What do you think about when you play?

This a question every musician has been asked, yet it can be embarrassingly difficult to answer. By the time we perform a piece of music from memory, we are no longer consciously thinking of the mechanical means of playing it: fingering, arm movements, bowing, breathing and so on. We have analyzed the music and made our decisions about tempo and rubato, phrasing and articulation, voicing and dynamics. We have memorized the piece carefully and no longer have to think about the next note. In short, we have developed an aural and mental conception of the piece that we can reproduce with accuracy and consistency, at least in the privacy of our studio or practice room. So what are we thinking about when we perform a piece of music from memory?

Perhaps our difficulty answering this question is related to the experience many musicians have when they perform from memory--a feeling of being disconnected from the music instead of absorbed in it, of watching our performance from outside instead of guiding it from within. This feeling has sometimes been compared to an out-of-body experience: the limbs and muscles go through the motions they have learned, but the mind and spirit seem to be elsewhere. With this lack of concentration comes a dangerous level of self-consciousness. The mind, not being focused on the music, fixes its attention, instead, on extraneous details: the placement of our feet on the floor, the reflection of our hands in the shiny fallboard of the piano, the sounds in the hall, the note we just missed. With this last event, the mind quickly lurches back to attention with an increased sense of panic, and we resolve to concentrate still harder on the music. Even if we make it through the piece without memory slips, technical failures or other catastrophes, we are left with a disappointed feeling of not having fully participated in our own performance. If someone would ask us what we were thinking about when we were playing, we might very well have difficulty answering without embarrassment.

Much has been said and written about how to prepare for a performance, especially about how to memorize our music. All good teachers and performers know we must cultivate the different kinds of memory--aural, analytical and kinesthetic; we must not neglect to study our music away from the instrument; we must resolve all technical difficulties; and we must play for others as much as possible. At the same time, we also know that in performance, nerves can sometimes undo even the most careful preparation. Such a performance leaves the musician feeling not only disappointed, but helpless, for it is hard to know what one can do to avoid a repetition of this unpleasant experience. Performing more often certainly helps, but does not guarantee we will become less prone to mental distraction. We somehow need to develop our power of concentration so all our careful preparation does not unravel when we perform.

When we speak of concentration, we usually think of it in terms of what we must exclude from our thoughts: "I must not listen to the man coughing in the fourth row." "I must not worry what my teacher may be thinking." "I must not wonder what is for dinner tonight." This is a losing battle because we cannot exclude thoughts from our mind without thinking about them. The only way to keep the mind from thinking negative, irrelevant thoughts is to fill it with positive, relevant thoughts. I am not referring to the vague, wishful "positive thinking" of the self-help books, but to a specific musical activity--a way of thinking in sound just as we think in words.

Thinking the Music

When we read a literary text, a poem for example, we sound out the words silently in our minds. If we then memorize the poem, we can either think through it in our heads or recite it out loud. In the latter case, the mind thinks the words, while the voice simultaneously gives them utterance. There is no separation between the thinking and the reciting, so it would be quite impossible for the mouth to go on speaking by itself if the mind went blank.

When we read a musical text we have not seen before, we similarly sound out the notes, either at our instrument or in our heads, with our inner ears. There is no separation between the reading and the sound--one produces the other. As with the poem, if we then memorize the piece, we can again think through it in our minds. The thought--our memory--is still connected to the sound in our heads. But when we play a memorized piece on our instrument, something new--and dangerous--may happen. If we are not careful, the mind, hearing the sound coming from the instrument, may cease to think the music actively and begin to merely experience it passively. Now there is a separation between the thinking and playing. Because we have made the physical memory of the piece automatic, it is quite possible, and indeed frighteningly easy for the fingers and arms to go on playing while the mind goes blank. In this way, we become an audience to our own performance.

The solution to this harmful separation between the mind and the music, then, is to continue to think the music as we play, it. But what exactly do we mean by "thinking the music"? Before reading on, take a minute to think through in your head a piece (or part of one) you know very well from memory. We all hear music somewhat differently, but your inner hearing probably included at least three essential aspects. First, if you really know your piece well, you were able to think all of the notes, either by hearing the pitches, seeing their placement on the staff or thinking their names (or some combination of these). This is an important point; if we cannot think all of the notes, we have gray areas in our memories that may trip us up in a performance. Secondly you undoubtedly thought of the notes not in isolation, but rather in their rhythmic, dynamic and expressive context. In other words, you thought of the meaning of the music, not just its notation. Lastly, you probably felt in your nervous system the physical feeling of playing--the location of the notes on your instrument, the gestures and fingerings that correspond to them--even without moving your arms and fingers. Thus, your thinking of the music represented a synthesis of the notes, their musical expression and their technical execution. You probably also noticed that your mind did not wander as you thought through the music, or if it did, the music in your head came to a stop. If we can keep this musical thinking going even as we play the mind, instead of feeling separated from what the body is doing, will be unified with it in the re-creation of the music.

