Intermittent Motor Control in Volitional Musical Imagery

Abstract

Musical imagery, defined as having sensations of musical sound in our minds in the absence of any direct auditory input from the outside world, may be both a nuisance (“tune stuck in our ears” or “earworms”) and a pleasure (cherishing past experiences of music). For music professionals such as performers and composers, musical imagery is an integral part of craftsmanship, be that as an aide in learning new works (related to so-called “mental practice”) or as a tool for predicting the sonic appearance of a composition (also referred to as “aural imagery”). There has been a growing interest in musical imagery during the last couple of decades, in particular in the neurophysiological correlates of musical imagery, due to available methods for neurophysiological observation (fMRI, EEG, EMG, eye tracking, pupillometry, etc.). What seems to emerge from this and related research is that musical imagery is multimodal, with strong links between images of sound and assumed sound-producing body motion, including images of body postures, effector motion, and related sensations of effort and touch. It may even be argued that images of musical sound are inseparable from images of sound-producing motion in our minds. The aim of this chapter is then on the background of known links between musical imagery and motor imagery to argue how motor imagery can be used as a volitional control of musical imagery (in contrast to involuntary musical imagery), and how this can be useful in various domains of music-making, in particular improvisation and composition.