Here are some ideas for cultivating habits of mind that might be useful for developing as an instrumentalist.
 
Generally, people do physical exercises, including practicing a musical instrument, knowing that their muscles and movements will improve, often to the point of being automatic in function. Less general, however, is the realization that patterns of thought can also be practiced until they become habits that kick in automatically.
 
Duhigg (2012) defines habits as "the choices that all of us deliberately make at some point, and stop thinking about but continue doing, often every day" (p.xvii). Aristotle is credited with the quote (perhaps apocryphal), “we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
 
To pave the way for suggesting habits of mind for effective practicing, we’ll first discuss the importance of having an empowering mindset for learning, and then we’ll explore some ideas about learning.
 
Mindsets
 
An essential prerequisite for cultivating useful habits of mind is to have supportive mindsets. For our purposes here, I would define mindsets as patterns of beliefs and presuppositions through which to view a given domain or situation.
 
Here are some examples from my experience.
 
Looking back at my own development as a violinist (we’ll assume for the sake of argument that there was development) I realize that there were stages characterized by different mindsets.
 
The first stage, primarily pre-teen, was when my main concern was whether or not I had sufficient talent. I practiced to improve, but under the implicit assumption that my improvement ultimately would be determined by how much talent I had (or didn’t have). My confidence was not very stable, fluctuating as it did according to the levels of my performances and the evaluations of “experts” about my talent. If I played well, and had it confirmed by respected professionals, I felt confident. But it was easily undermined by the inevitable lesser performance and the occasional critique of others.
 
The second stage was when I followed expert advice to join one of the world’s top violin classes and went to study with Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard school in New York. There, working hard and developing the right technique became paramount. At that stage I became convinced that it was not so much talent, but hard word that would be crucial: my overriding conviction was that whoever practiced the most would eventually be the most successful.
 
The third stage, developing over a much longer time span, was the realization that the management of my own learning was the key to optimal progress. That is based on the conviction that human learning capacity is virtually unlimited, and that learning to learn is fundamental to unlocking that capacity.
 
One of the key experiences initiating the third stage was my introduction by DeLay to the Inner Game approach by Timothy Gallwey, specifically the Inner Game of Tennis (more on that later). Also critical, seen in retrospect, was DeLay’s statement at one of my earliest lessons that her job was not to teach me to play the violin, but to teach me to teach myself.
 
Another key influence was my exposure to the world of NLP, some years later, which convinced me of the role of beliefs and language in releasing or hindering (shaping) our potential.
 
Each of these stages constitutes what is essentially a mindset: I set of ideas through which one’s development is viewed, and that has significant practical consequences.
 
Researcher Carol Dweck (2012) has shown how mindset can impact a person’s motivation and ability to learn and grow. She distinguishes between “fixed” and “growth” mindsets. A fixed mindset is when you believe that your abilities are fixed and therefore not amenable to change by effort and experience; a growth mindset is when you believe that your abilities are shaped by the effort and learning you invest.
 
Those with a fixed mindset believe strongly in inborn talents and shy away from challenging situations that might put “talent” to the test, fearing that it might show deficiency; they also tend to regard a need for great effort as proof of insufficient inborn ability, and therefore ultimately useless. They therefore tend to have less grit, and explore less for solutions to difficulties.
 
So, I would suggest that the starting point for cultivating useful habits of mind for practicing your instrument, is to have a growth mindset. In case you need convincing, here are the facts:

• Your brain is a reflection of learning: the more your learn and practice, the richer the synaptic connections in your brain. It is known as the “plasticity” of the brain. (Growth Mindset). It’s like a scaffold. The more you learn, the more you can learn.
• “Talent”, like “intelligence”, are processes that can be developed (growth mindset), not things that we either have or don’t have (Fixed Mindset), even though we use nouns instead of verbs to refer to it. You’ve surely heard it said that “love is a verb, not a noun”. The same can be said of “talent”. It should be a verb, not a noun. It’s what we do, not what we have.

 
In an empowering, growth mindset, then, practicing is a process of learning. The questions then become, how do we learn most efficiently, and how can we manage the process?
 
