The effect of Mental Practice and Body Awareness on the daily practice of music students
(2025)
author(s): Juan Rodes Pintor
published in: Research Catalogue
This research investigated the effect of mental practice tools and body awareness exercises, when correctly integrated in a practice routine. This type of practice is heavily used in sports but is yet to be completely discovered by musicians. This research proposed a one-month routine which implements tools like Imagery, Visualization, External focus, and Body awareness exercises amongst others, and investigated the effect it had on Imagery abilities, motor and cognitive learning, performance anxiety and enjoyment.
Eight conservatory students from different countries and instruments followed this routine for one month practicing unfamiliar pieces. The data was collected using a mixed methodology composed of personal questionnaires, logbooks and the Bett’s Questionnaire upon Mental Imagery, a tool that helped keep track of the mental abilities of the participants before, during and after the intervention. The use of different imagery and visualization exercises reflected a twofold improvement in scores according to the Bett’s QMI criteria in the vast majority of participants, even though none of the participants mentioned feeling improvements in their mental abilities in the post-intervention questionnaire. Logbooks showed fewer levels of mental and physical anxiety after performing body awareness exercises and the personal questionnaires reflected a slight improvement in practice and performance enjoyment and motivation thanks to the goal setting strategies of the routine.
The findings suggest that the use of mental practice and body awareness exercises should be used more in the musician’s daily life.
APPROACHING IMAGES: A Journey from Imagery to the Concrete
(2023)
author(s): Rui Braga Simões
published in: KC Research Portal
The piano is an instrument filled with endless possibilities, and an absurd amount of marvellous repertoire, but also has its downsides, namely its extremely complex mechanism: fingers activate a key, that moves a hammer, that hits a string. It’s a lot of steps from the moment you imagine a note and the moment you hear it, and the resulting sound isn’t always what we hope for. This instrument can be limited for the things that are asked from pianists, such as playing singing and legato lines. However, there are ways of getting over this limitation, and one of them is the use of Imagery, I.e., having a strong imagination of something else in order to do things that, in many occasions on a piano, are technically impossible.
In this artistic research I approach the concept of Musical Imagery and present an arrangement I made of Debussy’s Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut (from the second book of Images) for piano and percussion quartet, exploring the imagery elements I use in my practice and explaining how I turned them into something concrete, through the use of new layers added by the chosen instruments.
Metaphors in piano teaching - Thanos Katsaras
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Thanos Katsaras
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Effectiveness of metaphors in piano teaching. Definition of the goal of using metaphors when teaching a piano student