#6 "Sounding-together" 301 (Audiation unbound)

1. From the mss:  On Beyond Waldorf,

Team Human K-12 Education;

Goethean Psychology Applied to Child Development and K-12 Schooling;

Some Assembly Required

The wholes we have in mind

quote Participant report from Tone and Sound, led by Manfred Bleffert

Manfred then gave us the image of the four animals from the Grimm’s fairy tale, “The Bremen Town Musicians”: donkey, dog, cat, and rooster. He further suggested these four represent four different levels (members) of human consciousness:

Donkey Physical body

Dog Astral (sensory) body

Cat Etheric body

Rooster Yadda-yadda waking self crowing about itself, from the neck-up

Several individuals tried an exercise on the xylophone, playing the movement pattern (rhythm) of one animal. The rest of us had to guess which animal the musical rhythm portrayed. After each "tryout" the group voted for the rhythm most appealing to them for each animal.

Next two xylophones, each with a different player, each playing the rhythm of one animal. What would the meeting of two different animals sound like? Could the two rhythms be made harmonious and pleasing together--or not? In this way we explored how pairs of the four animals might sound together as a "duet."

Next four xylophones, each with a different player, each playing the rhythm of one animal. Manfred asked groups of four of us to come to four xylophones, each playing the rhythm of one animal. The slow donkey always began the quartet. The other three coming in one at a time, tried to match and harmonize until all four were sounding together harmoniously.

Then in reverse order, each rhythm stopped playing one at a time until all was quiet. This required a lot of concentrated listening!

Slightly adapted for clarity and simplicity so you can replicate it from http://freecolumbiapastevents.blogspot.com/2013/01/beyond-object-beyond-sensation.html

quote A slightly shorter version also at pg. 57 Being Human (Autumn-Winter 2013) http://www.rudolfsteiner.org/fileadmin/being-human/bh-10-2013-Autumn-Winter/bh10-web.pdf

In the above workshop example we have musical tones sounding together until they are harmonious, this as a metaphor for how the four lower bodies-aspects of the human being sound harmoniously together--or not!

In the phrase of another author, we have a “community of tones" sounding together. This does not mean all sounds together will be harmonious. Cacophony and chaos are real too. What 'hearing the sounding-together' points to is exercising human discernment to uncover harmony--if it can be achieved.

Sound together: Quaker Meeting Clerk function

In adult group meetings of all kinds, listening for underlying, harmony--if any “sounding-together” often occurs. To alert listeners, if a growing consensus (harmony) exists, it can be “heard” within and under more superficial word levels, questions and confusion.

This is a main function of the Quaker Meeting Clerk, to listen to all contributions from individuals during the group silence; then if asked, to compose and articulate the "sense of the Meeting," when called to do so.

Sound together: left brain~right brain

One of the reasons the fad explanation of our psyche as right and left brain hemispheres, 1975-1985, faded was too few people interested in and willing to hear these two sounding-together.

The height of media interest in topic, especially in Southern California 1975-1985, is difficult to over-estimate and easy to under-estimate. Somehow a large fraction of journalists, such as in LA Weekly, made it their mission to propose right~left brain hemispheres as the explanation for every contemporary topic from soup to nuts.

This did not always work well; and, produced a predictable backlash, discarding dismissing and denigrating any validity of right~left brain hemispheres, a classic case of throwing baby out with the dirty bathwater.

What happened? What did we learn? We learned:

- Simply knowing about validity of right~left brain hemispheres is only a first step towards whole-brain thinking,

- Right brain capacities (intelligences) was analogized to explain topics A, B and C.

Left brain capacities (intelligences) was analogized to explain topics X, Y, and Z.

Yet, almost no one (outside perhaps of feminists) talked about hearing the two intelligences sounding together.

- It was primarily only a few spiritually inclined NFs and NTs--(defined further below) who had interest in multiple intelligences sounding together, or sounding in alternating rhythm.

Q: Did Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, Frames of Mind (1983), help people hear multiple intelligences "sounding together?"

