This dissertation aimed to better understand how violin and viola private instructors teach Mental Practice in their studios, investigating different approaches on how to apply and teach auditory, motor, and visual imagery, score study, and auditory modeling, as well as its benefits. This research was divided into two different stages. In the…

Flow is a state of optimal or peak experience, commonly associated with expert and creative performance. Musicians often experience flow during playing, yet the neural mechanisms underlying this elusive state have remained underexplored due to challenges posed by substantial artefacts in the neural data. Here, we bypassed these issues by focusing…

Musical instrument training has been linked to improved academic and cognitive abilities in children, but it remains unclear why this occurs. Moreover, access to instrument training is not always feasible, thereby leaving less fortunate children without opportunity to benefit from such training. Although music-based video games may be more…

Music performance requires high levels of motor control. Professional musicians use body movements not only to accomplish and help technical efficiency, but to shape expressive interpretation. Here, we recorded motion and audio data of twenty participants performing four musical fragments varying in the degree of technical difficulty to analyze…

In order to maximize children's learning environment, this article describes how classroom teachers may introduce different types of music into the daily classroom schedule; current findings indicate music contributes to students' learning. This discussion identifies several different kinds of music and further describes how classroom teachers and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of pitch and rhythm priming tasks on sight-reading accuracy and fluency. High school wind instrumentalists (N = 182) were assigned to one of four experimental groups: pre-/posttest rhythm, pre-/posttest pitch, posttest-only rhythm, or posttest-only pitch. Participants sight-read selected…

Given the prevalent use of sight-reading in the classroom, at music festivals, and in audition procedures, it is important to know the most effective practices in preparing students to sight-read musical excerpts. Previous studies suggest that rhythm accuracy is a significant indicator of sight-reading ability. However, others have observed a…

Embodied mind theories underline the role of the body in the act of knowing. According to the enactive approach, we learn to perceive and to know through our bodily interactions with the world (Varela, Thompson & Rosch, 1991). However, such an approach remains incomplete as long as sociality is not taken into account (Froese & Di Paolo,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of cognitive load during practice on university wind students' learning. Cognitive load was manipulated through instrument family (woodwind or brass) and the amount of repetition used in practice (highly repetitive or random). University woodwind and valved-brass students (N = 46)…

In an exploratory study lasting more than 16 weeks, 15 undergraduate and graduate piano students prepared a short piece by the Brazilian composer Guarnieri, "Ponteio" no. 22, without guidance from their piano teachers. The data that were collected included their performances, interviews pertaining to their practice and stimulated recall…

This study explored the differences in ear-playing ability between formal "classical" musicians and those with vernacular music experience (N = 24). Participants heard melodies and performed them back, either by singing or playing on their instruments. The authors tracked the number of times through the listen-then-perform cycle that each…

In this essay, the author first addresses the theme of disciplined somatic training and its relationship to self-awareness and transformation. Her attention is focused specifically on the chapter on Ludwig Wittgenstein, in which Richard Shusterman presents and then elaborates upon the philosopher's connections between conscious bodily feelings and…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of cognitive chunking techniques among first-semester group-piano music majors. The ability to group discrete pieces of information into larger, more meaningful chunks is essential for efficient cognitive processing. Since reading keyboard music and playing the piano is a cognitively complex…

This study addressed the cognitive processes of musicians using imagery to improve expressive performance. Specifically, it was an examination of the extent to which musicians translate imagery into explicit plans for the sound properties of music. Eighty-four undergraduate and graduate music majors completed a research packet during individual…

The perceptual and cognitive processes involved in learning to play the piano are examined as sources of confusion and problems which might be encountered by the young learning disabled piano student. The paper is reported to be based on personal observations during private piano instruction, published and unpublished literature, and a summer…