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Deep Practice – Peak Performance | by Kristian Steenstrup
The third book by Danish trumpet pedagogue Kristian Steenstrup (podcast episode here), Deep Practice – Peak Performance is 96 pages.So, our reading goal will be 5 pages per day, starting Monday, November 27th. And ending Sunday, December 17th.
At the end of each week (i.e. Sunday), click the red “Reply” button to post a few thoughts, insights, reflections, or questions that came up in that week’s reading.
(Remember to click the red “Subscribe” button to get an email notification whenever someone posts or replies in this forum! 😁)
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45 Replies
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The biggest take away for me was about reinvestment. I’ve always been plagued by this, where suddenly I find myself (away from the piano) thinking and analyzing a passage that’s already comfortably in my fingers, and the mere thoughts about it start to degrade performance in that section. It’s nice to know my experience is lining up with the research!
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I read up to pg 40 on my kindle (not sure how that lines up with print version) the last section I read was “Flow and Transient Hypofrontality” – I found everything so far a very good review for all the stuff I’ve been learning in the Performance Psychology Essentials iterations.
My biggest takeaway was really starting to understand how the brain works in practice vs performance by being able to remember instances of myself in relation to the text – choking when I am overthinking something that goes just fine if I leave it alone, I have also had glimpses of flow – the quote regarding isn’t it scary when you look down and wonder whose fingers are playing type instances – then when I notice that though … overthinking and flow is gone, hahaha!
I really liked the quote by Jascha Heifetz “Practice like it means everything in the world to you. Perform like you don’t give a damn” in relation to really focused, deliberate practice, versus NOT overthinking and interfering with yourself in performance.
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I have found the opening section really helpful in that it has helped me to organize many concepts from Noa’s courses that I understood in a more scattered way. The discussion of the shift from verbal to more automatic processing resonates with my experience both playing and teaching. The movement through the learning stages makes more sense to me now.
I have many students who have been told not to play “on autopilot” but their solution is to re-engage in verbal directions that disrupt the flow of their more innate processing developed in practice. The “singing brain” seems to be the answer for me and for my students. However, I find that I need to do a lot of persuasion to “sell” the idea to students who only trust their habitual patterns—mostly high volume repetitive practice.
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I, too, would like to engage in more “singing brain” activities with myself and students. I have used mental playing of the music with astonishing success for short sections of music, usually of an expressive nature.
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Like the others, I’m finding this an interesting summation of things I learned in PPE, as well as other books in the genre (Inner Game, Peak).
The idea that has most piqued my interest so far is implicit learning. Because I first heard the term (I think in PPE) describing “traditional” practice involving unguided, thoughtless repetition, I thought implicit learning was the opposite of deliberate practice.
It’s clear from chapter 5 that there are more strategies that can take advantage of the strengths of implicit learning, and I’m eager to get to them later in the book. As <font face=”inherit”>a “control enthusiast” I find conscious monitoring and manipulation hard to avoid, and I suspect that these implicit techniques might help me </font>overthink<font face=”inherit”> a bit less (or, on the other hand, maybe I won’t be able to use them at all! Who knows?). </font>
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I’m always looking for interesting studies to share on the blog, so I got excited about all of the specific citations Kristian has sprinkled in throughout. I’m particularly interested in taking a deeper look at the Suzuki study (#132, on pg.35) related to the potential auditory-motor coupling benefit of early learning-by-ear experiences.
I’m also realizing that it’s tough for me to stick to a specific reading time/schedule, and I would probably do better if I had the book in Kindle format on my phone, so I could sneak a quick few pages in here and there instead of having to look for my physical copy of the book.
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FYI the book was available for as part of my Kindle Unlimited plan. And, yes, it helps to dip in and out at random times. I also like the annotation, text copy and comment features in the Kindle app.
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Yes, I am also reading this on Kindle for free. The Kindle edition even has the page numbers of the printed edition. I am using highlighting and copying / excerpting, and I also set bookmarks for the starts of each new week, rounded to chapter boundaries. With the excerpts, I can keep an overview easily enough.
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I’m a at page 46 and so far I enjoy all the studies to point out concepts. It made me want to read the inner game and Free play again.
