“Total inner memory”: multimodal imagery1
Supplemental Materials
"Total Inner Memory": Deliberate Uses of Multimodal Musical Imagery During Performance Preparation
by K. Davidson-Kelly et al., 2015, Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, & Brain
Appendix A: Questionnaires 1-3
QUESTIONNAIRE 1 (Q1)
Open questions:
1. At what age did you begin playing the piano?
2. Do you consider yourself to be professional/semi-professional/amateur?
3. Are you primarily a teacher or performer?
4. What is your musical training background?
5. Do you find it easy to memorise?
6. Were you explicitly taught how to memorise music?
7. Describe what you were taught to do:
8. Which teacher or method did you learn from?
9. How do you currently learn a new piece? Describe the process from first listening to the piece or reading the score through to the full performance (whether or not this is in public).
10. Why did you decide to come on this course?
11. What do you hope to get out of the course?
Likert scale questions:
1. Rate your skills prior to this week’s course on the following scale by circling one number. (1 = no skill and 5 = expert)
“Total inner memory”: multimodal imagery1
Memorisation 1 2 3 4 5
Score reading 1 2 3 4 5
Transposition 1 2 3 4 5
Teaching 1 2 3 4 5
Detailed analysis 1 2 3 4 5
Understanding of form 1 2 3 4 5
Piano technique 1 2 3 4 5
Performance skills 1 2 3 4 5
“Total inner memory”: multimodal imagery1
2. Rate the amount of training you have received prior to this week’s course.
(1= none and 5 = professional level)
“Total inner memory”: multimodal imagery1
Memorisation 1 2 3 4 5
Score reading 1 2 3 4 5
Transposition 1 2 3 4 5
Teaching 1 2 3 4 5
Detailed analysis 1 2 3 4 5
Understanding of form 1 2 3 4 5
Piano technique 1 2 3 4 5
Performance skills 1 2 3 4 5
“Total inner memory”: multimodal imagery1
3. When learning a piece, which aspects are most important to you? Rate the following on a scale where 1 is not important and 5 is very important.
VISUALImage of score 1 2 3 4 5
Image of keyboard 1 2 3 4 5
Image of hand positions 1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe) 1 2 3 4 5
AURALListening to recorded or live performances 1 2 3 4 5
Imagining sound by reading score 1 2 3 4 5
Recalling sound from memory 1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe) 1 2 3 4 5
MOVEMENTPractising on piano 1 2 3 4 5
Imagining movement 1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe) 1 2 3 4 5
STRUCTURALUnderstanding form 1 2 3 4 5
Analysing content 1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe) 1 2 3 4 5
ASSOCIATIVEMood 1 2 3 4 5
Narrative 1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe) 1 2 3 4 5
QUESTIONNAIRE 2 (Q2)
Open questions:
1. Was the course what you were expecting?
2. What did you benefit from most?
3. Was there anything you did not understand?
4. What will you take away and do differently?
5. Were there any aspects you would not wish to adopt, and why?
6. Would you come on the course again, and why?
7. Do you have any further comments you wish to add?
8. May I contact you in the future? If so, please give your postal address and/or email.
Likert scale questions:
Having taken part in this week’s course, to what extent do you expect the following aspects of your work to be affected in the future? Rate the level of impact you think the course will have on your work by circling one number.
1 = no change to my existing method...... 5 = complete revision of my method
“Total inner memory”: multimodal imagery1
Memorisation 1 2 3 4 5
Score reading 1 2 3 4 5
Transposition 1 2 3 4 5
Teaching 1 2 3 4 5
Detailed analysis 1 2 3 4 5
Understanding of form 1 2 3 4 5
Piano technique 1 2 3 4 5
Performance skills 1 2 3 4 5
“Total inner memory”: multimodal imagery1
2. Which aspects of learning a new piece might be most important to you in future?
Rate the following on a scale where 1 is not important and 5 is very important.
