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Most all of you are probably familiar with Oliver Sacks' books, which are mostly case history of cool brain disorders. I picked up his 'Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain' the other day and highly recommend it. Here's a brief summary and then a question for you about a passage I found very interesting in its potential implications for how we learn and practice.

The book is basically an exploration of 'what goes on in human beings when they make or listen to music.' And it shuld come as no surprise that he approaches the question mostly from the perspective of 'what sometimes goes wrong.' A close examination of fascinating, and sometimes heartbreaking, individual pathologies are his hounds in the hunt for an elusive explanation of our "normal" musical sense. I already regret having written that sentence -- but can find no better one -- for it suggests that the patient histories he recounts are a means to an end and nothing could be farther from the sensitivity and appreciation he shows for his subjects. The book explores varieties of "amusia," in which some aspect of musical perception is absent, of unusual musical sensitivity, sometimes apparently at the expense of other faculties, of "synthesia," where musical perception somehow excites what we habitually think of as unrelated senses, like taste, color, or smell. All the usual puzzles about whether these afflictions are physiological (rooted in the sense organ), neurological, or psychological are explored -- hint: all of the above. But Sacks also looks closely at the effects of music on sufferers from amnesia, aphasia, Tourette's Syndrome, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease, and other conditions. A great strength of all of Sacks' work -- exemplified marvelously here -- is that, while his stories rise above the particular to resonate with questions of general interest, the rich texture of individual lives is never diminished in their telling.

So here's the question. One section, in particular, caught my attention as I reading it on the train yesterday while simultaneously practicing in my head a section from a song I've been trying to learn. He has a chapter on what goes on when we imagine music and points to some research that suggests that it is not only the auditory cortex, but also the motor cortex that is active when we imagine a piece of music and quotes this passage from Alvaro Pascual-Leone:

"mental stimulation of movements activates some of the same central neural structures required for the performance of actual movements. In so doing, mental practice alone seems to be suifficient to promote the modulation of neural circuits involved in the early stages of motor skill learning. This modulation not only results in marked improvement in performance, but also seems to place the subjects at an advantage for further skill learning with minimal phyiscal practice. The combination of mental and physical practice leads to greater performance improvement than does physical practice alone, a phenomenon for which our findings provide a physiological explanation."

If this is true, it could have profound implications for how one might more effectively learn to play. This seemed quite plausible to me as I was practicing in my head on the train and I spent most of the rest of the day doing this in the background of other activities. I can't say for sure that I experienced any marked improvement when I picked up the guitar again later in the evening, but then I wasn't expecting immediate results. It does seem to makes a lot of sense and reminds me of some of the mental exercises I used to go through in my younger days while preparing for an automobile race.

Do any of you do this? What do you think is going on while you mentally practice? And does it help more than exclusively practicing at the instrument?

I'd expected this discussion of the relationship between the auditory and motor cortices and the process of learning to lead into a consideration of muscle memory. But, unfortunately, Sacks doesn't touch on that.

-Stuart

I used to do this all the time when I played piano. I would practice songs in my head while on walks, moving my fingers the way they would move on the keys. I do this less often with guitar, I think because we're dealing with notes that are on both a horizontal and a vertical plane. However, I DO think it helps a lot and I notice that when I actively try to do this, it does help me to play better when I get back to my instrument. Interestingly enough, I saw my daughter Emma doing this very thing a few nights ago, after learning to play a melody on her uke. She was sitting in the kitchen while I made dinner and I saw her moving her fingers around as if on the fretboard, while she said the names of the notes. I'd never suggested she do this, so I found it interesting that she came up with the idea on her own.

What might be an interesting experiment is to try to do this every day for eg. a month, perhaps for a certain set amount of time, and then note the results in playing. Obviously it's a hard thing to quantify, but I think you might be able to tell if there was a marked improvement in your playing.

Suzi

I have never specifically tried to practice a song note for note in my head without the guitar in my hands.

I do imagine singing the lyrics and where the chord changes, riffs and leads happen, but never the specific finger positions. And I don't imagine myself changing chords, riffs or leads on instrumental songs

As you allude to in your last sentence, I'm a big believer in auditory and muscle memory which is a product of physical practice.
There are many times, when I'll go back to an old favorite song and I'm surprised at how my fingers find the right place to be at the right time, but I don't think I would be able to do that in my head without a guitar in hand.

Also as Suzi implied, there may be instruments that are more suited to practicing in your head. If I were to attempt this on guitar, maybe I would start out imagining myself playing simple scales. Hey if the theory works, I'm for anything that helps.

Max

Very interesting post Stuart. Yes I do this, I constantly go over the chord progression in my head as I quietly sing/hum the tune. I think it's obvious that it helps with remembering the progression of the tune, not sure it helps with playing it, but I do think about the fingering as I do this so maybe it does. I have read a bit about visualisation in sport mainly, and it's a method used at Olympic level so they apparently think there's something in it.

There was a study done about 20 years ago or so with basketball.

They took 100 people that never played the game and had 50 of them practice free throws for 30 minutes everyday. The other 50 never practiced on the court, but did imagine they were practicing for the same 30 minutes. After 60 days they brought them all together and tested them. There was no difference in the 2 groups. They had all improved the same amount. Later, they did the same experiment again, but with three groups. The third group did both physical practice and mental. This time, the group the did both far out did the other two groups.

The conclusion was that along with actual physical practice you should also be practicing mentally to increase your learning speed.

That's very interesting Andy. I'm not surprised.

To be clear, I wasn't playing air guitar on the train, but I was working through the song in my head as though I were playing it in full. I don't think I was moving my left fingers at all, I was visualizing the fretboard and my right hand was moving slightly in response to the ups & downs I must have been sending it. The interesting thing is that imagining the physical encounter with the instrument seemed to trigger the imagination of the sounds.

I don't really think this is any more complicated to do with the guitar than with, say, a piano. I've done essentially the same exercise with a Ducati Desmosedici, which is even more complicated since you've got to imagine the position of your whole body, work going on with both hands and at least one foot, and, of course, the machine doing all its crazy stuff.

Anyway, I think I will pick out one song from my repertoire, practice it daily, but only mentally, record it once a month, and see whether it gets any better. I don't think it's possible to do a controlled experiment against the converse since you can't really keep the brain from going off and practicing on its own.

I would really be interested in reading something about muscle memory. It is clearly a very real phenomenon, but I haven't ever read anything about how to get the most out of it.

-Stuart