What the word means
Edwin E. Gordon used audiation for the musical equivalent of thinking in language. When someone speaks, you hold sounds until they become words. In music you organise what you just heard, and predict what may come, from key and metre.
Hearing with the ears (aural perception) happens while the sound arrives. Audiation is the cognitive follow-up: giving meaning. Without that, music stays a chain of stimuli, or copying fingers.
What this app is and is not
The Audiation app leans on that idea — inner hearing — in its own simple path of eleven steps, from about age 7. It is not a Music Learning Theory course, not GIML certification, and not a substitute for a teacher. Names (Do or 1) come after hearing, except when finding a note. Singing or an instrument is a check, not the goal.
If you want to go further, toward Gordon and Music Learning Theory, a short list is below. Those sites belong to others; I do not run them.
Useful links
- GIML: Audiation The term, types and stages, from the Gordon Institute for Music Learning.
- GIML: About Music Learning Theory How we learn music according to Gordon: audiation as the core of tone and rhythm.
- Gordon Institute for Music Learning The organisation behind the research, training and publications.
- Wikipedia: Music learning theory English overview of the theory and the place of audiation in it.
- Edwin E. Gordon Archive (University of South Carolina) Archive of Gordon’s papers and materials, via the university library.