A: Only for a few. As Eugene Schwartz recounts in Millennial Child, Gardner was more interested in he idea K-12 teachers would discern which one or two intelligences an individual student was or could or might excel in; and then, encourage students to specialize in their "strong suit."

Sound together: gut brain~head brain

We have right here an easy way to perceive what's lacking in he forces wishing to persuade human beings Descartes is still king: I think therefore I am!

Since the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) book (2004), Progressives in several fields have been more willing and interested in hearing the human being with both gut brain and head brain sounding-together.

In those genetic, electro-chemical, neuron arguments for, 'The human being is matter or maybe matter plus mind and no more,' if we don't hear gut brain and head brain sounding-together, we know we are only hearing an argument for one smaller part of the human being.

Jung's MBTI as hearing intelligences sound-together

Over in psychology, starting with Jung around 1905, he tried to hear the whole of an individual's personality sounding-together, the combined voice of four personal preferences.

This useful idea went thru much evolution and is now best-represented as David Keirsey's and Marilyn Bates' version of MBTI, starting with Please Understand Me (1978), but more accessible now in https://www.16personalities.com/

Keirsey's post-modern view of MBTI has had some of the most-visited pages on the internet since 1995.

To Learn More about "sounding-together"

We have from RS:

quote The sounding-together of wish and reason, or thought and desire as they live in the human [psyche] ~ Event of the appearance of the Christ in the Etheric world, RS Jan 25, 1910. pg. 6 Compiled Lectures By Rudolf Steiner

By Rudolf Steiner Reprinted 1969 by Heath Research https://books.google.com/books?id=JjKvfO6aDZUC&pg=RA1-PA6&lpg=RA1-PA6&dq=%22rudolf+steiner%22+%22sounding+together%22&source=bl&ots=-voce4F0Ct&sig=8nqSuoPB9PJvJMHiDfU-6vtcwOU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2iujY0YrZAhUByoMKHfWrCeAQ6AEIQjAK#v=onepage&q=%22rudolf%20steiner%22%20%22sounding%20together%22&f=false

And...

quote A completely harmonious sounding together of the two rhythms--of the human world and the world rhythm ... pg 193 May Human Beings Hear It!: The Mystery of the Christmas Conference

By Sergei O. Prokofieff https://books.google.com/books?id=NqEcAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=%22rudolf+steiner%22+%22sounding+together%22&source=bl&ots=G_rI9rThv9&sig=auKiAyKdWud3cqX7vxBk6YTzyLY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2iujY0YrZAhUByoMKHfWrCeAQ6AEISjAN#v=onepage&q=%22sounding%20together%22&f=false

And...

quote Their many voices many tones, many activities, sounding together, from the Cosmic Word, in which our own soul being--itself Cosmic Word--begins to find itself... ~ No page number. Secrets of the Threshold (1913) By Rudolf Steiner (1987) by Anthroposophic-Rudolf Steiner presses. https://books.google.com/books?id=V9X4eht2hlwC&pg=PT83&lpg=PT83&dq=%22rudolf+steiner%22+%22sounding+together%22&source=bl&ots=4eDr9P58_S&sig=bCPX-_Jl2QTwNa8dTR0J2U2OQSo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2iujY0YrZAhUByoMKHfWrCeAQ6AEITTAO#v=onepage&q=%20%22sounding%20together%22&f=false

Audiation - Inner hearing

Right now, please stop reading and recall hearing or singing the song “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star”. Don’t hum or sing it out loud--only hear the notes and melody internally.  

I'll wait.

Done? No problem for most of you, right?

This inner hearing of music is audiation.

When we to ourselves and think silently in language, we "ideate"--a verb, describing an inner activity.

When we can sing a tune from memory, this is begins many more things we can do internally with music, "audiate." another verb pointing to inner activity perceptible to individual.

"Ideation" means "thinking in language." We cognize content, cognize patterns and predict patterns.

"Audiation" means ability to cognize and to focus on one or more aspects of music: tempo, rhythm, melody, timbre, etc. We, cognize rhythms and melodies; we cognize patterns in these; we predict, replicate and expand on patterns perceived and cognized.

