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Awareness Cures

8/25/2020

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Awareness Cures. 


There are different levels of awareness. We can be aware of the overall quality (or lack of it) of something without being aware of the detail that makes it so. It’s the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is taking in the whole, the gestalt; listening is focusing on the detail. The one is getting an overview; the other is making fine distinctions. The one seems passive; the other is active.

When asked about the intonation of a scale they have just played, students are usually aware of less than perfect intonation (they “heard”), but often they have missed the details - of which notes exactly were out of tune and how specifically. They weren’t really “listening”. As soon as they are asked to identify specifics, they start to really listen to the intonation, note by note, and become aware of where and how specifically they play out of tune (is it sharp or flat, and by how much?). Such focused, zoomed-in awareness usually affects a rapid cure.

Dorothy DeLay used to complain that many players don’t listen intently enough. They vaguely hear what is going on in their own playing, but they only intermittently listen to the detail. Or they might listen to the detail of some facets of their playing, but not to others. So for example, they might play with good intonation, but with one-dimensional sound, or with vibrato too randomly controlled. The ability to really zoom in with focused listening on the detail of all facets of their playing is what separates the masters from the rest.

In a discussion with students at the Aspen Music School and Festival, Itzhak Perlman said that he thought the greatest challenge for a performer is to really listen to themselves. Indeed, to really listen with attention that is both objective and focused on the moment to moment detail is not easy. It takes discipline and practice. 

Simple failure to listen intently is one part of the problem. The solution is to understand the difference between different levels of awareness - between hearing and listening - and to develop the skill and discipline of focused listening. 

The power of questions
For focusing one’s listening it helps to ask yourself about specifics. When you hear yourself playing out of tune, ask which notes, specifically, are out of tune? Then play it again with laser-sharp focus of attention to find out. Awareness of the details is essential for fixing it. In fact, very often problems seem to disappear by themselves when our awareness is sufficiently sharp. Another example: which notes, specifically, have no vibrato, or need a different kind? Truly listen this time, attentively, so that you can gather the required information for making a change.

Another part of the problem is the limits of our awareness at any given moment. Since our attention is limited, it is impossible to be aware of all the relevant details, and very difficult to be truly objective. 

That is why we need tools for supplementing our awareness and changing our perspective. Not only students have such a need, but professionals also do. We have two resources: other people and technology. Your teachers, other professionals, your peers and friends can provide much useful feedback. They can help you become aware of details you missed, and give an objective impression that eluded you. So can your cell phone and other recording devices. To hear and see yourself objectively can be extremely sobering and enlightening. It is surprising how keen our judgment can be when we have a different perspective. Few experiences can be so instantly effective. Make use of it. Play for other people and record yourself regularly. It will expand your awareness and enhance your objectivity immensely.

Awareness does indeed cure. By not simply hearing, but listening actively to the detail, moment to moment; by asking ourselves questions to elicit specifics and make distinctions; and by making regular use of the feedback provided by others and by technology, we can significantly improve our playing. 
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Dancing With Your Instrument

8/18/2020

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A fundamental idea in behavior sciences is that rapport is a pre­requisite for effective communication. 

Rapport is in essence a two step process:
1.       Gathering optimum sensory information about your com­munication partner (what does s/he look like, sound like, feel like? How is s/he communicating verbally and non-ver­bally?)
2.       Mirroring the essential process elements (the how), as distinct from the content (the what), back to your partner so s/he can experience a sense of familiarity which allows for a feeling of ease.

Thus, by speaking the other person’s process language, verbally and non-verbally, a base of mutual understand­ing is established, allowing people to communicate “in step”, as it were. This is known as rapport and greatly facilitates the understanding of the content of communication. Sensory information about the total spectrum of a person’s communication patterns provides a framework for understand­ing the content of his/her message.

All the myriad details of a person’s non-verbal patterns (voice-tone, inflection, tempo and rhythm of speech, body-posture, hand- and facial gestures, etc.) constitute the context within which the verbal content of his/her communication finds its meaning.

By becoming aware of a person’s communication patterns and then reflecting it back, or getting “in step” with it, as in a purposeful dance, an efficient process is established for effective communication, with the partners alter­nately “leading” or “following” in the “dance”, as the case may be.

Comprehensive information gathering is thus the essential first step without which the rest of the process is unlikely to succeed.

Similarly, playing a musical instrument can be thought of as a partnership between the player and his/her instrument. The instrument can be regarded as a collection of information about possibilities of sound, while the player can be thought of as the agent for realizing those possibilities, offering his/her own set of information. 

Now, it must be stressed that there is no abso­lute dividing line between the information presented by the in­strument and that of the player. This is illustrated by the fact that different players can each elicit their own distinct kind of sound from the same instrument.

It is, as in all effective communication, a “dance” between two partners bringing together two sets of information for a common purpose, which is to make glorious music. In effect, the player and his/her instrument “dance” (perform) together to the tune of the music being played.

For the dance between player and instrument to be most effective, the first step of the process is the establishment of rapport. The player must gather comprehensive information about the instrument and its responses to the player’s actions. Sensory awareness is paramount: what does it sound like, look like, and feel like? 

