Music Lessons

Mental Practice

"One should never make any music, not even sound one musical tone, without a musical intention preceding it."

(Arthur Schnabel, Chicago lectures)

Are you looking for a way to practise more efficiently and with more relish? Mental practice gives you the chance to tap new resources, to enter new dimensions of interpretation and to strike at the roots of technical problems.

As in sports, mental rehearsing of music benefits essentially from the effects of deep relaxation. By reducing the motor activity to a minimum, the sensory capacity of the brain grows, which allows the learning process to become more fundamental and more transparent. As mental rehearsing in music includes the imagination of sound, of rhythm and of movement, the positive effects are manifold and differ individually. Some people may profit from a more general improvement of their performance, a decrease of stage fright, others gain more freedom for their interpretation or master technical difficulties hitherto unimagined. By developing and refining self-perception and deep sensibility, mental practice may help you prevent medical conditions typical in musicians, e.g. tendonitis or dystonia.

In the course of the lessons, we find the method of deep relaxation best suited for you and we train all aspects of the imaginary process, especially the perception and imagination of movements. Furthermore and most important, we learn how to set the objectives favourably. This includes finding the real reasons for difficulties presenting themselves, and to adjust the objectives in accordance with one’s current capacities and skills.

Mental practice is a method of rehearsing and learning and can be acquired independent of specific instrumental techniques. I work with professional musicians, students and advanced amateurs.

Please contact me for further information and appointments.