0It sounds like I know what I’m talking about, doesn’t it? \u00a0What does it mean, though?<\/p>\n

The quick (and not terrifically accurate) definition is that audiation is “singing along in your head”. \u00a0It is much more complex than that, but it gives you a handle on what we are talking about here. \u00a0Audiation is how a composer can write multiple lines of an orchestration or arrangement without playing them all simultaneously. \u00a0S\/he is running the lines in their head, experiencing the interplay between them without them being played externally, and as they write each new line, they are running the existing lines in their head, over and over again.<\/p>\n

To a much lesser (but more accessible) degree, audiation is also what unwittingly happens when we get an earworm. \u00a0You know the routine – you are walking down the street, doing nothing very important, when all of a sudden “Close to You” by The Carpenters pops into your head and won’t get out. \u00a0Round and round it plays in your head, demanding your attention and constantly surfacing like an inflatable toy in a swimming pool… \u00a0You can’t sing it out loud because… well, there are limits to how many times you can sing, “Birds suddenly appear, every time, you are neeeeaaaar!” without your co-workers killing you. \u00a0But it is still in your head. \u00a0If you want to properly shift it, the best thing to do is probably to sing the entire thing. \u00a0Out loud. \u00a0Maybe with a backing track. \u00a0Go \u00a0on – look up the lyrics, lock yourself in the bathroom and go for it. \u00a0The unfinished nature of earworms makes them worse.<\/p>\n

Anyway – if this has happened to you, then you know that you have the ability to audiate.<\/p>\n

I often say that I usually have a backing track playing in my head whilst running choirs, whether there is music going or not, as is proved by the fact that I continued to conduct a totally absent backing track during a choir rehearsal last night, whilst explaining a point about breath control and pronounciation. \u00a0In my head, the music was still playing, going round and round the instrumental until we were ready to come back in, at which point we moved forward into the next verse.<\/p>\n

It is easy to audiate a bit – playing the hook, or earworm section of song in your head is easy. \u00a0More difficult is playing the entire song from the beginning through to the end, carefully running through key changes, breathing spots and tricky passages, not stopping at any point. \u00a0But when you do this, and hear the music in your mind as vividly as you can in the outside world, you are culturing a skill which will help to improve your overall musical ability, and particularly your ability to \u00a0sing accurately on pitch.<\/p>\n

Listening to music and singing along internally, is a very useful skill to learn.<\/p>\n