It’s that time of year when everyone is returning from vacation, myself included! In past years, one of my biggest mistakes was not coming back to the instrument mindfully. This video discusses some of the mistakes I’ve made in the past, and some tips for returning to the instrument in a healthy way.
Covid Recovery as a Low Brass Player
I recently had the unfortunate experience of going through Covid-19 for the first time. I decided to turn my Covid recovery into an experiment to measure how my lungs were progressing during the weeks after testing positive. This video details how I used Michael Davis's 20-Minute Warm up book to track my progress and eventually get back to 100%. Everyone's experience is different, but this is mine! I'd love to hear yours as well.
How to WARMUPIFY your music
This week’s topic is a practice tip to help you work on tricky passages that are holding back your progress as you practice an etude/solo/excerpt, etc. It’s a way to re-contextualize the passage that helps both with mastery and with mental flexibility.
Performance Practice Followup!
Here’s a little followup to last week’s video on practicing performance mindfulness. The inspiration for this comes from Noa Kageyama’s Bulletproof Musician blog post entitled “When is the Optimal Time to Start Performance Practice?”
Practicing Performance Mindfulness
This video blog is a follow-up to its predecessor, “The Tuba in My Head.” This is an explanation of how I prepare for mindful performance in the weeks leading up to a recital.
The Tuba in My Head
I recently had the opportunity to give a solo recital at the International Women’s Brass Conference in Denton, Texas, and the recital went pretty well. This may not seem like a momentous announcement, but I have realized that, for me, it is. I have spent some time reflecting on how far I’ve come, particularly in my ability to put mindfulness principles in action during high-pressure live performances.
My performance anxiety began when my physical playing difficulties began to manifest. Sure, I got nervous when performing in college, but never to the point that it crippled me. I mostly thought of it as a type of fuel for my performance. My teachers always focused on developing my musicianship, which grew into a strength for me. But tuba teachers are sometimes hesitant to assess a player’s embouchure and ask them to change it. Partly this is because it’s hard to see what’s going on, but in my case I think it was because my embouchure worked … until it didn’t.
I always played with a kind of “upstream” setup, which is what happened naturally when I first approached the instrument (I started in 7th grade). I had a kind of underbite when playing, pointing the air upward in the mouthpiece. As I began to play F tuba and encountered solo music that demanded higher and higher notes, I developed a habit of moving my face upward in the mouthpiece and applying pressure. For a long time, it worked, but it was unreliable. Toby Hanks, who I studied with for my Master’s degree, was the first teacher to tell me that something about my embouchure looked wrong. Again, he didn’t tell me exactly what to do or not to do, but he did tell me that for higher range notes I should have more of my facial muscles in the mouthpiece so that they wouldn’t have to work as hard. He suggested a more “downstream” shape to the embouchure—blowing downward in the mouthpiece. This is something that is suggested by many method books, but for some reason it hadn’t come up in my tuba study before then.
At this point I decided to try to change the way I was playing high range notes, both because of Toby’s suggestion and because I had seemingly reached the edge of my capabilities doing it my original way. What followed were several frustrating years of adjustments. Just at the moment when I should have been most confident in my abilities as a musician—doing Master’s and Artist Diploma recitals at Yale—I suddenly took ten steps backward physically. I was second-guessing and overthinking everything. I had to plan for new endurance limits and embouchure shift points. I couldn’t rely on myself to do perform the way I had in the past. After a while of committing to this change I couldn’t even comfortably go back to my old way of doing things because I was no longer accustomed to playing with a high degree of pressure.
I continued to try to adjust to this new technique after leaving Yale but I didn’t really have anyone to guide me. I began teaching college students shortly after completing my Artist Diploma, which probably increased my focus on technique. I could get by doing what I needed to do (freelancing, the occasional faculty recital), but I was never comfortable. The fear of walking on stage and having the instrument completely refuse to cooperate with me was very real. I lost a ton of my confidence as a player, and I was mentally at my worst during recital situations.
After years of this struggle I reached a breaking point. My approach to building endurance and technique had always been to practice as many hours as humanly possible, but all that practice didn’t seem to be helping. If anything, it was demoralizing that I still had the same inconsistencies after so much work. I was still really struggling with the “old way/new way” concept, and trying to make my technique as consistent as possible. I finally reached out for help to my undergraduate teacher, Dr. Ross Walter.
He listened patiently on the phone to my very detailed description of how I was struggling with my embouchure—how certain notes seemed to work both ways, but I couldn’t figure out how to approach notes that were in my “discomfort zone,” which was right on the edge of where I shifted my embouchure. And then he asked me a question that should have been obvious, but completely surprised me. He said “Well, which way sounds better?”
I suddenly realized that in all of my focus on technique, and on exactly what I put into the instrument and how, I had managed to completely ignore the most important part of the equation: the sound that comes out of my bell. I had been thinking in binaries like “old way/new way” and “right way/wrong way” instead of looking at my technique as an ever-evolving work in progress. When Ross finally asked me that pivotal question it broke me out of the tunnel vision I had developed, and I was able to find the solution almost immediately.
Part of my issue was that once Toby suggested to me that I might need to adjust my embouchure, I became stuck with the mindset that something was wrong with me. I was forever trying to fix myself, yet not always considering the full picture in the scope of my entire playing career. I did what felt best when I first started playing tuba, and changed when I needed to change. The solutions I found after grad school may not have even worked for me at age 18. Since that conversation with Ross I have tried to let my technique adjust to create the sound I want. The sound itself is my primary objective. I try to live by the words of another teacher of mine, Andrew Hitz: “Play along with the sound of the tuba in your head.”
