There are many kinds of mental practice, which aim at different areas. Many pianists integrate all these areas and aims and come up with complex mental routines. Perhaps the most famous example is Glenn Gould, mostly because he took great pains to explain it all. Check it out:

- �These days and throughout my professional life, indeed, I�ve practised only on an if-, as- and when-needed basis, and only for the purpose of consolidating a conception of a score - never for the sake of contact with the instrument per se. I�ll give you an example. The most recent recording I�ve made as of the date of this interview is the Brahms Op. 10 the four ballades. I recorded them three weeks ago in New York. It happens that I�d never played them before - not even sight-read them � [�] I�d never even heard them played until I decided to record them.

[�] for approximately the next six weeks I studied the score from time to time, and developed a very clear conception of how I wanted to approach the ballades.[�] But as for playing them, I spent only the last two weeks at the keyboard and [�] it averaged about one hour a day. [�] that one hour gave me he opportunity to play through the ballades twice on each occasion (they�re almost exactly half an hour in length) and think about the conceptual changes I wanted to make.

Now, those conceptual changes were reinforced, needless to say, by running the ballades through in my head many dozens of times when driving along in the car or conducting them in my studio. [�]

- But this presupposes that one has a very specific and very secure conception of what is involved in playing the piano.

- Oh, absolutely. It presupposes that at some point, one has hit upon precisely the co-ordinates that are involved and then frozen them, stored them in such a way that one can summon them at any time. What it all comes down to is that one does not play the piano with one�s fingers; one plays the piano with one�s mind. If you have a clear image of what you want to do, there�s no reason it should ever need reinforcement. If you don�t, all the fine Czerny studies and Hanon exercises in the world aren�t going to help you.�

(These are a few excepts, you can read the full interview in David Dubal: The World of the Concert Pianist).

Trying to do what Glenn Gould does however is not the best approach, since his is a completely integrated approach polished over many decades. If this is all new to you, the best thing is to break down the process into much more limited aims and strategies:

- Memorise the piece away from the piano. (Check Walter Gieseking & Karl Leimer�s book �Piano Technique� where this is explained in detail).- Study the score and analyse it away from the piano.- Read the score and �hear� the music in your mind.- Practise in your mind (by visualising your self practising � then mentally feeling the touch sensations involved and mentally hearing the music produced. The beauty of this kind of mental practice is that you can play perfectly! But beware, when done properly this is really tiring, so do not overdo it.)

The main difficulty with mental practice is that people tend to delude themselves they are doing it, when they are in fact just daydreaming about it. For instance, truly effective mental practice must be done in real time, that is, if it takes you ten minutes to go through a Beethoven Sonata at the piano, real mental playing should take the same time. This is one of the times where a metronome could be invaluable, by making sure you are not fast-forwarding.

Mental practice (I)

Regard the score as a map of the piano (it is: every line and space correspond to a key in the piano: the notes show you graphically which key tho press and in which key to put your fingers � if fingering is supplied).

Now imagine you are in a strange town with a map of its streets. You must spend sometime mentally orientating yourself. You must interpret the information on the map in terms of the reality of the town (the map has deletions, distortions and generalisations that you must undo before you can find your bearings).

Likewise, look at the score and see it as a map of the piano. Mentally translate the diagramatic information on the score into the reality of the piano geography. The more proficient you get at this, the more your sight-reading (amongst other skills) will improve.

Do not worry about �hearing� the music at this stage. Your aim is purely visual information. You want to be able to look at the score and �see� (in your mind) the appropriate keys being depressed.

Once you can do that, try (mentally) putting your fingers in those keys. A bit like trying to keep up with a pianola or a disklavier.

This is difficult though, and mentally extremely tiring. So just like you would do with real practice, do it in small sections (just a couple of bars) and for a limited amount of time (10 minutes).

Be systematic: do not move to the next section until you mastered the one you are in. Plan the learning sequence so you know which bars you will be doing next. Choose an easy (very easy) piece (e.g. Burgmuller Op. 100) to learn the methodologie. Don�t go to the piano until you have finished the piece in your mind.

Mental practice (II)

Open the score. Look at it. As you do so, �hear� the notated music in your mind.

This presupposes that you can actually decode musical notation into sounds. If you cannot, then you will have to work on it first of all.

This is the single most important skill in sight-reading, so it is worthy cultivating.

Consider two very different strategies:

1. Some pianists decode notation as position information in the piano: as they look at the score they �see� which keys to press. I described this in mental practice (I) and suggested it was a desirable skill to acquire.

2. Some pianists decode notation as sound, and then they play by ear what they are hearing as they scan the score. This is what I am describing here and I am suggesting that this is also a very desirable skill to acquire.

