Have you ever heard the phrase “You either have it or you don’t.”? Well it’s a load of crap. This is what ‘It’ is.
The idea of the ‘Mind’s Eye’ has been around philosophically and spiritually for ages. It is the person’s ability to visualize something before they do it. But it isn’t just limited to
the philosophies and religions. In fact, it is considered a serious topic in science and experimental psychology dating back to the late 1800’s.
So, it pretty much goes without saying that there is something to visualization or the ‘Mind’s Eye’.
In SFS, I expand on the definition of visualization though as it is a bit weak. It’s just not complete enough. Visualization is defined as:
Visualization – v. the formation of a mental image of something.
That’s all well and good, but seeing something isn’t exactly getting the whole picture. Have you ever heard the phrase “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? Well that is what a visualization is, a cover. It is a picture or image of something seen. But it doesn’t necessarily mean you have all the information. You don’t necessarily know what is behind the cover so to speak.
A concept is a bit different. A concept is the construct or makeup of something and all it’s parts. The definition is:
Concept – n. something conceived in the mind.
Something conceived in the mind. And the definition of conceive?
Conceive – v. to cause to begin. Originate.
When you get a concept, you literally build it in your mind from all of it’s parts. So you see the cover, every single page, the back cover, and the binding. You can fell the leather in your hands. You can smell the ink on the pages. You can feel the weight of it as you hold or hear the sound of it if dropped. You know the pages are paper and the cover is leather (if leather bound). Not to mention the colors around and throughout.
You might think that is visualization and you would be completely correct…if you are remembering a leather bound book you have actually seen and read before.
So what if I asked you to imagine a book that has a purple silk cover, yellow pages, dark red ink, and silver stamped images on every other page. That the pages are made of cloth, not paper, that it’s the size of a coffee table and weighs about 200 pounds. Go ahead and do that. Read back over the description as many times as you need, but do this. Create this in your mind.
Ok got the idea? Did you create it in your mind? If you did, good.
Now I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you have never actually seen a 200 pound purple silk book with expensive silver and yellow cloth pages and dark red ink that you could kick back and rest your feet on. But the reason you have a concept of it your mind right now is because you conceived it. You conceptualized it.
You were able to create it because you have seen and experience books, covers, page, silk, red ink, silver, cloth, coffee tables, and 200 pound objects. You get it? You took the basic ingredients from experience and reconstructed them into something completely new. You did that. You created it. You originated it. That is your concept.
So one could argue that visualizing is remembering or seeing as a whole and conceptualizing is creating or recreating in the mind a construct of something from all it’s parts.
Therefore, when we are dealing with concepts, we are dealing with something that have built or rebuilt in our ‘Mind’s Eye’ from scratch. We are dealing with basic ingredients and then reconstructing what we want mentally.
And that is what the core of Singing From Scratch is all about. Getting the basic ingredients of singing known to you so you can recreate (sing) any song you want.
