Inner Hearing (Audiation)

Hey,

Anyone know how to develop your ability to compose straight from your head as well as being able to read a score and hear it in your head?

It is know as audiation I believe and is the reason Beethoven could write symphonies while being completely deaf and I've noticed that most great composers can do it well.

It certainly would be a useful skill.

Any suggestions?

Chris

Corbin got it pretty much straight down. I built mine up by first humming something and then playing it via my instrument and then work my way to thinking it in my head and then playing it. After a while it becomes pretty natural, but the key part is constant work on doing it.

No short cuts. *shrug*

Practice, practice, practice.

All above plus transcription work. Start easy - early classical composers are a great point. Early Mozart as well as Leopold Mozart and his contemporaries. Or just start with pop tunes. Start with transcribing the melody only , then bass only .. later both parts and inner voices.

I understand your desire, I do not do it hardly enough so i still have to get to the piano or something to gewt it down exact. Though the more you take time to "hear" your ideas (rather than always relying on improving at your instrument) will help a little also (but you need to do the ear training, transcription etc)

No short cuts. *shrug*

Practice, practice, practice.

My weekly music classes did that for me. Audiation works like a charm.

Well, audiation is pretty much sight singing something in your head.

Not quite my idea of Audiation...

My idea is vividly hearing a sound in your head so clearly that it could in fact be the instrument itself playing.

Hence why Beethoven didn't need functioning ears to write a symphony.

I know a few people who have this ability. One of them has given me some stuff to work on, but I thought you all might have more to add?

I have it; had it since childhood. I used to see colors and cartoonish, abstract images, then associated music cinematically -- my earliest, mostly lost scores that I wrote before I learned how notation worked were sprinkled with marginal comments about the visual content of a given passage.

Later I refined this into mental notation through several years of obsessive score reading with recordings, and even with a few live concerts taken in with the score, though now I feel that this is impolite to the performers -- I want to see what they are doing.

It is a great skill to have when you're caught in a place where you need to write something down and have no access to music paper. I once crammed the entire melody of a song ("Adamson," 2003) onto the margins of a postcard someone had sent me as I was on the bus and didn't have access to anything else.

However, for refining or developing ideas, it's not very useful. You really need an instrument. Even Beethoven would pound away at his Broadwood even though he couldn't hear it; he still needed his fingers to work out advanced kinds of solutions. When he died he had broken all but two of the strings on his piano; someone commented that his piano was as mute as he was deaf.

When I didn't have notation software I would often compose at the kitchen table or somewhere away from an instrument and correct it later. I still write down short ideas that way, but it is much easier to work in the program beyond that. Also, mistakes of various kinds crop up no matter how good you are at it, though I was really proud that the melody on the postcard was absolutely correct.

One other disadvantage of Audiation is that it discourages passive listening. Just recently I was listening to a relatively new Philip Glass work and not getting it. Then I had to take my car through a car wash, and that kind of turned the Audiation off. Glass' music was a perfect accompaniment for the car wash, and afterward I was able to listen to it and "get" it. It is really not desirable to visualize music all of the time, as there is so much music that is not meant to be analyzed before it is enjoyed.

Uncle Dave

listen to everything. listen and think.

I have Audiation in way I suppose. I also have math calculating skills. I think about math and music is the same way and I see them both the exact same. I have never really analyzed it that much because it's of no use to anyone around me (until now really). I sort of see the harmonies in my head. I can't play the piano at the moment but I'll try and make some concise notes of how it works next time I'm at the instrument tomorrow.

You don't either "have" or "don't have" this. I'm pretty sure there's nobody alive who can hear everything that's going on in a very complex piece (say, an orchestral piece like "Pl

You could perfectly start out by browsing the YC forums and just reading the scores of the music people uploaded without listening to the audio files and getting an impression of the piece without hearing anything. (This may actually be a good habit anyways, as if you listen to the midi audio right away, things like the instrumentation may come out wrongly and give you a faulty first impression.)

Yeah, and it also can hide good writing. Some really clever/idiomatic/fascinating ideas just come out as much more awkward than the most bland instrumentations on midi (and even samples).

Not quite my idea of Audiation...

My idea is vividly hearing a sound in your head so clearly that it could in fact be the instrument itself playing.

Hence why Beethoven didn't need functioning ears to write a symphony.