This (finally) brings us back to the mindfulness in performance aspect that has changed for me in recent years. The old fears about not being able to play on stage when it counts will take a long time to completely die, if they ever do. My method of staying mindful in performance is to focus on that internal tuba sound and to do my best to play along with it. I’ve always had the hearing skills to do this, but I have had to work hard to train myself to focus on that instead of on technique. I try to remind myself before a performance to focus on output, not input, and I often fail at that. But luckily the practice of mindfulness is still just that: a practice. So instead of beating myself up about losing focus, I try to congratulate myself for noticing it and then guide my thoughts back to the tuba in my head.
My thoughts during my recent recital ranged from “OMG that’s Don Little in the back row!” to “I really should have put my hair up because it’s in my face” to “Should I have asked for a different lights setting for this room?” to “I wonder how my recorded track sounds out front…” But for today I’m congratulating myself because I noticed each of these moments and consciously steered my attention back to the tuba in my head. Each of these instances was a helpful reminder of what all musical performances should really be about: the music.
Kintsugi: The Art of Repair
Lately I’ve been fascinated with Kintsugi, which is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. In this process, pieces of broken pottery are painstakingly joined back together using a lacquer that is mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. When the process is finished the resulting piece is more unique and usually more valuable than the original. Here is a look at a few pieces of Kintsugi pottery:
Kintsugi is related to the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-sabi, the aesthetic tradition of embracing the beauty found in imperfections. According to Richard Powell, “Wabi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”* These three principles have their origins in the Buddhist concept of the three marks of existence.
It makes sense that Kintsugi is related to a larger philosophical framework because this process of repair can be a powerful metaphor for human situations we encounter all the time. For example, a long-term relationship will inevitably develop cracks or breaks over time. Are we content to throw those relationships away, or to repair them with scotch tape or cheap glue? Or should we instead give those cracks and breaks our time and attention, repairing them with as much care as possible? If we do, the resulting relationship looks different, but it can be more unique, more beautiful, and longer-lasting because of those repairs.
We can view ourselves individually through the same metaphorical lens. In this case, I will focus on applying the metaphor of Kintsugi to the practice of music. There are four main principles that we can take from Kintsugi directly into the practice room:
1. Don’t throw it away
Anyone who is reading this has probably already been tempted to give up on a piece of music, a skill, or even on the study of music itself. The foundational principle of Kintsugi is to honor and value something that appears broken. Since we don’t all start out with the same teacup or vase, this could mean a variety of things to any given musician. But one important concept to remember is that whatever may be broken is rarely completely irreparable. If we make the conscious decision to repair or rebuild some aspect of our playing in the practice room, that time and attention will be well spent.
2. Embrace imperfections
In the modern musical world, perfection is almost a requirement. This especially applies to recorded music, which is usually engineered to sound completely flawless. It is an impossibly high standard, and one that makes us hyper aware of our own flaws. But the imperfections in our playing are incredibly important, because on the other side of each of our weaknesses is a strength. As a college student I longed for each note attack to sound robotically “perfect.” It took me years to realize that the flip side of that imperfection was my unique musical approach. I’m good at exaggerating musical gestures and phrasing, but the price is that I sometimes take too big of a swing. Although I still practice for consistency, I try to preserve my expressive musical language while doing so. Embracing our weaknesses doesn’t necessarily mean not working on them–it means accepting and striving to maintain whatever makes us ourselves as we improve.
3. Turn weaknesses into strengths
This idea is one that I try to implement in a very specific and literal way in the practice room. Rather than simply glueing and painting over the cracks in a piece of pottery in an effort to make them invisible, practitioners of Kintsugi emphasize those lines with gold. The areas that were originally weak become the highlight of the piece.
When learning a piece of music there will always be passages that are more difficult to put together than others. Instead of simply trying to survive those moments, I challenge myself to turn them into areas of strength. I will memorize them, play them slowly with metronome and tuner, and generally get to know them inside out and upside down. The goal is to reach a point where those tricky areas are not only passable, but are actually the most comfortable and polished moments in the piece. That is easer said than done, of course, but even just aspiring to that level of mastery helps make my practice more focused and productive.
4. Create a unique finished product
Part of what makes Kintsugi pottery so valuable is the fact that no two pieces are alike. Individuality should also be a main goal of our musical development. Audiences have often valued stylistic and musical uniqueness over technical perfection (even if our conservatory training instilled in us the opposite impression). But individuality also extends to what we choose to do. Many musicians are finding that creating their own specialty and following a unique path allows for a more personalized, less “cookie-cutter” experience. In this way, like Kintsugi, value comes from what is uniquely our own instead of the elements we share with everyone else.
Mindfulness is all about deciding where and how we direct our attention and focus. I often enter into a practice session with the goal of fixing something specific. But reimagining my approach using the metaphor of Kintsugi has given me a different perspective on mistakes, imperfections, and on my own individuality as a musician. I like the idea that the painstaking work we do is not to make us like everyone else, but is instead to make us more ourselves. Which is good because that work continues … forever!
* Powell, Richard R. (2004). Wabi Sabi Simple. Adams Media.
Roots of Mindlessness: Premature Cognitive Commitments
One main cause of mindlessness in our lives is our tendency to hold on to previously-formed mindsets. Consider the word mindset for a moment: it very clearly indicates that our mind is, well, set. Whether our mindset is positive or negative, it is inflexible. Ellen Langer states that we become mindless by “forming a mindset when we first encounter something and then clinging to it when we reencounter that same thing (Mindfulness 22).”
Because this type of mindset is formed without much critical thought, Langer calls it a premature cognitive commitment. Sometimes we accept our first impression of something because it seems unnecessary to reflect any further upon it. That impression simply settles in our mind, and without making a conscious decision (mindlessly), we are committed to that view. When the subject comes up again, our perception of it is already colored by our previous experience, rendering us unable to see it differently.
