Noa Kageyama
Forum Replies Created
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The key element of deliberate practice is problem-solving. And if I’m understanding your question correctly, this is where it seems you are getting a bit stuck, yes?
Do you have a sense of why you’re playing wrong notes? As in, are they generally the same wrong notes, or different ones every time? Is it because you’re not quite sure where your fingers should be going, or the spacing, or do you not hear them clearly enough in your head, perhaps? As in, is it a mechanical reason that is causing wrong notes, or as you describe, a matter of looking ahead better, or having the keyboard or notes mapped out or memorized more deeply?
With regards to sight-reading, the best way to get better at sight-reading is of course to do more sight-reading. So perhaps this would entail reading with others, or playing with an instrumentalist for fun. Deliberate practice would come into play when it’s time to figure out how to improve your sight-reading. To figure out what is holding you back – whether it’s the discipline of keeping your eyes moving ahead, or being able to let mistakes go, or gaining more technical facility with the keyboard – and then devising ways of improving those areas.
There’s a relatively new book out that’s all about deliberate practice, written by the researcher who is responsible for the term and has studied this most of his career. It’s called Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, by Anders Ericcson. It’s full of examples and really digs into deliberate practice, so you might find it a helpful read if you’d like some tangible pictures of how others have used deliberate practice in different domains.
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Ah, the Fantasie. One of my favorite pieces ever. It’s one of those odd ironies, where when we try to slow down, often the opposite happens. I think you’ll find “singing brain” and “pulse” in the Focus lesson to be helpful not so much in slowing down, but in keeping yourself busier (both mentally and physically), which will take more time, and help to arrest the tendency to go too fast.
Also, there’s another strategy that might be helpful. That of injecting/offering subtle nuances into your performance – subtle color changes, phrasings, dynamics, etc. that perhaps even your duo partner may not notice, but you definitely do. This will tend to prevent you from moving ahead too quickly, or thinking too far in advance.
Hope this helps!
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Keen observation. Yes, if auditions, performances, chamber music, etc. all feel quite different, then the profile will tend to be more helpful if you focus on one specific type of situation when answering the questions. So if, for instance, you’d like to see your profile for auditions, think only of auditions in your recent past when answering questions. Or if you are more interested in orchestral situations, then think of those performances when responding to the questions.
You could even take the PSI multiple times, and print one out for each type of performance.
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I don’t know a ton about hypnosis, but I’m familiar with that app, and a number of students and clients have mentioned it as having been helpful tho them. One of my mentors was well-versed and trained in hypnosis, and from what I understand, a hypnotic “trance” is essentially like being in a state of flow. So yes, it does seem that this could be a very helpful training tool.
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Nice! Now that you’ve got your awesome notebook, the only thing missing is an awesome .38mm pen! =)
http://www.mypenneedsink.com/blog/2014/03/31/review-uni-ball-signo-um-151-38-mm/
Just kidding…sort of. I’m not a total geek about office supplies, but do enjoy a trip to stationary stores more than I probably ought to.
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Yours is actually a pretty common experience – specifically, of not being sure what exactly to write down in a practice book, and falling off the wagon after a time.
Something that can help is to think of the book as less of a log or diary and more of a todo list. As in, sure, you can write down what you did and for how long, but this becomes sort of a chore, and doesn’t always tie directly into making tomorrow’s practice session any more fruitful or productive. When you’re taking a slew of auditions, it can be valuable to have a log to refer back to, so you can see what worked, and what didn’t (like keeping a workout or training log at the gym).
But on a day to day basis, I think you’ll find it more helpful to use the notebook to track (a) specific problems you’ve identified, and (b) specific solutions that you’ve discovered (or even potential solutions to try in your next practice session). So for instance, let’s say that you have a bunch of repeated notes, but they aren’t coming out clearly and evenly (I remember the pianist in my trio experimenting with a variety of strategies with those repeated notes at the beginning of the 2nd movement of the Brahms B major trio, for instance). In line with the deliberate practice formula in the preparation section, you could write down the problem, and then potential solutions. A different fingering? Something about tension in your hand or fingers? Weight of your arm? (I don’t remember what my friend ultimately identified as the solution to this particular problem).
Because as you go through rep and accumulate specific problems to solve, you will also discover a bunch of solutions, not all of which will be very obvious at first. And it sucks to come up with a brilliant solution and have a mini-breakthrough, only to forget what it was the next day. So the practice notebook ultimately becomes a way of forcing yourself to articulate problems in words, and also keep track of specific solutions, so you don’t forget them.
Does this help clarify what you might do with a practice notebook?
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Going through the beginning stages of learning a complex skill – especially a musical instrument – is challenging indeed!
One thing to keep in mind, is that you are pushing yourself to your current limits from week to week, and are presumably playing something for your teacher from week to week that is at the edges of your current ability. So it’s probably going to feel quite a bit less natural and fluid and easy than if you were to prepare something that you played previously, that is easier to play and doesn’t stretch your current skill level quite so much. So sometimes, it can be helpful to go back and play things that you haven’t played for a while, to see how much easier it feels and how much better it sounds.
