Connecting the Inner Ear and the Voice

Eric A Johnson
Edward Klonoski

Editor's Note: This article is an adaptation of an Interest Session presented at the 2001 ACDA National Convention in San Antonio, Texas.

Introduction

THE challenges of developing consistent in-tune singing in choral ensembles pose daily struggles that consume valuable rehearsal time. Part of the difficulty of singing pitches accurately stems from the myriad factors that influence intonation. Issues of breath support, diction, vowel uniformity, and rhythmic precision are a few of the concepts singers try to coordinate to produce clear, accurate pitches. Addressing these concepts should certainly play an important role in the choral rehearsal. However, a concept more fundamental to consistent, accurate singing often goes untended in rehearsals and choral methods classes. Singers need to learn how to connect their inner ear to the physical vocal process before initiating sound so they can accurately reproduce a pitch on the first attempt. This article is an examination of concepts and techniques that can be used to establish and strengthen the inner ear/voice connection, including subvocalization, pure and enacted tonal images, and the concept of sound carriers. Current research in the nascent field of auditory imagery will be summarized and its practical applications for vocal pedagogy will be proposed.

Contemporary vocal methods give little or no attention to the importance of inner hearing. One might find an instruction such as "hear the pitch before you sing it" presented in a master class or identified as a solution to fix an out-of-tune-note. However, modern-day vocal pedagogy does not advocate a systematic approach to connecting the inner ear to pitch generation as an integral part of vocal instruction. Books that mention this topic begin at an advanced stage of inner hearing. Often, they focus on patterns and broader musical concepts such as tonality and tonal function, rather than on the fundamental process of connecting the voice to the inner ear. ¹

In aural skills classes, the authors have observed that some students can match external pitches accurately with their voices, and report that they are able to mentally hear pitches, yet not be able to accurately sing the pitch they hear with their inner ears. In such cases, the weakness lies neither with the voice, nor with the inner ear. Instead, the...