The next step is to reflect back, or respond in kind, which is to say that the player has to understand and accept the possibilities offered by this particular instrument, respect­ing its individuality and its limitations, and then engage in a partnership, a dance, in which the best is evoked from both. With sufficient rapport, the player’s own individual sound conception meshes with the instrument, giving rise to results that may be more than the sum of the parts.

Ignoring this process and forcing one’s idea of sound on the instrument without being exquisitely aware of its unique character and possibilities is too much like rape. Sound becomes forced and harsh, muscles become stiff and bruised, and the love of music is forgotten or lost.

Playing a musical instrument -- playing your particular personal musical instrument -- should be a dance of love, a mutual performance, animated by gorgeous music.
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Multi-tasking

8/17/2020

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We can actually do multi-tasking when we practice! By multi-tasking I mean we can develop more than one skill at a time.

For example, while working on a left-hand issue, we can simultaneously develop our control at different parts of the bow, as well as of different bow strokes. Each time we repeat a passage, we can do it at a different part of the bow (middle, tip, frog, or any place in-between); and at a different sounding point; and we can do it with different bow strokes (detaché, spiccato, martelé, etc.). 

That way, for the same time spent, we have multiple gains: we get repetitions of left hand actions, as well as practice of different bow stroke skills. 

Practicing this way actually has multiple advantages:

  1. It keeps the mind interested (variety is the spice of life)
  2. Several skills are developed in the same time spent
  3. Repetition value for the left hand is retained
  4. A repertoire of execution possibilities is assembled to choose from for eventual performance
  5. Flexibility is increased
  6. Self 1 is “distracted” from interfering with the smooth actions of Self 2 
  7. Independence of the two hands is enhanced

Now that is a bargain, is it not?!

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Surgical Precision

8/17/2020

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We have to practice with surgical precision. This is necessary to save time and to solve problems properly. When we practice in a sloppy manner - letting problems slip by; postponing the necessary work to fix them; working on chunks that are too large and include material that  doesn’t need particular focus - we waste time, and often solidify mistakes, making it more difficult to fix them later.


Surgical precision is done by immediately zooming in on trouble spots, not wasting time on passages that we can play properly. Once we have identified and zoomed in on a problematic spot, we should memorize it right away so that we can pay full attention to our interaction with our instrument without the distraction of having to read the score. 

The next step is to lower the tempo and intensity of sensory stimuli so that we can make finer distinctions. If we play too fast, loud and tense, things become blurry, preventing us from the quality feedback required for refining how we play. To clean up sloppy playing, we need to slow down, play softer and rid ourselves of excess tension. 

Then we should engineer a solution (or solutions) by:
  • Having a clear idea of the outcome we want (what it would sound like, look like, and feel like)
  • Noticing what prevents us from achieving it (what kind of problem is it: fingering? Shifting? Intonation? Sound? Tempo? Coordination? Way of thinking? etc.)
  • Figuring out how to solve it
  • Experimenting with different potential solutions till we find what works best
  • Repeating the solution sufficiently to become an automatic skill
  • Reintegrating it into the larger musical context to test for efficacy there
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Expressive Musical Performance

8/13/2020

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Of course, musical performance entails much more than our theories of it allow.. Complex skills do involve more than we can say in words. As the great Martha Graham said, “if I could say it, I wouldn’t have to dance it.”

But that doesn’t mean we can’t make explicit some key elements of great performance. Even though our descriptions are necessarily incomplete, and fall short of what can only be fully gained through exposure and experience, we can learn a lot by reverse engineering, as it were, what masterful musical performers do.

Let’s start with a basic question: What distinguishes superior musical performance? What are the most striking differences between masterful and mediocre musical performance?

It seems to me that the most important differences can be sorted into three fundamental categories: differences, kinetics, and shape.

Great performers make more differences than lesser performers. If one could tally the number of differences made, you would find that master performers do so much more than lesser performers. These are differences of many kinds: dynamics, articulation, voicing, timbre, tempo-rubato, rhythmic flexibility, timing, etc.

Great performers also have a much more active sense of kinetics (movement or momentum). They know how to manage, or present, the energy curves of the music, by speeding up and slowing down in proportion to the inherent harmonic and other tensions and resolutions.

In addition, compared to less accomplished performers, great performers “shape” the music in ways more curvy than square, and congruent with the ebb and flow of tensions and resolutions in the music.

Proportion

To achieve this, they present the different elements in just the right proportions. In fact, the essence of musically satisfying performance is proportion. If the different elements are presented in the right proportions, the result is aesthetically convincing. If the proportions are inappropriate, the result is not satisfactory. What are those elements?

To play expressively, performers apply various proportions and gradations of
  • loud and soft
  • fast and slow 
  • foreground and background
  • articulation
  • timbre
  • Punctuation
  • expressive devices (like vibrato and portamenti)
Applying the appropriate proportions of these elements allows the performer to create the desired differences, sense of kinetics and shape required by each piece. 

