AUDIATION FOR SINGERS/MUSICIANS --> Prep Your Phrase by Sheryl Rak, Vocal Therapist, Voice Teacher, Coach Audiation for singers is a feeling sense, an inner listening sense, a way of imagining yourself singing in your inner ear, your inner mind, as if you were really physically singing – hearing and feeling yourself, your voice sounding. Audiation for singing sets up the neurological system to organize all the involved fine-tuned inner physiology, for manifesting the performance of a passage or series of sounds appropriately. The term was coined in about 1970, says Wikipedia, in an article mostly relating to how to use audiation to learn music, music reading, etc., and begin to trust yourself in the music. The term is hardly known or used, and is not even in dictionaries yet. I began to work with this singing preparation concept, which I created and developed for my voice students around 1990: the concept of internally imagining (hearing and feeling) your singing, your vocalizing, ‘as if’ you were fully singing in your own inner ear with your own voice, before you breathe for your phrase, in preparation for the wholeness of your singing experience of the phrase. When you have totally prepared the whole phrase in your inner mind/ear/breath/voice, then the phrase will be manifested exactly as well as you imagined hearing and feeling yourself singing it. You are to imagine yourself singing as well as you know you can sing. This works amazingly well, once a singer has begun integrating and mastering the technique of healthy vocal production and diaphragmatic breathing, because it resolves issues with pitch control, breath support, and voice quality. I was introduced to the term for this concept, ‘audiation’, by Melissa Cross on her DVD “The Zen of Screaming” when I watched it in the mid-2000’s. Eloise Ristad also uses this concept, without naming it at all (she was sure there were no words to describe this concept), in her book, SOPRANO ON HER HEAD, written in 1985, which I read in the mid-1990’s. Audiation is a feeling sense, an inner listening sense, a way of imagining yourself singing in your inner ear, your inner mind, as if you were really physically singing – hearing and feeling yourself, your voice sounding. There was a British study proving that, when you imagine music, there is an inner ear bone that moves in response to your simply imagining the music. Other studies since have proved that all of the muscles and nerves involved in doing a function engage -- they all fire -- while you are imagining performing the function, just as they do when you actually physically perform the function. Interestingly, recent studies say that they do not fire in a way that strengthens your muscles, but in a way that increases your coordination and rhythmic ability. In the movie, “The Secret”, there is a discussion of Olympic athletes being studied, attached to electrodes while only imagining fully their sport event, and then again, while actually physically fulfilling their sport event; the studies prove that all the exact same muscles – not just most – fired in both instances for all the athletes studied. We singers are vocal athletes, so these studies relate to us absolutely. In just thinking about what we will do, rather than imagining or audiating, our mind is basically just comparing what it knows about the function to be used, and what it knows from past experiences, etc. Experiment: Asking someone to think about walking a specific distance, say from here to that chair over there, and tell how many steps it would take him/her -- one looks around the space, and thinks about walking ‘over there’, often coming up with a number of steps (in my experiment, many said 13 to 20). Then, they were asked to close their eyes and imagine/visualize/feel their body walking the distance and tell how many steps they will take… (many said 6 to 10). Then, they walked to the chair, most taking only 6 to 8 steps. Their closed eyes-imagining/visualizing/feeling (audiating!) used their inner brain which knows much more and, much more specifically, what all of their body/mind functioning involvement is and will be than their pure thinking-about does, and is much more accurate! In audiation, when you do it properly, fully*, when you trust yourself/your inner brain, when you allow it to work, it is never wrong. And, you manifest exactly what you audiated. (* by “properly, fully audiate”, I mean: many singers will often ‘claim’ that they audiated, but one cannot pretend to or hope that they audiated, and, truly, fully, properly audiate the whole phrase. Often, in other cases, they may have only audiated the first note or only half the phrase, and then are perplexed, surprised, and distressed when the rest of the phrase falls apart in one way or another.) When you are contemplating a passage that you sing which ends up generally in a muddle, such as the notes seeming too fast, or the intervals are challenging to you, or has troubling pitches or words, etc. – if you audiate this passage the way you usually sing it, you will continue to manifest it in a muddle. Also, since often the muddle occurs because you do not truly know the passage correctly and fully, you will need to take the time and effort to get to know the passage fully, before audiating can ‘save’ your performing of the passage. However, if the muddle occurs simply because your body and voice have not physically coordinated the proper performance of the parts of the passage with your mental ‘knowing’ of the passage, your audiation will have you manifest the passage as you know it. Audiation sets up your neurological system to organize all the involved physiology, in all its parts and ways, for manifesting the performance of the passage appropriately – often amazingly! Just as you audiated it. Most singers are in a hurry to “get it done”, so find this concept of audiating challenging. You must hone your ability to work with this concept, and then, actually do it repeatedly, routinely, taking “real-time” audiation for all vocalizing phrases. When this becomes well-integrated, the audiation can take less and less time, so that, with practice, it becomes ever more useful throughout all songs and performances.
Posted on: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 00:56:02 +0000
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