I learned of Noa K from @troy and have been following him. This most recent post smacked of the CtC community. Just as speed picking is not the same as slow picking at a faster speed, perhaps mental practice has to be at a faster speed too.
https://bulletproofmusician.com/should-you-be-using-a-metronome-when-you-do-mental-practice/
Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Has anyone tried this / seen any results relating to mental practice?
Seems fairly inconclusive as we can’t necessarily extrapolate from the experiment described to know exactly what it might mean for musical practice, but worth considering.
From the article:
3. Does this mean that you could learn to play a passage faster, simply by visualizing that passage at a faster tempo than you can currently play it at?
You know, that’s the first place my mind went when I read this study. I don’t think the study necessarily answers this question, but I’m intrigued by the idea. Like, what would happen if you set a metronome at a tempo a few clicks faster than what you can currently manage, and spent a week or so visualizing yourself playing a tricky passage at that tempo. Would this help you get the passage up to that tempo?
I honestly have no idea – but if you try it, please do report back in the comments and let us know how it goes!
I can tell you that the visualization techniques have worked for me both for the voice and the guitar. I haven’t tried the speeding up for guitar but i’ve done it for voice. I think there’s something to this.
ok, ill bite…how do u do visualization for voice? (im a singer as well as guitar player)
I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking but I’ll tell you what i do.
I’m mainly a rock vocalist but have to learn a whole bunch of new words to songs i don’t know. There’s definitely a component that’s just memorization of words. But then there’s also the technique aspects of trying to attain the sound using my voice. For example scooping or overshooting or other completely made up terms by me 
So a lot of times my lips or voice will be unconsciously moving as i do that . I do this in situations where there are lots of people around me and i’m otherwise quietly sitting. Like in a public place , waiting room , public transportation, etc…
his website has a lot of summaries of sports performance science on the topic of visualization
Hello,
Visualization techniques actually work great for me and I use them everytime I cannot do a normal “physical practice” : for example when I’m not at home. I also used them a lot when I injured myself a few months ago.
I got very interested in these visualization techniques last year and read every study I could about them. The most relevant study I found has been made with piano players.
The conclusions of these studies seem to be :
Mental practice alone (replacing all the physical practice) works, but is less efficient in terms of results (something like 30% less efficient if I remember well, which is not that much and way better than nothing)
Mental practice mixed with normal Physical practice works great and has the same efficiency than physical practice alone. Which is surprising but cool. Actually we know that motor learning is something happening in the brain so maybe it is logic.
Now there is something that the studies do not say : mental practice is very demanding, at least for me. Remaining 100% focused on something you hear and imagine doing the moves is actually very difficult.
Maybe it comes from my mental practice method : I’m doing my mental practice almost exactly like my physical practice. I set up a metronome and imagine doing the moves slowly, then raise the BPMs and imagine doing these same moves faster and faster.
There is always a point where my mind can’t follow the metronome anymore, but it always happen at a higher speed than my usual physical practices. Which might mean that my playing is more limited by my athletic abilities? I’m not sure.
So this kind of mental practice is actually way harder than physical practice to me, and I do not plan to do any mental practice unless I really have no solution to practice normally!
excellent comments.
I agree about how fatiguing it can be. I further think sometimes mental is more tiring because you can’t fall into dreamy or thoughtless patterns like you do when physically practicing, i.e. can’t start daydreaming while mindlessly running through drills.
That’s also what I think!
When you are doing physical practice and daydream about something else, you can still pretend you are practicing since your fingers are still doing the moves (inaccurately though)