Langer and her colleagues conducted a study in which two groups of participants were told they would be tested for a fictitious disease called chromosynthosis. They were told that the disease was a hearing problem that was similar to colorblindness, in that it was possible to have it and not know it. The two groups were given two different booklets with information about the disease.
One booklet said that 80 percent of the population had chromosynthosis, and asked participants to reflect on what they could do to help themselves if they were determined to have it. The other booklet stated that only 10 percent of the population were affected by the disease, and did not ask participants to reflect on anything. In other words, the first group had much more reason to believe they might have the disease, and were asked to think about it, while the second group went into the test thinking it was unlikely they had the disease, and that the information in their booklet was irrelevant.
The subjects were then asked to listen to two recordings of conversation and mark down the number of “a” sounds they heard on each one. The participants scored their own tests and all of them were revealed to have chromosynthosis. They were then given follow-up tests requiring them to use specific skills that would challenge people who had the disease. The subjects who had previously considered the information in their booklet irrelevant performed worse once they were diagnosed with the disease. The subjects who had considered themselves more at risk of the disease, and therefore considered their booklet more relevant, performed better. Because the disease was not real, presumably both groups of participants should have had an equal chance to do well on a routine hearing test.
The purpose of this study was to see the outcome of a situation in which different groups took in new information in different ways. The group that took in the information in their booklet mindfully, and with reflection, were better able to deal with the challenges of testing. The group that was encouraged not to reflect on the information in their booklet, or to consider it relevant, was much less able to adapt to the follow-up rounds of testing.
One of the scariest examples of this phenomenon is the way in which many people experience social media. Scrolling Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram is something that many of us do mindlessly, while waiting in line at the grocery store or killing time between classes. When we take in information that way, without stopping to think critically about what we we just saw, it can become imprinted in our mind. That article headline or quote from somewhere on the internet can color our future interactions with the subject material. If we’re honest with ourselves, I think most of us can say we have experienced this. Over time, the repetition of this type of experience can lead us down a path toward extreme mental inflexibility, and an inability to critically assess new information as it becomes available to us.
In the realm of music, premature cognitive commitments can be an outgrowth of our insistence on filing music into discreet categories. For example, we label etudes and solos as either “lyrical” or “technical,” as though skill in both areas is not necessary in order to perform any music well. As I found when conducting a survey of college tuba and euphonium teachers during my doctoral degree, there is great disagreement over what constitutes an etude vs. a technical study, or whether there should even be two terms in use at all.
On a more personal level, I know that I have experienced a fixed mindset in my own practice of etudes, solo music, and excerpts. I can attest to the fact that it is very difficult to undo or change the impression I formed of a piece of music upon first hearing or playing it. This is one reason why I do not usually recommend that students begin learning orchestral or band excerpts until they have reached a certain level of proficiency and musical maturity. A tubist will play the Meistersinger excerpt thousands of times over their career, and if their first experience of it is at a young age, then elements of their own underdeveloped technique and musicianship will become encoded into their performance of the excerpt as habit. Those habits will then become much harder to change than if the player approached the excerpt with more experience.
I see now that the exact age of the player is not the determining factor in whether they will be able to update their performance of a piece of music as they develop. It is the mindfulness that the player employs, both in their first experience of the music and in their subsequent experiences, that allows for long-term flexibility. Langer’s advice is simple: question everything, all the time.
Like the mindlessness that comes from repetition of daily routines, predetermined cognitive commitments are an unavoidable side effect of being human. It is incredibly difficult to take in new information mindfully 100 percent of the time. That said, we can certainly remind ourselves to reassess our ideas about the music we play on a regular basis. Regular sight-reading and improvisation, both of which require constant musical decision-making, will also encourage a flexible rather than fixed mindset. In fact, I’m beginning to think that we need an entirely new word to describe our mental approach to music: perhaps the goal should be that our mind should never be “set.”
Roots of Mindlessness: Repetition
One of the most prevalent sources of mindlessness in our lives are the constant repetitive actions we carry out every day. Because of the cyclical, repetitive nature of many of our days, we tend to develop routines that require very little thought. We are not called “creatures of habit” for nothing. Our routines tend to be completed mindlessly in part because our minds are often occupied by other thoughts when we are performing them.
Ellen Langer includes a story in her book about a man who comes home after a long day of work and is preparing to go out to a dinner party. He undresses, showers, then puts on his pajamas and goes to bed. The beginning of his party-preparation and nighttime routines were so similar that he accidentally switched between the two mid-stream.
According to Langer, moving through our daily routines mindlessly week after week, year after year, can cause mental stagnation. We become locked into our perceptions of ourselves and the world, unable to assimilate new information. Mindlessness inhibits both our ability to reach our full potential, and our control over our lives.
For musicians, repetition is a necessary part of our practice room experience. The question is: are we repeating mindlessly or mindfully? Each repetition of a passage reinforces our mastery of its technical elements, but also serves to lock in our perception of the passage and our musical interpretation of it. For example, once we have repeated a passage one hundred times it is difficult to change the dynamics or the articulations. Technical advancement sometimes brings mental inflexibility. Mindless repetition past a certain point inhibits growth.
This is one reason why many brass teachers don’t recommend repeating the exact same fundamentals routine each day. Our fundamentals are perhaps the portion of our practice that is most repetitive and mindless, and if we do exactly the same thing each day, as with any other routine, we will be come dependent on doing it. We will be able to execute the technical demands of that particular routine, but will be unable to go beyond or outside of it. More importantly, our mental approach is completely set and closed. In order to enter a performance situation, we need to be open to new information and ready to adapt.
