This is Part 2 of a two part Series View Part 1 <\/a><\/p><\/b>\n\t— Out of all the topics in your book, [and you really covered a lot of ground in that book] the idea of mental play is my favorite topic. I never really exercised that part of my brain much before I started reading your book and now that I’ve tried it, I have seen wonderful results. —<\/em><\/p>\nMental play has all kinds of beneficial effects. Not only beneficial, but necessary. All the great performers and the great musicians have tremendous mental play power. It’s obvious to recognize that when one observes what these great musicians did. It’s one of the most powerful tools that we have and it’s so overlooked.<\/p>\n
— Mental play is a little difficult at first before one adapts to it, but I have found it to be a crucial part of my practice routine. Because I can play a piece and have the muscle memory and there it is. Before I developed the ability to do mental play, I would go and try to play it in my mind without the instrument get stuck so easily. It’s really hard at first. Like anything, it gets easier and easier, and it is so powerful and valuable. —<\/em><\/p>\nThere’s an easy way to get out of that kind of fear about mental play. Consider a mother with five kids getting up in the morning, and each kid has his preference on what he eats for breakfast, and how to make each breakfast, and which school they go to, and how they go to school, and when to pick them up, and all that.<\/p>\n
When a mother wakes up in the morning, she goes through this entire thing in the morning to make sure that she knows what to do for the day. That’s mental play. She’s never been trained in mental play. Yet, she’s an expert in it. The mental play she conducts in figuring out the whole day is much more complicated than a Bach invention!<\/p>\n
Mental play is not difficult, and everybody does it. If you’re not trained to do that in music, it’s difficult to get started. But conceptually, everybody already does it. There’s no reason to be afraid of it, or think of it as difficult. You just have to use it and practice it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\t—\u00a0<\/em>You’ll often see people, myself included, who get nervous playing in a recital, and we start thinking, “Oh no. I’m messing up. This is awful. This is like a bad dream.” These are the thoughts that are so loudly going through our heads as we perform.\u00a0 But n<\/em>ow I’m training myself so when I’m performing, and also when I’m practicing, to be very focused on playing the music in the moment in my head and not be thinking about other things.\u00a0 That’s another application for mental play, mental play in tandem with physical play<\/em>. —<\/em><\/p>\n\tMental play is the best cure for stage fright. Before, I used to get so nervous. I hated performing just because of the nervousness. Then I learned about the mental play when I was about 50 years old. I said, “Man, this is great.”<\/p>\n
I started using it and I found out that if I can mentally play a piece completely away from the piano, I wasn’t nervous at all. Now I wonder, “How does anybody perform without mental play? It’s so scary!”<\/p>\n
[learn more about mental play from this free resource from Chuan Chang]\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat is a Genius?\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Power of Mental Play The Science of Music Education: With Chaun Chang This is Part 2 of a two part Series View Part 1 — Out of all the topics in your book, [and you really covered a lot of ground in that book] the idea of mental play is my favorite topic. I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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Music has dominated my life from a young age. I started playing piano and harp at the age of five, and took up acoustic guitar in junior high. I enrolled early at the Santa Barbara City College Music Program, where I won the Guido Bart Music Scholarship and wound up studying harp all across California under master musicians. After receiving my AA from SBCC, I decided to expand my education in both music and sound. I began composing for film and video in 2004, working at Santa Barbara Sound Design and studying under Hummie Mann at the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Institute. I graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2009 with a BA in Film and Media and a Minor in Music. For years I tutored piano, music theory, musicology and music history at SBCC while working professionally as both sound mixer and harpist. I currently live in the South Puget Sound area. When I'm not playing keys and singing in the blues band Good Grief, I teach music from my home studio. 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Music has dominated my life from a young age. I started playing piano and harp at the age of five, and took up acoustic guitar in junior high. I enrolled early at the Santa Barbara City College Music Program, where I won the Guido Bart Music Scholarship and wound up studying harp all across California under master musicians. After receiving my AA from SBCC, I decided to expand my education in both music and sound. I began composing for film and video in 2004, working at Santa Barbara Sound Design and studying under Hummie Mann at the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Institute. I graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2009 with a BA in Film and Media and a Minor in Music. For years I tutored piano, music theory, musicology and music history at SBCC while working professionally as both sound mixer and harpist. I currently live in the South Puget Sound area. When I'm not playing keys and singing in the blues band Good Grief, I teach music from my home studio. 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