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Login Forums Beyond Practicing Forum Clarification of Be Hear Now Exercise Reply To: Clarification of Be Hear Now Exercise

  • Noa Kageyama

    Administrator
    November 23, 2016 at 11:15 am

    Ha, yes. It’s like in the movie Happy Gilmore – easier to just hit a hole-in-one every time.

    Ideally, when doing the exercise, it’s an opportunity to practice a) being oblivious to mistakes and imperfections (i.e. not keeping score) because this is an important skill in performances and auditions to ensure our focus is not being constantly interrupted, and b) to identify and practice being intently focused on something that is engaging enough that we have a difficult time simultaneously monitoring/noticing mistakes.

    I think you can approach this in a couple ways. If you’re able to get about 30 seconds at a stretch without losing focus – but are letting yourself continue to play on when mentally acknowledging a mistake – then you could be ready to try to increase the difficulty level of the exercise. At this point you could then make the exercise a little more challenging by stopping even when your mind does go to a mistake. And when you can do this for ~30 seconds without stopping, then you’ve got pretty great control of your attention.

    It’s a bit like sight-reading – if you’re reading something pretty difficult under some pressure, you really can’t afford to let your mind and eyes deviate from what’s just about to happen. And you can’t be there and registering mistakes at the same time very effectively.

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