Audiation

You may have heard me mention the word "audiation." Audiation is to music-making what thinking is to speaking. It's the brain function of processing music. We sometimes hear music in our heads when there is no music in our environment, and that is part of the process of audiation. Audiation is the foundation of all music-making. Without audiation, no further musical learning can occur. When a person can audiate a song correctly (with a consistent beat and in the same key throughout), that person can most likely sing the song correctly. As I'm always telling my school-age students, "If you can sing it, you can play it."

A process I often use with my piano students and my high school drummers is to have them sing the music that they are attempting to play. Very often, their mistakes (the consistent ones, not the fluke ones) happen as a result of the fact that they are audiating their music incorrectly. This becomes apparent when I ask them to sing their part, and they sing it incorrectly. If I can help them correct their audiation of the music by helping them SING it correctly, then they can usually pick up their sticks or place fingers to the keyboard and play their music correctly.

At birth, the vast majority of people have the potential to become musically competent: meaning to be able to sing in key and keep a steady beat. This potential only becomes reality if musical stimulation is present to encourage growth and development. Just as almost any person is born with the potential to learn to speak, we only learn language if we are exposed to it consistently and have many many opportunities to "practice." As with most of our basic skills, (speech, movement, etc) musical audiation is best developed at a very young age, when the brain is at its most receptive. After the age of 6 or 7, our brains become less malleable and potential abilities that aren't developed are sort of "pared away" in the interest of efficiency. That is part of the reason it's more difficult to learn music as an adult.

I have seen this many times in my older students: The ones who had a consistent environment of live music-making experiences as young children are usually able to sing in key and move to a steady beat. These students have a MUCH easier time learning to read music and play an instrument.

So, to get back to the Music Together context, how does one encourage a young child "practice" this important skill of audiation? For starters, the words "practice," "work," and "play" all mean the same thing when we're talking about young children. Their work IS their play. They'll work at anything that tickles their brain and that Mom and Dad do, especially if it's fun/silly. Every time we play with the resting tone at the end of a song (singing the resting tone in silly ways at the end of the Hello Song, drumming on the floor while singing the resting tone, throwing scarves and singing the resting tone when they hit the ground, hugging ourselves on the last note of the Goodbye Song, etc) we encourage our children to audiate that note.

One way we encouraged this with our little ones in class this past week was when we split into two groups and took turns singing the phrases in Nigun. When I told one group "Sing very loudly but only inside your head," and we did not sing out loud at the end of each musical phrase, we gave ourselves and our children the opportunity to audiate the music. Any time there's silence after a song (rare but beautiful!), our children (and probably many adults) are still hearing the echos of our last notes in their heads. Any time we pause before we sing the last phrase or note of a song (Think about the very end of the recording of Pop! Goes the Weasel.), we encourage audiation.

This is why it's important that we have silence or singing of the resting tone after each song, rather than talking. It aids their audiation process. Any time we start talking, we immediately take our kids right back into the language centers of their brains, and the musical audiation process is disrupted.

So, during the next few days, try singing Pop! Goes the Weasel or Driving in the Car or When the Saints Go Marching In to your toddler, and see if you leave off the last word or note--will your child fill it in? Give him or her 5 seconds--it sometimes takes the littles a long time to turn "intake" into "output." Allow some silence at the ends of songs, whether you're listening to the CD or singing yourself. Sing Blow the Wind Southerly or Hello to your infant as you change her diaper, and listen for several seconds after you sing the last note--does he coo back to you? If so, sing his pitch back to him, and have a little musical dialogue!