VISUALImage of score 1 2 3 4 5
Image of keyboard 1 2 3 4 5
Image of hand positions 1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe) 1 2 3 4 5
AURALListening to recorded or live performances 1 2 3 4 5
Imagining sound by reading score 1 2 3 4 5
Recalling sound from memory 1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe) 1 2 3 4 5
MOVEMENTPractising on piano 1 2 3 4 5
Imagining movement 1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe) 1 2 3 4 5
STRUCTURALUnderstanding form 1 2 3 4 5
Analysing content 1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe) 1 2 3 4 5
ASSOCIATIVEMood 1 2 3 4 5
Narrative 1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe) 1 2 3 4 5
QUESTIONNAIRE 3 (Q3)
Open questions:
1. What aspects of NBO’s teaching have helped you most?
2. What aspects of NBO’s teaching have not helped you? Is this because you disagree with her methods/they do not suit you/ you need further teaching?
3. How has your whole approach to playing developed since beginning your studies with NBO?
4. Which physical aspects of your playing have been affected by NBO’s teaching, and how?
5. Has NBO’s teaching affected the way you think about learning and/or memorising piano music, and if so how?
6. I would summarise NBO’s approach to learning a new piece as follows:
i Play through from the score once or twice.
ii Analyse (“explain”) the piece, in outline and in detail.
iii Prepare and memorise the piece away from the piano, combining structural knowledge with mental representations of the keyboard, of your movement on the keyboard, and of the sound.
iv Play on the piano once the piece is known
v Refine at the piano and away from it
a) Do you agree with my summary, or do you have an alternative description of the method she proposes?
b) Describe how you actually learn new pieces currently. Do you do what NBO recommends, or have you found that another approach works better for you?
7. Which of the aspects of learning described in question 6 do you find
a) Easy b) Challenging c) Impossible
8. What are the benefits of working on music away from the piano BEFORE working on the instrument itself?
9. What difference, if any, do you think there is between memorising away from the piano BEFORE playing, compared to learning at the piano and THEN working away from the piano to understand and memorise?
10. What are the difficulties of applying NBO’s learning method?
11. Since beginning your studies with NBO, how have you changed the way you spend your time? (please tick one box each process):
Analysing/explainingmore time less time same amount of time
Imagining sound by reading scoremore time less time same amount of time
Recalling sound from memorymore time less time same amount of time
Working on mental
representations of keyboardmore time less time same amount of time
Working on mental
representations of hand positionsmore time less time same amount of time
Working on mental
representations of movementmore time less time same amount of time
Practising on the pianomore time less time same amount of time
12. Do you have any further comments or questions? THANK YOU!
Appendix B: Key concepts in Nelly Ben-Or’s teaching: examples from practice
Prior memorisation: ‘total inner’ memorisation before physical rehearsal.
NBO advocates the mental learning and memorisation of musical material prior to physical rehearsal, in order to enhance learning and reduce learning time “by intelligent scrutiny of what needs to be done” (NBO, Interview). “[O]ne has to memorise, not the text as a text on the page, but as a text translated into the happening of the music on the piano[.]” (NBO, Interview). She teaches pianists to study material away from the piano and to develop a “total inner memory” via the deliberate rehearsal of multimodal mental images. She emphasizes the need to organise the material into meaningful units, or in other words to identify patterns on various levels. At the formal level this entails identifying structural features (e.g. movements, sections, large-scale repetitions); at the mid–level, phrase groupings are described, and at the most detailed level it involves “explaining to oneself” the content of the text, bar by bar. The purpose of this “explanation” is for the pianist to understand the text clearly and thoroughly, before physical memory is encoded and rehearsed. This strategy incorporates the type of analytical pre-study described and tested by Rubin-Rabson (1937). It is relatively simple and does not involve ‘the kind of finished theoretical analysis required in advanced analysis classes’ (Rubin-Rabson, 1937). Instead the description tends to move through the musical text in a successive manner reminiscent of Donald Tovey’s method, which attempts to trace the same process in time that the listener experiences (Bent and Drabkin, 1987). For example, during the observation NBO handed out copies of the opening page of a Haydn sonata (Figure 1).
