AN EXPLORATION OF AUDITORY IMAGERY ABILITY AMONGST CHORAL SINGERS AND CONDUCTORS

Abstract

Auditory imagery is a fundamental skill for choral musicians, useful for imagining pitches in preparation for singing, as well as coordinating singing in tandem with others. Given the value that auditory imagery holds in the choral profession, I hypothesized that years of experience as singers or conductors would correlate with auditory imagery ability. Participants drawn from the choral profession completed a ten-minute questionnaire documenting their personal information, background in music, musical skill set, and self-reported ability to imagine both vivid and malleable auditory images. A previously designed questionnaire, the Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale (BAIS, 2015), as well as additional choral music questions modeled after the BAIS were used to address auditory imagery ability. The BAIS and the supplementary choral music questions had two subscales, vividness (BAIS-V, the clarity of an image) and control (BAIS-C, the malleability of an image). Results indicated that years of conducting experience were associated with higher degrees of vividness and control of auditory images, while years of singing experience were also correlated with higher degrees of control. The purpose of this document was to better quantify the significance of auditory imagery ability in choral music-making environments, as well as to consolidate recommendations from research around cultivating auditory imagery ability in singers and conductors.