Audiation is the ability to hear and understand music for which the sound is not physically present. In short, it’s the ability to think musically. Performing music is a lot like speaking a language.

In order to speak, we must have a vocabulary of words, and the ability to put those words together into a sentence so it makes sense in the context of each unique situation.

In music, we must have a collection of tonal and rhythm patterns, and acquire the ability to perform them in musical context, that is, within the harmonic and rhythmic constraints of the tonalities and meters of our culture.