Super interesting! I feel like I could play most of my music with my eyes closed. It does help me to stay engaged with the music and keep me from being distracted. I’m still working on gauging the right balance between this, glancing because of a difficult change, and looking at the audience to keep a connection.

@herve-amiot And this is a bit of an oversimplification perhaps, and an attempt to apply something from outside music to music, but conceptually, it makes sense to me that there are moments when playing with eyes closed could help (especially if playing from memory):

https://bulletproofmusician.com/do-musicians-perform-better-with-eyes-open-or-ckosed/

I’m sure Molly will be able to weigh in on the more neuro-related aspects of your previous question. 😁

Hi Noa 😃 Thanks for replying!

You know what, that actually was my first theory about it! That, maybe, there was too much information in the higher end of the spectrum, it would bother me and, as a result, make me stray from the path. But it kind of echoes to what Molly was saying about overstimulation as well…

I have heard about that movie but haven’t watched it yet. Now that you mention it, I will most definitely do 🙏

By the way, would you happen to know if that overstimulation thing is only from an auditory perspective or is it the sum of all of our senses? Because the most succesfull concert I have played (and there are not many), I played them with my eye shut almost all the way through. Same thing when I practice, I can see that closing my eyes makes me perform better, I just had a try. So far, I thought that was because when I watch my hands, sooner or later I’ll eventually start second-guess myself. But maybe it’s just that closing my eyes allow me to reduce stimuli… Do you have an opinion on that?

Also, I suffer from tinnitus, that I can mostly ignore due to being used to them now, but in certain situation, I can also experience hyperacusis on certain frequencies. I’m wondering how this could potentially have an impact on overstimulation, even though I don’t consciously feel bothered when I play…

@herve-amiot Interesting observation. Have you tried recording yourself to see how much of a difference you notice in the recorded version of your playing when you have headphones on vs when you don’t?

My initial thought was to wonder if you’re naturally less self-critical and self-evaluative when playing with headphones on, because when you can’t hear as much of the nuances and details that we otherwise tend to obsess about, maybe it’s easier to let go of that? I wouldn’t be surprised if you were more naturally focused on bigger-picture things, like phrasing, as opposed to the pesky tiny details of sound production, etc. that we can easily over focus on, and which can lead to a tendency to try to overcontrol.

I’m assuming you’ve seen the movie The King’s Speech? If not, I think you’d enjoy it, as it applies this idea to stuttering.

Hi Molly! I was like, “Molly Gebrian… why does that name ring a bell?!” Of course you are THE Molly Gebrian “from Youtube” 😃 I watched your videos last year after taking the summer course with Noa. You all triggered a serious interest in understanding more about neuroplasticity applied to skill acquisition. I’m currently reading a book you may have heard of: “Anyone can play music” by Josh Turknett who used to be a neurologist/neuroplastician. All that stuff is soooo darn cool! Anyway, thank you so much for your super helpful videos, you’re great!

Now, about your experience… It’s actually super interesting and it really makes me wonder… Altough I don’t think I’m neurodivergent, I can relate to what you’re saying, about being overstimuled. For example, when I perform, I use a PA or at least an amplifier. Which I never do at home. I came to the conclusion that listening to myself louder might disturb me by making me feel more self-aware. Therefore I started practicing…

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Hi Hervé! I’m not aware of any research on this, but I have experienced the same thing myself and have seen the same result in many of my students. I am a violist, just for more context. I especially find this to be the case with neurodivergent musicians (especially those who are autistic and/or ADHD) and I’m convinced that it has something to do with sensory overstimulation when playing without earplugs. Even if the musician isn’t feeling overstimulated, cutting down on the auditory information coming in seems to be really helpful. That’s my theory, anyway! 🙂

-Molly

Hi everyone! Alright, this one is gonna sound random, but there’s something I’ve been noticing for a few years now. Some time ago, I would sit in my studio, because I needed to record new material (that was meant to go public at some point, so always triggering some nerves). I would put on my headphones, do the setup etc. But sometimes I would get the feedback of the mics through my headphones, sometimes I would have none (like before I’m finished setting up everything but would start playing anyway, because my mind has seen a butterfly!). I always felt that I was playing my best when I had the headphones on with no feedback, therefore listening to a muffled and quieter sound out of my guitar…

Today, as I was practicing my performance skills (trying to focus on anticipatory auditory, trying my pre-shot routine, etc.), I was not 100% happy with what was coming out from my instrument. I could feel the pressure, my playing would be tense and quirky at times, my mind…

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@grace-ueng Yes – interleaved would be rotating between different passages in the three pieces multiple times in the same practice sessions. Where you’re practicing getting things right the first time, essentially, instead of getting better at making adjustments and getting a passage “right” on the 2nd or 3rd try. Just like how you would study vocabulary words with flashcards, cycling through the deck multiple times, testing yourself.

