“TOTAL INNER MEMORY”: MULTIMODAL IMAGERY
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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
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pmu0000091
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)
Memorisation
12345
Detailed analysis
12345
Score reading
12345
Understanding of form
12345
Transposition
12345
Piano technique
12345
Teaching
12345
Performance skills
12345
2. Rate the amount of training you have received prior to this week’s course.
(1= none and 5 = professional level)
Memorisation
12345
Detailed analysis
Score reading
12345
Understanding of form
Transposition
12345
Piano technique
Teaching
12345
Performance skills
12345
12345
12345
12345
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.
VISUAL
Image of score
12345
Image of keyboard
12345
Image of hand positions
12345
Other (please describe)
12345
AURAL
Listening to recorded or live performances
12345
Imagining sound by reading score
12345
Recalling sound from memory
1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe)
12345
MOVEMENT
Practising on piano
12345
Imagining movement
1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe)
12345
“TOTAL INNER MEMORY”: MULTIMODAL IMAGERY
STRUCTURAL
ASSOCIATIVE
Understanding form
Analysing content
Other (please describe)
Mood
Narrative
Other (please describe)
2
12345
1 2 3 4 5
12345
12345
12345
12345
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
Memorisation
Score reading
Transposition
Teaching
Detailed analysis
Understanding of form
Piano technique
Performance skills
12345
12345
12345
12345
12345
12345
12345
12345
Running head: “TOTAL INNER MEMORY”: MULTIMODAL IMAGERY
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.
VISUAL
Image of score
12345
Image of keyboard
12345
Image of hand positions
12345
Other (please describe)
12345
AURAL
Listening to recorded or live performances
12345
Imagining sound by reading score
12345
Recalling sound from memory
1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe)
12345
MOVEMENT
Practising on piano
12345
Imagining movement
1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe)
12345
STRUCTURAL
Understanding form
12345
Analysing content
1 2 3 4 5
Other (please describe)
12345
ASSOCIATIVE
Mood
12345
Narrative
12345
Other (please describe)
12345
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“TOTAL INNER MEMORY”: MULTIMODAL IMAGERY
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/explaining
more time
less time same amount of time
Imagining sound by reading score
more time
less time same amount of time
Recalling sound from memory
more time
less time same amount of time
Working on mental
representations of keyboard
more time
less time same amount of time
Working on mental
representations of hand positions
more time
less time same amount of time
Working on mental
representations of movement
more time
less time same amount of time
Practising on the piano
more time
less time same amount of time
12. Do you have any further comments or questions? THANK YOU!
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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.
“TOTAL INNER MEMORY”: MULTIMODAL IMAGERY
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 a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
4.0 License.
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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 Phantasiestücke op.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
“TOTAL INNER MEMORY”: MULTIMODAL IMAGERY
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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 Phantasiestücke op.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.
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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).
Figure 6. Bars 135-139 of Traumes Wirren from Phantasiestücke, Op. 12, by Schumann.
The examples reported above illustrate how imagined rehearsal of auditory and visuo-spatial aspects of
musical events resolved what might initially have appeared to be physical problems. Organising
technically challenging material into smaller, or alternative patterns appeared to facilitate rapid technical
progress in situations where other commonly advocated practice strategies - for example working slowly,
practising with different rhythms, practising hands separately - had reportedly not produced improvement.
NBO’s imagery techniques ensure that in complex situations the pianist clarifies auditory and visuospatial images in detail and removes the focus from the fine motor aspects of playing (“When I am at the
piano … now it is more mental work than fingers work.” (P6, Q3)).
Psycho-physical performance enhancement. Alexander Technique (AT) principles inform and are
embedded in all NBO’s work. Practitioners of the technique claim that it enhances musical performance
“TOTAL INNER MEMORY”: MULTIMODAL IMAGERY
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quality and enables musicians to hear what they play more clearly (Adams, 1995; Brandes & Davis, 2007).