But when it comes to preparing for lessons, one of the problems we can run into, is the fact that the way we usually practice sets us up to expect a higher level of performance than we can actually deliver the first time. Meaning, when we practice, if we play through something, then again, and again, each time making further refinements and adjustments to each previous time, we can get to an increasingly higher level of performance – but it’s kind of an illusion. The “momentary” habit strength of our skills is not the same as our “underlying” habit strength, and the only way to gauge our true level of mastery of the passage/piece is to play it cold, only one time, just like we would for a lesson. That is actually what our current level is with that piece. Random or interleaved practice is one way of maximizing actual learning on our instrument, rather than the blocked style of practice we typically engage in which maximizes the momentary strength, at the expense of underlying strength. You can read more about this in a blog post here – and also I recommend the book Make it stick: The science of successful learning, which gets into this and other very cool aspects of how to maximize learning.
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A couple things you could experiment with:
1) I wonder if rhythms might help? As in, practicing the passage with exaggerated dotted rhythms, whereby you will be playing some notes extremely quickly in succession, followed by a pause to gather your thoughts/let your fingers catch up and get ready for what’s about to happen next. Does that make sense? I’m thinking a video is probably easier to understand – here’s Nathan Cole demonstrating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikyu1eEJsk4
2) While playing, it might also help to really take a close look at both muscle tension and excess movement. Even with something like typing. Pay attention to how much movement you are producing. Is it really necessary? For instance, how high off the string do you really have to pick up each finger between notes? Could you keep them closer to the string without tightening up so that they don’t have to move up and down quite so far? Having to move further distances than necessary takes time, and can also cause excess tension because of how hard you have to work to keep up.
Let me know how those go!
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Hi Daria,
Sounds like you’re in good shape, preparation-wise, for the audition – which is great. Plenty of time for really getting the mental game there, and doing lots of performance practice.
Auditioning for jobs we reeeeally want is tricky. There’s nothing inherently bad about wanting something really badly, and in fact, this is helpful because it’ll motivate you to go the extra mile and do the work you need to do. All things being equal, the person who wants something more is probably going to get it.
However, going into an audition thinking only about the outcome, and how much you want it, is probably not going to help. It’s ok to focus on the outcome a few weeks/months out, but as you get closer and closer to the audition, to begin prioritizing and focusing more on the audition process and experience. As in, controlling the things about the audition that you control. Eating optimally, sleeping optimally, practicing in the right way, thinking the right thoughts, staying focused in the warmup room, centering before excerpts, keeping muscles loose, breathing, etc., etc., etc. There are quite a lot of things that you do control, which if you do them to the best of your ability, will probably end up resulting in good things.
Your job is to focus on these controllable things, not the end-result, which we don’t have direct control over. Let go of that and trust that it’ll all work out somehow or another if you do your best in the areas that you directly control. Because either way, it’s a waste of time/energy/resources to divert that away from what we do control to things we don’t control.
Make sense?
Good luck!
Noa
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Unfortunately, they aren’t anywhere else to be found (at least in English). Although, it looks like they are available on DVD and other formats online, for instance, at Amazon.
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Hi Gregor,Learning is never as neat and tidy as we’d like it to be, but it seems that “both” is the way to go here with both of your questions. 1. Regarding hearing it in your head before you play, sure, you might have an idea in your head to start, but when you actually play it that way, it might not produce the results you are going for. The fingering may not work as you thought, the bow distribution and pressure and contact point may require a different combination, and so on. It’s important to have a target to aim for, but we have to test out that target, and see if we might need to move the target, and the only way to really know that is to play and try it out. This is particularly evident in chamber music, right? Where someone has an idea that sounds silly, but when you try it, it actually doesn’t sound so bad. 2. Same goes with your second question. The research is clear that mental practice alone is not as effective as physical practice alone. We just don’t get any feedback when we practice mentally. Or if we do, it’s not an exact replica of the feedback we would get physically. It’s better to think of mental practice as an adjunctive performance aid – as the literature also seems pretty clear that mental PLUS physical practice is better than physical practice alone. It’s also important to differentiate between mental practice and developing a clear intention. What Fleisher describes isn’t mental practice, so much as having a clear goal. As in, if we don’t have some idea of what we want something to sound like, we’re probably not going to be very successful at getting it on a consistent basis. Does that distinction make sense?Hope that helps to clarify!
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Nice. This question gets at a very intriguing phenomenon. The implementation of this can be slightly different for each instrument, but what’s interesting, is that “singing brain” actually seems to help with staying ahead of the music and being in the driver’s seat with creating line, shaping, timing, even sound quality, as opposed to be constantly behind and reacting to what’s already happened. Because it takes time for sound to travel from the instrument to our ears, for the vibrations to be turned into electrical impulses, for those impulses to travel to our brain, for our brain to interpret those signals, send out a response to certain muscle groups, and for the muscle groups to activate and produce a change on our instrument, and for sound to be produced. Not a lot of time, but the standard unit of time that it generally takes most average folks to respond to an auditory signal (like the starter’s gun in a track race) is about 190 milliseconds. The implication being, if we are too focused on listening to what’s happening, we’re constantly behind and reacting as opposed to planning and creating.
