Page 65 - How to Shine on Stage

that the technical aspects of practice pose hardly any challenge to them.
Those musicians who are generally more inclined to emotional respons-
es when listening to music will be able to convey during performance the
emotional message of music with greater ease and beauty.
When playing a piece by heart, it is very important to be able to
play it in the mind. This means that one either visualizes the keyboard
or the notation and is able to perform the entire piece in their mind.
This requires a very high level of concentration on their part. It is char-
acteristic of many successful musicians that they can imagine a piece so 63
strongly in their minds that they can practise without actually using their
instrument.
Mental motor skill practice refers to the imaginary practice of motor
skills without the aid of any muscle movements. It is recommended par-
ticularly before beginning to play a piece, as it helps to establish an ade-
quate mental image of it.
Of course, learning to perform music inevitably demands specific
physical practice of the instrument. Once one has mastered the basic
technical skills, they can begin some form of mental practice, given how
beneficial it can be. Indirect Factors of Musical Performance Success
German piano teacher Leimer (1932–1972), who taught the famous
pianist Gieseking, is often referred to as an advocate of mental practice.
Leimer believed that a musician has to know the piece and its individual
parts by heart before playing it on their instrument.
Some music educators emphasize cognitive training, others just the
specific practice of the instrument, while still others advocate a combi-
nation of both. Most mental practice experiments in sport and mental
preparation in other motor activities suggest that mental practice is bet-
ter than no practice, but not as useful as physical practice (Gabrielsson,
2012). However, there has been little such research in music.
There exist some other common types of instrument/singing prac-
tice that bear mentioning. These are a vista practice (reading a clus-
ter of notes seen for the first time), practice by heart, and improvisation
practice.

2.1.7.1.1 Practice A Vista and the Notation Reading Ability
One of the important aspects of successful practice involves reading no-
tation quickly and efficiently. Viewed from a developmental perspective,
it also begs the question of the appropriate time to begin music literacy
in the sense of notation. We shall therefore firstly address this and after-
wards the ability to read a vista.