Exercise : Mental Movie Reel

Best done as an individual

This is something most people do when they are listening to music without even realizing it. By doing it intentionally and paying attention to what your mind comes up with you can unlock your imagination and tap into your own unique creativity.

Steps

1. Get in a place that is quiet, calm, and where you won’t get distracted.
2. You will need a way to listen to the song you are wanting to learn and perform.
3. Get comfortable.
4. Close your eyes.
5. Listen to the music. Listen to it intending to pay attention to how it makes you feel and what it makes you think of. Free associate. Let it be silly, serious, wrong, make believe, or real. The point is to free your mind to think and your heart to feel whatever it will with the most freedom possible. Imagine the music you are listening to is the soundtrack to the reel of images that now runs through your head.
6. Afterward, right down the images that seemed the most clear and most emotionally potent and where in the music that took place.

What’s the point

These images can provide the most unique and authentic starting points for how you connect with this song and how you develop the context. If you really let your imagination go no one but you would have come up with the sequence of images you came up with. This can become an excellent starting point for making the song your own uniquely expressive and authentic performance.