You will obviously hear what’s coming out of the piano, and adjust accordingly, but the idea is to be more preoccupied with what you want to hear, and to keep yourself out in front, creating the line, much as we do when sight-reading. And depending on what voice is most important, you could certainly switch dynamically back and forth between voices, much as a conductor might between different instruments/lines in an orchestra.
Here’s a recent paper that provides a little more detail about this notion of visualization while playing, if you’re interested in reading more.
As far as getting better at hearing the exact sound of your instrument in your head, you can practice visualizing sound in your head, then playing, then visualizing again, the playing, and so on, comparing and contrasting what you imagine, and what you hear, to get better at hearing something with your mind that is closer to what you hear with your ears.
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Tricky question – I have two thoughts.
One, it’s helpful to look back at past auditions and see what seems to have worked best for you if there’s a pattern. Over time, ideally you will be able to put together your own individualized gameplay for what seems to be best for you.
That being said, there are a few principles that seem to be pretty universal. For instance, you want to get plenty of sleep in the last few weeks approaching your audition. Staying hydrated is also important, as well as taking a walk or staying active if you already run/exercise. Super basic, I know, but it’s easy to neglect the basics.
In the last week before the audition in particular, it’s important to
a) Practice getting into performance mode on command. As in, centering, and starting each excerpt off exactly with the kind of musical intention and intensity you will want to in the audition itself. Practice thinking exactly what you want to be thinking in that moment, and playing while singing/pulsing/etc. exactly as you want to in the moment, rather than keeping score and analyzing what’s happening. The goal is really to get to that place. If you can get to that place, you’re likely to do as well as you can do. And we can’t ask for much more than that, right?
b) Practice transitions between excerpts. What are you going to do? What are you going to think about?
c) Visualization. Practice seeing and hearing exactly what you want. Also practice hearing and seeing and planning what you want your optimal response to be when things aren’t going perfectly. No round is ever 100% perfect, so rather than having to scramble to plan a response under pressure, having already pre-experienced how you want to respond, in a more graceful and optimal manner is really helpful.
d) This is probably just a different way of saying everything in (a), but practice volume will probably be decreasing in the last week as you don’t want to wear yourself out, but the intensity of your practice should be increasing. As in, your time should be spent more in performance mode, rather than in practice mode (i.e. where you do tons of repetition and work on major details). Making sure you can really “bring it” and play your absolute best the first time, not the 2nd, 3rd, 5th time. Sort of like taking practice tests rather than studying.
Hope this helps – and all the best with your auditions!
Noa
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I’m not sure what the research says about this, but anecdotally, it seems that we can turn ourselves into more of a morning person even if it doesn’t initially feel quite so natural to us. I also think that you’re more likely to have success keeping a morning routine than a routine which interferes with competing priorities as it sounds an evening routine does for you. Though there’s something to be said for practicing performing at various times of the day, on a day-to-day basis, whatever allows for a more consistent and habitual routine is probably going to help you make the most of your time. Plus, there’s something cool about being up in the morning and getting stuff done before the day has really gotten started. It may take a while for it to feel more natural, but my two cents is that it’s worth making an effort to try it out!
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If you don’t have much to play in the way of solos at the moment, it’s ok to skip the video-making part. The idea is to have a clearer idea of what tends to happen with your skills under a little bit of pressure. But you can do this by thinking back to past performance-type situations in the last few months to a year as well.
I’d be more inclined to have you move forward with taking the PSI, and getting started with the course. I suspect you probably have a pretty good sense of what happens and how things feel in performance situations already.
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Ah yes, the audio and video files are compressed and packaged as “zip” files to keep them all together (rather than having to download each one separately).
Here is how to open them on an iPad:
1. Download an app called WinZip in the iPhone app store (there’s a free version with ads).2. When you go back to the course and click on the download button for the audio files, it might take a little bit for the phone to respond, but eventually you’ll get a white screen with the file listed right in the middle. Select the “Open in…” option in your upper left, and choose the WinZip program.
3. If it’s your first time using WinZip, it’ll walk you through some introductory screens, but just keep swiping through, select the free version (unless you want to pay to get rid of ads), and you should be presented with the file. Click on the file, and you’ll see the individual chapter MP3’s or video files listed, which you can then play by clicking on them.
Hope that makes sense! Let me know if you run into any snags.
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Hi Boyd,
Sounds like a fun exercise. A couple thoughts.