Differences

A law of information has it that information is news of difference. Blandness is absence of information. A blank sheet of paper contains no information. As soon as coherent differences are added– elements that contrast with each other and with the background - a message or a picture starts to emerge. 

Likewise, noise that is too uniform is called white noise, because like a white sheet of paper, it carries no information. Introduce differences in the form of pitches, articulations, rhythms, loudness, and voila!, speech or music becomes discernible. 

It’s the difference that makes the difference. Differences carry information. For example, it’s the difference between one’s and zero’s and their sequential arrangements that allow computers to be such effective processors of information.

In musical performance too, it is the differences that make the difference.
Due to the greater number of differences in superior musical performance compared to lesser performance, more information is communicated. 
Such differences enhance definition. The musical elements are presented in sharper relief, more clearly etched out, delineated. 

A key factor in how convincing a musical performance is, is the extent to which all channels of communication carry the same information or message. In a word: congruence. Is the phrasing congruent with the character of the music? Does the visual appearance of the performance match the character of what is heard? 
If there is incongruence – if incompatible information is communicated, the audience is not convinced. They may not know exactly why, but will unconsciously pick up any mismatch in what is communicated, and will experience indifference or even unease.

It could very well be that the spell-binding, mesmerizing, entrancing, or riveting (note the words associated with the phenomenon of trance) quality of exceptional performances result from the “hypnotic” power of congruence. 

When the totality of people’s attention is occupied with congruent information, i.e. information that carries the same or closely related meaning, they tend to go into trance. When people are “entranced” during a “spell-binding” concert performance, they exhibit the typical signs of trance: enhanced facial symmetry, defocused eyes, slower breathing, softer muscle tonus, and a narrowing of attention to the exclusion of other stimuli, etc. And as we’ve already noted, the words they use to describe their experience have strong associations with trance.
Related to congruence is the idea of closure. Closure means that musical utterances, on all levels from small to large – from phrases to whole compositions – are concluded in ways that are congruent with the character of what was played. Principally, it has to do with timing and gesture at points of conclusion. For example, abruptness following the last notes of a piece can disturb the character, preventing the natural dissipation of the atmosphere. 

Proper closure could be described as providing sufficient psychological space for affective experience to run its natural course. Interrupting the natural flow of affective experience toward conclusion or dissipation has the undesirable effect of cancelling out, or neutralizing, much of what has been experienced until then. Masterful performers provide closure that is congruent with the character of the music played. It sets the seal on the musical message they communicated.

Kinetics

In addition to more differences, superior performance shows a keener sense of kinetics, of movement toward and away from musical high-points, like rubber bands that attach the performer to it, drawing him faster toward the goals, and slowing him down on the other side.

Beginners and lesser performers tend to play straight, square, rigid, stocky, mechanical. Uniformity and rigidity prevail, rather than variety and suppleness. 
Masterful performers know that mechanical is soulless. Instead, they convey a sense of movement that is organic.  They understand that if everything is equal – if all beats  are divided exactly equally,  if all rhythms are played absolutely straight, and if tempo remains metronomically static  - then nothing is special. 
And if nothing is special, then there is no anticipation of musical pay-offs, or climaxes, or high-points, no expectations that can be satisfied or denied, no organic curve of tension and resolution, nothing exciting in wait for the musical traveler.

As on a journey, in music there are destinations, high-points, resting places, diversions, detours, pit-stops. There are periods of urgency, requiring quicker forward motion, more momentum. These are alternated with periods of relaxation, where an ambling pace is more appropriate. Sometimes, the music rushes urgently toward a destination; at other times it relaxes to enjoy the scenery; and there are times when it comes to a complete standstill. 

Since music is an event unfolding in time, it is always going somewhere, at least in the traditional Western tonal harmonic system. It is in essence a system of tensions and resolutions that creates a sense of movement – a journey, if you will – away from and eventually back to “home base”.

That sense of movement characterizes not only whole compositions or movements of a composition (note the word, “move-ments”; and note also that we speak of being “moved” by music), but also smaller parts like melodies and phrases and sub-phrases. There also, subtle quickening of momentum towards high-points with relaxation thereafter enhances the affective power of the music. 
When conveyed by expert performers, movement is seldom mechanical, stocky or rigid (unless, of course, the music has deliberate mechanical character). Mechanical is cold and lifeless. Rather, musical movement is usually organic. It is fluid and supple. Music moves and breathes like an organism, in contrast to mechanically rattling on like a machine.  Like expressive speech, it is nuanced, not stiffly measured. It’s like dancing as opposed to marching. Seducing, not commanding. It is smoothed, rounded and poised, not clipped and clocked; curvy, not square.

Another insight of masterful performers that contributes to their sense of kinetics is that notes can often be more meaningfully grouped, musically speaking, than is apparent from notational conventions. Musical groupings can transcend bar-lines and beats. For example, it often makes more musical sense to consider the last note/s of groups that are notated according to beats, as belonging to the next group of notes notated as if they were a separate unit. Playing it that way contributes to the sense of forward motion, or momentum, so fundamental to a satisfying musical journey. 

