Mental Practice: Practicing Without the Keys
1. The 2014 Hotel
In 2014, I was sitting in a hotel room in Cardiff, Wales. There were only 2 hours left before an important performance where I would be playing a one hour programme from memory. Unfortunately, many hotels don’t come equipped with a piano in each of the rooms and I didn’t think it was a great idea to travel with a piano in my hand luggage.
So, before the performance, I tried to use positive visualisation to stay calm. I’d be thinking about what would happen if it was the best performance I’ve ever given and I would tell myself that this was an opportunity to move people and make them feel something. I would read through the sheet music and imagine the sound of the piano in slow motion.
However, for this particular performance, I didn’t want to leave anything to chance and I knew that it would give me much more confidence if I could just play through the pieces from memory one more time.
So, I cleared the table conveniently sitting under the TV. I stacked some cushions on the chair to raise the chair to the correct height and I played the entire 1 hour piano programme on a coffee table with no keys and no sound (other than my fingers hitting the table).
I’m sure if someone had walked in during that hour I would have looked like I was in need of therapy.
However, afterwards, I felt much more confident. I was able to reassure myself that I knew the pieces even without being able to hear the notes out loud. I remembered the fingers and the shapes to a degree where I could play without actually having the keys under my fingers.
2. See & Hear
Throughout my time studying the piano the concept of “mental practice” was discussed and used a lot by myself and many of my pianist friends.
But…What is it? Does it actually work? How?
There is a concept in both music and language learning called “inner hearing”, this is simply our ability to imagine sound. It’s the process that happens in our brain when we read a book - we kind of hear the words in our head. This is why using reading as a way to learn languages is so effective for your speaking of the language.
The same is true for music, if we are learning a piece of music, visualising how we want that piece of music to sound will directly influence the way that you then play that piece.
For example, if you are sitting on a train with a piece of sheet music and you are trying to learn the dynamics of that piece, you can play the piece in your head deliberately focussing on changing the sound of your inner hearing where the dynamics change. When you then next come to play the piece on the piano, you will have learnt the dynamics without having touched the piano!
However, we can actually do much more than this. We can also visualise chord qualities, pitches and jumps and particular shapes on the piano. You can, in fact, learn an entire piece without actually touching the piano (providing there are no technical problems).
There is a famous story, which I’m not sure is true or folk lore, but it does provide an important lesson and it goes something like this:
‘Daniel Barenboim was once on a flight when a fan approached him with a piece of music he had been writing. Curious, Barenboim agreed to take a look. For the rest of the journey he quietly studied the score. When they landed, he handed it back with a smile, saying it was a wonderful piece.
That evening, at his concert, Barenboim sat down at the piano. To the fan’s astonishment, he performed the entire composition from memory, without ever having touched the keys beforehand.’
3. Practice Anywhere
Practice doesn’t need to be limited to the piano. Of course, in order to improve technique and your ability to physically play the piano, the majority of practice should be actually playing the piano. However, you can train your brain to understand and interpret music without needing to touch the piano at all.
I have often been asked, what should I do when I’m away on vacation (holiday, for the British)?
My answer is:
- Practice the fingers
- Practice the dynamics
- Practice the rhythms
- Find scales, patterns and chord shapes in the music
- Work out the chords and try to visualise the quality of sound
- Learn the structure and the overarching story
- Learn the articulation (staccato vs legato etc.)
There are many times when it is not easy to get to the piano to play, but we can still continue and actually make significant improvement with a little bit of mental practice.
Matthew Cawood
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