Yes, getting motor skills from the early, thought-intensive, “how the heck do I do this?” cognitive phase, to the automated, “I can do this in my sleep” autonomous stage is important for being able to perform these skills at the highest level under pressure. When things are at the cognitive stage, we can’t play and do much else at the same time, because the skill is still very cognitively taxing. Like sight-reading, for instance. You don’t have time to think about anything else, because the task demands too much of your cognitive resources. However, when you have practiced something to the point of automaticity and have reached the autonomous stage, we have lots of cognitive resources free, which is both a blessing and a curse.
Blessing, in that we can play effortlessly at a high level. Curse, in that because we have so many cognitive resources free, we tend to think too much – about technique and mechanics, or worries/doubts about the future and what’s coming up, or wondering what our listeners may be thinking, etc. So we want to, at that point, also practice thinking about task-relevant details, that will help us raise the level of our playing even more – and also, so we don’t accidentally start thinking about task-irrelevant or self-sabotating thoughts that can spiral out of control or lead to choking.
Does that make sense? -
Sounds like a great idea, Elisha. Let me know how it goes!
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Hi Elisha,
If I’m understanding things correctly, it sounds like what you’re describing might be related to the fact that we all have different levels of ability to visualize (or in this case “audiate”) sound.
As an analogy, imagine if I asked you to look at a bowl of fruit, then close your eyes, and then draw it from memory, exactly as it was. Not just the general locations of the fruit, but the color splotches on the apple, the dimples on the oranges, the spots on the bananas. A little trickier to get this level of detail, right? Then open your eyes again, look closer, and notice how much more carefully you are able to look and how much more detail you can then draw.
In much the same way, we can train ourselves to get better at having a more vivid sound in our head – but rather than beating your head up against a wall, you may need to “calibrate” the sound in your head by imagining a note or very short phrase, then playing that note or phrase on your instrument and rating from 1-10 how close the result was to what you heard in your head. Then imagine the note/phrase again, seeing if it can be closer to what you heard, then play again, and rate again. Over time, you can begin to select more nuanced or complex sounds/phrases, and hopefully you’ll find that as you practice this, and your number gets higher, your ability to hear something that very closely resembles your own sound will continue to improve.
Noa
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Hi Emma, You’re on the right track – trying to focus on what it feels like to be more relaxed can help to a degree. There are two other parts to this that could help.
(1) Have you practiced the simulation/adversity training? Learning to use the adrenaline response, even in quiet passages can help prepare you for those moments. Where instead of feeling like you need to control what’s happening physically, it’s more of a letting go and freeing up of yourself. I know that probably sounds rather vague, but how has it gone when you’ve practiced letting go after some pushups or burpees? Have you been able to experience that feeling of letting go even when the voice in your head doesn’t trust it?
(2) Also, especially at these moments when our mind will go to thoughts that aren’t helpful, preparing a mental script in advance – something really compelling about the process of producing music at that moment, whether it’s singing in your head, feeling the pulse, shaping the line (things from the focus chapter) will be critical. The idea is we need to hijack your mind’s ability to think about or worry about the physical sensations and instead be 100% engaged in what you want to hear, create in the moment. Much like when meditating, we keep directing our thoughts to our breath, or something very small, instead of allowing it to go where it would otherwise go.
Does this make sense?
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Not a silly question at all! Some folks like to center with eyes open, and others like to do it with eyes closed. It might even depend on the situation and what helps you focus better. Feel free to experiment, and if you feel like eyes closed helps you get more zoned in, then by all means, go for it.
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You don’t want to overdo it, but yes, many find that some exercise can absolutely be helpful on the day of a performance! Exercise has been established to have pretty noteworthy anxiolytic (i.e. anti-anxiety) effects, so it can certainly be a helpful activity to integrate into your regular routine as well.
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Regarding scheduling this into your summer, my recommendation would be to think of each lesson as a 2-week cycle, where you spend some time every day reading/listening and working some of the exercises into your practice routine, but where the 2-week period is geared towards a recorded performance where you test out the skills you’ve developed (either for yourself or where you invite a friend or colleague or two to increase the pressure a bit). Doesn’t have to be a full-length recital or anything like that – just a movement or two or 10 minutes of whatever you are working on but very much in performance mode.
Some lessons will be less involved than others, but this way there’s a natural ebb and flow to how much work you’re putting in. It means you probably won’t take up the full 15 weeks, but you’ll have 7 performance simulations over the course of the summer (8 if you include the baseline performance before taking the PSI).
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The question of motivation is often a tough one. One thing that might help is to think smaller. When we think of the task, and how much work it will entail, it can be difficult to get going. If instead, your goal is only to figure out how to get started, it’s easier to get going, and easier to keep going. So how can you simply get yourself to tune and play a couple minutes? Because once you do that, you’ll probably stick with it for a bit longer.
There are are two books that I found really helpful with long-term and day-to-day motivation. Mastery, by George Leonard and The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. You might take a look at these as well when you have a chance (or when you don’t feel like practicing and need something productive to do).
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Yes, you can certainly work on portions of different lessons at the same time as long as it doesn’t spread you too thin. As long as you have time to practice the skills on a regular basis, this should be fine.