Ideas about learning
 
Maps or models
 
When developing a skill, we are constructing an internal model, or map, of the actions required. This is essentially how all learning happens: we develop richer, more sophisticated representations, both sensory and conceptual, that constitute a model or map of the subject matter or skill in question, in order to make ever finer distinctions.
 
Such development of internal representations, or models, involves a dynamic interplay of information gathering, conceptualization and problem solving.
 
We enlarge our sensory perception by involving more senses and by making finer distinctions. Our conceptualizations improve when we discover principles, search for patterns, and develop   strategies for solving problems.
 
Repetition is at the tail-end of the process, with the purpose of solidifying and automatizing the correct actions, arrived at through information gathering, conceptualizing and strategizing. Conceptual activity is primary and repetition secondary.
 
This is what many master performers mean when they maintain that “technique is in the head, not in the fingers”, and that mindless repetition is therefore largely a waste of time.
 
To put it simply, understanding comes first, followed by planning, and then we are ready to condition our bodies through practice, so that skills can become automatic. 
 
The Inner Game
 
A useful way for music students (and we are all lifelong students) to conceptualize learning and performance is that two parts are involved. One does the actions (the body); the other one conceptualizes about it (the mind). Gallwey (2014), in The Inner Game, calls it Self 2 and Self 1.
 
Self 2 (the body) has been learning since before birth. It learned the most complicated skills that you’ll ever learn - how to crawl, walk and run, for example -  without the assistance of its conceptualizing counterpart. It learns by copying examples in action. It soaks up lots of sensory information from good examples, and learns in practice through trial and error.
 
There is no verbal instruction, no judgment, no forays into the past or the future, no regrets or fears or anxieties - all of which distract or interfere with the body’s ability to learn.
 
The basic idea is that Self 1 (assigned the number one because it likes to take credit - to think it is nr 1) can either hinder or assist Self 2 in performing its natural task of learning. It hinders by giving lengthy verbal instructions, by criticising and judging, by dredging up the past and catastrophizing about the future, by worrying and by internal chatter.
 
Consider that our attention is limited. Therefore, whatever occupies our attention distracts from attention to something else. Conceptual activity distracts from sensory awareness, when attempted simultaneously.
 
The Inner Game approach is summed up in the equation, performance = potential - interference. The purpose of the Inner Game is to minimize self-interference, by learning to manage Self 1 in support of Self 2.
 
How can that be achieved? By assigning tasks to self 1 that actually support rather than hinder Self 2. Examples of such tasks are: setting goals, choosing where to focus sensory awareness, describing the results of actions non-judgmentally, playing awareness games that keep the mind in the present, etc.
 
When done properly, the process often results in a state of “flow”, famously described by Csikszentmihalyi (2009) - or what sports people call “being in the zone” - when everything seems to click into place, allowing “out of the mind” learning and performance akin to mystical experience.
 
Do yourself a favour by learning to play Gallwey’s Inner Game. It can be a tremendous resource for developing an empowering mindset for learning and performance. I would most highly recommend Gallwey first two books: The Inner Game of Tennis (1974, 2014) , and Inner Tennis: playing the game (1976). I agree with Dorothy DeLay and Itzhak Perlman, who both claimed that it tops their lists of best books about violin playing.
 
DeLay’s metaphor
 
Dorothy DeLay used to say that studying to perform music is like looking through both a telescope and a microscope. It is studying the big picture - the overall architecture and the meaning of the music; and it is investigating and mastering the minutiae - the tiny details that add up to the difference between good and truly great performance.
 
Habits of mind need to be cultivated for optimal learning when gazing through our metaphorical telescopes and microscopes.
 
Once you are convinced of the utility of a growth mindset, and understand the necessity to develop richer internal models by continuously refining the distinctions we make, I would suggest developing the following habits of mind when practicing.
 
 
Habits of mind
 
Goals
 
The first habit to cultivate is to aim properly - to decide what we are going to focus on. As the saying goes, “if you don’t know where you are going, you might end up somewhere else”.
 
Having clear goals focuses the mind. It acts like a filter, separating what is relevant from what would only clutter and distract the mind and prevent full attention.
 