And variable practice would be practicing selected passages/pieces with more variation from one repetition to the next. Like, playing it louder, softer, faster, slower, phrased this way, phrased that way, bringing out this character or that character, etc. Instead of trying to play it the exact same way every single time.

Hi Noa, so for the 3 pieces I talked to the Office Hours group today about, I think the interleave practice means mixing up the 3 pieces? And the variable is practicing various parts of each piece vs repetition and alway doing complete run throughs (other than the morning run through)?

@sandra-lacroix It’s in the Module on Getting Into the Zone – https://members.bulletproofmusician.com/courses/beyond-practicing/modules/lesson-2-attention-control-strategies/lesson/2-1-anticipatory-auditory-imagery-pc15/

Please help me find a reference to “singing brain”. Is it in now of the lessons in Beyond Practice course? Thanks for any help!

Sandra LaCroix

I just wanted to say thank you for this discussion. I can relate to so much you both are saying! Thank you also for the book recommendation!
I am curious about something – does it matter whether you learn the piece first through sheet music and learn it by heart later or if you learn it through hearing from the start and then maybe write it out later, as a memorization tool?
I wonder if there is some research on that.
I am currently trying to hit my “weaker” channel, just to see what happens. ANd I always found it useful to draw a map of the piece with little milestones, just to have a way to wander through the piece in my mind as I go…

I am having the same problem that hasn’t gotten any better. For several months, I worked on completely letting go physically and mentally. But my body immediately tried to control the bow, but I am not sure if it is trying to control or just simply to balance the bow so that I don’t drop the bow. I have been focusing on that matter so much to the point that my tone is not that great any more when I play long tones in softer than mezzo piano dynamic while the issue persists. If anyone who has had some success on this matter, I’d love to hear the experience.

Thanks for your reply, Noa – and for reminding me that the “Pulse” can be a tricky one.

Hi Helen,

The pulse strategy can be a tricky one for younger students, though it really depends on where they are in their development and how much of this sort of thing they’ve already done for other musical reasons.

The audiation strategy though often comes much more naturally to folks, and those at the 14-19 range will often be able to implement this in their practice and performance. Especially if they already have some familiarity with mental practice and visualization. This could even be a good place to start, as this can have some benefits too, of course!

Hi Noa and everyone,

Thanks for a very interesting course!

I have a question, since I also teach piano. What would be your best advice for helping music students aged 14–19 get into the Zone?

”Singing brain” and the rhythm-based attention control strategie: ”Pulse” are two of my favourites, as a teacher. What do you think about using these approaches with that age group (considering they are at different levels)? Other suggestions?

Thank you😊

Thank you! 😊

🤗

Thank you – it’s due to the support of people like you!

You are definitely very hard on yourself, Pat❣️ You are making great progress from week to week❣️ I am glad that you are finding ways to work with your recordings in a less stressful way❣️

After starting into The Confident Mind in this month’s book club, I made a pact with myself to play in at least one Performance Lab weekly. Not an easy task for me based on my high level of performance anxiety.

But I dug right in and found pleasant, supportive and very understanding people, all of whom are working with some sort of difficulty themselves. What I’m learning to do is work with, in spite of, the anxiety, as is suggested in ACT for Musicians.

After each performance, I feel like a total failure, as if nothing went right. Later, listening to the recording, I find that’s not really true. Then, I heard a great suggestion from Jason Shafer in Noa’s interview (https://bulletproofmusician.com/jason-shafer-on-healthier-practicing-strengths-based-performing/).

Jason asks his students to record themselves, then when listening, write down comments, half of which must be about something that went right. After testing this on my latest “failed” performance, I found a…

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Hi Elisa,

Good question. So, the order of the strategies and the weekly structure is really just so that you can get a taste of each strategy and see how it works for you. So you don’t have to go through it linearly. It’d be nice if there were a single practice formula you could just plug and play, but it’s very difficult to come up with a practice “formula” because our practice goals and needs are always changing from day to day, week to week, for each piece, and depending on what our learning priorities and performance timeline look like.

But long story short, the idea is that deliberate practice is something you would do most of the time with most repertoire, whether it’s new or old. That’s just what effective practice looks like at every stage of learning.

Interleaved practice is just a practice organization or scheduling strategy, not a learning strategy, in the sense that in each interleaved practice segment, you’d still be doing deliberate practice within each…

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Hello, Noa!

I’m new to the Beyond Practice course. I decided to join your course after having memory lapses on stage and having my confidence shaken. I’m studying the first module about practice, and a question popped up in my head: so these techniques are meant for pieces I already know? If so, I choose the tricky passages and work the techniques from ‘practice that sticks” in order or mixed up?

If not, if I am learning a piece from scratch you suggest I follow the order from the course (1st week: deliberate practice, 2nd week: retrieval practice, etc…) or mixed up?

I’ve always liked to practice in blocks, probably because I have a hard time to do the same activity for too long, so I’d like to know your suggestion about my question above so I can adjust my practice routine.