What really stayed with me :
Teacher student relationship. On p. 29, the tendancy to analyse a student playing can interfere with our own playing. It is important to keep the role of the performer and the role of the teacher distinct.
The importance of audiation (shall work on it more, with daily exercices)
Practice practicing and practice performance
The state of flow can be interfered with perfectionnist thinking patterns
On a side note, did anyone read Edwin E. Gordon work ? During my pedagogy studies I partially read Intro to research and psychology of music, Learning sequences in music, Sapce Audiation, Rhythm : contrasting the implication of audiation and notation and finally The aural/visal experience of music literacy . I remember asking my didactic teacher what was the point of those books, since there aren’t a lot examples of audiation exercices in any of those books. Maybe I was too immature to understand them.
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I teach a program called Musikgarten and one of its base is Gordon’s system of audiation. This is the foundation of all my students musical language. The books he wrote are rather dull to read but programs like Musikgarten bring his work and contributions alive.
Ellen
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Hi everyone! As I’m reading this book I’ve been thinking about how the information can improve my teaching. (Mostly intermediate level 8-12 graders, violin/viola.) So much to think about! Jaime
Include more solfege: (Linking to the section about the Reinvestment Theory by Arnold Jacobs)
Use it for shaping of musical phrases
Include physical actions away from the instrument, (like big arm actions or small arm actions to indicate basic changes in dynamics)
Could using solfege and ear training with a piano, and identifying intervals, playing and singing, help to improve my student’s intonation on their violin/viola’s?
Encourage more musical performances:
Focusing on teaching a new piece more immediately based on musical expression, then the techniques needed to express the phrase
Spend most of my teaching time from an Implicit point versus Explicit (except for new instruction/demonstration of techniques.)
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So far an interesting summary of what i‘ve learned here. I’m amazed, that there are so many studies on „our“ topics!
The point „Keeping the roles of performer and teacher distinct“ stuck with me particularly because I realized this is something i need to be aware of and i never thought of this two roles that way.
I‘m looking forward to learn more about implicit learning strategies and the audio-motor-loop mentioned on page 30.
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“Practice like you care and perform like you don’t give a damn” I had a busy weekend of holiday performances and this quote was front and center in my mind and helped me to relax into tricky passages.
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The initial chapters present a lot of evidence why deep practice is important and why it works. I am ready to take this at face value right now. I am more interested in HOW to do it and WHAT EFFECT it will have on my playing. The book makes two promises:
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Generally speaking, it offers „principles and strategies for strengthening and integrating musical, technical, and attentional skills“ AKA it teaches us how to become better players.
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Specifically, moving on to performance enhancement, it offers „interventions and processes that may provide artists with the means to perform optimally even when under intense pressure“ AKA it teaches us how to keep up what we can do as players under pressure.
I am much more interested in the first aspect but the author really seems to emphasise the second aspect. We will see how that plays out for me.
One mode of practicing and playing seems to be central in the author’s opinion, namely pre-hearing: “Focusing on the music, not in terms of words and instructions to oneself but rather in terms of mentally conceiving the intended music aurally in real time while playing, will instruct motor systems in the brain how to act with little conscious monitoring. It is therefore not about listening to oneself while playing, even though aural feedback will occur and allow subtle adjustments; rather, the primary goal is to mentally create, hear or imagine the desired elements of the music a moment before they sound on the instrument.”
Pre-hearing seems to be one way of implicit learning, which the author maintains is the effective way of deep learning after potentially an initial phase of explicit, instruction-driven learning. From the examples, I understand what explicit learning is. I am still looking for a more concrete and positive definition of implicit learning. Are there other forms of implicit learning? I hope there will be answers later on in the book.
Pre-hearing is also called mental singing (thinking in musical sound). Noa has called this the singing brain, right? It is where musical creativity lives.
There is evidence for the efficacy of pre-hearing or mental singing in the form of the audio-motor loop. I am looking forward to that chapter in the book.
How can pre-hearing be trained, in my own experience?
