What's new in pedagogy research?(Professional Resources)

When you teach your students how to memorize music, do you talk about how we use our visual, aural, kinesthetic and intellectual (conceptual) abilities to play from memory? If you are like me, at that point you warn them that kinesthetic, or muscle memory, is the easiest to do and the most likely to let you down during a performance! A recent study, titled An Exploratory Study of the Role of Performance Feedback and Musical Imagery in Piano Playing, (1) investigated what kind of feedback and musical imagery advanced pianists used when they played from memory. The results were somewhat surprising.

The study examined eight advanced pianists from the Royal College of Music in London, England. Each performed from memory an excerpt of a baroque or classical piece from their repertoire. They played the excerpt four times on a Yamaha Disklavier with a "Silent System" under the following conditions:

1. A normal performance.

2. A performance with no auditory feedback--the Disklavier was set on "Silent" and the performers wore headphones to keep them from hearing the mechanical sounds of their fingers striking the keys.

3. A performance without auditory and visual feedback--in addition to the lack of auditory feedback, the performers played with their eyes closed.

4. Instead of playing the piece, they tapped the beat with one finger on a single key as they audiated it in their minds, thus having no aural, visual or kinesthetic feedback.

These beats were compared to the beats as they occurred in the expressive playing of the normal performance and the other two conditions.