This discussion is not meant to challenge the necessity of routines. Our routines, both in life and in the practice room, provide us with structure and a certain amount of comfort (ask any parent). The aspect in question here is only the repetition of these routines without the active engagement of our mind. It follows that if we play mindlessly in the practice room, we may also do so in performance.
The next time you begin a practice session, take a moment to think about what you’re about to play. What is the purpose of playing this exercise? What should I be listening for in my playing? Do I need to do that again? What would be the best follow-up to this exercise today? When you practice a musical passage, do so mindfully, making small, deliberate changes in each repetition in order to maintain flexibility. Mindfulness is the process of constantly taking in the information that the current situation gives us and letting that information guide us on a path that is unique to today.
Mindfulness: East and West
The discussion around the subject of mindfulness is somewhat complicated by the existence of both eastern and western perspectives. While these two approaches to mindfulness have overlapping ideas and outcomes, they come from two fundamentally different sources.
The eastern understanding of mindfulness revolves around meditation: the calming of the mind by focusing on the present moment (on breath, a mantra, etc.) and the letting go of distracting thoughts. There is a moral aspect to eastern mindfulness as well. It is expected that achieving a state of focus on the present moment will result in the best possible decisions about our own behavior.
The western approach to mindfulness has been shaped in large part by the research and writing of Ellen Langer, Phd, a Harvard professor of psychology. Langer writes that western mindfulness begins as an assessment of the mindlessness that is present in our lives. By examining how a lack of mindfulness is already affecting us, we can begin to challenge our rigid mindsets and single-minded perspectives. Langer describes mindfulness as “The process of actively noticing new things, relinquishing preconceived mindsets, and then acting on new observations.”
Both eastern and western traditions use mindfulness toward the goal of a more fulfilled and productive life, and a freedom from automatic behavior. The central overlapping idea between east and west is that both aim for a greater awareness of both ourselves and the world around us.
The following series of posts will be an approach to mindfulness that begins with an examination of mindlessness. Much of the discussion will be based on Ellen Langer’s book, Mindfulness, which was originally published in 1989. Langer’s explanation of her years of research on mindfulness is aimed at an audience of the general public, and assumes that the reader has no background in psychology or academic research. For this reason, the book is an excellent resource for those who are interested in an accessible introduction to the topic of mindfulness.
Self One and Self Two
I have recently been enjoying Michael Lewis’s podcast, called “Against the Rules.” Season Two is all about the rise of various types of coaching (athletic, financial, life, etc.). Two episodes in particular captured my interest because of their connection to music and mindfulness.
In Episode Three, “The Coach in Your Head,” Lewis talks with Timothy Gallwey, the author of The Inner Game of Tennis. This is one of the most popular books recommended to musicians, and with good reason. In it, Gallwey deals with the mental challenges that arise in performance (in his case, tennis performance), and his insights are applicable far beyond the world of tennis.
Although I had read the book many years ago, I was interested to hear from Gallwey himself in his interview with Lewis. As Gallwey describes it, he was working as a tennis pro at a country club. One day, out of sheer boredom, he decided to try a new tactic with his student. He wanted to see what would happen if he gave the most minimal instruction possible. So instead of giving specific comments on technique, he simply demonstrated the proper form. His instructions, given sparingly, were mainly on where the student should direct their focus.
Gallwey found this type of instruction to be very effective, which was what eventually led him to write The Inner Game. He found that discussing each minute physical action in a player’s tennis swing would often cause the player to overthink their swing. This overthinking would then cause unnecessary tension in a motion that should be smooth and natural. Gallwey’s innovation was in directing his students’ attention away from the many individual components of their tennis swing and allowing them to simply focus on copying what they saw. This helped the students to detach from their conscious thought and rely on everything they were able to pick up and implement unconsciously.
Episode Five of Lewis’s podcast, “The Data Coach,” deals with a new trend toward data in baseball coaching. One of the examples of this trend is Kyle Boddy, who founded Driveline Baseball. Boddy uses data from cameras and sensors to coach baseball pitchers toward a more efficient pitching motion. Although he has access to an incredible amount of information about each pitcher’s physical process, some of the exercises in Driveline’s training program are very simple. For example, pitchers will often throw weighted baseballs. According to Boddy, the added difficulty of throwing a heavier baseball will cause players to adjust elements of their pitching motion, correcting small inefficiencies in their form. Interestingly, Driveline has had great success with taking pitchers’s conscious thought out of the process and letting them rely on the unconscious connection between the brain and the body.
In the Practice Room
The interviews with both Gallwey and Boddy both deal with a common thread among those of us who perform regularly in any way: Our conscious mind has a way of making things that should be simple very complicated. The Inner Game of Tennis refers to the conscious mind as Self 1, and the unconscious mind as Self 2. Much of the book deals with how to let go of judgements and practice focusing Self 1, therefore letting Self 2 do what it already knows how to do.
These ideas, of course, bear a close resemblance to those often associated with the practice of mindfulness. Judgement and negative conscious thought can often take us out of the present moment. Luckily, our unconscious mind has an amazingly efficient way of being able to carry out the very actions that our conscious mind wants to complicate. Our job, as always, is to do our best to get out of the way and allow that to happen.
For brass musicians, the closest thing we have to throwing a weighted baseball is buzzing on our mouthpieces. My students know that I do this every day, both as a way of warming up and as a way of learning music. Anyone who has tried mouthpiece buzzing knows that it is physically much more taxing than playing. For this reason, it can sometimes seem like a party trick: I buzz a passage that I’m having trouble playing, and it instantly improves. But isn’t it mainly because I just did something that was more difficult than playing, and now playing seems easy?
