Word.ws English Dictionary

audiation

Syllables: au·di·a·tion/ɔːdɪˈeɪʃən/US/ˌɔdiˈeɪʃən/

audiation noun: the comprehension and internal realization of music by an individual in the absence of any physical sound.

Noun

audiation (countable and uncountable, plural audiations)

  1. The comprehension and internal realization of music by an individual in the absence of any physical sound.
    • 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.1976, Edwin E. Gordon, “Development of the Taxonomies”, in Tonal and Rhythm Patterns: An Objective Analysis: A Taxonomy of Tonal Patterns and Rhythm Patterns and Seminal Experimental Evidence of...
    • [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...1992, Stan Godlovitch, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, →OCLC, page 7; republished as “Performances and Musical Works”, in Musical Performance: A...

Examples of audiation in a sentence

  • Private ‘audiations’ are systematically insulated from the ambient environment critique performance lives in.1992, Stan Godlovitch, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, →OCLC, page 7; republished as...
  • 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.2003, Edwin E. Gordon, “Part Six: Imitation”, in A Music Learning Theory for Newborn and Young Children, Chicago, Ill.: GIA Publications...
  • 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").2008, Michael Long, “Listening in Dark Places”, in Beautiful Monsters: Imagining the Classic in Musical Media, Berkeley; Los Angeles...

Forms of audiation

pluralaudiations

Origin of audiation

Presumably audio + -ation, coined by American music researcher and educator Edwin E. Gordon (1927–2015), possibly in Learning Sequence and Patterns in Music (1976).

Questions about audiation

What does audiation mean?
Audiation means the comprehension and internal realization of music by an individual in the absence of any physical sound.
How do you use audiation in a sentence?
Private ‘audiations’ are systematically insulated from the ambient environment critique performance lives in.
What part of speech is audiation?
Audiation is a noun.
How do you pronounce audiation?
Audiation is pronounced /ɔːdɪˈeɪʃən/ (UK).
What is the plural of audiation?
The plural of audiation is audiations.

Words near audiation in the dictionary

  1. audiatable
  2. audiate
  3. audiated
  4. audiates
  5. audiating
  6. audiation
  7. audiations
  8. audibilise
  9. audibilised
  10. audibilises
  11. audibilising

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: audiation (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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