Audiation, the ability to hear music in your head, is argued to be the foundation for musical creation. Humans are born with a capacity to do this, sort of like being handed an empty bucket to fill with musical ideas you come across in the world. But no one is born with the bucket pre-filled. So the music we attach childhood memories to, the ear worms we hear on the radio, the exercises we learn at our lessons, among countless other sources, fill the bucket. Trained musicians learn how to not only get ideas into their bucket quickly, but also to recreate the ideas on their instrument through imitation. It really puts in perspective how amazing and fragile music is. If all music was to vanish today, both from media and minds, music would just have to start from scratch.

In many ways, teaching music to a student who doesn’t actively listen to music presents problems similar to teaching Whole Language. Whole Language was an approach to teaching that challenged Phonics with the idea that learning to read comes naturally to humans and eventually led to an educational disaster in several states, including California, the first to implement it in the 1980s. In short, the only students who seemed to do well with the Whole Language approach were students who grew up in wealthy communities. Their peers and surroundings provided a Phonics education automatically, through exposure. Students who grew up in poverty ended up providing a control for a study that should have been conducted before implementation. And sadly, it came at the cost of their own education.

Because of the current state of art and music education, “artistic poverty,” as it could be called, can be found in any socio-economic background. Billy had every advantage that you could think of. A wealthy family, tutors for any subject he needed, a stay-at-home parent, and a great school to attend. But Billy didn’t really listen to music. He had never seen a live concert and his family didn’t listen to music in the car. His school had a very minimal music department. It seemed that the only time he heard music was when it was used as a fashion accessory or a way to sell products. As a result, his bucket was pretty empty. There wasn’t much to pull out of it and imitate. Rather, he was trying to do it “correctly,” as you would solve a math problem. You play the first the note, then the next note, and so on, even if it didn’t sound anything close to what it was supposed to. As a result, it didn’t matter what notes he was playing, because it was never going to sound right anyway. Imagine trying to learn how to speak a language without ever hearing it.

If his performance was plain English, it would have sounded something like the following recitation of a popular nursery rhyme:

Starlight, star tri- tri star bright

Second, star I see to, fist star You, I see. tomorrow!

I dish I may? may… … I… dish I? might

Have wish! I wish… wish… two nights.

Now, I don’t demand perfection from my students. But I do know music when I hear it. Even if it is sloppy, out of key, and hanging on by a thread. But, this wasn’t music. It sounded like he was trying to fill out a Scantron sheet. When finished with his performance, his obvious sense of pride made it clear that this other standard of quality was met not just with a friendly smile by his previous teacher, but also praise. So, naturally I smiled as well and told him that he did a great job. I’m not a monster.

It took a couple of years to change his perspective on practicing. If he wasn’t going to be listening to music, we’d have to learn what music sounded like while he was learning how to play it. So, we implemented a three-part approach that I had been developing over the previous few years.

1. Prioritizing

With the aide of a metronome, I asked him focus less on playing “correct” notes as long as they took his attention away from keeping a steady beat. If we had to, we played the rhythms on a single note of his instrument. If that still resulted in problems, we would clap the rhythms, taking the instrument completely out of the equation. Sometimes, we would play random notes to the rhythms, almost as if we were improvising while following a rhythmic structure.

2. Contextualizing

After making sure we had the timing down, we knew exactly when we needed to play. So, we experimented with something that was close to the same shape as the melody. If the notes went up on the staff, Billy played notes that were higher. If the notes went down, he would go down. Context became self-regulating. If he started on C and the next two notes went up and then down, but the last of the three notes was one note higher than the first note, logic would assume that the second note wasn’t D.

3. Self-Guided Audiation