This style of music was very familiar to all participants and technically easy for all of them. NBO asked the pianists to learn the piece without playing on the instrument; they were instructed to “explain it to yourself. Listen to it inside you”. NBO then demonstrated the type of explanatory process with which she would begin her learning, discussing the extract with the group as follows:
NBO: … the first bar is?
Several participants:C major
NBO:And the second bar is?
Several participants:second inversion F major
NBO: In the third bar it comes back...
Several participants:… same as the first bar
NBO: The fourth bar kind of concludes the little sentence, it has [chords] V and 1: dominant seventh and tonic. So we have I, IV, I, V, I, V, I [indicating chords in bars 1-5]. Then we have a change of key. Where is he going? To the dominant of G major [bar 6] to go into G major [bar 7]. So look at bar 8. He’s playing around in G major, and then into the dominant of G major and back to the tonic [sings] then … stays in the tonic. Then look what happens [bar 12]: first there is the tonic, then there is B and G in the left hand, then F-sharp is gone - it changes to F natural in the right hand. BUT, only for a moment. F-sharp appears again in the next bar. We are in soh majeur, even though there is a little D-sharp [bar 15] - it’s just an ornament.
The explanation of the musical text, which in the example quoted above focused on harmonic structure and melodic detail, is only the first stage of the work that NBO proposes should take place away from the piano. NBO reported encountering a student who was able to write out verbatim a piece from memory but was subsequently unable to play the music on the instrument. For some participants, study of the score automatically generated vivid auditory imagery or a feeling of playing the notes (P1 and P4, Notes), but (according to skill level, and especially when dealing with complex passages) more deliberate techniques may be required to prepare thoroughly for performance.
Figure 1. Musical score of the section of a piano piece used for memorisation training (Divertimento in C major, Hob. XVI:1, attributed to Joseph Haydn). This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
Mental imagery techniques. In conjunction with the encoding of structural markers, and the bar-by-bar pattern knowledge developed through ‘explanation’ of the score, NBO uses imagery both to bring the text alive in the pianist’s ‘inner experience’ before the ‘external’ (physical) aspects of playing are rehearsed, and to address technical difficulties encountered during rehearsal. Via the explicit creation and rehearsal of mental images, the pianist is able to encode a multi-dimensional knowledge of the material in memory, to make interpretative decisions and to rehearse recall. For fluent and secure performance, NBO advocates integrated rehearsal of an internal structural ‘map’ of the text, exploration of musical intention through imagined sound, visual imagery of note patterns on the keyboard, and an overall imagined sense of how the body will perform the music.
Multimodally integrated imagery. NBO used singing and encouraged the use of auditory imagery, often explicitly combined with imagery of the keyboard and/or body imagery, to improve expressive quality in participants’ playing and to resolve performance difficulties without additional physical practice. “[T]he most important aspect…in creating the music that you wish to hear, is listening” (NBO, Interview). For example, one pianist performed a phrase from Brahms’ Rhapsody, Op.79, no.2 (P1, Video transcript). NBO asked her to refine the timing of the bass line (i.e. to adjust very slightly the temporal relationship between notes) in order to improve the expressive quality of the line; she demonstrated what she meant by singing the phrase. The pianist reported re-imagining the sound of the phrase very vividly with the refined timing (Notes), but when she repeated the phrase on the piano the timing had not improved. NBO then asked whether she felt that she was playing with her “whole arm”. The pianist answered that she was not, and spent a moment imagining a sensation of the whole arm and body playing. She then performed the phrase again with the desired timing (P1, Video transcript). This example illustrates NBO’s point that both mental clarity and physical ease, or “wholeness”, are essential for fluent performance.