But buzzing does more than just require us to complete a difficult physical action. It takes the instrument out of the equation, meaning that it illustrates the direct connection between our brain and our lips (or lack thereof). As Arnold Jacobs liked to say, a musical message begins in our brain and travels down the seventh cranial nerve to our lips. So mouthpiece buzzing helps us to connect our ear to our lips, which determine what we put into the instrument. More than that, the added exertion that buzzing requires will cause our lips to do what a baseball player’s arm will do when throwing a weighted ball: naturally eliminate the tiny technical inefficiencies that sometimes add up to larger problems. Our lips, with the help of our unconscious mind, will find their way to the most efficient buzz possible.
Buzzing does not equal playing, nor does it always follow that “if you can buzz it, you can play it.” Plugging the mouthpiece into the instrument completely changes the physics of the situation, so practice on the instrument is necessary. I prefer the slightly less catchy “If you can buzz it–or even halfway buzz it*–you will automatically be CLOSER to playing it.” Not only will you be closer in pitch, but your technical mechanism for playing will be much more efficient from the outset. Such are the benefits of hearing the music in your head and letting the unconscious mind take over.
* This refers to playing the instrument with a paper clip or toothpick inserted between the mouthpiece and lead pipe. This creates a situation in which the player is buzzing, but also getting some help from the instrument. It’s about halfway between buzzing and playing.
Practicing for a Performance Mentality
One of the silver linings of living in these strange times has been how many new resources are appearing online for musicians. Some of the world’s most prolific artists and teachers are creating content in their homes, and much of it is available for free. Added to that, many of us have had more time on our hands with which to consume that content. I tend to view these online resources from the angle of mindfulness, and I recently saw one video that seemed especially relevant to this subject.
Rex Richardson (world-class trumpeter and VCU Professor of trumpet) began his “100 days of practice” challenge sometime toward the beginning/middle (what is time anymore?) of the COVID-19 lockdown. Instead of simply sharing video of himself practicing, he usually includes sheet music for the exercise he is highlighting, along with some commentary. Day 35 was a clinic on various strategies for overcoming stage fright or performance anxiety.
In this video, one of Rex’s recommendations is to focus on the task at hand, not the consequences of how we perform that task. He makes the point that it is almost impossible to tell ourselves NOT to think about a certain thing (distractions, anxiety-producing factors). Instead, he recommends that we actively direct our attention toward the music itself. This occupies our conscious mind with ideas that are productive rather than destructive.
Rex notes that while most musicians know this already, putting ourselves in a healthy frame of mind during a high-pressure performance is easier said than done. The performance mentality has to become part of our practice routine in order for it to be accessible to us in performance. We can view this as just another part of our training: the mental along with the physical.
In the Practice Room
My method for practice, which comes from my teachers (and their teachers), is to simplify each task as much as possible in order to master it. As Toby Hanks explained it, the goal is often to break an excerpt down into its component layers (notes, rhythm, articulation, etc.), practice each layer separately, and then reconstruct the excerpt. Sometimes we even simplify to the point of practicing only one single note or interval. This idea is not new at all, but I have come to realize it is perfectly in keeping with the practice of mindfulness: focus on only one thing at a time.
Inspired by Rex’s thoughts on performance anxiety, I have recently been working to find a way to focus specifically on the mental side of performance during my practice sessions. The first task in constructing a positive performance mentality was to identify what my specific focus would be: where should I actively direct my attention? Many musicians believe that peak performance comes from focusing on the music, but what exactly does that mean? Here are some possible points of focus that could work:
-Focus on hearing an ideal musical performance and play along with that
-Focus on hearing your own voice singing and play along with that
-Focus on connecting each note to the next, forming larger phrases out of micro-phrases
-Focus on your breath and how it becomes music (for wind players)
-Focus on the combined physical and auditory sensation of creating each note and phrase
There are plenty of other ways to think about this, and each performer will have a highly individualized mental concept of the music they perform. I have found it to be worthwhile to try out different points of focus in order to observe the effect they have on my performance.
Of course, performance in the practice room is not the same as actual performance. The closest approximation is making an audio or video recording, since many of us experience similar nerves in both recording and performance situations. Recently I have been applying the “one thing at a time” idea to practicing my mentality while recording myself. I decide on a point of mental focus (an ideal tuba performance, my breath, etc.) and record myself while trying to maintain that focus.
I say “trying” to maintain that focus because I am never able to stay completely focused on whatever I choose. My mind will stray here and there to react to what I hear coming out of my instrument. Luckily, as I have often written on this blog, the practice of mindfulness is not the act of maintaining a focus or an empty mind indefinitely. It is simply the act of returning our focus to where it belongs when we waver. Perhaps the most important part of training for our performance mentality is our perspective on the process. Losing focus is not a failure. It is a human reaction. Instead, the act of returning to our point of focus is a victory. Each time we have one of those little victories, our performance improves because of it. We cannot ask more of ourselves than that.
Mindfulness in Isolation
As all musicians know, the emergence of COVID-19 and the necessity for social distancing and quarantine brought many aspects of the music world to a complete halt. Orchestras, bands, Broadway musicals, and other performing arts groups around the world suddenly ended their concert seasons. In the midst of this new landscape, music schools continued to offer instruction to their students, which required a complete reconfiguration of the applied lesson (among many other things).
As my reality shifted along with everyone else’s, my new mode of communication with my students became the online lesson. I still had my students submit videos because the sound quality was vastly superior to what we experienced during online low brass lessons, so the lesson itself mainly became a way to check in and offer feedback. Since my semester ended I’ve had time to reflect on the successes and failures we experienced using this system. One of the main challenges in this instructional setting is maintaining our attention.