The idea of up-beats and down-beats, notated on either sides of bar lines, but actually together forming indivisible units, comes from ancient Greek dance, where the arsis and thesis (up-beat and down-beat) are parts of one smooth movement, that of the leg going up in preparation of coming down for the next step. Lifting the leg is not a separate movement from putting the leg down – that would be disjointed movement. It is one flowing action. Arsis and thesis belong together, as if there is no bar-line separating them. 

So a crucial element in the process of shaping a performance to “move” people, is to have a sense of organic movement, of kinetics. That sense is enhanced by looking beyond bar-lines and beat-groupings, to find a more musically satisfying way of regarding notes as belonging together as units. It’s a question of not being imprisoned by the bar-lines and enslaved by metronomic beats, both of which are results of notation convention rather than intrinsic musical sense.

Shape

Another way to express the nuanced characteristic of masterful musical performance, is to describe it as the “shaping” of the music. This “shaping” essentially has to do with proportion: how much of each expressive factor is employed relative to others.

In fact, it could be argued that the essence of musical “shaping” is proportion. The most fundamental criterion for decisions about relative loudness, tempo, timing, articulation, timbre, etc., of any element in a composition is its relation to other elements and to the whole. Getting the proportions right is the main musical challenge.

That’s why structural analysis is the starting point. It is the process of identifying musical elements, or units, their character, and their relationship to the rest of the system. Yes, it can be called a “system”, because in a musical masterpiece, everything is somehow interrelated. 

The most basic “shape” in music is probably an arch, or a curve. Why? Presumably because we live in a “curvy” world. Think of the horizon, of the sun and moon, of the glide-path of any flying object, of the swing of a limb, of the uterus, of mommy’s breast, of the female form. We are a sexy species! Roundness, curves, arches are what turn us on and what sustain us. In music, as in life. 

Think of the tension curves of metabolic processes like hunger and sexual arousal. The curvy nature of life is reflected in music – both the parabolic shapes we see, as mentioned, and also the tension and resolution “curves” of our basic biological drives.

Musical utterances, on all levels from motifs to whole compositions, can thus be thought of as a series of arches, with each arch representing an increase followed by a resolution of tension. 

In the presentation of musical utterances, the laws of nature are followed, where opposites define each other and together form wholeness, like the concept of Yin-Yang in Chinese philosophy: Up-and-down, high-and-low, fast-and-slow, light-and-dark, heavy-and-light, etc. So in music, opposites tend to alternate and compliment one another in order to engender a sense of balance, of wholeness or completeness.
 
If the first phrase or a sub-phrase goes up in pitch, the following one tends to come down. If there are jumps in pitch, it tends to be followed by step-wise motion. A quickening in tempo is followed by a slowing down. Louder is followed by softer. Legato (connected) sounds are followed by staccato (disconnected) articulation. An increase in harmonic dissonance (tension) is followed by more consonance (resolution). Rhythmic complexity is followed by simplicity.
                  
What goes up must come down. I like to say that what you take away, you must give back. If you speed up, you must balance it out by going slower; if you play louder, you must become softer again; and so on. 

This can be accomplished through any of the musical elements, or any combination thereof: pitch, rhythm, tempo, volume, harmony, timbre, articulation. Often, this is a succession of opposites. Pitch rising, then lowering; louder followed by softer; faster balanced out by slower. What goes up, must come down. It’s about balance:  an increase followed by a decrease. 

While all notes are important, at least in master-pieces, not all should receive equal emphasis, or have equal weight. Some notes or harmonies (combinations of notes) are indeed more special than others. Not all destinations on a journey are equally significant; not all events in a drama are equally pivotal; not all elements of foreplay are equally titillating; not all parts of a building are equally impressive; and so on.

In musical events there is usually a whole spectrum of significance. There are the major pivotal points/moments, but often there are also lesser points of gravity, more or less regularly spaced. These are like telephone poles, or pillars, between which the other notes may flow less anchored.

Part of the performer’s task is to identify not only the major high-points, but the other more regular points of gravity, or anchors, or pillars, or telephone poles, between which the music is strung.

Motifs, phrases, themes, melodies, movements – these are names for musical utterances of various lengths, much like clauses, sentences, paragraphs and chapters in language. And like language, musical utterances have their own rhetorical devices and nuances. Notes can be emphasized, rhythms can be bent a little, silences can be lengthened or shortened somewhat  (or entrances can be anticipated or delayed), etc. – all to heighten the musical message. 

These factors are mutually supportive. For example, a rise in harmonic tension with an increase in loudness (crescendo) can be supported by a quickening in tempo, followed by a slowing down with the harmonic resolution – all in proportion of course, and within what Dorothy DeLay called, “the channel of style”. The scale of proportions depends mostly on the context and the overall style of the piece. For example, the scale of the differences admissible in Romantic music is generally much larger than that in Baroque music.

The striving for balance in musical performance can be thought of as having two dimensions, vertical and horizontal. The vertical dimension represents the expressive factors of loudness, timbre, articulation; the horizontal dimension represents movement, i.e. tempo and rhythm. The two categories, vertical and horizontal, should be in proportion. The scale of differences in one should be matched by those in the other.
 