I know a few people who have this ability. One of them has given me some stuff to work on, but I thought you all might have more to add?

Sight-singing and audiation are closely related. To sight-sing well, you have to "hear" the pitch in your head before you sing it. This is audiation. And that's all it is. Hearing something in your head. It is irrefutable that sight-singing and ear-training improve one's ability to audiate. That is, unless one already is capable of audiating at a high level.

Also, it is NOT something like perfect pitch, which is impossible or very difficult to learn. It's a learned thing.

If you wish to know more about audiation, look up Edwin E. Gordon, the guy who defined the word. I think that would be more fruitful than fabricating your own rather grandiose definition.

I have none.

I am completely incapable of having any notion of what is going on in a score if I just read it. I can get the rhythm, but the sound? Nope.

I can follow a score while the piece is playing, but that's it.

The only thing I write down in my moleskine when I'm not at home is what I've already played at the piano and can remember, because I use VISUAL memory. I remember which keys on the piano and therefore write the corresponding note.

If I want to develop on what I've written right there, I go along with much difficulty for four or five bars humming scales up and down to find the tones I want (meanwhile, I forget half of the idea I was trying to write) until I give up because my head hurts of the excessive effort...

Audiation? I just take pills for that ;)

Uhm., ok my personal experience. I cant hear all, all. But most. Like dunno, i dont have an mp3 player , i go just concetrated down the street and i hear what i want when i want , almost. Its a learnt ability cause i realized the things i dont get to hear are the things i didn work. I played by ear during many years the piano. But.. i used most of times major and minor chords, now im tryin to work with tensions , cause its what i didnt work and its what i cant hear very well. Improgressiong though, other thing i canthear very wel its if there is a lot of movement in the work, like, .. a very worked counterpoint with more than 2 instruments. Cause, .. i cant read music so.. im nto used to have such a big notion of rythm.But i think i get in whatever i hear the 80% of the instruments and movement of any piece. There are factors, the easiests are the chorus for me, the brass after, well percussion to, ( up to the rythm), and wind is hard, the hardest for me is strings, its hard to get a uhm proper sound vibrating like a voice. Ok.. how did i get this? i think everybody can. U need to develop a litle ur ear for getting the texture, and the harmony structure. work playying songs by ear on piano etc. And dont use the mp3. Hear something, and after retain it, concetrate and work on that idea in ur head , shape it ( its not exactly memory.. u kind of rebuild it) and the high notes are easier than the low ones. I began with frankestein soundtrack of patrick doyle. untill i heard the good bass surroinding my ears like a stereo. Work on the quality , untill u enjoy the mental sound. Ul lkeep loving it and feeling somethign magical that u got by ur work . And eventualy u wont need an mp3 player , and ul work it for enjoying and it will improve more and more. And dont leave it a lot. i did when i was studyign for my exams, and.. i felt the effect , now i cant audiate that good like some monteh s ago but , it takes some days to get bakc to the level i had. Good luck.. i love to audiate.

coherent writing is a friend.

coherent writing is a friend.

Not his, apparently.

I'm pretty OK at doing this for a single line, within limits (speed etc.), but I have serious problems when it comes to polyphony, or just music with a lot of stuff going on. I can manage a few parts at once, but I just can't get myself to piece everything together into what the complete texture should sound like...

I'm pretty OK at doing this for a single line, within limits (speed etc.), but I have serious problems when it comes to polyphony, or just music with a lot of stuff going on. I can manage a few parts at once, but I just can't get myself to piece everything together into what the complete texture should sound like...

You'll have a "eureka!" moment when it all gels. (or you won't even notice, you'll be so used to it)

Exactly - and start with the chansons of the Renaissance period or early baroque with mostly a monophonic texture. I still struggle with it but what I do for vocal works is choose a particular voice to concentrate following. Also, woodwind ensembles are great for this due to great variance in the instrument's timbres.

well, yes i did my best i was in a hurry, and i am spaniard so, well, i can write it pretty much coherently in spanish, anyway i guess people understood what i ment. If not, just ask me. Another thing, audiation is not very controllable. It resounds on head even sometimes u dont want to. Most of famous composers hear music in their heads all time. they cant help it. The ideas come so fast endless and defined that they can create great things.

Yes, though extracting those ideas efficiently is something quite a few have trouble with.

Most of my 'ideas' are very vague anyway, it takes a lot of messing around to turn them into something solid.