Goals have to be aligned: ultimate goals, intermediate goals and immediate goals. Given what you are aiming to achieve ultimately, what would be realistic, achievable intermediate goals (steps), and what do you need to focus on right now?
 
Instead of vaguely deciding to “do some practice” or “put in some hours” without clearly specified goals, decide exactly what you would like to achieve in your present practice session. Decide to learn these notes, or fix that passage, or do those exercises, or analyze the structure of a particular piece, or find a solution to a specific technical problem.
 
Be clear in your mind about your goal and a time-period for achieving it, and about the steps you’ll take, keeping in mind that it can all be adjusted if needed. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how it focuses your mind and mobilizes your resources.
 
One additional tip about goals: formulate them positively. Specify what you want, not what you want to avoid or eliminate. What you want to avoid or eliminate has to be replaced by something desirable instead. Focus on desirability instead of avoidance. By giving attention to what we don’t want, as a goal, we actual contribute to its staying power. It’s the “don’t think of a pink elephant” conundrum: it’s impossible to follow the instruction, since understanding the instruction in the first place requires representing a pink elephant in your mind. What you represent is what you engage with. Therefore, represent to yourself that which you want to achieve, not what you want to avoid.
 
It is a habit of mind worth cultivating.
 
The Quick Route
 
I would like to suggest an alternative habit of mind to what I regularly observe in students at lessons and rehearsals. Often, their reaction to a difficulty seems to be the following, which I’ll call the Long Route:

1. “This must be difficult”
2. “Therefore, it will require much effort”
3. Therefore, it will take a long time to fix”
4. Therefore, I cannot do it now, but only later when I have sufficient time”

 
This habit of mind can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The mind is primed in the direction of a time-consuming difficulty.
 
My suggestion is to try the opposite approach, which I observed in exceptionally quick learners in DeLay’s class. Let’s call it the Quick Route. Assume the following as a working hypothesis, and see what happens:

1. “This is easy”
2. “Therefore it is easy to fix”
3. “Therefore it can be done quickly”
4. “Therefore I can do it now”

 
You will be surprised at how often the results are positive. It is a habit of mind well worth cultivating. Assume that difficulties are small, easy and quick to solve, and then do it immediately. The results might significantly exceed your expectations.
 
Our expectations let us notice what confirms it or contributes to it, and ignore what doesn’t. In that way our expectations tend to fulfil themselves. They become a map for a particular outcome, making it more likely for that route to be followed.
 
Fine distinctions
 
One of the defining characteristics of true masters in any field is their ability to make extremely fine distinctions. They are aware of detail that others miss. Therefore a fundamental part of the process of learning is to develop the ability to make ever finer distinctions. It is an essential habit of mind to cultivate for effective practicing.
 
So how can we improve our ability make extraordinary distinctions - to detect the tiniest details?
 
One of the ways to fine-tune distinctions is suggested by die Weber Fechner law, which indicates an inverse relation between the intensity of a sensory stimulus and the fineness of the distinctions our nervous system can make. The more intense a sensory stimulus received by our nervous system, the greater the differences have to be for our senses to detect it; the weaker the stimulus, the finer the differences we are able to detect. Thus, by lowering a sensory stimulus - for example, pressing lighter with our fingers - the finer are the tactile sensations we can experience. Similarly, when we want to make finer auditory distinctions, it helps to play softer.
 
Also useful for focusing our perception and making finer distinctions, is to make comparisons, either to an imaginary scale, or to previous examples. For example, you can ask yourself, on a scale of “zero” to “ten” (0-10), how tense is your hand while playing that passage? Or with an intonation problem, let’s say, you can instruct yourself to play a problematic note several times (in context, of course) in succession, and each time notice whether is was higher or lower than the previous time.
 
As Timothy Gallwey of The Inner Game says, “awareness cures”. Simply, but profoundly, it means that improvements in actions depend on having the required sensory information about what actually transpires in reality. When we get distracted, when our awareness is hijacked by conceptual activity, we might miss vital sensory information that is critical for effective feedback. In order to make essential adjustments to movements, your nervous system requires accurate and extremely detailed sensory information about what is actually happening in the present moment.
 