That being said, there are certain lessons that are more conducive to this than others. For instance, the lesson on Concentration could be paired with Focus or Energy. The Preparation lesson is another one which could be combined with the other lessons. But trying to work on both Focus and Courage at the same time, for instance, may dilute your efforts and get in the way of learning as quickly as you might. At the end of the day, your best guide is probably your own intuitive feel. If you feel a bit scattered or overwhelmed, then take it easy and simplify, but if you feel like you’re making connections between skills and your curiosity/interest/enthusiasm/energy is running high, then by all means go for it!
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Managing lots of rep can be tough. I’ve heard of a variety of different strategies folks have used for rotating through rep and managing their time. A simple one that a student recently found helpful in prepping for a big audition was to get out a piece (or two or three) of paper, and to create columns – one for each movement or piece. Under each column, write down the major problems or issues that need to be solved based on your most recent run-through of the piece/movement. That serves as a basic guide for where to spend your time, so you don’t fritter away too much time working on things that aren’t priorities. As you fix issues, you can cross them off and add new smaller things to work on. Over time it helps to build confidence too, as you see things getting better and better.
You can certainly adapt this to fit your needs or tweak it a bit, but some sort of system like this, which encourages you to be specific about what to work on, and forces you to do regular run-throughs can help ensure that your time is being devoted to the most important areas of your program.
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Really important question. It’s tough to recommend a specific warmup routine, as it depends on the instrument, the person, and so on, but I do have a couple suggestions.
1. Practice your warm-up routine ahead of time. Experiment with different warm-up routines, of different length, so you know what works, and what doesn’t. One of the main things I think you’re trying to do in a warm-up is to get connected with your instrument, to turn your ears on, and your kinesthetic senses on so you are really able to get into that mode where you are really sensing things and hearing, and conceiving what you want in your mind’s ear, rather than worrying, thinking, analyzing, and micromanaging technique. So perhaps really really slow scales, or single notes, or long tones, or really basic things where you can really practice loosening up and playing with ease, may be the most effective in getting you “warmed up.”
2. The most effective warm-up routines also tend to be rather odd-sounding, or at least not very impressive to listen to. We tend to feel self-conscious in public, and often don’t utilize the actual warm-up routine or exercises that would be most helpful, but instead run through some scales really quickly or play some tunes on autopilot without really settling into things, and connecting with our instrument. If it helps you to play the same note over and over, just to hear your sound, then go for it. I have a colleague who just plays the same note, while systematically manipulating bow pressure. Sounds weird in theory, and in practice, but it helps him feel more comfortable and get warmed up.
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I think the key part of the quote there is “edge of your capabilities.” Think of there being three zones of skill – a comfort zone, where things are easy and well within your existing capabilities (like when you’re practicing something easy slowly), a “stretch” zone where you are at the edges of what your current skill level supports (like playing something challenging at tempo), and a “panic” zone where you are going way beyond what your current skills support (like playing something that is too difficult for you, at a tempo you can’t maintain, without enough time to prepare, in a make-or-break situation).
Practicing inside your comfort zone is not the most productive use of time, because you’re not learning as much. It’s like going to the gym and lifting weights that require no effort. You’re not going to gain much from your time. Of course, trying to lift weights you can barely even get off the ground is not particularly helpful either. The “sweet spot” is that place just outside your comfort zone that stretches you a bit and forces you to rise to the occasion, to adapt to the new demands (technically or musically) that you have placed on yourself by moving closer to the edge of the kind of playing/music-making that your current abilities can support.
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Interesting. Yes, I think you’ll find energy regulation to be very helpful in the long run, but everything is going to be more difficult if you don’t feel confident about your preparation, and consequently your ability to play the way you know you can on demand. Practicing the right way can be hugely confidence-building, so in your particular situation it may indeed be most helpful to work through the Preparation module first (you could skip the memory stuff for now if that part isn’t as relevant).
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Sounds like you’ve done great work to prepare for the worst – which is certainly very important, so that things don’t throw you if they happen. On the flip side, it’s important to spend a good bit of time preparing for the best-case scenarios as well. How much time do you spend visualizing exactly what you want? When things go precisely as you’d love them to? Where you get absorbed into imagining the details of exactly the experience on-stage you’d love to have? I like the personal highlight reel exercise as a way to incorporate this easily into your daily routine. You can certainly do a more extended, and detailed mental rehearsal as well, especially as you get closer to the day of a big audition or performance.
But to sum up, I think it might help to adjust the ratio of positive visualization to adversity/resilience visualization so you do more of the former. Make sense?
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Ah, yes. To answer your question, yes “singing brain” is meant to be done WHILE you are playing. Think of it as a way of giving yourself instructions about what to do with the music without using words or thinking in terms of mechanics (which should already have been taken care of in the practice room).
And with all the variations of singing brain, yes, it’s all done in your head. No need to vocalize externally! Though I suppose some people do, and there’s probably nothing wrong with it as long as it’s not a distraction.