Chunking the auditory image. NBO demonstrated how deliberate “chunking” (Tulving, 1962; Chaffin et al., 2009) can be used during the initial learning phase, and as an adjunct to physical rehearsal, when technical difficulties are anticipated or encountered. Complex material, which might eventually be organised as one chunk is unpacked into smaller, more manageable sub-units. The sub-units may be organized below the phrase level and therefore do not necessarily make musical sense. Once all sub-units have been clarified, the group of sub-units is re-imagined, reconstituted as one whole unit (chunk), and the organisation of the material thereby returns to the meaningful phrase level. This technique is used particularly where rapid runs of notes or other technical difficulties cause uneven execution. Figures 2 and 3 illustrate this type of procedure (below).
Figure 2. Bars 1-4 of Traumes Wirren, from Schumann’s Phantasiestückeop.12.
The problem inherent in this passage is that the right hand finger movements (particularly those circled in Figure 2) can be difficult to execute reliably at speed and can cause tension in the hand - especially when the 4th finger is used (which, whatever fingering is chosen, is likely to be the case for some or all of the accented notes). NBO proposes removing the focus from the fingering; instead, the pianist can imagine the melody, simplified, as consisting of the accented notes only. Each note is then imagined with an upper mordent, and the last of each group of four semiquavers becomes an acciacciatura leading to the subsequent melody note (see Figure 3). Use of this technique enabled one participant (P5) to improve fluency and technical security (Video transcript, Informal interview, Email correspondence).
Figure 3. A re-imagined version of bars 1-4 of Traumes Wirren, from Schumann’s Phantasiestückeop.12
Visuo-spatial imagery. Although musicians are known to use movement imagery (Holmes, 2005), NBO prefers to focus on visuo-spatial imagery of the key pattern sequences required to execute the piece on the keyboard. In other words, as well as imagining the sound, the pianist is encouraged to visualise the keys going down in the correct sequence - rather than to imagine the movements required to depress the keys. Two particular techniques were demonstrated during the course. In the first, described by NBO as a “bird’s-eye view” of the keyboard, the pianist is taught to picture the keyboard mentally, as if from above, and to imagine where note patterns will be played on it. The view is of the keyboard as a whole, rather than as individual keys or octave units, and the mental focus is on the arrangement of note patterns on the keyboard, rather than on the finger and arm movements required to play the notes. One pianist was taught to use this technique to overcome inaccuracy and improve fluency in a passage by Schumann, [Davidsbündlertänze, Op.6 no. 4, bars 1-7] (Figure 4). She repeatedly stumbled when playing this phrase – in which the left hand has to move up and down the keyboard repeatedly – and was frustrated at her inability to perform fluently, even though she knew what the notes should be. NBO asked her to “see the bass of the first four bars” as a three note cluster (circled in Figure 4), ignoring the octave doubling and the intervening chords in the left hand, and then to re-imagine the next group of bass notes in the same way. After re-imagining the bass once, by following NBO’s instruction to “see the small area where this bass exists” (see Figure 5), the pianist was able to perform the phrase fluently (Video transcript).
Figure 4. Bars 1-7 of Davidsbündler, Op.6 no. 4 by Schumann.
Figure 5. Video still showing NBO describing a “bird’s-eye view” of the keyboard.
The second technique is in effect a variation of the bird’s eye technique that relies on visualisation of the keyboard from above. Here, the geography of the keyboard is re-imagined in condensed form, so that notes appear in the same octave as each other when, in reality, they are further apart. Condensing the keyboard in the imagination seems to reduce the perception that the hands must travel across wide distances, which in turn results in a sense of physically encompassing distance with ease. This technique was particularly applied to technically challenging passages. See Figure 6 for an example in which the right hand must move rapidly from one octave to another and back again within a single phrase. One pianist played the passage twice, each time with a number of pitch errors. He was then taught to envisage the circled notes as being next to each other on the keyboard, rather than in different octaves. Reducing the perception of difficulty by using this technique enabled the pianist to improve his performance of this passage: having spent a few moments rethinking the geography of the keyboard, as demonstrated by NBO, he was able to perform the passage correctly three times (P5, Video transcript).