Maybe you doubt this. If so, think about regular, non-notational audiation for just a minute. You hear a piece; then you go to work, sorting out the essential pitches and durations; with those building blocks, you form patterns, you audiate a resting tone and macro and micro beats, then you audiate tonality and meter, and so on. You can do this because you have all the pitches and durations to work with.
Back in 2007, I completed my doctoral study. I wanted to find out the best way to teach tonal music reading to elementary school students. These kids (the subjects who took part in my study) had already learned to audiate and perform tonic, dominant, and cadential patterns in major and minor tonalities. They had moved nicely through the pre-notation skill levels (aural/oral, verbal association, and partial synthesis). They were, at least based on the principles of MLT, ready to read tonal patterns. My task was to see how best to teach them to do that.
In its simplest form, an inverted dictation involves a student notating a musical response that she or he sings or audiates while (or after) listening to a musical stimulus. Fig. 1 provides a more detailed model that can be used to generate numerous activities beyond the examples provided below. Because inverting dictation assumes that students can generate a variety of musical patterns in response to a stimulus, basic improvisation activities are a helpful and often necessary prerequisite step. (See Schubert 2014, Schubert 2012(a, b, c, d), Rogers and Ottman 2013, Rogers 2008, Michaelson 2014, and Duker and Stevens 2017 for example improvisation exercises.)
Another inverted approach is for students to sing and notate a melody or countermelody (Root 2016) to a short progression or musical passage, like the melody given in Fig. 2(a). This activity can be completed as a class, with one group of two or three students working together to sing an improvised (counter)melody, another identifying its solfege, a third group notating the suggested countermelody, and everyone discussing the quality and viability of each suggestion. Depending on the length and divisibility of the passage, these roles can be rotated between groups. Dividing the component skills in an inverted dictation between different groups helps model the process that individual students will use when they eventually complete similar dictations on their own. This activity can also be completed in small groups (with individual group members taking on the roles described above). Eventually, each student is expected to generate, audiate, and notate a (counter)melody to a short musical passage.
Fig. 2(b) shows another response type, inspired by materials in Ottmann and Rogers 2013: harmonic singing. Working individually or in small groups, students first use the Do/Ti Test to identify the real or implied harmonic progression of a musical example or given melody. Next, they sing or audiate a harmonic arpeggiation around the guide tones. To increase difficulty and variety, students could be asked to alter their pattern by avoiding specific guide tones (such as the G4 in m. 3) and adding passing tones. After a short period of free improvisation, each student notates the embellished arpeggiation they created and then discusses it with their group members.