It is said that legendary pianists Rubinstein and Horowitz hated practicing. Rubinstein simply didn’t like practicing for hours on end, while Horowitz supposedly feared that practicing on pianos other than his own would negatively affect his touch. Their solution? A healthy dose of mental practice.
Though many of us may never be legends, mental practice is something that all musicians can absolutely benefit from, regardless of skill level.
Have a concert coming up that you’re not ready for, but too tired to practice? Want to practice but can’t, because of a flare-up of tendonitis or a bad cold? Practice rooms full? Instrument in the shop? Too early/too late to practice? Only have 15 minutes, so it’s not really worth getting your instrument out of your locker, finding a practice room, and getting set up, only to have to quit a few minutes later?
Sound familiar?
Sure, but just imagining yourself playing can’t be the same as real physical practice, right?
You’re right. It’s not the same, but from studies of athletes, we know that successful individuals tend to engage in more systematic and extensive mental rehearsals than less successful individuals. Yes, I acknowledge that there are some differences between athletes and musicians – but not as many as you would think when it comes to the mental aspect of performance.
Furthermore, researchers are finding more neurological and physiological evidence to support what top athletes such as basketball great Larry Bird, Olympic diver Greg Louganis, and golfer Tiger Woods have known for years – that mental practice produces real changes and tangible improvements in performance. In one study, participants who mentally practiced a 5-finger sequence on an imaginary piano for two hours a day had the same neurological changes (and reduction in mistakes) as the participants who physically practiced the same passage on an actual piano. Some have suggested that mental practice activates the same brain regions as physical practice, and may even lead to the same changes in neural structure and synaptic connectivity.
In other words, there is growing evidence that mental practice (if done correctly), can absolutely make a difference in your playing.
My Experience with Mental Practice
I remember when I was 4 or 5, my Mom would put me down for a nap before performances, and tell me to lie quietly in my room mentally going over my performance note by note. I thought this was silly at the time, but it kind of stuck, and just became part of what I did.
I found out years later that this mental practice habit contributed to my developing a reputation in college for not practicing because I spent so little time at the practice rooms. Mostly, the reputation was true – I practiced maybe a couple hours a day at most and usually even less on the weekends. I heard that another violinist in my studio asked our teacher how I was able to play as well as I did despite practicing so little. She told him that most of my practicing took place in my head, so I didn’t need to spend as much time in the practice room. I don’t know how she knew this, but she was right. Off and on throughout the day, whether I was walking to class, eating, or just sitting around, I would often find myself inside my head, hearing whatever I was working on, seeing and feeling my fingers play the notes, trying out different fingerings or bowings, experimenting with shifts and finger pressures, correcting mistakes, all in my head. At the end of the day, I’d spend an hour or two going over the things I had already spent all day working on, and that would be the end of it.
In all honesty, I really should have practiced more, so I can’t endorse the idea of trying to get away with practicing only an hour or two a day (though you may wish to read this article on how to practice more efficiently). I also can’t promise that you will sound like a Rubinstein or Horowitz if you engage in more mental rehearsal, but I do know that if you don’t engage in mental practice, you are totally missing out on a tremendous tool for improving your playing.
Keys to Effective Mental Practice
The psychological literature on mental rehearsal suggests that there are two important keys to keep in mind when engaging in mental rehearsal – that it be systematic and vivid. In other words, mental practice is not the same as daydreaming, in the same way that practicing on autopilot is not very helpful. To be effective, it must be structured just as actual practice, with self-evaluation, problem solving, and correction of mistakes.
Some Guidelines on Mental Rehearsal
Here are some ideas on how to get started.
1. Calm down
Close your eyes. Focus only on your breathing for a minute. Breathe in slowly and fully through your nose, then breathe slowly out through your mouth. Then do a total body scan for tension: check your head and facial muscles, your jaw, neck, shoulders, arms, wrists, hands, back, hips, quads, hamstrings, calves, ankles, even toes. Let any tension you find just melt away.
2. Expand your focus
It can be anything – your instrument, the stand in your practice room, a specific wall. See it in your head. At first, it may not have much detail, or you may have trouble bringing it into focus. That’s ok, your goal is to take something small, make it more vivid, and begin to expand that vividness into the rest of your imagined environment. You’ll get better with practice.
3. Warm up
Imagine yourself playing scales or warming up with something easy. Can you hear yourself? Exactly the way it sounds? What do you feel? Can you feel your fingers, your arms, shoulders, lungs, throat, etc.? See how vividly you can mentally recall the kinesthetic elements involved in playing your instrument.
4. Imagine
See, feel, and hear yourself starting to play. Concentrate on the motions that produce the sounds and effects you want as you go through the music, note by note, phrase by phrase in your head. Keep “playing” until you make a mistake or feel the need to correct the way something sounded.
