Noa Kageyama
Forum Replies Created
-
Hi Ellen – interesting student and situation. I didn’t have much training in autism spectrum disorders in school, but the thing I’m rather curious about is why the child is so interested in playing repertoire that’s beyond their capabilities. This may ultimately be unimportant, but my instincts were sort of drawn there. Any ideas why this factor seems to be engaging or important to the student?
Noa
-
Hmm…I do remember my orthodontist telling me years ago that if my tongue kept pushing against my front teeth, that they would go out of alignment. Curious about this “mewing” exercise…
-
Testing push. This should trigger an email to Daisy and a push notification. (Yes – push and email received instantly)
-
This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by
Noa Kageyama.
-
This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by
-
I was hoping for more details on the how-to aspect of how to breathe slower. Was resonant breathing basically it?
Also don’t know that I understood the bit about lungs as a weight-regulating system. That seemed to be mentioned briefly but wasn’t really expanded on…maybe in a later chapter?
Oh, ok, he starts getting into more of the nuts and bolts of breathing less on the context of running in chapter 6…though it doesn’t sound pleasant…
My son and I did try the mouth tape last night. I didn’t notice it at all during the night, so I think it’ll be pretty easy to continue the experiment. My wife doesn’t remember if I snored at all or not, so we’ll have to see how that goes. Haven’t had a chance to ask my son what his experience was yet, as he’s still sleeping. Even though it’s 3pm. Wait…maybe I should check on him and make sure he’s ok?! 😳 (he’s fine, just FYI)
Oh, one amusing side effect of mouth tape. We forgot that it’s nigh impossible to talk when your mouth is taped. So he couldn’t turn the lights off in his room (voice activated with Alexa), nor could I, so my wife had to do it. 🤣
-
My thoughts for chapters 3 & 4:
Intrigued by the rationale for alternate nostril breathing. Will have to look into this further as it relates to performance and regulating anxiety.
Also intrigued by the idea that nasal breathing is more efficient and allows lungs to extract more oxygen. Never would have thought the “use it or lose it” concept applies to nasal breathing…
Ah, mouth taping! I guess I really do have to try this now. I think my son and I will try this when he comes home for spring break in a week or two. He has had some sinus or respiratory issues in the past and reports fatigue even when getting a fair bit of sleep, so will be curious to see how he feels at the end of the week.
Want to learn more about increasing lung capacity. Wondering if Nestor will share more about how exactly to do this…
Breathing (avoiding the tendency to hold one’s breath) and exhaling was something that was emphasized by some folks when I was doing Brazilian jiu jitsu. Exhaling fully was something I really focused on when trying to quickly recover between rounds of “rolling” (aka sparring). Of course, now I’m curious to see how things would have felt if I had prioritized breathing through my nose DURING the rolls themselves too…
Ahhh! I was at Aspen in ‘92. If only I would have had an awareness of this then I might have seen that workshop…I was always a mouth breather when playing. I had some teachers (and a mom) who tried to get me to close my mouth, but I always stubbornly resisted…
-
As much as I enjoy reading science books written by writers or journalists (e.g. Malcolm Gladwell, etc), I’m always a little wary and skeptical because I think there’s a tendency to focus on telling a compelling story, and then selectively looking for data to support that story. You’ll often see anecdotal evidence featured prominently or unpublished non-peer-reviewed studies, for instance. Whereas researchers who have written books (e.g. Angela Duckworth) are better at looking at all of the research and seeing what story emerges from the data, whether that story is as compelling or neat and tidy as one might want it to be…
That said, as I put that bias aside for a moment, my main takeaway is that I’m sort of shocked at how terrible mouth breathing seems to be from Nestor’s description. And not just the physiological issues associated with mouth breathing, but the learning and attentional and performance related issues as well.
My son actually gave me mouth tape for my birthday. Sort of as a gag gift, but also partly out of genuine curiosity. You’re supposed to tape your mouth shut at night so your body is forced to breathe through your nose for the entire night. I’ve been a little afraid to try out, but now I’m inclined to give it a try and see if I feel any differently after sleeping this way.
-
testing again
-
Testing reply to Daffy. (Daffy received push notification)
-
Congratulations, @rebecca-bogart ! That’s really exciting news! Thanks for sharing!
-
Testing general reply, not to daisy. This should trigger push and email notification, as Daisy is subscribed to this discussion. (yes, both worked)
-
This should trigger push/email for daisy. (and it does both)
-
Testing general reply, not to daisy. (This triggers push and email notification)
-
Hi Yuki,
Good question. Yes, playing with less tension under pressure can be tricky. Just out of curiosity, have you done much exploration of Alexander Technique or Body Mapping or Feldenkrais? It’s one thing to try to release tension before playing, but it doesn’t necessarily transfer to performance, because it can be difficult to trust ourselves to play more freely/with less tension if we haven’t specifically practiced this or baked this into our technique.