Another procedure that can be used to enhance your ability to make fine distinctions, is to employ small movements. Just as our minds are enabled to construct three dimensional images by micro movements of our eyes, so our tactile and proprioceptive sensations are refined and enhanced by small movements, allowing nerve ends to detect minute differences.
 
Think of how one can only feel the texture of a fabric between our fingers, for example, by making small movements. Every tiny difference in pressure and location and angle provides information for feeling the texture. Feeling the texture is experiencing the tactile differences provided by tiny movements.
 
By making small movements, let’s say, with our fingers on the string, either vertically by pressing harder or softer, and horizontally by moving back and forth, we enhance our ability to make minute distinctions, providing our nervous system with essential information for developing greater control.
 
It is a habit of mind worth cultivating.
 
Problem solving
 
It is extraordinarily useful to frame playing difficulties as problems to solve, rather than as skill deficiencies. When encountering a stumbling block, say to yourself, “either my nervous system doesn’t have the required sensory information yet, or I need to develop an effective strategy. How can I gather the requisite information? How can I become more aware of what exactly is going on here? What can I experiment with? And what strategies can I develop to achieve my goal?”As David Elliott writes in his book Music Matters (1995), “Practicing is not mechanical duplication. As errors are detected and corrected and as problems are found and solved, difficulties diminish and parts are linked to larger wholes. All this requires attention, awareness, and memory. And all of this is not different in kind from what occurs in writing an essay or learning to do a scientific proof...A musician ‘researches’ the composition he is attempting to interpret and perform by studying and reflecting about the composition in all its dimensions. He generates and selects musical solutions in the actions of practicing by experimenting, adjusting, correcting, and refining various parts of his performance. He organizes his interpretation in terms of dynamics, articulations, and phrasing. He then edits or polishes his performance-interpretation. Finally, the performer asserts or expresses (or ‘makes public”) his understanding of the work as a whole. Preparing an interpretation of a composition for a performance through practicing is no less cognitive than preparing an essay for public reading or writing, even though many aspects of practicing and performing are nonverbal in essence.” (p. 289)
 
Thinking of difficulties as cognitive problems to solve is a habit of mind well worth cultivating.
 
Requisite variety
 
The Law of Requisite Variety, also known as Ashby’s Law, states that variety is required to regulate, or cope with, variety (Dilts, 1998). In order for a part of a system, or a system within a larger system, to survive and thrive, the variety in the part needs to be proportional to the variety in the whole. For example, solving a problem requires the exploration of a sufficient variety of possible solutions. The more complex the problem, the greater the variety required. Or simply, the more flexible you are to explore different options, the more likely is an eventual solution.
 
Think of yourself as a learning system within the larger system of the field you are studying. The variety of learning strategies you employ needs to be proportional to the variety in the system you are studying.
 
Any particular way of doing something can be regarded as a set of information. If your repeat it with no variety - if you do something over and over in the same way - you are stuck with one set of information. If it doesn’t provide a solution to the problem you are trying to solve, it means that the variety of your attempts is not proportional to the requirements of the problem.
 
If instead your repetitions are varied, then each variation is a new set of information. In such a way many sets of information can be gathered for the same time spent. The added bonus is that variety in repetition not only contributes to solving a particular problem, but also provides information - raw material - for developing other skills. It drastically enriches your mental models for playing skills.
 
Not only is that much greater efficiency, it also provides the mind with the variety needed to detect the underlying commonalities or algorithms. That’s is how masters solve problems. They are willing to try a great variety of approaches, to the point were the underlying commonalities are grasped as operating principles.
 
As a student at the Aspen Music Festival many summers ago, I asked my classmate, Marc Peskanov, who had the most extraordinary skill of playing any imaginable kind of flying staccato on the violin, how he managed to achieve it. He told me that in desperation he locked himself in his practice room one night, vowing not to escape until he had mastered the skill. Several hours later, by early morning, he was successful. He experimented with countless different ways of doing it, including drastically varying his bow grip, arm position, and holding the bow in different places between the frog and the tip, even turning the bow around so that the frog served as the tip. Indeed, the end result of all that variety of practice is his astonishing flexibility of skill, from the orthodox to the highly unusual and entertaining.
 