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On the recommendation of Mio Morales and Jennifer Roig-Francolí, I have practiced while listening to loud brown noise through headphones. That emphasises pre-hearing and prevents reacting to the actual sound that one produces. For me, that leads to more experimentation with the means of sound production and to more exaggerated ways of playing. When I record my playing under these circumstances, I also get post-playing feedback about what works and what doesn’t. It is informative.
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I expect that Primal Alexander constructive thinking while playing prevents the conscious mind from interfering, keeping the audio-motor loop intact.
I am looking forward to more information about that.
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I find the writing thick as if the writer is trying to impress someone. Is he going for tenure?
Anyway, i wish he would go more into how we know when it is time to move from deliberate practice to prepare for a performance. Are there cues in the playing?
Ellen
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Thanks for mentioning the writing. I, too, was frustrated by the lack of clarity and repetitiousness.
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Very busy weekend so I’m just getting to post now.
I am a Suzuki violin teacher so the study on Suzuki students was very interesting, and I want to look into that further. I have definitely noticed over the 25+ years of teaching that students who can sing very well on pitch catch on so much faster to learning by ear. I do lots of singing and matching pitches with their voice with students which makes a huge difference in their playing, memory, intonation, phrasing etc. I’m motivated to do it even more!
I also found the study where they compared personal practice, mental imagery, singing, a combination of all 3, and no practice very interesting and motivating. The combined practice seems to be the key. Also interesting how pitch was the only one that improved the most with personal practice even over combined practice. I want to work more on the mental imagery piece which I do some of but could be stronger… and also remembering that the combination is the strongest aspect of deliberate practice. Motivating. Thanks!
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I’m enjoying the book, as a way to fill in the framework of what Noa has been teaching us. In fact, my first reaction was “How is it possible that Noa, who knows and teaches these skills so well, has never read this book?!!”
The speculation about the evolutionary advantages of music is interesting, though inconclusive. Some say that babies coo and sing before they speak; I would think that music preceded speech in human development, rather than the other way around. I wonder what evidence there is about this.
The neurological information is wonder-full; first the notion that a neuron integrates information from multiple other neurons, and then the idea that synapses can be strengthened quickly through repetition of an action, but that new dendrites and synapses take longer to form and are created during new experiences/actions/ideas. Is this why the initial stage of learning seems slower and more laborious than reinforcing an existing skill?
The chapter on deliberate practice is a good review of what we’ve been learning, and I appreciate Steenstrup’s inclusion of inconclusive and contradictory studies, showing the push-pull of ideas and the development of increasingly nuanced theories of learning.
Describing the cognitive, associative, and autonomous stages of learning is useful in clarifying the best times to use explicit vs. implicit strategies. The chapter on choking reinforces the lessons Noa gave us on performance strategies, and the section on distraction theory opened up my definition of working memory to include the ability to hold a stream of sensation in mind, as in audiating, rather than just the ability to hold a train of verbal and analytical thought.
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Sorry I’m so late with takeaway, which is rather long for my own benefit… it helps me organize in my mind what I read.
It was helpful to be reminded of many ideas from Noa’s Psych Essentials.
I didn’t realize that mindless practice actually has a negative impact… that it’s actually detrimental! Good to know!
I liked some of the quotes in the book like: instead of “It’s in the fingers” / “muscle memory”; it’s more accurate to say “It’s in the basal ganglia” since the memory comes from the brain, not the muscles.
I was shocked by the revelation: “it was discovered that the use of psychotherapy was 3x more prevalent in the music industry in comparison to the whole work force.”‼️
I wondered if it has something to do with the old school method of teaching that has thankfully died out, which seemed geared to continually test student’s toughness with its focus on the negative, often with added personal attacks, rather than motivating students to head to the practice room.
It was good to be reminded of the 3 main theories that cause chockingduring performance along with solutions ⤵️
(I’m summarizing them here for my own benefit, not to bore others with what they’ve already read 😁)
- Explicit monitoring: when one’s attention is focused internally – being “mentally occupied with controlling components of the body movement and the sensory feedback or feel of the muscles involved therein”.
