Voluntary Musical Imagery Content during Mental Practice: Multimodal Commonalities and Embodied Differences

Mental practice is widely used by musicians and is associated with benefits for learning, memory, and performance regulation. Yet what performers actually imagine when rehearsing away from the instrument remains less well specified. Research on voluntary musical imagery (VMI) has often isolated single modalities under controlled tasks or focused on neural correlates, leaving open how imagery content is organized during routine practice and whether it varies systematically with instrumental demands. We conducted semi-structured online interviews with 15 classically trained instrumentalists (8 pianists, 7 non-keyboard musicians) and analyzed transcripts using qualitative content analysis with a deductive–inductive coding framework spanning auditory, motor, visual, and emotional domains. Participants described VMI as characteristically multimodal: inner hearing of melodic, harmonic, and expressive detail was frequently coupled with imagery of action and bodily sensation, visual references to score and performance context, and affective or expressive states. Instrument-linked emphases were also apparent. Pianists more often highlighted harmony and keyboard-spatial representations, whereas non-keyboard musicians more often foregrounded pitch-accuracy monitoring and breath-related control. These findings provide a naturalistic map of VMI content in mental practice and suggest that pedagogical approaches to mental rehearsal may benefit from greater instrument sensitivity.