Thank you very much 🙂

According to an Italian bassoonist I know, Fixed Do is preferred in Europe, or was at the time he told me that about 15 years ago.

I think I have a different understanding of moveable Do. I was taught (in the US college system in the 70’s/80’s) that Do is always the tonic of the key, which makes it quite confusing after a certain time period since modern music often did not center around a key as much and/or determining the key and key changes can be more difficult. Also, in the Romantic period, keys began to change more frequently and transiently than in previous eras, so what do you do there? Needless to say, I struggled a lot in my ear training classes because of this. When I found out that fixed Do was more common in Europe, I immediately changed and I do change the syllables for sharps and flats with it which I prefer much much more. Maybe I am not understand something about your description of moveable Do or things are just described differently in different countries.

I can do both fixed and moveable do and i can even create my own random system to march the piecei am singing. For my students on the autism spectrum i stay far away from any system with numbers.

Usually fixed means you sing the fixed note (absolute pitch, if the pitch is G you’ll say Sol etc…). Usually the term moveable Do or Kodaly system is used when you say that the tonic is C for any key. It’s a very common thing to do and if you look at music history, for a long time your tonic was a relative concept not an absolute pitch based system.
Moveable Do can be very useful to undestand and hear a melody. If you are interested here is a link for Kodaly concept :
https://www.oake.org/the-kodaly-concept/
It’s quite a cool concept since it also uses the hand gesture to follow the sound (very useful to center your voice, and undestand the connection between your voice and ear).
Theorist like Erno Lendvai also uses this concept to analyse music. By analysing everything in “C” you get to directly understand the mechanics of a piece.

The link doesn’t talk about flats and sharps. You add “i” if it’s sharp :

(D#) DI (F#) FI (G#) Si (A#) Li

You add “e” for flats, except for…

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I appreciate the insight you gave on movable versus fixed. Thank you very much for this information. Very helpful

I was interested in the answer to this question as well. I learned fixed do in my college years, following the European and Asian (yes, Asian countries like Korea use fixed do) way of solfege. However, when I entered my teaching job, I needed to teach movable do so I became pretty proficient at it and movable do is very common in US schools. I do love understanding and hearing the tonal relationship between notes in a key/scale and for theory, moveable do is great.

The problem with moveable do comes in the practical use of solfeging real music which modulates so frequently. This is why I think Europeans stuck with fixed do – it’s just way more practical and way more musical than singing letters of an alphabet. Our new theory person, who is also a jazz person, only uses numbers (within a scale, similar to moveable do). While it may be good for theory, jazz and practical for 20-21st century music, it’s not very musical sounding. I think that’s why choirs gravitate more…

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Hi! I am trying to find self-teaching resources for beginning solfège with fixed Do…. I found this thread when I tried to start a new topic in discussions…. and I had to choose someone to whom I might direct my query…. is this something you might be able to help with, or to point me to someone else who might help? Internet searches have not yielded much that worked for me… thanks! Beth Lyon

Hi Albert!

It is uncomfortable the first several times! Once I determined one specific thing that needed the most improvement, that is the only thing I worked on and recorded. Perhaps pick something that is a little bit more challenging? A tricky bowing, counting, shifting positions?

You’re correct, it does make you identify some specific thing you feel you need to improve upon and then, identify and record the improvement. Seeing your own improvement in writing is great for motivation and confidence. Keeping the log helps to focus on step by step, specific improvements; small improvements as well as big improvements. Keeping a music practice log was a game changer for me. Keeping a log is a good way to improve a goal from exercise to almost anything! For me, keeping a music log (worksheet) has proven to help me reach my goals.

The worksheet Noa provides is a template. Try creating your own personalized practice log. As Noa says, trust the process!

One…

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Hi Albert – I’m not sure if you’ve gotten to this part of the module yet, but I wonder if it will help to differentiate a bit between practicing and performing?

As in, the idea is to run or “perform” some portion of the music that you’re working on as if it were a performance (even if it’s not anywhere close to performance-ready), to naturally expose the bits that are most in need of work. The goal in these run-throughs is not to look for problems while you’re playing, but to practice performing (this will make more sense in the focus module), and allow the problem passages to expose themselves. And then you can use the deliberate practice process to figure out why it’s not sounding the way you want, and find a solution to that problem.

As things become increasingly polished, you’ll continue to do the same thing, but with increasing use of recordings, so that you can identify more subtle details, but also so that you don’t have to spend so much of your mental bandwidth…

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Not sure if I’m over thinking this, but it feels like the deliberate practice worksheet serves the purpose of getting you in the habit of diagnosing and problem solving. Right now it is difficult to make any solid improvement right now because I’m only doing that and not really going for repetition.

It also feels uncomfortable doing this because I feel like I’m playing a passage for the purpose of looking for some kind of problem that needs to be fixed