I thought the Gallwey book reference from a later chapter explained it well. Self 1, “the conscious, judgy, micromanager, ego” needs to submit and have faith in Self 2, the “unconscious doer”, (basal ganglia😜) allowing the body to move automatically or intuitively without getting in the way. Quite like the Victor Borge quote in a later chapter: “Has it ever frightened you to play, and watch your fingers moving, and not know who it is that is making them move?”
But how does one do that? …Switch from internal to external focus of attention?
Solution:
There’s overwhelming‼️evidence that an external focus of attention is beneficial – “considering the effect of the activity, the end product.” In music, that would be “concentrating on the intended sound of the music in question”, ie “mental singing”. This instructs the “motor systems in the brain how to act with little conscious monitoring.” (Self 2).
And avoid listening critically to yourself while playing (“even though aural feedback will occur and allow subtle adjustments”)
The goal is to immerse yourself in the music by mentally creating, hearing, imagining “the desired elements of the music a moment before they sound on the instrument.”
2. Distraction theory: when one’s focus shifts from the task at hand to matters irrelevant to it… the examples given so relatable: thinking/worrying about failing, the result, what listeners are thinking
Solution: prepare strategies to cope with distractions in advance and practice them.
3. Over-arousal theory:
I personally get this when I’m trying too hard or care too much… it even led to a terrible panic attack at least once.
Solutions:
- For me… remind myself not to try too hard.. it’s just another day. (Maybe @Noa has ideas about this? … maybe it was covered in Psych Essentials… maybe a food question for office hours… Anyway, I liked the Heifetz quote the author used to end the next chapter: “Practice like it means everything in the world to you. Perform like you don’t give a damn.”
- Practice redirecting excess energy / nerves so that they are less detrimental to performance
The book also discussed:
a) The importance of working on two contrasting categories of practice for successful performance: “practice practice” & “practice performance”; the first needing close attention in terms of critical analysis & problem solving and the latter requiring shutting down this part of the brain entirely and focusing instead in the external, that is being entirely focused in the outcome in progress – producing the desired sound, being immersed in the moment no matter what occurs rather than analyzing / criticizing/ micromanaging.
b) How practicing performing – adding any pressure such as playing non-stop through longer sections and communicating to an imaginary audience – is beneficial in developing the skills for peak performance and chocking prevention.
c) How recording helps to keep one’s focus on the external … producing the desired outcome, rather than analyzing it, since the recording allows you to analyze later, if you wish.
Hopefully I correctly understood all the concepts.
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Hi @Willa – good question. It’s different for each person and even for each situation/context, but adopting a growth mindset is one thing that can help. Where the focus of each performance/audition is less about proving yourself and more about testing out new ingredients in your performance/audition preparation formula. Where it’s less about winning the audition and more about seeing how well the new elements/strategies work for you. Kind of like running a marathon, where it’s less about winning the marathon, and seeing if you can come up with a training program that enables you to win a marathon.
Athletes often train themselves to focus relentlessly on only those things that they have direct control over. And we don’t have control over what the audience thinks, or how the audition committee feels about our playing/choices (or whether they’re even paying attention). But you do have control over your attention, your focus in the moment, etc.
Athletes also work on detaching from outcomes as you get closer to the game/competition. Where it’s less about winning and more about doing the best you can do with no attachment to whether you win/lose. Actor Bryan Cranston talks about this as well, crediting this perspective for his audition success. Like in the links below:
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Good points, Noa, to separate outcomes that we have control over from those we have not. And to evaluate with respect to process and not to final achievement (if I understand what you are saying, I don‘t want to put words into your mouth, but that is what I think). Thank you for providing the links, much appreciated.
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Before Noa’s class and reading books like this, I had discovered certain aspects of this research on my own, as I’m sure is true for many of you. Specifically, audiation and quiet eye were “revelations” that had come to me over time before I knew these were actual things. In fact, I even printed shirts for my piano students that said “Breathe….Listen…..Play”, to embody their pre-performance routines. So the parts in this next section about singing brain and external focus really resonated with me, and are so helpful to have them codified so we can talk about them and refer to them. Interesting side note – I heard a psychologist on TV the other day use the word “audiation” in a non-musical context, in reference to thoughts we have in our heads. First time I’ve heard that outside of music.