It is not a question of which strategy is best. Both are equally desirable. And if you work on both, then at some point they will gel into an integrated skill that will allow you to look at a score and immediately hear the sounds and know the keys.

However you cannot work on the integrated skill, you must work on its components separately and patiently wait until your unconscious mind integrates them.

So how do you go about acquiring this skill?

1. The main problem you will encounter is that the mind tend to fast forward, to slow down and to skip whole sections of the music. So you must make sure that as you go through the score the mental sound you hear are in real tempo, that is it should take you exactly the same amount of time to read the score as it would take you to play it. I know of only one way to ensure real tempo: use a metronome.

2. If you cannot hear anything as you look at the score, then you must train yourself to do so by listening to a CD of the piece as you read the score. There is an even better strategy though. If you have a notation software that pays back the music to you, and that you can change the tempo, set the tempo to very slow and listen to it as you go through the score. The main advantage of slow listening is that it will allow you to hear all the details. This is your ultimate aim: to hear everything, all the minutiae of the score. Untrained people when they listen to music hear almost nothing. Most of the details bypass them. A fully trained musician should be able to write what he heard.

3. Start with simple pieces and increase in complexity as the simple pieces become easy. And I mean simple. My favourite to start this sort of work is Edna Mae Burnan�s A Dozen a Day .

4. Try also dictation: as you listen to a simple piece, write what you hear. Then compare what you wrote with the original score. Again a notation software that can play back the music to you at a slower tempo will be an invaluable aid.

Mental practice (III)

Analysis.

The idea here is to delay piano practice as much as possible. So get the score and take several photocopies of it (you will be doing cut and paste later on).

1. Check out the score for repeated patterns. For instance, how many different rhythm patterns can you identify? For instance, Chopin�s Prelude Op. 28 no. 7 has only one rhythm pattern that is repeated 8 times. Get some music paper and write down all the rhythm patterns (don�t worry about the actual notes or chords, just the rhythm). Then practice these rthythms on a table top or in your mind. Use a metronome to start with, and once you feel confident try for a more natural pulse. Then join the several patterns and go through the whole piece rhythm alone.

2. Now check the score for melody patterns. Again isolate the melody and hear it on your mind (or as Minsmusic said, sing it, hum it or whistle it).

3. Next look for harmonic patterns. Identify and name all the chords used. See if you can hear the chords in your mind. It is far more difficult to identify harmonies by ear then melodies, but it is definitely a learnable skill. If you do learn it you will experience great facility in improvising.

4. If the piece is counterpoint, isolate (rewrite) each voice and look for patterns in each voice separately. Think of this as getting to know intimately each piece of a puzzle before putting it together.

5. Once you know each pattern back to front, get familiarised with the parts of the piece that do not seem to fit any pattern.

6. Now put it all together. Look how repetitive these patterns are. Sometimes you will not have an exact repetition, but a passage that is exactly like ano

ther passage but written a third higher. Notice and familiarise yourself not only with the similarities, but also with the differences.

7. Now look at the question of strong and weak beats. As you go through the score, notice accents (and remember that you may accent a note not only by playing it louder, but by playing it slower.) Watch out for melodic accents as well as harmonic accents.

8. Mark cadences and repeated chord progressions. Notice dissonances and their resolutions.

9. Mark the key of each passage in the score, so that you can see straight away where the modulations are happening (now you know why you have to work on all those scales).

10. Examine the dynamic markings. Notice incongruencies amongst different accents (harmonic, melodic, dynamic, metric, rhythmic), since it is in these incongruencies that you will find the most dramatic moments in the piece.

11. Consider this: Which story does this music tell? Although some pieces are clearly programmatic, and the composer supplied already the story, many pieces are not. However it will be very helpful if you can come up with your own story for the piece. It will supply meaning for the piece, and learning something meaningful is always easier than learning something meaningless.

12. Enjoy!

Also you must have guidelines to decide on fingering. Here are a few criteria for a start:

1. Use the fingering that will allow most comfort.2. Use strong fingers on accented notes, weak fingers on notes that do not need so much emphasis. 3. Whenever possible, thumbs and little finger on white notes, 2-3-4 on balck notes (although the thumb can be quite effective on black notes in certain positions).4. Use fingerings that allow your forearm bones to be aligned with your fingers 3-4 or 5 (adjust the angle of the arm accordingly).5. Look forward and backwards in the score before using a finger. An uncomfortable fingering at the present note may make your life much easier on a later note. (Or in previous notes).this method seems to help me a bit, and it prepares me for the next practice session.