The reader may have noticed the mix of metaphors. Musical richness translates uneasily and insufficiently into words, refusing to be reduced to single metaphors. Music can be variously thought of as:
  • a journey 
  • narration/communication (poetry, story, drama, dialogue) 
  • architecture 
  • art (painting, sculpture)
  • nature 
  • sex  
  • any combination of such metaphors. 


At one moment the music can be gaining momentum toward a specific destination or high-point, as in a journey; the next moment different musical voices can be engaged in a dialogue between different characters, as in a drama. Our awareness can be drawn to the elegant shape of a phrase, as in a drawing or painting or sculpture, or expand to admire the imposing overall structure of the piece, as in architecture. Then again, harmonic, rhythmic and dynamic tension can build towards glorious climaxes and resolutions, very much as in sex!  

These metaphors are discernible in our language: 
we speak of musical “movement”, of “where the music is going” (journey) 
of musical “drama”, of “voices” having a “dialogue”,  of musical “questions” and “answers”, of the “character” of a theme or melody or a movement, of “tone poems” (narration)
of the “shape” of a phrase, of the “structure” of a piece,  of making its “architecture” audible (architecture)
 of “male” and “female” “voices” and cadences,  and of “tensions”  building toward “climaxes” (sex)

The richness of the musical message performers communicate is informed (inform-ation) by the richness of the metaphors they use to engage with the music.

These fundamental ideas, gleaned from reverse engineering masterful musical performance, are encapsulated in the following questions, devised to help performers focus on the crucial elements for presenting music in “moving” ways.

1. What’s the structure of the piece? [identifying musical ideas] (What are the main themes, phrases? Where are the cadences? Transitions? Sequences? Patterns? Modulations?) 
2.What's the character (of a phrase, melody, section, movement, piece)?
3. Where is it going (where are the high-points and climaxes)?
4. How can opposites be highlighted and balanced?
5. How can notes be grouped musically (as opposed to notationally)?
6. How can momentum be used to support the other indicators of tensions and resolutions?

Many years ago, the violinist turned conductor, Alberto Bolet, taught me his four “C’s”:
Colour
Contour
Character
Contrast

Considering our investigation, we might add three more “C’s”:
Climax
Congruence
Closure

That gives us Seven “C’s” for representing the ideas offered here for masterful musical performance:
Contour, Character, Contrast, Colour, Climax, Congruence, Closure.

Proportion
In the final analysis, the art of musical performance lies in how the performer proportions the elements of music to achieve the desired measure of differences, kinetics and shape - or, if you like, the seven “C’s”. Proportion is the fundamental essence of satisfying musical performance. If the proportions are right, the music moves us. If not, we feel uneasy.

All of this is not to suggest that performers invariably go through such complicated conscious procedures with every composition they are preparing to perform. It's similar to the difference between having an impromptu conversation and preparing a complicated speech. Expert performers know the musical language, can speak it fluently, and sometimes, depending on the piece, they are simply having an impromptu musical conversation, intuitively following the musical rules of grammar and rhetoric. At other times they have to thoroughly plan for delivering a complicated musical "speech". And of course there is a whole spectrum in between. Their conscious cognitive engagement can vary considerably on that spectrum, depending on the challenges posed by a particular piece.

To summarize:  In order to entrance audiences with masterful musical performance, we need to consider the differences we make, the sense of kinetics we provide, and the ways we shape the musical material. 
To help us do that we can ask six fundamental questions about the music we are preparing to perform, and ponder the presence of seven key elements in how we perform it.

To conclude, there is good news, and there is bad news.
The good news is that we can learn much from masterful musical performance. There are indeed patterns and structure to what great performers do. This has been an attempt to verbalize some of it.

The bad news is that there is a lot that remains unsaid, and that can be acquired only through intense engagement with a particular composition over an extended period of time. For that there are no short-cuts. It is the musical, non-verbal  discourse between you, your instrument and the composition. Only by living with a piece, by engaging it with your instrument over a long period of time, can you begin to discover the depths of its inner workings and its meaning to you. 

Musical interpretation involves both objective and subjective processes. The objective processes involve the “science” of music: the theory, analyses, rules, practices, techniques and procedures of musicianship. The subjective processes are what transpire in your personal engagement with the music through your instrument. Both processes are essential.

In the final analysis, what you end up offering an audience, when all is said and done, is your personal experience of the music. The end product of all your objective and subjective preparation for performance is what the music means to you. You are in effect saying to the audience, “having studied this music objectively with all the tools available, and having lived with is through my instrument, this is what it means to me, and this is how much I value it.” Providing personal meaning and value is essential for truly engaging an audience. 

For the immense privilege of having an audience, we performers have the responsibility to do all the objective and subjective work required to provide a compelling experience of intense personal meaning and value. That is no mean task. It requires intense study and engagement. 

