Mental Practicing
- Only perfect practise makes perfect

ONLY PERFECT PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT! - Mental Practicing

The "scary passage": Which musician isn't painfully aware of it and its cunningly choking threat? Practiced over and over again, to the point of drudgery, the coveted experience of dance-like self-confidence doesn't even begin to manifest itself. More probable: the practicer develops tense muscles as well as increased feelings of panic! Each mistake compounds the fear of the passage. The practicer learns to fear the "scary passage" instead of mastering it. Fear, if not already "pre-programmed", lurks in appalling proximity. The musician gets tangled in his own dogged striving for perfection, battling against himself and his own body, practicing incessantly, and yet the same faults are made anew, almost "incidentally" and almost always at the very same places! A truly sad result of numerous labored hours!

This cannot be the right way
But what other options are accessible to a musician other than "practicing", if the passage in question does not want to "settle down"? When it simply does not want to echo the way it tones in the inner ear during moments of leisure? Ought it not be practiced again and again, mindlessly, mechanically? After all, Liszt read while going through his finger exercises. Is there perhaps another way to achieve the goal? The genius violinist Kreisler, when asked, commented dryly: "I never practice!" I beg your pardon?! Yes: "In the formal sense of the word, I have never practiced in my whole life. I practice only as I feel the need. I believe that everything is in the brain. You think of a passage and you know exactly how you want it" ( Great masters of the violin, Boris Schwarz, 1983 ).

THE 'OTHER' WAY
This is the other way: not to run through the same passage to the point of insanity, but to organize it mentally, using the imaginative powers of the brain! Even the most mediocre musician has specific ideas about how a piece or musical passage ought to sound or what the appropriate technique should be!
Dare to try it : CGo e your eyes and see / hear/ feel yourself making music!
A bit of patience, now, try it again ! Is everything you see perfect?
Technique, performance, interpretation? Then you can put this article aside!
You don't need it!

Or maybe your visualisation is not quite flawless? Inhibited, unclear, cramped, simply "not good"? Then just go ahead and create your own reality with the power of your imagination, with the energy of your inner pictures, with the potency of your brain!

We not only learn from reality, from personal experience. What sense, then, except for entertainment, have books, courses and schools? The famous "Eureka-effect" is in no way confind to a real course of events! So, once more: CGo e your eyes, see, hear, feel yourself playing perfectly, learn what you see, and then perform exactly like that!

We create our personal reality through our own inner visions, that is, the reality grows out of our imagination!

ADVANTAGES OF MENTAL PRACTICING
The advantages of mental practicing are exciting: Mental practicing · is more effective than learning through observing.

- is ideal for identifying and eliminating " scary - passages ".

- shortens warm - up time.

- leads to increased certainty with technically tricky passages.

- eases stage fright and aids memory.

- prevents excess strain and tension.

- improves sensomotor abilities.

- excludes danger of injury.


Mental training is a "program" for learning and practicing emotional, mechanical and psychological
skills. The main effect: inner strength is increased ("I can do it!") and practical performance
becomes more polished.
As every mildly enthusiastic sports fan knows: without professional, psychological preparation, even top athletes perform less than their best. A few gifted musicians, however, struggle on, having the vague feeling that stupidious, repetitional practicing does more harm than good, and hurdle themselves into some sort of personal mental training program. Unfortunately, it is often based on foggy notion rather than knowledge, and regrettably, is almost always without professional help! Mental training, if taught to musicians at all, just hints at the possibilities and is seldom done in a systematic and pedagogical way!
Similar to a physical training program, mental practicing should take place daily, or at least three to four times a week! You're right! It is incredibly difficult for most of us to demonstrate the necessary discipline for doing "nothing", at least until the first victories are experienced. Of course, one stands under the pressure of wanting to improve, having to practice, instead of simply "thinking around"!. All our lives we've been taught that repitition, over and over again, is the single best way to improvement.

It is not!
Let's recap: active practicing may have its advantages, it also has it's disadvantages ( the uselessness of doing something for the hundredth time, tenseness, increased stage fright, cementing old mistakes). Mental practicing can overcome these problems, presupposing, the student shows some trust and discipline. Take note of the following:

- Alternating practical and mental practicing shows the best results.

- The effectiveness of mental practicing depends on experience and age .

- The positive effects of mental practicing increase remarkably with the complexity of the task.

DURATION OF MENTAL PRACTICING

If periods of relaxation are interspersed between each mental run-through (more details later), practicing can be done principally until concentration goes on "strike". Beginners hardly ever practice longer than ten to thirty minutes, advanced musicians manage for up to a few hours with this technique. Beginners have more problems regarding their notorious urge to play and very easily give in to the desire do something! It may not be wise to do more than ten minutes of mental practicing before a performance as one needs optimal concentration during the concert.

A good friend of mine, a successful journalist, had always made the same mistake at the same place in her piano piece. The fingers just did not seem to cooperate. Remembering our conversations on mental practicing, she looked at this spot under her "inner magnifying glass". Just as a watchmaker will take apart a broken watch, to get at the bottom of the problem, my friend took a good look at the inner happenings of the piece. What a surprise! Exactly at the place were she continuously made the same mistake, two tones were "missing" in her mind! The necessary notes, sounds and motions were "added on", and the mistake disappeared. And it never happened again! Gotten your courage together?

Get started with mental practicing !

deutsche version