An example of such requisite variety in another field is the great Thomas Edison. According to the Smithsonian museum (smithsonian.com), “the man also stumbled, sometimes tremendously. In response to a question about his missteps, Edison once said, ‘I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.’”
 
He practiced requisite variety, and reaped the rewards. He could have given up at any point, arguing that his failures were conclusive. But instead he relentlessly kept going, trying something different each time, thousands upon thousands of different attempts, until eventually he reached a critical threshold of variety - requisite variety - which engendered a solution.
 
Of course, the threshold is unique to every situation. The number of required information sets  varies widely between situations. Therefore, avoid expectations about the variety required for solving a particular problem. Be open to whatever transpires while you relentlessly gather information by continuously trying new approaches.
 
Not only does variety contribute to solving particular problems and the general enrichment of our mental models, it also keeps the mind interested. It staves off monotony and boredom. For survival over millions of years mammalian nervous systems have evolved to be especially sensitive to news of difference, not to sameness. The value is clear. Sameness indicates lack of threat, while a sudden change could signal danger. In other words, our brains have evolved, for survival purposes, to be intrigued by the appearance of differences in our perceptual field.
 
Given the multifarious boons of practicing “requisite variety”, it is a habit of mind well worth cultivating.
 
Focus on results, rather than process
 
Research about various skills (golf, darts, swimming, etc) has shown that focusing on results of actions is considerably more effective for both learning at the beginning stages and for performance later on than focusing on the processes of executing those actions. (Wulf, 2016)
 
It seems clear that the information (feedback) needed for adjustments toward greater accuracy is contained in the results of actions, more so than in the process of execution. The richer the information about results the more effective it is for the nervous system to make adjustments. Since our attention is limited, whatever we spend it on prevents it from being used elsewhere. So whatever attention we pay to the process of execution is not available for attending to results, thereby diminishing the clarity of perception needed for high quality feedback.
 
We musicians are prone to get bogged down in process - in the details of technique. We worry about our execution, about getting the technique right: how to hold the bow, or move the arm, or any of a myriad details.
 
First of all, which technique is followed? There are several different schools of violin playing with quite divergent ideas about proper technique. But all of them have produced exemplar violinists. Clearly, there is more than one way to play the violin exceptionally well. So it seems overly pedantic to spend lots of energy, time and attention on getting the specifics of a particular technique perfectly “right”.
 
Secondly, playing a musical instrument is such a complex skill that it is virtually impossible to do all of it with conscious control. The neurological processing required in playing actions are so complex, and happen so fast that it is naive to think it can all be controlled by our relatively slow, linear thinking, verbalising, conscious minds.
 
DeLay used to say about technique, “ if it sounds right and it feels good, it’s right!”.
 
The solution - a habit of mind worth cultivating - is to focus on the results of our playing actions, and then trust that the vast nonverbal intelligence of our nervous system, our somatic intelligence, if you will, will use those results as high quality feedback to make the required adjustments. That seems to be another characteristic of master players. They trust the inherent intelligence of their bodies.
 
Aim for perfection in practice, as 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 as a player 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, including scales and exercises, as if you are in front of an audience engaged in delivering your absolute best musical, not mechanical, performance.
 
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.
 
Test for comfort, or minimize effort
 
Efficiency, or economy of means, is a high technical value in musical performance. It saves energy for use when extraordinary musical and technical challenges arise. Economy of means is also a contributing factor to what may be called elegance in performance. That is when execution and gesture is proportional to the character of the music.
 
Comfort, or perhaps one should rather say, relative comfort, is one indicator of efficient playing.
 
Since comfort is relative, and is often simply associated with whatever a performer has become accustomed to, it is useful to habitually test for the possibility of greater comfort in execution.
 
Mostly, whatever we have become used to serves as the baseline for judging our level of playing comfort. In fact, however, more often than not we could in fact be more comfortable. It is a question of testing for the possibility.
 