When students are in a face-to-face music lesson, attention is generally not an issue (I’m speaking mainly about college students). With a class size of one, students have no choice but to pay attention and be engaged. Both student and teacher are responsible for creating the content of the lesson, and we interact constantly. It is certainly possible for attention to wander, but the usual distractions (phone, computer, other people) are not present.
When applied lessons moved online, they brought one of our primary distractions (a screen) front and center. The novelty of teaching and experiencing lessons in our own homes, maybe even in our pajamas, wore off fairly quickly. We were left trying to maintain our productivity in a setting that removes us from the most important, engaging aspect of a music lesson: the completely analog experience of music itself. Additionally, we were now staring into the very screen that constantly wants to send us notifications to let us know what we’re missing while we’re in the lesson. It is important to note that this can create attention issues for both the student and the teacher. So how do we maintain our mental focus while experiencing a lesser version of music through a screen?
I had an interesting lesson recently with a middle school euphonium student. I had sent him some music to work on, but he had to use his tablet to view the music. This meant that he could keep the Zoom meeting going, but we lost video. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of teaching a student I couldn’t see, but in the moment there wasn’t another way around it. We proceeded with the lesson, and I found that an interesting change occurred in my attention. With no student on the screen, I was forced to really focus in on what I heard. I found myself closing my eyes and listening with more intensity because I didn’t have any visual stimulus. My student also had to do the same when I was speaking or playing for him. I was unable to comment on anything I might have seen in his playing, like posture, breathing habits, or facial setup. But I was able to be more specific about everything I could hear (even with how bad low brass sounds on Zoom) because my ears were so plugged in.
Many of us are finding that platforms like Zoom give us a way to connect with students, colleagues, friends, and family right now while we can’t see people in person. But many of us have also had frustrating experiences with online communication, especially in situations with more than a few people in the same meeting. I recently spoke to my mother on the phone and she reminded me that even though we had visually seen each other in our weekly family Zoom hangouts, we hadn’t really had the chance to speak and catch up in more detail. A regular old phone call gave us so much more of a connection than a Zoom call during which we could see each other.
We already know a few things about attention. We know that when we eliminate stimuli around us, we are better able to focus on our current task. Eliminating the sense of sight so that the sense of hearing becomes more attuned is an extreme example of this. Simply removing screens from the room while working used to be a way to accomplish this, before our entire lives revolved around screens! But we also know that attention is a skill that doesn’t necessarily come to us easily. It needs to be developed with practice. And during a time when the way we go about our daily lives and interact with others has completely changed, that practice may need to be adjusted.
Many of us have made adjustments instinctively. I’ve heard from colleagues who have begun taking notes and keeping records on paper (imagine that!) so that they can get their eyes off of a screen for any amount of time. This also probably helps them maintain their attention as well. Consciously adopting practices that develop our focus can help us to achieve the mental clarity and fight the “brain fog” that many of us have struggled with in this new environment.
My experience teaching a purely audio lesson made me realize that one of the issues with experiencing music (and life) online is that audio and visual stimuli together can be overwhelming. Recently I have begun to seek out audio and visual experiences separately as way to better focus on each type of experience. In general, the practice of mindfulness asks us to focus on one thing at a time. How many times are we listening to music while doing absolutely nothing else? How many visual experiences do we have without audio?
I have found that I can gain and maintain focus by creating either pure audio or pure visual experiences. For me this means either listening to music while doing absolutely nothing else (preferably with my eyes closed) or drawing/coloring in a quiet room while doing absolutely nothing else. I have found that pure audio experiences are more calming and centering for me than pure visual experiences (maybe this is why I’m a musician). But in both cases I gain focus and mental clarity, often times in 10 minutes or less.
Mental Practice
Due to my university’s fall schedule, I recently enjoyed the longest Thanksgiving break I’ve had in many years–an entire week! It was glorious, but I traveled to the east coast by plane, so I was without my tuba for the week. I’m currently in the process of learning new music, so my practice for the week consisted mainly of mouthpiece buzzing (to keep my lips in shape) and a combination of mental and partial physical practice. For me this means some singing, buzzing, and blowing the wind patterns for musical phrases while practicing the fingerings. Essentially, I immersed myself in every part of the music except the actual tuba playing.
When I returned from the week away, I approached the instrument with a bit of trepidation. I find comfort in the reinforcement of the physical aspects of playing the tuba. I don’t like to take time off, and I rarely go more than a few days without playing at least a bit. I don’t feel normal when I do. But in this case I found, as I usually do when I’m forced into this position, that my mental practice brought me to a new level of playing when I returned to the instrument. I know this should not be that surprising, but it gets me every time!
When I say a “new level” of playing, I mean that literally. When learning new music, us brass players have a bad habit of diving into a musical work mouthpiece-first and asking questions later. We look at the music, try to play it, and assess what we hear coming out of the instrument (sometimes successfully, sometimes not). I definitely have the skills necessary to learn a piece by singing and working out rhythms beforehand, but I often skip that step in favor of getting “face time” on the instrument. In my case, this is because I’m constantly trying to build muscular endurance, so playing while engaged mentally seems to achieve two goals at once. Regardless of the reason, learning a new piece with a play-first approach means that I’m starting at zero. I am coming into the situation with no real concept of melody, rhythms, articulations, dynamics, or musical gestures.
What this week of mostly mental practice taught me (…again…) was that if I take the time to mentally reinforce the musical pathway I plan to take through a piece, then I’ll be starting at a much higher level of musical understanding when I apply my mental practice to the instrument. Performing a solo piece can be likened to giving a speech. Wouldn’t it be easier to begin practicing a speech if you already had a basic idea of what you’re about to say? Or even better, if you had each word, sentence, and paragraph already planned? Mental practice can help us to jump-start our physical practice. And since our mind is involved in our physical practice as well, it can help to connect our mental image of a piece to the eventual product we create on our instrument.
