There are a couple of good books how your brain works while listening to music.
That itself is something every musician should be aware of and i can recommend at least two of the ones I know.
What practicing a musical instrument does to your brain is not as widely researched as one could wish for and Ericsson writes about violin students in his book „Peak", but since he is only interested in high achievers, it isn’t really relevant for musicians who work in a field where instrumental technique is a very personal thing.
One player needs a lot of dexterity, another one not at all.
But I recently found a book by Jonathan D Harnum that was quite interesting.
It’s called
The Practice of Practice and it deals with musicians from very different musics and how they practice.
He goes into the brain thing as well, but most of his information about that seems to come from other books, like Ericsson. But even just the interviews and the outlook of very different performers on how they achieve what needs to be done is worth the read.
