Mental Rehearsal
Photo credit: Stanford University
We tend to think that piano playing is all about what you can do with your fingers, but so much of it has to do with what you can do with your mind: recognizing patterns, being able to see the forest and the trees at the same time, knowing what to think and when to think it, decision making.
As I’m writing this post, I’m engaged in several levels of thinking. I’m thinking about the concepts I want to convey, and I’m focusing rather heavily on forming logical arguments. I translate those thoughts into words, and in order to type the words, I have to think of them on a letter-by-letter basis. Sort of. I’m actually an adept typist, and as such, it’s more descriptive to say that my thoughts are at the “word” level, and they keystrokes I use to type those words operate at a subconscious level, until I come to a word like “subconscious” or “descriptive,” for which I don’t appear to have automated routines. Then, I’m aware of my mind switching to a letter-by-letter mode. I slow down my typing speed, and I become more aware of where each letter is on my keyboard.
Playing piano is a lot like that, especially when we’re talking about playing something as sophisticated as, say, a Mozart Sonata. There is some sense in which I “know” the piece on a note-by-note level, but much of that knowledge – all the more so the better I know the piece – is at a subconscious level. My conscious thoughts are at a higher level – higher than a “word” level (chord, gestures, simple patterns) … at what I think of as a “landmark” level (which I’ll explain a few paragraphs from now). At any moment, I know that I could downshift my focus, but I wouldn’t attempt to perform while thinking at a “word” or “note-by-note” level. I’d have to slow down, much like I’d have to slow down my typing speed (which is quite fast) in order to type a less-familiar word.
Now, I just said that “at any moment, I could downshift my focus.” That’s true only because I’ve spent years training myself to be able to do this. As a younger pianist, if you were to ask me to take a piece I knew well and had performed successfully many times, and play it at a slow tempo, thinking of it on a note-by-note level, I could absolutely not have done so. I disliked that type of exercise, because it reminded me of what it’s like to have a memory slip during a performance. Ultimately, I came to see this as an insecurity resulting from a lack of thoroughness in my preparation. Fixing it has made memory slips less likely, far less significant when they do occur, and easier to recover from.
When I perform, although I have an awareness of the piece on a note-by-note and “word” level, my conscious focus is at a landmark level. Much like driving a familiar route and making turns at familiar landmarks, there are moments within the piece: things that distinguish similar passages from one another, important formal junctures, certain interrelationships between my hands … any number of things peppered throughout the piece. As I pass one of these landmarks, I sharply imagine the next one. As I move between landmarks, my thoughts aren’t so much about individual notes. Instead, I’m listening, singing (in my mind), monitoring the physicality of what I’m doing … any number of things.
The landmarks I use to navigate a piece, I call these a mental map. I have planned where I’ll place my thoughts, while leaving other things mostly – but almost never completely – to muscle memory. Mental mapping may not be familiar to every pianist, but the more complex the repertoire and the more skilled the performer, the most likely it is that a mental map is in use.
And now, I can finally talk about mental rehearsal. I don’t find it especially practical except when it comes to mental mapping, and there I find it absolutely indispensable. I will often follow up my practice with exercise (biking or walking or the like), and as I’m exercising, I will spend time recalling and reviewing the mental map I was just attempting to form during my practice session. Some thoughts:
- It’s important to mentally rehearse away from the keyboard, so that you distance yourself from your muscle memory. Being able to see a keyboard during mental rehearsal might be helpful, but I find it more effective if you have to imagine a keyboard as you mentally rehearse. If you find that your imagined keyboard isn’t helping, don’t go to the piano. Go to the score.
- In order for mental rehearsal to work, it has to be part of your usual practice routine. If you’ve never done it, but then decide to try it right before a performance, expect confusion, frustration and perhaps disaster. If you’ve regularly and thoughtfully used mental rehearsal and feel confident in your mental rehearsal skill, then doing it right before a performance is the golden path to success!
- The landmarks that you rehearse should make sense to you. For example, if thinking “F7” helps you remember an important chord, fine. If it’s more helpful for you to think “that chord with the E-flat in it,” don’t feel weird about that. A colleague whom I greatly admire doesn’t form mental maps in theoretical terms at all. She uses colors and feelings as her landmarks, and that works for her.