In the practice room
If I’m completely honest, my lack of mental practice is not entirely due to the need to build physical endurance. In part, it’s just laziness. I find it difficult to sustain my attention and engagement with a piece of music if I’m not actively playing the instrument. It can sometimes feel like a chore. I’ve found that the main necessity for productive mental practice is mindfulness. I know, another shocker.
It seems many of us struggle with attention issues in the practice room these days, either because of the stresses of our nonstop existence, or because of the ready availability of electronics and media. Many of the concepts discussed in this blog, such as one-mindfulness and observation, are meant to be antidotes to this attention problem. Nothing I’ve said so far in this post is earth-shattering. It makes perfect sense that mental practice helps us to better practice and perform our music, but the roadblock standing in our way is usually finding the time and sustained attention to do it.
Here are some tips for getting over the time/attention hurdle into productive mental practice:
Make use of times in which it is inconvenient to actually go to a practice room. Once inside the practice room, many of us find it difficult to not just … practice! But there are plenty of moments throughout the day when we might find a few minutes to think through our music and visualize playing it. This moments often happen in much more comfortable environments than a practice room. It can be refreshing to experience our music outside of the practice room.
Start small. If attention is an issue, set a timer for a manageable amount of time (as short as 5 minutes). Tell yourself that you will fully engage for that small amount of time, and then gradually increase it.
Add physical elements to your mental practice. For many athletes and musicians, mental practice is just that: entirely mental. It is a visualization of an ideal performance. But I find that incorporating some physical movements with my visualizations helps me to integrate the music with the physical act of playing. Sometimes I conduct, and at other times I perform my fingerings. I may even move in my chair in the way I would when practicing and performing. This helps my mental practice to feel more like a true precursor to playing.
It doesn’t have to be silent. Brass players often sing and buzz our music in order to make our playing more accurate and efficient. But singing and hearing our music also allows us to incorporate musical elements with more ease than we sometimes have on the instrument. The end goal is to have that 100% mental visualization (including pitch) to rely upon in performance, but singing helps us build that mental ideal of a piece.
Forgive yourself for drifting. Everyone’s attention wanders. If you find this happening to you, be kind to yourself. Bring yourself back to the present moment and proceed as though there has been no interruption.
If you are interested in reading further about mental practice, I highly recommend Noa Kageyama’s blog on the topic: https://bulletproofmusician.com/does-mental-practice-work/
Take it Easy
Last week the UNI Tuba and Euphonium studio had the pleasure of hosting Øystein Baadsvik for a guest masterclass and recital. Baadsvik is a world-renowned tuba virtuoso, and perhaps the only person to make an entire career of touring as a tuba soloist. We are still processing the experience, but as I speak to my students about it individually, certain ideas that Baadsvik mentioned in his masterclass keep surfacing consistently in our conversations.
One of the reasons that Øystein Baadsvik has had such success as a musician is that his manner of playing is utterly natural. His tuba seems to be an extension of himself, and he is able to truly sing through it, making each note and gesture musical. As he worked with several of our students in his masterclass, a major focus was on the general theme of relaxation. There were several variations of this, from adjusting a student’s posture to make breathing easier to describing how to approach playing high-range notes with focused air instead of forced air. But the overall message was that most things become easier on low brass instruments when we relax … in other words, “take it easy.”
Relaxation is one of the hardest things for us musicians (and particularly brass musicians) to enact in our daily playing. This is in part because of the process that most of us go through in order to learn and master our instrument. When we begin playing our instrument, sound production takes a huge effort. Sometimes even holding the instrument correctly is a challenge for young students. As we become more practiced on our instruments, the act of playing becomes easier, but there are always notes or passages that are difficult. In order to achieve what seems just outside of our grasp, we push. And it is that habit of pushing that stays with us into our musical adulthood. In my experience, the study of music at the college level often amounts to a gradual undoing of the various unhealthy habits that have built up until that point. For better or for worse, we build and reinforce those habits in the practice room.
As Øystein Baadsvik noted, simply relaxing is not enough to play the tuba well. Ironically, thousands of hours of training are necessary to get us to the point where we are capable of making our music sound effortless. Because of the tension that can build up in during practice, we constantly need to be reminded to get out of our own way. I personally strive toward a sense of equilibrium; balance between the athletic work that goes into playing my instrument and a sense of relaxed stillness as I focus on the music I intend to make.
In the Practice Room
The act of pushing, or tightening up as we play our instrument is a habit. Like most other habits, simply saying to ourselves “don’t do that” does not particularly help us to stop doing it. Instead, we can counteract the habit by focusing on an approach meant to replace it. Below are some strategies that can help to build relaxation in the practice room.
1. Set a timer to go off at certain intervals (5, 10, or 15 minutes). These are check-in points. When the timer goes off, take a moment to observe your own body. Do you feel tension in your shoulders, neck, jaw, or anywhere else? Take a moment to hit the “reset button” by taking a deep, cleansing breath. Focus on your breath (in and out) until you feel the physical tension dissipate. When you begin playing again, note any change that may occur in your sound or style.
2. Use a written symbol to note places in your music where you can take a moment to release tension. Write a word or invent a symbol if necessary. In my music, I include a symbol that specifically reminds me to relax and reset. I write the symbol between phrases or at the end of larger sections of music. This helps to counteract the progressive buildup of tension that can sometimes occur in solo pieces. If it will help even the tiniest bit, why not include it in the score?
3. If and when you feel relaxed and tension-free in the practice room, record yourself. It can be illuminating to hear the results of a sound that is not overly controlled. Sometimes a recording can dispel the notion that a tightly controlled sound is better than a free one.