May the differences you make carry much musical information; may the kinetics you employ take listeners on an exciting musical journey; and may your musical shapes be truly elegant. In short, be musically articulate, mobile and sexy!
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Stage Fright: Advice From An Expert

8/9/2020

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In a master class long ago,  legendary pianist Krystian Zimerman gave the following advice for overcoming stage fright:

1. Be well prepared. Doubt about our preparation - even the slightest doubt - easily translates into nervousness. Eliminate any doubt about your preparation for performance by making sure that your practicing for performance has been more than adequate. Remember, as we practice so we perform.

2. Change your thinking about the audience to something positive. Realize that people spend time and money to share in your love of the music you are performing. They are present at your performance to share in something special. It is a privilege to share wonderful music. Give the music as a gift.                                                                                                                             

3. When you are practicing, imagine the performance situation as realistically as possible, so that you can learn to cope with whatever anxiety arises.  Weak spots will become obvious. Sort them out especially well when you practice. Similar to Zimerman, Itzhak Perlman related that as a teenager when practicing at home, he would pretend an upcoming performance situation so vividly, that he would actually experience the same nervousness, allowing him to learn to cope. He would enter the living room from the bathroom as if entering the stage from the green room, and then perform as if in the actual concert. In this way he practiced performing. Doing this allowed him to discover passages that needed extra preparation, as well as providing opportunities to get used to nervousness and learn to control it.
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Fantastic App For Learning To Play The Violin!!

7/20/2020

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Take note, folks, there is an app that completely and utterly overshadows all other teaching and learning apps. Nothing comes close. It has been tested and fine-tuned by the best violinists ever. And it's free. And you already have it.

It's your mind. It is the product of millions of years of evolution. It runs on the most complicated mechanism in the known universe. It’s hardware transforms along with its software. With every software update the hardware adapts to it. For all practical purposes it’s capacity seems unlimited. The more you use it the better it gets. It is a stupendous learning machine.

Could you expect anything that impressive from a cell phone app? Would you outsource what your mind can do to some cell phone app?

Sadly, outsourcing our minds has become addictive. We are hooked by the digital sugar designed by clever people to make as junkies, so that our mindless behaviour can make them money.

Sure, the idea of outsourcing some mental tasks in order to focus on more important things is not in itself a bad idea. But when we have become addicted to digital sugar our judgement is compromised. We lose track of the really important stuff.

We all know the spectacle of people sitting at dinner tables, unable to communicate with each other because they are glued to their cell phones for getting their continuous digital sugar fixes. Digital communication in a virtual world is no substitute for authentic interaction in the real world.

Similarly, learning apps for cell phones are no substitutes for using your own mind. Our biggest challenge is not to find the most useful cell phone app for organizing our learning, but to learn to manage our own incredible minds. By discovering and expanding the app inside our skulls while engaging with our bodies and our musical instruments in the real world, we learn vastly more, not only about playing the violin and making music, but about ourselves as living organisms who aspire to so much more than becoming digital junkies. To settle for anything less is to deprive ourselves and our fellow human beings of meaningful existence.

Don’t be a digital junkie. Don’t depend on digital apps to do what your mind can do infinitely better. Use the greatest learning app ever created. Use your mind to learn to play the violin.
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As We Practiced, So We Perform

7/14/2020

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As we practiced, so we perform. If we practice sloppily, mindlessly, without musical feeling, we will most likely perform that way. Think of it this way: your performance (any performance) is probably the average of how you practiced for it. If most of your practice time was spent repeating mistakes over and over, with intonation that is only approximate, with sloppy rhythm and less than concert-grade sound, at suboptimal tempi and with a lazy posture, you could expect to play exactly that way in performance! It would be totally unrealistic to expect otherwise.

Let me repeat, with full credit to Nathan Cole (wonderful player and teacher!), practice makes performance (see https://www.natesviolin.com/practice-makes-performance-training-1-3/) . We perform how we practiced. If perfection is only a minute part of how you practiced - if most of your practice time was spent doing it badly, then that is how you will play in performance. 


Watch James Ehnes talk about practicing: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6noasTa4eiY).
Strive for the highest possible quality in all aspects of playing while you are practicing, as you would on stage. Condition yourself to always do the best you can. Intonation, sound, phrasing - all should be as perfect as possible. 

Don’t let your guard down. Don’t let yourself get away with anything at all. No excuses. None. No “it's OK because I’m tired”, or “it is only a small thing, I’ll fix it later”. None of that should be acceptable. As any performance, your practice time should be spent using the full resources of your mind and body. Do not waste a single moment. Condition yourself to require the very best of yourself in all circumstances.


This habit of mind should include always playing with proper musical phrasing, and with character. Part of your habit of mind should be to always play as a musician with musical phrasing and feeling. Practice everything as if you are in front of an audience engaged in delivering your absolute best.

Never do mechanical, route playing, even when you are practicing scales, exercises and etudes. Music is nothing if not human, and so should be its components. It should never be merely mechanical and soulless. Often it is said of great performing artists that they can elevate even trite music with soulful playing. 

It is a habit of mind worth cultivating.
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Why Do I Practice So Much?

7/14/2020

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When people become aware that I practice the violin for several hours daily, they often ask questions like, “why do you practice so much?”, or “what are you practicing for?”.