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Reading about the mental imagery part has inspired me to do more with mental practice again–for myself and my students. I’ve always done some but reading about it has made me think about ways I can develop it more creatively for myself and in my teaching. I love combining things so seeing the graph that shows combining different ways of practicing as the best way to improve really resonates with me, including combining breathing and the gesture, movement and the freedom we want. Working with imagining/thinking through those things as well in practice and pre-performance is very helpful. I’m also an Alexander Technique teacher so it fits well with that practice.
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My main takeaway has been about the importance and effectiveness of mental practice. Really cool to see how this combined with physical practice can really be beneficial. I have used the dynamic imagery when I done have my bass…. Basically moving my fingers on my right forearm. Great to see that this can be effective!
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My main takeaways from this second section (ended on pg 75) are:
Mental Practice – When do I do mental practice … rarely, if ever. I did try this once with a piece I was polishing and it worked wonders. I find it difficult sometimes in piano because of two hands, its hard to pull up an image in my mind and visualize both hands at the same time, usually I can only focus on one in my mind – that’s probably true in real life/time as well 🤣
External Focus – It makes a lot of sense that skilled golfers had difficulty performing when verbalizing the steps of the process, but newbies did not. I’ve found that in piano – the more I know and focus on those technical aspects, the more I get in my own way. I’m going to try focusing on the external sound, or intended sound and see how that goes. My hands know what to do, if I try to control them and micro manage its usually a hinderance (at a later stage in practicing the piece). I have also found that for technical things … the body knows how to move, focus on the intended target and it’ll get there kind of thing.
Internal focus is necessary when working specifically on technique but moving back to external as soon as possible is probably beneficial makes sense as well, if the intent is to generally focus on the external to not hinder oneself or “choke” but there are those times where obviously one does have to focus on internal movement or particular body parts.
I liked the suggestion when beginning to work with auditory imagery – starting with just the melody and singing it first to get feedback on whether pitch and rhythm are accurate … another difficult thing on piano with chords and multiple voices sometimes.
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It’s a bit off topic but I really enjoy the big font ! I enjoy to read at night and I have to say it’s nice. Otherwise, I’m on page 111 and so far it’s a nice reminder of a lot of concepts we saw with Noa and a lot of books on the subject (Peak, Bounce etc…)
Things I found interesting :Audiation
Focus of attention (internal and external. It reminded me when Pat Martino used to say he always plays better when he could see himself play from the audience.
I found the part about left hand practice interesting and I’m curious to know what everyone thinks of it.
Dual task practice : Shift the attention while performing something (only works with things that are already implicit). This part made me feel less guilty to play guitar while reading or watching movies.
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My biggest takeaway was being reminded of the importance of aural skills. I have many years of training of Kodaly pedagogy (E.g. Singing in movable Do. pp.52-56 in the book) as I thought that it would be hugely beneficial to my students. I was brought up with Fixed Do in Japan and I would always sing with Fix Do in my head automatically. But this caused me a lot of confusion when I started to play more complicated piano pieces from memory.
So after having enough training of Kodaly pedagogies in the UK, I have been teaching Movable Do to my students.(mainly younger children) Although I see the benefit to them, it also seems to cause some confusion too. (Movable Do)
As many piano course books start in C major, some students seem to have the idea of fixed Do in C major. Then when pieces are shifted to other keys, they tell me that ‘It’s confusuing’ (to sing in Movable Do in other keys rather than in C major)
I use many flash cards for them to sing in Movable Do (starting on different staves or withought staves)so that they don’t think in fixed Do. But still some seem to find movable Do confusing once they start to read music.
I wonder if anyone has a similar experience to this. If you do, I would very much appreciate your thoughts on this. Thank you for your time in advance.
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Isaac Stern once suggested a “trick” for improving coordination in tricky fast passages where there were fast string crossings combined with fast left-hand gymnastics. The trick was to finger along in both hands simultaneously while playing the passage. At first, overtly, by raising and lowering the fingers on your bow hand in sync with the fingers of your left hand on the fingerboard. And over time, increasingly subtly, by just applying a smidgen of pressure while playing.