Ask yourself regularly with whatever you are working on whether or not you could do it more comfortably. Experiment to find the most comfortable playing position, or technical approach, or level of energy for maximum efficiency. Not only will you conserve energy, you will also be less prone to injury. And you might even come across as more elegant in your playing.
 
It is a habit of mind worth cultivating.
 
Extend the envelope
 
In engineering the “envelope” is the limits, graphically represented, within which an aircraft, for example, can safely operate.
 
In instrumental playing, the envelope can be regarded as the limits of your capability at the moment.
 
It should become a habit of mind that you continually strive to extend your envelope. Always challenge yourself to do better, whatever you are working on: better intonation, better sound, better phrasing, greater ease, less effort, more fluency or elegance - whatever aspect you can identify. The wonderful thing is, it always can be better. All you need is to nudge yourself to extend the envelope.
 
As psychologist Jordan Peterson (2018) has it as one of his rules for life, “compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today” . You are your own baseline for improving step by step.
 
Condition yourself to insist on incremental improvements in your playing every single day.
 
It is a habit of mind worth cultivating.
 
Exaggerate
 
It is a truism for musical performers that there is always a loss between input and output. The result of what we do is almost always less than we think.
 
After more than half a century of playing I am still shocked each time I hear a recording of myself. The musical differences I made always turn out to be smaller than I thought while playing.
 
Scientifically, it is known as attenuation or signal loss. Unless boosted in some way, any signal weakens between input and destination.
 
So it is with playing music. The results are almost always less than our effort in playing would suggest. For example, the dynamic differences you make, are smaller than you think. Heard objectively, there is signal loss. 
 
The solution is to exaggerate. When the differences you produce seem exaggerated to you, they are probably just about right.
 
Condition yourself to exaggerate the differences you desire, whether in dynamics, tempo, timbre or articulation. If you don’t, the results of signal loss will be disappointing.
 
It is a habit of mind worth cultivating.
 
Strive for beauty
 
Truth, beauty and goodness. Sometimes called transcendentals, sometimes “virtues”.
 
The fact is, beauty moves us. It elicits the best from us. It fills us with awe.
 
What exactly is beauty? Philosophers have contemplated and debated it for ages. What is certain, is that we know it when we experience it.
 
It is, or should be, what we artists aim for. It is what we spend a lifetime trying to glimpse and convey.
 
Beauty should not be something reserved for special occasions only. As artists it should be our constant aim and sustenance.
 
Condition yourself to always play beautifully, practicing included. Playing beautifully should become second nature. Both you and your audiences will be elevated.
 
It is a habit of mind worth cultivating.
 
Conclusion
 
Becoming a masterful musical performer is no mean task. It requires a great deal of hard work. Fundamental to that hard work is developing empowering habits of mind.
 
This article offered some ideas that might contribute to more effective practicing. By having a growth mindset and taking responsibility for your own learning, you can develop habits of mind that aid you in becoming your own best teacher.
 
Practicing then becomes a creative endeavour that delivers results far exceeding your own expectations.
 
These are habits of mind worth cultivating.

© 2018 Piet Koornhof
 
Bibliography
 
Csikszentmihalyi, M., 2009. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Perennial Modern Classics. HarperCollins.
 
Dilts, R. 1998. The Law Requisite Variety. Ben Lomond, CA : NLP University Press
 
Duhigg, C., 2012. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change. Random House.
 
Dweck, C., 2012. Mindset: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential. Little, Brown Book Group.
 
Ehnes, J. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6noasTa4eiY
 
Elliott, D.J., 1995. Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education. Oxford University Press.
 
Gallwey, W.T., 1974. The Inner Game of Tennis. Jonathan Cape.
 
Gallwey, W.T., 1976. Inner tennis: playing the game. Random House.
 
Peterson, J.B., 2018. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Penguin UK.
 
Wulf, G., 2016. An external focus of attention is a conditio sine qua non for athletes: a response to Carson, Collins, and Toner (2015). Journal of Sports Sciences 34, 1293–1295. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2015.1136746
 
Weber-Fechner law, 2018. Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Weber-Fechner_law&oldid=6090526

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!