Musical U

To be fair, nobody told *us* either for a very long time... 🤯

When we talk about "improving your ability to audiate", one major focus is the accuracy of your sense of pitch in your mind.

Your ability to judge the pitch distances between notes in music (called "Relative Pitch") is crucial, and it all starts in your mind.

The more accurately you can "hear" the notes and their relationships in your mind, the easier it will be to process and recognise them when you hear them in the real world.

Audiation is a really powerful tool in Relative Pitch Ear Training, because when your ear is trying to figure out the distances between notes, a lot of what you end up doing is mental gymnastics and imagining e.g. "Oh, is it this interval or that interval?"

Another example of the connection between Audiation and Relative Pitch is how a lot of musicians think they "can't sing" because when they try, the pitches don't come out correctly.

Often it turns out that their ability to match pitch and their vocal control (see next chapter for details) are actually fine---but they don't have a clear mental representation of the pitches they intend to sing i.e. they can't audiate the melody.

This is a bit like trying to hit a bullseye without having a clue where the dartboard is!

---

This is an excerpt from Chapter 3: Audiation in the Musicality book.