The idea is not so much to follow along in your head with your playing, but to create the sound or phrasing you want in your head, and let your body follow. For some people, singing brain is happening at exactly the same time as the sound being produced. For others, they find it helpful to have singing brain leading them by being ever so slightly ahead of what they are playing – but on the order of a fraction of a second. Not notes or measures ahead, which can be rather disconcerting and puts you out of the moment.
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Hi Elma,
You’re right – finding a phrase that really captures the “what” is not always so easy. Remember back to the ASU golf study, where the successful golfers had two things in mind? The target (clear intention) and the general kinesthetic feel of a successful stroke (process cue)? Same thing with centering for us, except that instead of a visual target, ours is auditory.
So as you suggested, yes, rather than using words for either the clear intention or process cue, just focus your attention on hearing exactly what you want, with every detail and nuance, then pairing this with exactly what it feels like kinesthetically when you produce exactly what you hear in your head.
And ultimately, much of centering will happen all at once, as a combined set of steps – you can, for instance, hear and feel the opening simultaneously as you are breathing and releasing muscle tension.
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Good question. The clear intention is more the “what” step, as in hearing very clearly exactly what you want the first note to sound like. The process is more the “how” step, as in reminding yourself how it feels kinesthetically when you execute exactly as you’d like, effortlessly and with ease.
The order is deliberate, but that being said, you can certainly experiment with rearranging the steps to suit you, and eventually, you’ll be doing a number of the steps simultaneously, or mashed together anyhow. The end result is less of a sequential checklist and more of an organic, natural process. Hope this helps to clarify!
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Hi Anastasia,
With 10 days left, your experience is pretty normal. I don’t know that it’s avoidable, if it’s an audition that’s important to you. If you didn’t feel this way, you might be inclined to take things too lightly…to not prepare as diligently as you could. That being said, you don’t want to get too freaked out either, and there are a few things I’d recommend.1. Be sure to incorporate a good bit of performance practice into your preparation. Meaning, practice playing through rep for others, practice random excerpts, randomly selected rep and play without keeping score. You want to get better at playing through your mistakes and not paying attention to them (as you will have to do on stage).
2. Be sure to get plenty of rest. Being stressed and tired is not a good combination.
3. Remember that your primary goal at this point is not to win, per se. Your goal is always to win of course, but that’s not up to you. Your goal is to leave, feeling happy with your performance. And to do whatever you need to do to be happy with your performance. Because if you are happy with your performance, you’ve maximized your chances of making good things happen. Worry too much about making the panel happy, or winning, and you probably won’t be very happy with your performance, nor will they.
4. Visualization can be helpful too. Imagine yourself the day after the audition, feeling really happy, eating breakfast, reviewing how the audition must have gone for you to be feeling as happy as you are. How must your first excerpt have sounded? How must have your most difficult excerpt have gone? Etc.Good luck!
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Hi Mark,
Motor learning is not my strongest area of expertise, but my take on all of this is that the whole point of all the various ways of structuring or blocking practice trials is to ensure that we are actively creating or reinforcing an ever more precise, but also robust sequence of motor movement.
Meaning, a motor sequence isn’t much use if we can only do it when our hands are at a certain temperature, if we are wearing a t-shirt, our heart is beating at 68 bpm, and our instrument is angled just so. Repeatedly having to recreate an ever more precise motor sequence, when the circumstances are always slightly different will help us develop a more reliable motor solution even when the demands of the situation are slightly (or even wildly) different.
Here’s a cool tidbit from a book called The Coordination and Regulation of Movements (Bernstein, 1967): “The process of practice towards the achievement of new motor habits essentially consists in the gradual success of a search for optimal motor solutions to the appropriate problems. Because of this, practice, when properly undertaken does not consist in repeating the means of solution of a motor problem time after time, but in the process of solving this problem again and again by techniques which we changed and perfected from repetition to repetition.”
So long story short, I think you can come at the new etude from any number of different approaches. You could work on one etude for 5-10 minutes, go to your piece for 5-10, then to scales for 5-10. But sometimes you might need to puzzle over a shift, or a specific phrase for 20-30 minutes until you can figure out what is wrong with it, or what you want to do with it. So it kind of depends on what the goal of your time is as well.
But at the end of the day, so long as you keep your mind on its toes, and are constantly stretching yourself, you will be headed in the right direction.
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Hi Anastasia,
Good question, but to be honest, the whole left brain/right brain thing is kind of an oversimplification and often gets blown out of proportion. Some people are right-hemisphere dominant, others are left-hemisphere dominant, and it doesn’t necessarily have to do with handed-ness or the kind of thinker you may be. I would treat the right brain/left brain concept in lesson 1 as a metaphor, or a way of categorizing the kind of thinking that is more conducive to getting in the zone, and the kind of thinking that tends to get in our way. Hope that helps to clarify things a bit!