The most important aspect of-musical concentration is undoubtedly rhythm, particularly the feeling of forward motion, which is always present in great compositions and in great performances. While it is true we must be very much rooted in the present moment while we are playing (All performers know it is fatal to think about the notes coming up.), we must nevertheless play every note with an understanding of its place in the musical line--where it has come from and, especially, where it is going. The principle of forward motion applies to every aspect of music: rhythmically, short notes move to long notes and weak beats move to strong beats; harmonically, movement generally proceeds toward the dominant, which in turn moves to its resolution, normally the tonic; and melodically, each note moves forward to the next by means of the intervals that connect them. (These of course are only very general guidelines; each phrase has its own way of moving and each performer his own way of hearing.) Thinking the music in terms of forward motion helps the ear listen through the notes instead of from note to note. Listening to the continuity of sound, the mind develops continuity of attention, the very definition of concentration.

Practicing the Concentration

This kind of mental concentration is not always easy to sustain, but, fortunately, it is something we can practice every day; we do not have to wait for a concert to try it out. Indeed, we first must have made it a habit in our daily practice before it will serve us in performance. To start with, we can think through our music away from the instrument, not just at the beginning of the memorization process as Walter Gieseking advocated, but at regular intervals thereafter. Glenn Gould was known to practice a piece exclusively in his mind for several weeks, and only take it to the piano a couple of weeks before recording it. "Ultimately," he said, "you play the piano not with your fingers but with your head."

Another beneficial way of practicing--recommended by the great Romanian pianist Dinu Lipatti--is going through the motions of playing a piece on the instrument, thinking and hearing the music inwardly, without sounding the notes. This reinforces the tactile memory of the piece while still ensuring the mind is engaged. One also can think through a phrase or small section, then play it immediately afterwards, trying to maintain the same level of concentration required by the inner hearing.

Our thinking of the music need not always be done silently. Singing the melody while we play, reciting the note names in rhythm, counting the beats out loud--these all are extremely useful ways of internalizing the music and keeping the mind focused on its task. This is where the importance of solfege (ear training) becomes clear. Its purpose is not merely to teach us how to sing various intervals and take dictation, but to cultivate an inner musical voice. It connects the brain, through the ear and the voice, to the music we hear and play.

Unfortunately, the connection between ear training and instrumental practice is not always made clear, and many students wonder how solfege can benefit their playing. As teachers, we must make this connection from the very first lessons. We can start by asking our students to name the notes as they play. I find that the fixed-do solfege syllables work best for this. This creates a strong connection between the score, the sound and the ear, and has the further advantage of causing most children to match pitch with their instrument and start singing. It also is an excellent way of testing our students' memories; if they can recite or sing the note names of a phrase in rhythm, we can be sure the music is in their heads and not just in their fingers.

Pianists can benefit greatly from singing one part while playing another. We can, of course, sing the melody and play only the accompaniment, but it is perhaps even more beneficial to sing the parts that are hardest to hear and think: the bass line, an inner chromatic voice or long notes whose sounds fade away. Like a flashlight in the dark, singing trains our minds on the areas needing clarity and illumination. We need not worry if our singing is not beautiful in tone or even accurate in pitch; it is much more important we sing with character and rhythmic vitality.

Counting the beats out loud is a time-honored activity, one that, in my opinion, is abandoned too early. When advanced students are capable of making such rhythmic mistakes as adding a half-beat to a measure and not noticing it (something I have encountered fairly frequently), it is clear they have not developed an inner sense of pulse and measure. Counting aloud instantly makes mistakes like this obvious. The counting must be expressive, however, reflecting the rhythmic character of the music, not merely a metronomic rattling off of the numbers. If it becomes a habit, counting out loud--or simply inside one's head--will become an automatic reflex, a sort of inner conductor guiding the music through its course in time.

All these mental and vocal activities are ways of learning to think the music. No doubt there are many other ways as well. These are specific, practical things to help keep the mind concentrated on the music, both in the practice room and on the concert stage. Eventually, the activities should become so ingrained they no longer seem like conscious thought. Then everything is absorbed in the act of listening and the performer enters a state of rapt attention. In this blessed state, we truly feel one with the music.

I urge you to try these ideas for yourself. They are only a beginning, and surely will lead to other discoveries and new perceptions. Then, after your next performance, if someone asks what you were thinking about when you were playing, you can smile knowingly and reply, "I was thinking the music."

Ken Johansen is a professor of keyboard skills at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. In addition to teaching and performing, he regularly Contributes articles to various music journals. He holds M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in piano performance, and he studied piano and musicianship in Paris for many years.