I did it in my head..........

About 6 or 7 years ago my daughter insisted she had done her music practice. We were discussing the issue because as far as I could see her guitar had not come out of its case for days. She insisted that she had done her practice in her head. Although she still seemed to be making progress in her music learning, perhaps you can understand my scepticism!

Not long afterwards when I was talking to my brother in California I mentioned the discussion about the music practice which my daughter insisted she had done in her head. I know my brother and my daughter share a very similar visual approach to the world and learning but I was puzzled to hear him reply ‘Of course, I did it that way too.’

Over the years as I have watched and listened I have come to appreciate the great benefits strong visual spatial skills can bring to learning but I still hadn’t quite come to terms with mental music practice.

A few years ago I read about a study which showed the brain activity of a monkey watching another peel and eat a banana (or something along those lines) was very similar to the monkey performing the task. At this point I began to wonder whether watching her teacher demonstrate a new skill was actually a form of ‘practice’ which might explain the continued learning with so little evident practice…….. I had also read about elite gymnastics and their coaches who used visualisation to assist them in mastering new and complicated skills, but didnt link this to learning music.

Just recently I read of another study in which brain scanning techniques have demonstrated that mental rehearsal or practice does actually have a learning effect on neuronal pathways in the brain. Although the ‘learning’ was not quite as marked as in those who had done actual physical practice, it was quite a bit better than no practice at all. It also seemed to have a priming effect so that a practical session or lesson following mental rehearsal resulted in almost the same degree of learning overall as continual physical practice.

The mental music practice has come up for discussion again recently and I now have to conceded that perhaps the practice I had been sceptical about had actually been done and that the value of this visual, mental rehearsal was something that my daughter instinctively knew about years ago.