Audiation expands beyond hearing music in your head, repeating a tune you heard on the radio. Practiced Audiators can cognize and discern the patterns of rhythms and melody towards replicating the patterns; and if desired, expanding on, improvising on, variations on the patterns.

quote Imagine if you were able to--not only hear more musical aspects at once--but also analyze what's happening on each level simultaneously – and all when reading or hearing music for the first time. [By practicing and exercising] audiation, you can! ~ https://www.musical-u.com/learn/audiation-to-be-a-better-musician-use-your-imagination/

Well-habituated musicians can think in music: rhythm, melody, harmony, counterpoint.

Edwin Gordon specifies capacity for audiation is an element of music aptitude; to demonstrate music aptitude one must use audiation ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_music_learning_theory

Audiation is to musicians, what visualization is to artists. Visualization is a tool artists use to preview an image before they draw it. Audiation is how music is previewed internally before committing it to notation. Ever hear Bach's music compositions?

You can read a book because you practiced learning words and word patterns. Can you read a musical score? If not, you have not yet had enuf practice learning notes (words) and note patterns (scale, rhythms, melodies).

Do on the inside what we formally did on the outside

Any skill-language-intelligence you personally wish to improve at, you improve at thru learning to "do on the inside what we formally did on the outside."

Audiation is good Goethean Psychology

Within Goethean Psychology, what do we make of "Audiation"? Based on practical experiments documented over 60 years, I propose: The experience of competent Audiation in music reveals, suggests an archetypal pattern of how we learn just about everything:

What we do on the OUTSIDE as infants as as very young children, we will later do on the INSIDE. Or:

Do on the inside what we formally did on the outside

Perhaps you can refine this proposal more usefully for K-12 teachers. Send me a copy.

Q: I was never good at music; I won't be teaching music much. Why is this relevant to future teachers?

A: You want your students to be good at math? They need to "math-iate," be represent and manipulate numbers internally.

The longer you use math manipulatives, the more kids stumble into their own way of representing numbers and number manipulation in a workable way for their learning style. This is why math manipulatives are used much more in Japanese schools, to Grade Five, than in most USA elementary schools.

You want your high-school students to write interpretative papers on history? They need to "history-iate."

You want your high-school students to get good at chemistry? They need to "chemistry-iate."

What are you, Mr. or Mrs. Teacher Trainee trying to get better at which you already had some talent for? I bet you are practicing so you can do more of the activity on the inside.

Q: Isn't Audiation Howard Gardner's "musical intelligence"?

A: Indeed it is.

Q: Well, I took piano lessons for ten years and I never progressed past the first lesson; I never got the hang of it internally. Does Team Human ed require teachers to audiate music expertly?

A: No. What it does require teachers to do is to do SOME THINGS well enuf internally so students can use you as a model of how they can exercise the competency inside them. What are you good at doing internally? The more things you can do on the inside, the more you have to teacher younger folks.

A story ~ Tho I liked math up to pre-algebra, I was never good at any later math (my natal astrology chart has five retrograde planets including Mercury). I had a big breakthru at one community college higher math class where the teacher was more than usually conscious of working problems himself at the board, allowing us to see and hear his thinking process. He never said, "Now I'm going to show you how I think in case you can catch my style of thinking. Learning higher math is partly a matter of thinking style, what to think about and what not to think about." None the less watching and listening to him go thru problems at the board--and liking the teacher--I was able to internalize thinking style aspects very useful to me getting more higher algebra problems correct for the first time.

If you can get, beyond classroom management, this is what much teaching is about, the non-verbal osmosis of new styles of external notation and internal representation; then, you have grasped a big goal of Team Human and/or Waldorf teaching theory.

Steiner's idea of how "outer" affects "inner"

A basic tenet of Steiner's Goethean observation of children is how whatever in our childhood acts upon us from "outside" is in adulthood, transformed into forces which work on us from within. (Paraphrased from Millennial Child 136).

The big experience most adults have of this is as a parent: "No matter how many books I read, when upset, I still parent my children the exact same way my parents raised me, warts and all."