I found this really helpful, and have suggested it to others (violinist Catherine Cho has said that she suggests this to her students as well), but never really looked into the research for support. So it was very cool to see the studies that Kristian cited on the bilateral transfer of learning (pg.63-64).
I often used to finger along with passages with my right hand when doing “assisted” dynamic mental imagery in college (that’s just a term I’ve made up, but assisted imagery is where you listen to a recording so that you don’t have to create the sound on your own, and dedicate your mental bandwidth to kinesthetic imagery instead). There was a 10-min walk from my dorm to the conservatory building, so I’d listen to a recording of whatever I was working on, and would finger along with my right hand, even working out the extensions or exaggerating the spacing of intervals, etc. while doing so. I’m not sure why I did it with my right hand, but somehow that always felt more natural than with my left.
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Ohhhh that’s good – I’m going to try that – listening to a recording while doing mental practice!
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I use listening to recordings as a method to consolidate my memory, to be more aware of the structure and of the expression. And also for getting ideas about the spectrum of sound and what I really want.
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I am finding that the emphasis on external focus and anticipatory audiation seems to be a theme that I need to revisit often. I am also finding Steenstrup’s notion that focusing attention on audiation promotes more efficient motor coordination similar to things I have learned studying Alexander Technique. They both promote inhibiting unnecessary muscular contractions toward the end of making more fluid motions that do not need to be micromanaged with verbal directions.
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So well put, thank you ❣️
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In the materials for Week 2, I was most interested in audiation as external focus of attention, why it works and how to do it.
As to the WHY: The audio—motor loop is a fact. It explains why focusing on inner hearing as an external, outcome-related factor works, why we don’t need to control how we achieve it; why focusing attention on inner hearing, on creating the music in our mind, promotes more efficient motor coordination. I learned in my Alexander Technique sessions that our task is to create, through constructive thinking, good conditions for the audio—motor loop to work, which inhibits unnecessary muscular contractions toward the end of making more fluid motions that do not need to be micromanaged with verbal directions (I am integrating the comment by Paul Kenyon.) A few years ago, I have coined the term „inner coordinator“ for what seems to be the audio—motor loop in some AT class, and it seems to be continued to be used by Jennifer Roig-Francolí in her teaching. It is so cool how this is supported by scientific evidence.
As to the HOW, I want to refine my ability to actually pre-hear and then realize characteristics of sound in my mind. I can pre-hear pitch and rhythm and dynamics and timing but not so much timbre, resonance and other qualities of sound. I am connecting this with advice by Molly Gebrian on memorization, to mentally keep track of structure (where am I in the piece) and emotion (what do I want to say here). I do a lot of listening to recordings, both to open my ears to the possibilities of sound and to train my memory.
I was intrigued and also confused by the Audiation Practice Tool (ATP), which is mentioned, and only once, in the book. I found a definition at https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/497578/497694 (part of a report by Susan Williams).
There is much more at that site which I still want to explore.
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I love all the talk about audiation. I’ve been thinking about it alot since reading this book. I’m considering changing how I introduce a new solo to my students and how we approach the initial stages of learning from a notes/technique space to a “this is what I want it to sound like, how do I get there?” I think that would be much more engaging as a teacher and a student and for my own studies.
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Also, sorry to be posting late, we rearranged our house and I forgot what day it was!
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I found the practical step-by-step helpful, pg 131. I don’t remember using a cue word in Noa’s training. I’m wondering if this is an important step? Can audiation itself be a kind of cue word?
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@Peter You can certainly incorporate a cue word if you’d like. For some, this can lead to a little (unhelpful) technical/mechanical overthinking. For others, it’s really helpful and helps them thing bigger picture. Just kind of depends!
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There were a lot of interesting tidbits in this section … one that stuck out to me – that I’m not sure I understood at all was left hand (non-dominant) practice – although I’m on piano … so I use my left hand all the time- its my non dominant hand, but I’ve played left hand only pieces or pieces with the melody in the left hand, I understand I can work a passage that’s intended for the right hand in the left and that’s supposed to have some effect on learning (?!?).
