Day after day I’m becoming more and more sensitized to the power of the mind in learning and performing music.

In “The Violin Lesson,” Simon Fischer says that everything we do related to violin playing is a function of our minds, not our muscles. As an example he encourages the reader to think of a past experience sight-reading, where notes, rhythms, intonation and musicality might have escaped the first try. An hour or so later, on a second pass at the music, the violinist performs perfectly. What has changed from one performance to the next? Certainly the muscles were able to play the correct notes, rhythms, intonation and musical expression. It is only the mind that has changed. Only the mind changed its understanding of the music, and therefore transforms the ability of the violinist to perform the piece successfully.

I’ve also seen the power of mind at work in our Suzuki class with Carrie Reuning-Hummel. For class we studied some of Dr. Suzuki’s writing on tone. He emphasizes the mistake of mentally and emotionally giving power to the wrong aspects of our body and our instrument while playing. Many students think about their first finger on their right hand or the movement of the stick instead of the contact of the pinkie, the vibration of the horse hairs, or the movement of the tip through space.

Carrie led us through an exercise where we played phrases of Chorus as she instructed is to consider and handful of thinking points. As she guided us from thinking about the underside of our arm, to the softness of our hips, to the sending of sound behind our heads our sound dramatically changed. It is incredibly that nothing except the focus of our minds consciously shifted, and yet our sound was completely different.

The power of the mind is also evident in an experiment one of the violinists in my studio did today. A senior violin performance major, Esther decided to prepare the first movement of the Debussy Violin Sonata completely with the mind, not touching the violin at all. She put the part together with her pianist (also prepared only with the mind) for an interesting public performance today in studio class. Her performance of about two pages of mentally prepared music showed how much one can do with just imaging, and where the holes were in the complete mental image. For example her phrasing and left hand passage work and piano ensemble was extremely clear, but the bow usage and precise intonation wasn’t as coordinated as it could have been. I don’t think these weren’t clear because she didn’t have time with the physical violin, I think they weren’t clear because she hadn’t yet completely cemented the feeling of the intonation and the feeling of the violin bow in her mind.

With the power of the mind in mind (heh) I decided to focus the first of our two weeks in technique class on shifting considering the importance of mental image of the shifting destinations.

Try this…

1) Mentally picture yourself playing a D on violin in first position on the A string with your third finger. See this image in your mind’s eye AS vividly as possible. What does it feel like? What does it sound like? And, most importantly, are you playing in tune?

2) Now picture yourself playing F# in 5th position on the G string with your second finger. Again, what do you look, sound, and feel like? Are you playing in tune?

Chances are, your mental image of the D was far clearer than your mental image of the F#, even though it’s only a sixth lower in pitch.

If our ability to play the violin is solely based on our ability to mentally map playing it, then it makes sense why playing in fifth position on your G string is more difficult than playing in first position. The corollary, of course, is that it would be easier to play in fifth position on your G string if you were able to clearly image it.

In technique class we took time this week to clarify our mental images, without paying any attention at all to the left hand mechanics. I used the follow sequence to work on this…

• I played a descending pattern (E D C# B) and then the students imagine, very clearly, the sound of the open A
• I played the same pattern, they imagined playing the A in third position on the D string with as much clarity as the open A (this is a good time to discuss how it is possible to imagine out of tune notes — we do it all of the time!)
• they played the same pattern, they imagined playing in tune in third position
• they played the same pattern, they allowed their left hand to play in third position along with their mental image

We next used a similar sequence for playing an E in fourth position with the fourth finger on E string.

• I played an ascending pattern (B C# D#) and then the students imagine, very clearly, the sound of their open E
• I played the same pattern, they imagined playing the E in fourth position on the E string with as much clarity as the open E
• they played the same pattern, they imagined playing in tune in fourth position
• they played the same pattern, they allowed their left hand to play in fourth position along with their mental image

We did some imagining work traveling between two notes that aren’t as related. For example we would play F# on E in first position and then travel to a Bb in fifth position on the D string. Being able to image the Bb on the D first was paramount.

We applied imagining to a Bb major arpeggio sequence. Every time they shifted in the pattern we would take a beat to image the shift. Then we practiced priming the brain to think only of the successful shift in advance of the shift. Here it is also so interest to not HOW people imagine shifting in their minds eye. If shifting is done with fear and tension in the mind, it will be done with fear and tension in the body.

And finally, we moved the imaging idea to Henle’s shifting book in Modern Violin Exercises. We sight read a passage in our mind, noticing which shifts we had a clear image of and which we didn’t. We choreographed the LH motions on our violin without using the bow. Finally we played, taking great care to image (positively and with ease) ahead.

Before doing any intonation or shifting work with any student, but especially a young one, I would recommend testing and skillfully developing their mental image of their own violin playing. Especially being able to audiate the upcoming pitch — in tune! — and moving from one note to another without tension.