“Has it ever frightened you to play, and watch your fingers moving, and not know who it is that is making them move?”

– Danish pianist Victor Borge talking with Vladimir Ashkenazy on Saturday Matters with Sue Lawley, BBC Television, October 1980, describing a state of flow achieved while playing the piano¹.

Motor learning science has resoundingly shown that external focuses of attention are superior to focusing on trying to consciously control muscle movements². Rather than concentrate on what your body should do when playing, it is more effective to think about how you would interact with the piano, and what musical outcome you want your movements to achieve. Brush the strings lightly with the hammers when playing pianissimo. Curve your fingers like an eagle’s talons. Imagine a soaring phrase in your mind to shape it musically. Directing your attention towards external focuses when playing will intuitively tell your hands how to move.

Why are external focuses more effective? External focuses are a higher level driver for movement. By focusing on effects that are beyond your physical body, your brain is freed to automatically organize the low level muscle movements to achieve your desired outcome without you having to consciously think about it. Because your body has so many degrees of freedom (think of how many joints you have in your body and how many directions they move), it is impossible to consciously think about every single muscle movement without overwhelming the brain with information. That’s why using external focuses are more effective for learning movements that flow naturally and work efficiently—the hallmark of skill and a prerequisite of mastery.

Gradations of External Focuses

Proximal focuses are relevant in the early stages of learning, whereas later stages utilize more distal focuses. 

Within the category of external focuses, there are further gradations depending on how far removed from low level control they are, going from proximal to distal³. Whereas internal focuses concentrate directly on body movement, proximal external focuses redirect the attention outwards towards the physical world. Distal focuses go beyond interacting with the tangible environment to involve mental conceptions and ideas, such as visualizing the keyboard, projecting the pitches and rhythms to play, or utilizing imagery and analogies⁴. In the context of music and piano, the most distal focus of all is to imagine the music itself—the expression, character, mood or sonic effect—and to let that guide the hands to autonomously play the idealized music you have in your mind.

It is common knowledge that a learner progresses through distinct stages of mastery: an early “cognitive” stage where novel movements are crude and halting; an intermediate “associative” stage where consolidation occurs and the execution becomes more fluid; and a late “autonomous” stage where movements are fully internalized and automatic⁵. But, beneath this standardized learning curve, what are the hidden processes that are at work to elevate a learner to the next stage? Considering the gradations of external focuses, it becomes apparent that the stages of mastery develop in tandem with the level of attentional focus engaged when playing: proximal focuses are relevant in the early stages of learning, whereas later stages utilize more distal focuses. 

It was an “Aha!” moment when I realized that following these gradations of attentional focuses is an excellent strategy when learning a new piece or technique: by layering on more and more distal focuses, one systematically progresses towards a deeper mastery of the piece. Indeed, this parallel corroborates my own experience while learning Chopin’s B minor Sonata, which I recount in the next section. 

Achieving the Leggiero Effect

One of the most mesmerizing features of the 4th movement of Chopin’s B minor Sonata is the expansive 2nd theme. The 1/16th note runs, marked leggiero, bear the instruction to elicit a light airyness in the right hand that floats—or perhaps flits, flutters, or sparkles—above the playful bass line melody. A specialized “fliegende” technique is needed to achieve this airy sonic effect; engaging agile wrist motions organized into note clusters, it is different from today’s pedagogic trend of emphasizing finger articulation. 

Initial stage: Learning the fliegende technique with proximal focuses. 

Just starting out, I needed to determine how to move my hands to navigate the intricately winding passages. While it is tempting to revert to internal focuses at this early cognitive stage, I would habitually flip the focus to something external as much as possible. For example, I would learn the varied hand positions for note clusters not by memorizing the shape in which to hold my fingers, but by identifying the locations on the keys to play—sometimes closer to the fallboard or to the edge of the keys. I would quantify the wrist motion not by the angle of my wrist, but by which part of my finger touches the keys. Adding an element of physical interaction with the keyboard converts an internal focus into an external focus, albeit a proximal one.

Intermediate stage: Developing fluidity with distal focuses. 

The work that goes into consolidating the learnings from the initial stage aims at internalizing the basic movement patterns into muscle memory and developing auditory associations with the movements. 

To strengthen the new movement patterns, I turned to imagery, a distal focus. What I call the “soldier march” is a specific method of slow practice with exaggeration: playing each successive note with a large wrist and arm movements, while kicking up the finger in between—like soldiers doing a high march! Although playing up to tempo dispenses of the excess motion used in slow practice, this imagery continued to be an effective cue even when playing fast.

Audiation, the skill of imagining and expressing music as a language, is important for building the intrinsic connection between movement and music. Possibly the most essential of all focuses for any musician, being able to imagine the music is a precursor to achieving the state of flow expressed by Victor Borge in his quote above. Yet, audiation is too often taken for granted (or blithely overlooked), so I resolved to deliberately practice it: I focused on hearing every note in my head with utmost clarity while mentally rehearsing the passage, to develop the association between movement and auditory outcome. 

Late stage: Audiating my leggiero sound. 

With the foundational movement patterns gradually sinking into muscle memory, my focus shifted towards matters of sound. I could play the notes fluently by now, but what does it mean to play it leggiero? My answer came unexpectedly from a recording of a different piece, Chopin’s Scherzo in E major, performed by Roberto Poli, which presented one of the most ethereal leggieros I’ve ever heard. 

Hearing this recording formed a mental imprint for the leggiero effect I wanted to achieve, and imagining this sonic effect became the ultimate distal focus when playing this piece.

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Although there is a natural evolution of attentional focuses along the learning curve, the focuses used in each stage were not disjoint. It was not the case that I disregarded the eventual sonic effect when starting out, nor that I stopped practicing the soldier march once I progressed to the audiation stage. Rather, my active focus during performances—lessons, runthroughs, recitals—evolved alongside my stages of learning, while all levels of focus, proximal or distal, still remained relevant when practicing.

Each level of focus has their place in the learning process and it is important to use the level that is appropriate for the current stage of learning. Now, whenever I find myself stagnating at a particular level, I know it is time to step up to more distal focuses.

References 

Masters, R., & Maxwell, J. (2008). The theory of reinvestment. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 1(2), 160–183.

Williams, S. (2019). Finding Focus. Academy of Creative and Performing Arts. (link)

Wulf, G., Höß, M., & Prinz, W. (1998). Instructions for motor learning: Differential effects of internal versus external focus of attention. Journal of Motor Behavior, 30, 169–179.

Wulf, G. (2013). Attentional focus and motor learning: a review of 15 years. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 6(1), 77-104. 

Footnotes

1. See Masters & Maxwell (2008) ↩︎
2. Following the seminal paper, Wulf (1998), in which the authors found that surfers who concentrate on the movement of the surfboard perform better than those who focus on controlling their feet, there has been extensive research that further corroborates the use of external focuses, see Wulf (2013). ↩︎
3. See Table 2.2 in Williams (2019) for a description of proximal and distal focuses. ↩︎
4. Some of my favorite imagery I learnt from my teacher are to play fortissimos like cracking a whiplash and pianissimos like pressing a doorbell. ↩︎
5. See Table 1.1 in Williams (2019) for a description of the stages of learning. ↩︎