As far as left-handed athletes having an advantage, that has less to do with reaction time in left-handed athletes, and more to do with the fact that right-handed athletes face left-handed athletes much less often, so many things are different (in tennis, for instance, the spin of the ball on the serve), and so it takes them a split second longer to adjust, and they can’t anticipate what’s going to happen as effectively. If you’d like to read more on this, there’s a great bit on anticipation in baseball hitters in a book called The Sports Gene, where he talks about a (female) Olympic softball pitcher who was striking out all the top (male) MLB All-Stars, because they couldn’t rely on the normal cues they would normally use to pick up on what kind of pitch it was going to be early enough to make contact with the ball. Very cool story, and fascinating book.
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Hi Mark,
Ah yes, Psycho-Cybenetics is a classic.
I know this is somewhat a matter of semantics, but rather than thinking in terms of abolishing a negative self-image, or even spending much time hanging out there, it can be more helpful (and inspiring) to think in terms of whom we would love to grow into. Meaning, what would we love future us to be like? What is the grandest, most inspired version of ourselves we can imagine? What is the next evolution of ourselves as we continue to grow, develop, and change as a result of the choices we make and experiences we have on a daily basis?
Psychologists have found that even though we acknowledge how much we have changed in the past, we nevertheless underestimate how much we will change in the future. So when you think about how much you’ve changed in the last 5-10 years, consider how much more change you are capable of in the next 5-10 years. Pretty wild to think about how much is possible.
Hope this helps!
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Hi Mike,
Yes, it’s funny how differently we can respond in different performance domains. It’s as if our minds do some quick calculations of probability, and try to decide whether our resources/abilities will meet the perceived demands of the situation. If chances are good, then we don’t get too nervous. If the probability is lower, we get proportionately more anxious.I’ll bet though, that you are doing specific things or utilizing specific strategies in your professional life that enable you to present with confidence, which could also be applied to your guitar performances…
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You’re right – centering (or any pre-performance routine, for that matter) can seem pretty complicated and involved at first. Getting it down to a natural, organic routine you can do in 15 seconds without having to think about it takes some consistent practice.
With time, you’ll find it easier to combine steps – for instance, to breathe and release tension all at once, and to be able to release all the key muscle tension at once, rather than one muscle group at a time. And with even more time, you’ll just be able to get focused and get physically to that place where you know you need to be within a breath or two. Some take to it pretty quickly, and only need a couple weeks to feel like they have it down, and don’t have to think about the steps. It took me quite a bit longer to feel like I could get centered effectively in high-pressure situations. Part of it was that I didn’t practice centering every day, and it comes quicker if it’s something you do on a consistent basis.
To use a driving analogy, do you remember your first driving lessons? How there was a checklist of things you had to do when you sat in the car? Like buckling your seat belt, looking to make sure there was gas in the car, putting the key in, making sure your foot was on the brake before putting the car in gear, etc. At the time it seemed like a lot to keep in mind, but now, you don’t even think about any of that. You just do it. Centering is similar – keep at it, make it your own, as they say, and you’ll find it’s a pretty natural-feeling process once it’s more automatic.
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Hi Paul. I think that both is probably better than taking any one singular approach. As in, work out the difficult passages separately, both slowly and fast, but also find a way to work them into surrounding chunks as well (under tempo, at tempo, and over tempo too – even if the accuracy suffers a bit at first).
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Hi Anita, Indeed, some folks find that complete quiet, and even the lack of any audience feedback (such as when they are behind a screen), is the most distracting and disconcerting situation to perform in.
Knowing this about yourself, I would indeed encourage you to create some sort of uber-quiet and sterile environment in which to emulate a performance setting. See if you can kick it up a notch somehow. Where perhaps there is an audience, but you can’t see them or hear them as they are listening in another room, or they are behind you or something where you are cognizant of the ears and eyes, but can’t see them (if that is unnerving to you).
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A couple thoughts.
(1) I’ve known some very accomplished pianists with small hands, and it’s been my impression that they’ve been able to find ways to make do even in passages or repertoire that would be much easier with larger hands. So some it might be finding ways to be more creative and get away with more despite the seeming limitations?
(2) It sounds like you haven’t yet gotten things up to tempo, and achieved a comfort level with the repertoire where you have some margin for error. So it actually makes perfect sense that things would fall apart quite a bit when you are pushed even slightly beyond your comfort zone. You might experiment with prioritizing speed before accuracy on occasion – just on occasion. You may find that in order to play it at a faster tempo, the technique has to change quite a bit. Meaning, at 60bpm you are able to play it one way, but at 70bpm, you need to find a new tweak or radically adjustment of your technique in order for it to work. So if your technique is going to have to change at 70, it may not be as helpful to practice the 60bpm technique when you’re going to have to learn the 70bpm technique eventually.
Let me know how things go in the next couple weeks.
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Absolutely, yes.
Even a week before, it’s good to get used to doing mock auditions at the time of your audition – and at other possible times as well, assuming you advance and might have to do two in a day. Get used to eating the same things and going through the same morning ritual that you will have on audition day as well, but also be sure to practice auditioning in enough adverse circumstances that no matter what happens on audition day, it won’t throw you too much. Too cold? Too hot? Cold and hot? Have to go to the bathroom? Crazy tired? Shoes too tight?
