A good colleague once said to me:  “getting up to wash the dishes after a good meal is hard, so I motivate myself be seeing in my ‘mind’s eye’ the satisfaction of a clean kitchen sink!”

So what does this have to do with music?  Practicing scales, exercises and studies seems to be a little similar to doing the washing up – for some instrumentalists it is just work that needs to be done and the enjoyment comes from hearing an end product which is satisfyingly clean and tidy and makes space for musical interpretation.  (For others, the enjoyment may of course come from the rhythmic cleaning and tidying process itself – perhaps with rhythmic variation as described previously.)

The trick may be to come up with some words that describe the product we will hear in auditory rather than visual terms.  After all, it sounds pretty ridiculous to say ‘I can hear this phrase in my mind’s eye.’  To hear the notes inside of ourselves before we play them is to add accuracy, clarity and depth of musical meaning – but that this would be a preview just doesn’t seem to describe it accurately.