Often, in the practice room, we’re not overly tight, but we’re also not playing with the minimum amount of tension necessary, or with the greatest amount of ease or effortlessness that’s possible. And under pressure, when the nerves kick in, everything gets a little tighter. So if we were at a 6 in the practice room, we might end up at an 8 on stage. And a 6 might be ok, but at an 8 we might feel like we’re too tight. But it can be difficult to let go on stage, because we’re not sure what will happen if we do. But if you can get used to playing at a at 4-5 in practice, maybe it goes up to a 6-7, and that will still be ok. I’m just making up numbers, but hopefully you get the idea. =)
So one way to approach this would be to practice playing with less tension/more ease in the practice room, progressively going up the scale from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, etc., and finding the point at which it’s just barely enough “tension” and helps you play in the most fluid, effortless way possible.
And then see if you can continue to play in this range as you increase a bit of pressure, by playing for others, etc.
But if you haven’t already, I do recommend seeking out some Alexander Technique/etc. lessons, as this will help you go much deeper into better understanding how to play as freely and as easily as possible, both in the practice room, and also on stage!
-
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.
-
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.
-
Hi William!
Yes – I initially conceived of the course as being geared towards performance practice, or the parts of practice that we tend to neglect until it’s too little, too late. Which I think is what led to the idea of the name “beyond” practicing, though it’s been so long, I might be misremembering. 😅
Anyhow, I do think many of the aspects of this kind of performance practice ought to be integrated far earlier into the preparation process than we often do.
A couple thoughts come to mind regarding the memory challenges you describe. Your back-to-front and spaced retrieval practice sound excellent, but there are some additional elements that I think would help.
1. There’s been some really helpful research on memorization for musicians by Roger Chaffin. Who found that the use of specific types of “performance cues” is really helpful for musicians’ recall during performance. Basically, the idea is to divide the piece up into meaningful chunks and then create very specific cues/triggers that trigger the memory of the associated chunk of music. Many musicians do this on a sort of intuitive level, but it helps to make this encoding process really explicit. More details here: https://bulletproofmusician.com/regular-memorization-works-ok-but-heres-why-deliberate-memorization-is-way-better/
2. And then, well in advance of a performance, it’s important to test your recall of these and your other access cues in multiple ways too, in order to expose potential holes or weak spots in the various retrieval pathways you will be relying on in performance.
Testing your muscle memory, for instance, with no assistance from your aural memory or declarative memory (can you play a piece with zero sound coming out of your instrument – like air guitar). And testing aural memory, with no muscle memory or declarative memory (can you sing through or audiate through the piece, without your instrument). And then testing declarative memory, with no aural or muscle memory (can you write out the complete piece on blank staff paper without doing any audiation or air guitar to help).
3. If you haven’t gotten to Lesson 4 yet, I think you’ll find this to be relevant as well. In terms of developing a mental script of what exactly to think about while performing. Because this will help ensure that you’re in the present moment, and not worrying about memory. Or, if there are certain cues that need to be integrated into your mental script, you’ll have practiced this in advance so it’s familiar and keeps you in the present moment and not worrying about what could happen.
If you haven’t already listened to it, the podcast episode with Molly Gebrian would also be a great help. She does a great job of outlining the three main phases of memorization, and some of the key elements within each phase. You can listen to that here: https://bulletproofmusician.com/molly-gebrian-on-efficient-effective-and-reliable-memorization-strategies-for-musicians/
Hope this helps to give you a sense of how to start conceptualizing how memory work fits into your regular daily practice even from Day 1 of a new piece!
-Noa
-
Thank you for sharing, @ellenjohansen ! That’s a very cool story about your student – really seems to illustrate this study’s finding especially well!
-
Hi @Rollie – I’m probably not the best person to answer this question, but I had a one thought. My wife is a pianist, and has often had to accompany people with limited advance notice. And in situations like this, because it’s more important to stay with who you’re playing with than playing every note, you have to drop things. And from my own experience playing with pianists with limited rehearsal time, I know that things that are in the score were being dropped as things sounded more “empty” than they should. All this to say, I think pianists are great at this. So if you have any pianist friends, especially those who do a lot of collaborating/accompanying – they might be able to share some tips.