The whole idea is that you don’t want to be distracted by new and different things. If you’ve gotten comfortable auditioning at 8am, 11pm, and 4am, with a metronome at a different tempo and a fan blowing air at your music, no matter what craziness ensues, it’ll be no big deal and you won’t pay it much mind. You’ll be able to focus on the things that do matter, and prevent yourself from wasting energy getting all worked up and stressing about the unexpectedness or unfairness about a situation you can’t do much to change anyhow.
Incidentally, Power Sleep (James Maas) is a good book to read about the importance of sleep and its relation to peak performance. Make sure you get enough of it in the weeks leading up to your audition so that a bad night of sleep or two won’t affect your energy reserves (and consequently, your ability to focus) too badly. Here’s an article that gets at this a bit: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/12/sleep-your-way-to-the-top-how-sleep-equals-success.html
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With 2 days to go, there are a couple things I’d recommend.
1. Centering “lite”
The most important parts of centering at this stage of the game are to
be able to hear exactly what you want the opening to sound like in your head (listen as hard as you can to that – pay no mind to other thoughts that might try to pry their way into your thoughts)
take a couple easy belly breaths, feel the tension in your key muscles just relax out with each exhale
recall what it feels like when you are playing effortlessly, completely trusting your body to do what it’s already been programmed to do
and then go for itPractice going through these steps away from your instrument, then with your instrument. The order isn’t so important, just make sure you can hear what you want, and release tension, and trust yourself. Practice the opening 2-3 lines of each piece 5-7 times with this centering routine with a recording device handy. You can listen back later and see how you did. It may sound great from the get-go, or maybe not, but by the 7th repetition or so, it’ll likely be more consistent and feel different – like you’re more focused somehow.
2. Non-judgmental playing
Practice playing through sections of your repertoire where you are not allowed to analyze, criticize, or micromanage any of the details. What should you think about instead?
Just sing in your head. Hear exactly what you want to hear coming out of your harp, and trust that if you let go, your hands and arms will produce this for you.
This sounds goofy, but has helped for a lot of folks: Imagine you are performing for an audience of deaf psychics. Meaning, they can’t hear a sound coming out of your harp, but can hear everything going on in your head. So if you’re talking to yourself, analyzing things, worrying about an upcoming section, this is what they “hear”. If, on the other hand, you imagine exactly what you want to sound like in your head, and keep that going, this is what they hear instead.
3. Get your sleep
Drink fluids, eat sensibly, get some fresh air, don’t practice too much, and get enough rest. All things we know, but it does make a difference.
Let me know how it goes – good luck!
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Hi Peter,
Sounds like good progress with the centering! Interesting question about the mistakes. Can you tell me a bit more about the mind going blank part? Did this happen before the mistakes? Do you remember what was going through your mind before mistakes happened? I wonder if these were times during which you “spaced out” or weren’t as focused on what you were doing. Often, we aren’t quite sure what to focus on when we’re playing. We know that thinking about worst case scenarios or micromanaging our technique isn’t helpful, but it’s not so clear what ought to be going through our minds during performances.
I’d practice listening to yourself and your bandmates more intently. For instance, if you were to stop whatever you are doing now, and sit quietly for a few minutes, listening to all that is going on around you, you’ll quickly realize how much there is to hear – and how unaware you were of it until this moment. That level of listening, or focusing on the present moment, is key to ensuring that our brain knows what it’s supposed to do at each moment in time. Much like we are more likely to make a shot in basketball if we see the basket (than if we are shooting blind), our brain is more likely to rise to the occasion for us if we remain focused on our target – i.e. the exact sounds we wish to produce.
Centering will help, but work through the exercises in the focus lesson as well. And when that has become easier for you, it might be good to work through the resilience lesson as well, which will teach you how to get back on track quickly when the inevitable glitch does happen.
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Hi there! Indeed, the mental, emotional, and physical do tend to be tied together. For instance, once you notice the shaking (or suspect that shaking could start), your thoughts have been hijacked and it becomes difficult to stay focused on the task at hand. And once that happens, it’s easy to start worrying about what’s going to happen next because your body doesn’t feel under control. Which makes you tend to tense up even more, and when you try harder to control the shaking, it increases tension further and makes things worse. So very quickly our thoughts, emotions, and physical reactions all get away from us, and lead to a downward spiral.
Keep in mind too that a big part of gaining more control physically, is becoming more comfortable and capable of performing when you are not calm and relaxed. You’ll learn more about that through Centering and the focus lesson. The idea is to learn how to use the extra energy that comes with being on stage, rather than relying on being calm in order to play your best.
I’d have to look at your PSI to know more, but I’d bet that if you strengthened your ability to control the mental and emotional response even as you are feeling physically uncomfortable, learn to “ride the wave” as it were, and practice this via simulation and adversity training, the physical response will ease up and become less and less of an issue.