Usually, I reply, “for my next concert/CD-recording”, while thinking, “for the future, of course - don’t you know that performing musicians, just like athletes, need regular and prolonged practice to keep in the best possible shape?!”. 

A better short answer might be, “to be fit for the demanding task of making music”.

Actually, when people suggest that I practice a lot, it should be pointed out that it’s relative. Compared to whom? Many world-class violinists practice more than I do. Like most performers I know, I wish I could consistently practice more, but then living any semblance of a balanced life would be a greater challenge still. 

For those who might want to know more, here is a more comprehensive explanation of what my practicing is all about. I practice with the following goals in mind:

Maintenance
First, and most fundamental, is maintenance: I practice the violin for an absolute minimum of three hours daily to stay in shape. If I do less than that for even just a few days in a row, I feel a definite deterioration of my skills. Usually, for at least an hour every day I focus on basics like scales and exercises for shifting, double stops, vibrato and sound production.

Honing of skills
However, maintenance is not sufficient. I also practice to hone my skills. There is always room for improvement. Again, just like athletes who strive to improve on their personal best performances, performing musicians continually practice to improve.

Short Term Performance Goals
Then, of course, there are short term performance goals for which I practice: the next concert or recording that may be only weeks or days ahead. Most of my daily practice is devoted to polishing the repertoire for those performances.

Medium Term Performance Goals
Then there is repertoire that needs to be ready in the medium term. Those performances might by several months or even a year away. Part of my daily practice involves the beginning stages of its preparation, especially if new repertoire needs to be learned.

Essential Repertoire
A fourth goal of my regular practice is learning and/or refining repertoire that I regard as essential for becoming a well-rounded violinist/musician, irrespective of whether or not I ever get to perform it in public. It is repertoire that I feel the need to learn for my own development and satisfaction. It forms part of my profile as a violinist.

Exploration
Lastly, I spend part of my regular practicing simply exploring the wide and wonderful world of music for my instrument. This is what keeps my fire burning, and what often leads to exciting discoveries of unusual, off the beaten path repertoire that deserves a much wider audience. My greatest satisfaction as a performer is when I can successfully share my excitement about new musical discoveries with an audience.

So, this is my comprehensive answer to why I still need to practice a lot every day: I do it to maintain and to hone my skills, to prepare for the next performance, as well as for performances in the medium term, to learn and polish essential repertoire, irrespective of performance opportunities, and to explore new and unusual music.


One last thought: what is plenty of practice to one person may be quite insufficient to another. Each performer does what he/she needs and is able to do.
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The Inner Game approach: turning wander into wonder

7/9/2020

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As I have mentioned previously, The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, was required reading in the class of my violin teacher, Dorothy DeLay. It still tops my reading list for learning how to learn and perform complex skills. The Inner Game is both a theory of learning and a collection of superbly effective tools. It is also an attractive philosophy of learning. It is applicable in many different contexts. 

Since the publication of The Inner Game of Tennis in 1974 several other books followed, applying the principles to other activities such as skiing, golf, music, work, etc. In my opinion the original tennis book is still the best, and should be read first, regardless of your field of interest. Actually, the one I found most helpful was the follow-up book, Inner Tennis: playing the game, which is out of print, strangely.

As the title of the book implies, when we are learning and performing we are not only engaged in an outer game. There is an inner game as well, which is the interaction of different parts of our minds, and how it affects the outer game. That inner game is crucial to our learning and performance in the outer game. How we manage our minds is the Inner Game. 

The essence of the Inner Game is the management of attention. Gallwey organizes his ideas about learning and performance into three main topics: Awareness, Trust & Will. We might think of it as Information, Confidence, and Motivation. The aims are to gather pure sensory information about playing actions and their results, undistorted by a cluttered mind (awareness); to have confidence in your learning potential (trust); and to have a purpose that sustains your motivation (will). 

A mind divided against itself

The Inner Game approach is summed up in the equation, PERFORMANCE = POTENTIAL - INTERFERENCE. We can maximize our performance by minimizing how we tend to interfere with ourselves. How do we interfere? With thoughts that distract from our awareness.

Since we all have a finite capacity for awareness at any given moment, the more attention you pay to something, the less is available for something else. It is crucial, therefore, to manage our attention properly - to have maximum attention focused on critical elements.

By engaging different parts of the mind in activities at which it naturally excels, in ways that are mutually supportive, self-interference can be drastically diminished, or even entirely eliminated, allowing for the ultimate state of performance excellence, called “flow”. This is when the mind and the activity merge into one single self-less experience. Athletes and performing artists often refer to this as playing “out of your mind”, or being “in the zone”.

Gallwey’s useful simplification is that we have two “parts” or “selves” involved in learning and performance: sensory and conceptual. The sensory part he calls Self 2. The conceptual part he calls Self 1 (because that part likes to take the credit for learning, thinking of itself egotistically as “number 1”).

Self 1, the conceptual part (or “ego” or “conscious mind”) can either support the learning and performance of Self 2 (the part that actually controls actions), or it can interfere. Very often it interferes. How? By doing conceptual things that distract from sensory awareness: by annexing a substantial part of your capacity for awareness, by over-control, by judging, by dredging up the past and imagining the future (catastrophizing), etc. 