-
Hi Johannes, a couple thoughts:
1. The idea with anchoring is to be able to retrieve a particular emotional state/mental state, and the goal is the emotional/mental state itself. So the source memory itself isn’t really that important, because the eventual goal is to connect the physical cue with the mental/emotional state, and not have to go through the memory itself to retrieve the feeling. For instance, if you’re trying to access the state of confidence, maybe the best memory of this was a completely non-music-related situation in which you felt this way. At first, you might have to recall the situation to access the mental/emotional state, but with practice, the goal is to take the memory out of the equation and just do the physical cue, and feel the mental and emotional state flooding back. All this to say, it should be pretty instrument-agnostic.
2. Also, anchoring can help you quickly get into a desirable mental/emotional state, but once you start playing, your focus should be elsewhere, on things that are more relevant to what’s happening in the music in that moment. So this is where the attention control training stuff in the focus lesson will come into play. So even if the feel of playing each instrument is different, this is where you can redirect your attention to singing brain, pulse, micro-improv, etc., and anchoring probably shouldn’t be an active part of your focus at that moment.
Hope that helps to clarify!
Noa
-
Hi Rebecca,
If students are too low in energy, maybe 10 minutes before they play, they could do something to get their heart rate up (as in Susan’s video below), and then go through their pre-performance routine to settle back down again a smidge.
They can also experiment with changing the ratio of their inhale and exhale. Where instead of a long, slow exhale, they use a quick, forceful exhale. Which will also get their energy up a bit.
-
Nested reply to daffy on 5G.
-
Nested reply #2 from 5G. Does Daisy get push? Does this appear in one signal?
-
Nested reply from app using 5G instead of WiFi. Does this appear in one signal?
(No one signal but Daisy did get push. )
-
This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by
-
This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by
-
2nd level reply
-
2nd level reply
-
Nested reply to daisy from app instead of website. Does this show up in one signal? (NO, does not)
-
This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by
-
This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by
-
Nested reply 2. Waited 14 minutes and no push (message did not appear in OneSignal).
-
Nested reply to Daisy’s reply. Daisy is subscribed to discussion. This should result in both push and email, but historically has only led to email notification. Will wait to see if it arrives eventually.
Email notification received within ~30 seconds.
-
This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by
-
This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by
-
Nested reply after Rapyd – should trigger email to daisy and push to daisy (wait 6+min to see if it’s just delayed).
-
Testing another reply to daisy. (email notification received, but no push notification)
-
Testing nested reply to daisy. (email notification received, but no push notification)
-
Testing reply directly to daisy (this should trigger both email and push, but only triggers email).
-
Hi @lmharkgmail-com . I don’t get too much into the specifics of how to release tension, as this goes a bit out of my area of expertise. Do you have any experience with Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, or Body Mapping? There are some podcast episodes on the main site with practitioners of these various modalities that can give you some sense of which might be the best fit to explore further. Let me know if you need any help finding these!
-
Replying to Daisy. This should trigger both email and push. (but it only triggers email, no push)
-
@daisy Push/email not working for subscribed. Testing again with mentions.
-
Testing push/email.
-
Now daisy subscribed; should get push/email notification.
-
@daisy This should get email notification.
-
Replying without a mention. Daisy not subscribed. Should get no notifications.
-
@michelle-rudder I just uploaded a live recording Bill sent me – it’s an earlier version of the piece which two students recorded, so it won’t match up exactly with the score, but will hopefully give you an idea!
-
@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!
-
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!
-
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:
-
Thanks for confirming, William. Sounds like I have some troubleshooting to do…
-
Feel free to skip around if you’d like! Depending on your particular needs/goals, it may make more sense to jump from section to section, as in this particular example.
And yes – it’s easy to just read and put off the “putting into action” part, but I’m glad to hear you’re taking the time to do some implementation. That’s really where you start figuring things out and being able to translate/adapt things to your own needs as I’m hoping you’re finding out!
BTW, random tech question, did you receive an email with a nicely formatted version of the response I sent above in your inbox? I’ve suddenly stopped receiving those to my admin account, and am trying to figure out if it’s just me, or if this is affecting everyone. Thanks!
-
@argilmoregms-online-com Oof, sorry to hear about the finger injury. Hopefully it’s not too serious and heals up quickly. The unpredictable nature of health issues can be challenging indeed. Sounds like you’re approaching it in the best way by listening to your body.
And yes – maybe try to aim for something that seems easy to do. Still would feel great, but easy. See if that paradoxically makes it more motivating as you manufacture more successes.
-
@violadoc Oh, whoops! Sounds like a pretty handy extension though – had no idea anything like this existed!d
-
How’d things go this month, @Inspired ?
-
How’d things go this month @violadoc ?
-
@argilmoregms-online-com How’d things go this month?
