Audiation takes place when one hears music through recall or creation (the sound not being physically present) and infers musical meaning as compared to aural perception where one listens to music actually being performed.

[P]erformance always faces the risk of failure. One may get the notes right but quite misconstrue the work. One can discover one’s problems and then correct them. Private ‘audiations’ are systematically insulated from the ambient environment critique performance lives in. If being acquainted with the work in one’s head involves the same demands as becoming acquainted with it in public, presumably one can get it all wrong.

Some performers spend considerable time reviewing the score and experiencing the music through audiation, or engage in internal dialogue to get themselves into the right orientation to play while others complete a technical/physical warm-up with their instruments, playing both exercises and parts of the repertoire.

Children will stare for a few seconds at the parent, teacher, or another person as they become aware that there is a difference between their own singing or chanting and someone else's. […] In a sense, children are now attempting to enter the world of audiation. At this point, however, they do not know how to correct their singing, chanting, or movement and, thus, they are unable to begin to cope with audiation.

Rock's fantasists and their immediate parents, like the Beats, invented their visions and audiations from a vocabulary of imaginary sound and time spaces (thus, perhaps, "audiochronotopes").

Audiation

Meaning

Noun