Key elements are clarity of mind in moving, which NBO considers can be best achieved when deliberate
mental imagery strategies are utilised during learning.
Clarity during initial learning. Underpinning NBO’s whole approach is the concept that mental clarity
facilitates physical ease, and vice versa. In her view the intelligent preparation of material facilitates ease
of playing (“There is no thing that is just physical or just mental. It [AT] improves your psycho-physical
state […] Your mind becomes clear when your body isn’t engaged in all these reactions.” (NBO,
Interview). By learning in manageable stages and by consciously attending to every aspect of the learning
process the pianist may avoid situations in which technical difficulty obscures musical intention. NBO’s
central proposition is that by mentally learning the music before learning how to play it the pianist can
clarify what needs to be done - and many aspects of how to do it - before the body takes over the learning
of the material. This is important, she believes, because the body learns more quickly than thought can be
organised, at least with complex material: “The body can do things very quickly. The brain works in a
different tempo to the body[.]” (NBO, Interview). For NBO this means that it is essential to learn how to
think about the music and how best to “organize” it, both in terms of musical intention and physical
action, prior to repetitive rehearsal. She aims to ensure that the imagination is trained before the body, in
order to avoid unconsciously incorporating tensions and unhelpful habits into the learning. Repetitive
physical rehearsal is in NBO’s view only useful once the material is clearly understood. The pianist is
more able to focus on efficient, healthy use of the body once the material is memorised.
A psycho-physical re-education. Alexander described his approach as a “psycho-physical re-education”
(Alexander, 2001), and NBO communicates a sense of what this means by “guiding” students during their
playing. She uses a light touch or tapping motion on the pianist’s neck, back, upper chest or hands (Figure
7).
Figure 7. Video still showing NBO “guiding” a pianist at the piano.
Bringing the student’s awareness to areas of physical tension – which in some cases is very subtle –
reminds the student to release tensions or to move less, and to focus on the sound. In NBO’s view, any
movement that does not directly contribute to the effective depression of the required key is unnecessary
and potentially distracting. “Basically it is about do less [sic], get more music.” (P2, Q3.) In order to
achieve clarity in playing it is crucial for the pianist to be aware of how the body is moving, and one of
the key reasons for pre-learning the musical text is to avoid inadvertently encoding inefficient motor
programmes during initial learning at the instrument.
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Physical clarity leads to enhanced listening. The purpose of simplifying body movement is not only to
reduce potentially damaging tension, but equally to increase the focus on sound. NBO believes that the
pianist’s movement should directly contribute to effective sound production in order to be able to listen
more clearly. She notes that many pianists play with “a lot of tension, unnecessary movement, pulling
themselves in, all sorts of emotional responses that make the body do extraordinary movements in
reaction to the music, which doesn’t give the player a simplicity of access to the sound” (NBO, Interview).
Working with students, NBO guides them “to bring some sort of balance and simplicity into their whole
presence in playing, so they don’t do all these extraordinary things with themselves in music making, but
just do what is necessary to do at the keyboard; this is when they immediately say ‘I can listen more.’”
(NBO, Interview).
Physical ease affects mental clarity and vice versa: “wholeness” and “open-ness”. One of NBO’s central
themes is the achievement of a sense of “wholeness”, and she uses AT directions to help pianists develop
a sense of what this means. “I’ve got the whole piece inside me … there in my mental representation,
waiting to be audible” (NBO, Interview); “Something opens in you to let the music out” (NBO, Video
transcript). For the performer, this might be experienced as a sense of achieving integration of expressive
purpose, physical ease, and emotional engagement with the performance feedback. NBO’s emphasis,
derived from the principles of AT, is on clarity and awareness, both physically and mentally.
Understanding and knowing musical content at the outset of practice allows the pianist to pay attention to
what the body is doing; decreasing extraneous movement allows for greater economy of movement and
greater physical ease; physical ease facilitates enhanced listening and a greater sense of connection with
musical intention.