Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Read the full article:
pianowell-system.com/journal/when-you-look-at-a-score-what-happens-in-your-mind
Explore the PianoWell Program:
pianowell-system.com/program
What happens in a pianist’s mind between seeing a note and playing it?
Research into visuotonal modality transfer and notational audiation suggests that silently reading musical notation can transform visual information into internally heard sound. But for a pianist, the question goes further: what exactly can we learn to hear before we play?
In this video, I explore how notation may gradually evoke not only imagined pitch, but sound quality, sound movement, inner singing, harmony, dynamics, voicing and polyphony—and how this increasingly detailed inner musical image may begin to organize physical movement at the piano.
Perhaps reading music is not simply:
notation → movement → sound
but increasingly:
notation → internal sound → inner singing → movement → physical sound
I’m Emma Leiuman, a classical pianist and pedagogue exploring the relationship between inner hearing, musical intention, movement, and piano performance.
00:00 Seeing a Note → Hearing a Note
04:15 What Do We Actually Hear?
07:37 From Inner Sound → Movement
#InnerHearing #Audiation #MentalPractice #PianoPedagogy #PianoTechnique
Read the full article:
pianowell-system.com/journal/when-you-look-at-a-score-what-happens-in-your-mind
Explore the PianoWell Program:
pianowell-system.com/program
What happens in a pianist’s mind between seeing a note and playing it?
Research into visuotonal modality transfer and notational audiation suggests that silently reading musical notation can transform visual information into internally heard sound. But for a pianist, the question goes further: what exactly can we learn to hear before we play?
In this video, I explore how notation may gradually evoke not only imagined pitch, but sound quality, sound movement, inner singing, harmony, dynamics, voicing and polyphony—and how this increasingly detailed inner musical image may begin to organize physical movement at the piano.
Perhaps reading music is not simply:
notation → movement → sound
but increasingly:
notation → internal sound → inner singing → movement → physical sound
I’m Emma Leiuman, a classical pianist and pedagogue exploring the relationship between inner hearing, musical intention, movement, and piano performance.
00:00 Seeing a Note → Hearing a Note
04:15 What Do We Actually Hear?
07:37 From Inner Sound → Movement
#InnerHearing #Audiation #MentalPractice #PianoPedagogy #PianoTechnique