This might be a helpful analogy: think of Self 2 as the driver of a vehicle, and of Self 1 as the back-seat driver. The back-seat driver can behave in helpful ways, or in distracting ways. By overwhelming the driver with instruction, or being overly critical, or raising the driver’s anxiety levels, or interfering with the driver’s critical awareness, or simply chattering too much about irrelevant stuff, the back-seat driver can seriously hamper good driving. Alternatively, by focusing the driver’s attention on essentials, and only when truly helpful, the back-seat driver can actually contribute to good driving. 

The challenge is to engage self 1 in ways that contribute to Self 2’s task, instead of disrupting it. When Self 1 is acting as a supportive back-seat driver, instead of as a disruptive one, Self 2 can learn much faster and perform much better.  It is set free to actualize its full potential. Gallwey calls it “letting go”: letting go of Self 1’s clumsy and self-defeating attempts to control the actions of Self 2. 

Trust (confidence)

Trust is a positive relationship that needs to develop between self 1 and Self 2. It is built on the realization that the incredibly complicated neural processing required for quick, accurate and subtle movements are beyond the capabilities of Self 1. The most effective role for Self 1 is that of setting goals and of focusing awareness. Not control and judgement, but awareness. 

Since Self 1's domain is conceptual thinking, it should have conceptual tasks that are helpful to Self 2. What could such tasks be?

Instead of disrupting awareness in the moment with judgments and attempts at control, Self 1 can be usefully engaged to focus awareness. This is done by giving it descriptive and measuring tasks. By having to describe and/or measure what is observed, awareness is sharply focused. To accurately describe to yourself whether a note is higher or lower, for example, or your bow is closer or further away from the bridge - and by how much - observation has to be pretty sharp. 

Accurately describing and/or measuring what is happening in the moment can only be done if observation is keen enough. Think of Self 1’s task as that of aiming the lens of awareness and then focusing it. 

Awareness cures.

One of Gallwey’s mantras is, “awareness cures”. When awareness in the moment is pure, feedback to the nervous system is optimal. The higher the quality of the sensory feedback, the more positive the feedback loop. Trust (confidence) follows.

When sensory awareness is diluted by conceptual chatter, feedback and adjustment are poor, resulting in a negative feedback loop: the worse the performance, the more Self 1 tries to control, the weaker the awareness, the worse the results.  

Dorothy DeLay used to say that one can only control what you can measure. Measurement is essentially the detection and quantification of differences (distinctions). In differences resides information. Information = news of difference.

Gallwey introduces many different exercises in the context of tennis for focusing awareness. What they have in common is description, measurement and comparison. 

Turning wander into wonder.

Immerse the mind in something “wonder-ful”, and it will not wander off to be a nuisance. 

Almost all the Inner Game exercises involve description or measurement of some kind. Self 1 seems to be fascinated by measuring things and making comparisons. It keeps the mind engaged, preventing it from wandering off to do things that interfere with performance. By having it notice and describe/measure differences it is kept in “wonder”. Left to its own devices, Self 1 is prone to wander off and engage in all manner of distracting and interfering activities. It tends to be a control freak, harsh judge and doomster, all in one. “There you go again! Same shot you missed last time! You are going to make a fool of yourself if you blow this game! Why do you always blow it when the chips are down?!”

Gallwey makes the critical point that when our limited capacity for attention at any given moment is filled with supportive mental activity, like focusing awareness on the most critical elements of the outer game, and making fine distinctions - noticing and measuring differences - there isn’t any mental space left open for distracting thoughts. In other words, when managed properly, the mind will not wander off to do unhelpful or disruptive things. Anxiety, for example, can only take hold when the mind is not sufficiently engaged with something else. 

The tipping point is saliency. Engage the mind with “wonder” or “fascination” more intensely meaningful than the content of “anxiety” and it will opt for the former. The highest rating on the saliency scale wins every time. (See my other posting about memory and saliency).

Motivation (will)

According to Gallwey, motivation results from having a clear overarching purpose for playing any game, whether it be tennis, the violin, or anything else. He distinguishes between many different kinds of games, each one with its own criteria for success, unique quality of experience, and motivational energy. 

One can choose to play the “status game”, or “exercise game”, or “style game”, or “social game”, or “competition game”, etc. He suggests that deliberately playing the “learning game”, is a win-win choice. It is a kind of meta-game, a game of games. Regardless of whether you win or lose the outer game at any one time, if your game is to learn how to learn, i.e. play the inner game, you gain self-knowledge and mental skills for developing your potential to the full. You can always “win” at the inner game, regardless of what happens in the outer game. 

I cannot recommend reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey strongly enough. I have reread it several times since its original publication in the 1970’s, and my admiration has only grown. Gallwey was way ahead of his time. Do yourself the favour of reading it. It is one of  the best books you could read on learning to do anything.
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    Piet Koornhof

    School of Music, North West University, Potchefstroom Campus, South Africa

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