Exercise: Turn to your right or left to the teacher trainee next to you. Voice how "audiation" and "I parent the way my parents raised me" sound together inside your mind.

Love and audiation

"Experiencing being loved by others (love as an act, as a verb, internalized) is designed to precede, at a later date, "loving others"

Infants who feel bonded and loved more easily love others as adults than infants who feel unloved and unbonded.

One endgame of self-healing is to feel so safe and secure in how loved you feel on the inside that you can invite a partner in to share your love with them.

If you can find a partner who feels safe and secure in their love; and, invites you in to share their love with you; then, you have a method for connection and growth as a couple. We call this into-me-see.

Origins of audiation

Where does "audiation" come from? I learned it from Dee Joy Coulter from online posts in the 1980s. Mr. Google says the word does not appear in her book, Original Mind: Uncovering Your Natural Brilliance (2014). I plan to review her book soon. I suspect more good Goethean Psychology exists here.

Dee did not coin the word "audiation." The term was coined by music psychologist, Edwin Gordon, in 1975. He coined it to point to comprehension of and internal realization of music internally, when sound is not physically present.  

Zoltan Kodaly, audiation, solfege

Before Gordon, there was the Hungarian, Zoltan Kodaly, who did considerable writing on audiation and exercises to expand it. Kodaly also resurrected the eleventh-century Italian practice of "solfege," hand-signals for notes, do, re, mi, fa , sol, la ti do. Solfege was popularized for lay persons in The Sound of Music in the "Doe, a deer a female deer" song.

Audiation competency is capacity for, and ability to, internally hear musical aspects (tempo, notes, rhythms, melodies, etc.) in your head, without any external sound stimulus.

Tho Kodaly was famous and influential among K-college music teachers for 50 years, I suspect the strongest wave audiation and Kodaly's solfege came in the 1920s-1930s, the same period giving us Psychodrama and its many "children;" including, comedy improv.

Q: I was not able to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle" to myself silently. Why does audiating music seem so foreign to me?

A: Musical audiation is another language, different from "audiating" words and English.

When another "language" seems foreign or mysterious, it's because our Thinking is over-habituated, over-identified, with only one "language" and one set of "words."

Guess what? Before we learned to talk and think in local language, this too was foreign and mysterious to us.

How did we learn to think in words and language? Thru repetitive exposure and practice. We used language to think, to cognize, frame questions, choices and make decisions. Many of us became habituated, identified--addicted.

A goal of Waldorf and Team Human K-12 ed and teacher training is "flexible thinking." Part of this is attention to, and curriculum for, 'thinking in styles other than words and language.'

Thus, we add new practical import to the familiar slogan, "think outside your own box."

I suspect one big reason many people take the Waldorf or Team Human teacher training is to expand beyond the boundaries of their own rigid thinking styles. My Waldorf teacher trainings were a smorgasbord of opportunities to get outside the box of my own limited personal style and challenge what I thought I was good and bad at.

At its best, K-12 schooling can offer this same kind of leap-frogging of personal "Aha!"s, personal growing. This educates people for Team Human, a life of on-going civic involvement and personal-spiritual growth, as determined individually. Factory-style schools educate for Team machine.

What happens to a child if they never go to any formal school or education? They are going to internalize local language; it's too practical to avoid. They are going to internalize numbers at least in the domain of 1-10. If they handle money, they will learn to internalize numbers in the domain of 100 and 1000.

"So what" you ask? Formal schooling simply makes the process of internalizing useful knowledge more efficient. You get higher-paying jobs by having internalized more rare "languages."

We use repetitive methods to internalize words and language. Methods of repetition are needed to expand internal competency of additional intelligences you might wish to have; or, wish to impart to a child:

- Mathematical intelligence,

- Interpersonal intelligence, one of Howard Gardener's intelligences, now called "Emotional Intelligence,"

- Any of Howard Gardener's other intelligences.

Which additional useful knowledge-languages do we want Team Human graduates to internalize?

- Some training and practice in how to facilitate groups up to 20, for parenting, summer jobs and future teaching careers,

- After age nine, healthy experiences of service to others outside the school