The other was the left hand clenching … I understood it as far as brain hemisphere/side of body thing, but otherwise – I guess I would have to try it, I did highlight the page – pianists can practice the right hand part with the left hand, or grasp a soft rubber ball and squeeze it continuously for 30 seconds at a tempo of 120 prior to performance of a section.
For the 4 Step Process in piano I’m equating this to mock play not actually pressing the keys? If you have a wind or string instrument and you press or slide valves or press frets … there’s no sound correct?
I’m not sure my kindle is lining up with the timeline here, I’m reading 5 pages a day, but I’m only at 54% … is next week the last week?
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Hi @aalves – the pages on kindle don’t necessarily match up to the book version, because it depends on the font size on the kindle’s settings. But no rush – feel free to write up your final thoughts whenever you’re finished!
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My biggest takeaway from this book has confirmed that all the strategies I’ve learned from Noa’s course were proven scientifically, too. I felt so positive and hopeful about the performance psychology I’ve learned about after reading the whole book.
For many years, I was trying to find out how I could help my students to optimise their performances. I’ve suffered from sport injuries for many years and it has contributed to me having performance anxieties.
I tried to read books by Don Greene and the Inner Game of Music in the past but I struggled to understand the content. But after I took the Performance psych course in January, all the things Don Greene was saying in his book became clear to me.
I have been experimenting with the strategies I’ve learned and I’ve started to see the results. I am extremely grateful to all the research the experts have done. As Kristian and Don Greene said in their books, it seemed like it was taboo for musicians to talk about anxieties and nobody helped me how to cope with it when I was a student.
But now, at last I feel that I am better able to help my students to optimise their performances and it would give me so much pleasure to be able to do so.
Noa, thank you for introducing me to this book. I’ve found that it is extremely helpful for me to have a physical book as I’m a bit (or rather a lot) allergic to PCs (or any technologies). I’ve been reading some sections repeatedly and it seems to be helping me to better instruct my students in the lessons and also for my own playing.
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I forgot how many pages we should be at (the end ?). I finished the book a couple of days ago and I really enjoy how it was a constant reminder of a lot of other books but with very specific research based elements towards music.
I liked the Preparation Preparation for Musicians and the fact that there is a evolving system week after week for centering. Like with Noa’s lessons all of practice performance is shown as a new thing to practice (so there is a proper way to do it and things are backed up with research).
I enjoyed a lot the left hand practice. I hope to talk about it during the Q and A. I found interesting ways to apply it to guitar.
On the other hand I have to say it was a bit less “fun” to read than Peak, Bounce, The inner game or Atomic Habits.
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Hi all. I’d like to say thank you for recommending this book. I’ll be going through it and outlining some of it so I can be thinking of how to apply it to my own practice and ultimately to my students. My biggest take-away is the power of the mind and imagery. That’s something I’ve under-utilized in my life, but plan to change.
I also found Atomic Habits an “easier” read, but also outlined it. Both excellent books to expand my practice skills.
Jaime
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This week I had two things that really stuck out for me. First was the usefulness of analogies in teaching. I rely a lot on this for my teaching and I need to remember that this can be great but may not work for all learners. I also thought the section on sleep was really useful. I was especially surprised on how light sleep plays a greater roll on our learning that I had thought. I’m gonna go take a nap! 😆
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My apologies for not posting any takeaways from week 2 & 3🙈
I’m actually very interested in finishing the book and reading the comments but I’ve been crazy busy these last two weeks.
I do find the book a difficult read in the way it’s written… I can’t just skim through it during a quick break… I really have to be in a quiet environment and focus on what the author is trying to say, which can be difficult with his sometimes endless sentences which don’t always seem grammatically correct or well structured.
Luckily, the topic does interest me and what he says is useful.
I hope to catch-up over the “holiday”. In the meantime, it does help inform my practice & performance 🙂
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I just discovered the Book Club this afternoon, have not read the book, but from everyone’s thoughts feel as though I have. My training has been in science, which is a more of an analytical and mathematical activity than skillfully producing beautiful sounds for others to hear. The whole idea of allowing the body to automatically play music is foreign to my way of thinking. I had no idea that music required so much physical training.
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