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Finishing up the “A” topics, we have audiation and autopilot
Audiation, or, hearing what you plan to play before you play it
It is harder to accurately play music that you can’t “pre-hear” in your head. One angle on understanding this is audiation, for which The Gordon Institute for Music Learning offers this helpful description. Audiation is
… a cognitive process by which the brain gives meaning to musical sounds. Audiation is the musical equivalent of thinking in language. When we listen to someone speak we must retain in memory their vocal sounds long enough to recognize and give meaning to the words the sounds represent. Likewise, when listening to music we are at any given moment organizing in audiation sounds that were recently heard. We also predict, based on our familiarity with the tonal and rhythmic conventions of the music being heard, what will come next. Audiation, then, is a multistage process ….
The part about predicting what will come next is an especially important one in relation to accuracy. Even in unfamiliar music, if it is predictably tonal, you can anticipate the chords and where the voice leading might be going. Also, by repetitions of music in personal practice or rehearsal, you have a stronger feeling of where the music is going (not to mention if you have listened to recordings!).
This only scratches the surface of an important topic. For more, check the Gordon website already linked.
Autopilot
This seems like bad advice, but there is something to be said for playing on autopilot, not particularly thinking about anything related to accuracy. Just play and trust that automatic processes will allow you to be accurate.
But how? Actually, part of it is our previous topic, audiation. You know how the music goes because you know or anticipate how it will go. And another part of that was also just touched on, if you have played many repetitions of something, you will tend to reproduce it more accurately over time due to a combination of many factors.
For a practical angle on this, to have audition success you need to be able to play excerpts very well on sort of a high-level autopilot. The mind is quiet, you are simply just playing in the moment and allowing your automatic process to produce the music. Again, it sounds like bad advice but I relied on this for sure when I was taking my 30 professional auditions back in the day.
And put another way, when has trying to be more accurate helped? There is a point where you just have to trust yourself that you know it as well as you can – and then just play it.
This is an installment of a series on accuracy, drawn from notes developed for a book on the same topic. The series starts here.
Continue reading the Accuracy Encyclopedia