5. TiVo it
When you “hear” or “see” yourself play something that doesn’t sound like you want it to, immediately hit the pause button on your mental TiVo. Rewind to a place before the mistake. Start from that point, moving slowly forward, at a speed you can control. Repeat this process several times, just as you would in real practice, until you’re doing it correctly up to speed. Don’t just keep rewinding and trying it again mindlessly – make sure you hit pause, think about why the mistake happened, hit play, try it again, and then move on when you’re satisfied you got it down and know why the mistake happened in the first place.
6. Keep it real
It’s important to make the experience as vivid and real as you can – feel the instrument under your fingers, hands, lips. Really hear the sound, the textures, the volume. See the room around you and the instrument you are playing.
Additional Suggestions
When you use this technique, break it up into shorter segments, like phrases or shorter sections of the piece. You don’t always have to play straight through.
Try visualizing yourself in different locations, wearing different clothes, and in different conditions.
When you feel you’ve gotten the hang of mental practice, try testing yourself. Record yourself performing an excerpt, review and rate your performance, then run through a series of mental rehearsals of that excerpt taking notes about what you notice. Then perform again, review and rate your performance, and make note of what has changed.
Once you make systematic mental practice a part of your everyday practice routine, I am certain you’ll soon wonder how you ever did without it.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks very much. Very helpful suggestions for a busy working parent trying to also learn to play the piano!
Thank you for the lovely insight on other ways to practice! Very helpful advice.
~A
I do this often with my singing. I can hear the music, once I have learned it, and sing it in my head without missing a note. Even to correcting that wrong note, If sung wrong. I don’t have a piano, but a song once learned and sung enough is re-called. My head sings it better than my voice, for when I open my mouth sometimes the sound is not as pretty as it should be. Age has alot to do with this, and the fact that I am 72 years old and do not perform as I have in the past. Maybe more practice with the voice, instead of in my head?
Hello Frances,
You’re not alone in finding that often we are capable of sounding better in our heads than in real life – though it’s always surprising to me how many mistakes we make even in our own minds.
Have you ever tried mental practice with a primary focus on kinesthetic sensations? Meaning, rather than being focused on sound when engaging in mental practice, to focus also on what it feels like when you are singing optimally – i.e. to practice recreating the physical sensations and muscle activation patterns which occur when you are singing your very best?
Hello,
Thanks a lot for all this very useful information. I’m in a kind of transformation as a music student, seeking for everything that can improve my performances and especially my time inside the practice room.
I’ve just started applying this technique, and as soon as I “played” a difficult passage in my head, I could realise that my body was getting tense playing those notes! Now I’ll try to do this every day, before I go to practice. It’s very useful!
Many thanks!
L. Rochefort
Dr. Kageyama,
First of all, I love reading your articles. They are all very helpful and insightful, and I have already implemented some of your suggestions, such as keeping a practice notebook.
I was particularly excited about the idea of mental practice because I will be in Japan without my clarinet later this month. A few logistical questions: When I do use mental practice, should I have sheet music in front of me, or should it all be from memory? Do you recommend keeping your eyes closed the whole time? How long should a typical mental practice session last? And when have access to both an imaginary clarinet and my real one in the same day, should I allow for much time between my real practice and my mental practice? Should I mental practice before/after I real practice?
Forgive me for the barrage of questions, and thank you very much!
Graeme
Graeme,
Mental practice is a lot like regular physical practice, and can be structured similarly. If you are working on memorization, then certainly, you’d want to practice from memory. On the other hand, if you’re learning a new piece or just working through different passages, you could practice with your music in front of you. For me personally, it’s difficult to keep mental practice vivid if my eyes are open, but I don’t think there’s any hard and fast rule about whether eyes open or closed is better (eyes closed is generally what you will see described in the literature though).
At first, I’d encourage you to keep mental practice sessions shorter so that you don’t get burned out, or lose focus. As you develop greater mental stamina and the ability to stay focused on practicing productively in your head, sessions can be longer.
And when you have both a real clarinet and your imaginary one on the same day, given the circumstances you describe, you could probably give your imaginary clarinet a break that day. Under normal circumstances I would encourage you to integrate the two, i.e. play through a passage, rate yourself and write down observations, then run through a few mental practice runs to work out kinks and get it sounding exactly like you want, then playing it on your real clarinet, rate/write down observations again, and so on.
Have a great trip!
Mental practice is so very important. You must know your music mentally, it’s construction, keys and key changes. I’ve had students who would prepare repertoire with chunks of scales that they are familiar with but have no idea that they are playing scales until I make them look at the runs. Then they realize that all they are doing is playing a simple C Major scale then the particular passage is played with very little effort. We live in a society that does not have time to waste time. When I am working on my jazz pieces I will spend hours writing out the changes and writing what keys work the best with the changes. I enjoy playing my axe more when I don’t have to stress about what works best with a Bb7 chord.
Many thanks for this article. I’m always looking for ways to improve my musicianship when I don’t have my instrument to hand. I am so excited about trying this!
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