4. Develop a simple, relaxed, habitual way of beginning things (phrases, passages, or entire pieces). Over many years of study, we can develop all kinds of strange habits around musical beginnings. Because the way we begin a piece influences our playing during the rest of the piece, it is worth examining our beginnings for anything extra and unnecessary. Simpler is often better.
5. If you employ all of these strategies, but still find yourself overly tense and struggling to relax, it may be time for a break. I know, I know, we should all be practicing all the time no matter what until the end of time. But–and I’m speaking mainly to brass players here–if you are physically fatigued, and the only way you can play is by pushing the notes out with force, then your practice has become unproductive. Instead of progressing, you are reinforcing a tense approach in your muscle memory. Consider shifting your practice to one of the myriad techniques that does not involve the instrument. Listen to recordings, sing or blow through your music with fingerings or slide positions, or plan your phrases and breaths. Or go get a cup of coffee! If at any time you are unable to release the tension from your playing, take it as a sign to stop playing.
The Routine Dilemma
This week I had the pleasure of visiting (virtually) with an elementary school music class. The teacher, a friend of mine, was taking her students through a unit on the symphony. The kids are working on creating a program of classical music, so I mostly talked to them about the part of my job that involves planning, programming, and rehearsing music for an ensemble concert. But of course, I also introduced myself as a tuba and euphonium teacher, which led me to show them a tuba, which led to a performance (it inevitably does). It was an illuminating experience that took me out of my well-established performance comfort zone.
I played an unaccompanied solo that I’ve played several times before. In fact, I plan to play this solo again in a few days in recital at the University of Iowa. Needless to say, performing for a group of antsy elementary school students is an entirely different animal than performing for a quiet, well-behaved audience of musicians. Since I was able to see the students on my computer screen, I found myself reacting to them while I was performing. I made musical decisions designed to exaggerate and amplify the dramatic gestures in the piece. I shortened the pauses built into the music to make it clear that the piece was continuing through the silences. While the notes and rhythms were the same as ever, I performed an entirely new and unique interpretation of the written music simply as a reaction to my audience.
This performance experience sent me down a path of contemplating the contradictions that exist in my own practice of music. The goal of this blog, and one of my primary goals as a musician, is to increase and enhance mindfulness in myself and others. A performance like the one I gave to the elementary class is only possible when I am able to bind myself to the present moment and ride along with it. I am happy to say that I was able to do that in this case, but the experience was also a bit disconcerting. Like most musicians, I practiced that solo for many, many, many hours before ever performing it. Each time I program it, I add more hours of practice in order to re-familiarize myself with it. This type of repetitive practice relies heavily on certain routine elements. The repetition itself is routine. I work hard to incorporate my musical interpretation of the piece into that practice. But how many times in all of my practice of this piece did I play it exactly as I did during this one performance? Zero.
In the writings of Ellen Langer (one of the first scholars to write on mindfulness) and others, routine is often presented as the antithesis of mindfulness. This is because many types of routines are comprised of the mindless repetition of actions. The lack of thought or attention around those repetitive actions can lead to behavior that is automatic. How many times have you heard a waiter say “Enjoy your meal,” and accidentally responded with “You, too”? We often have built-in, automatic responses when our brains are not engaged in the moment. When we engage with our behavior mindfully we often find that the automatic action or response is not the best one for the present moment.
I bring this up because routine is unavoidable in the practice of music, and especially in brass playing. I have a routine of fundamentals that I try to play every single day–I don’t do exactly the same thing every day, but I do play similar types of exercises each day that target the main technical areas of tuba performance. This fundamentals routine is responsible for my ability to play most music that I find on the stand in front of me at any given time. I do not need the routine in order to be able to play, but I do need it in order to be a well-rounded brass player in the long term.
I think many musicians would agree with me that it is incredibly difficult to be entirely present and mindfully engaged in every minute of our daily fundamentals practice. Regardless of how often the exercises may change, it is still the most tedious thing we do in the practice room. It often feels mindless.
It is far easier to be mentally engaged with our etudes and solo music than with our technical studies. Nevertheless, we are creatures of habit. The patterns of routine repetition that anchor our technical practice also find their way into our more “musical” practice. This is very much on purpose: when I’m having trouble with a certain interval in my solo, what do I do? I isolate it and repeat it until it becomes more comfortable. Even though solos involve much more musical interpretation than fundamentals, I still follow a routine in practicing my solos. It is what grounds me and gives me the confidence to perform the music. I don’t just play through my solo pieces; I build them from the ground up through practice.
My elementary music class performance made me rethink the idea of routine in my solo practice. Although slow, methodical, routine-based practice does help to build the skills necessary to perform our music, it also tends to reinforce only one musical interpretation of a piece. As I incorporate my musical ideas into my practice I am generally aiming toward one version of the piece that I hear as perfect. But I now realize that musical practice should prepare us for more than one eventuality. Instead, it should prepare us for as many outcomes as possible. Different audiences, performance spaces, and occasions call for different interpretations of our music. Our practice should reinforce engaged, mindful performance instead of mindless repetition.
Ultimately, I believe that I was able to provide a mindful, appropriate performance for the students that heard me this week. That was made possible in part by my routine, repetitive, methodical practice of both fundamentals and of my solo music. But I will continue to explore what mindfulness and mindlessness mean in my practice. When I find myself using repetition and routine in my solo practice, I will also take time to turn on my “performance mode” switch and create a unique interpretation of the music that only exists in that moment.
The Three Parts of the Practice Day
I recently learned about a TED Talk given a few years ago by a monk. In order to create a schedule that would be maximally beneficial, he advocated for breaking each day into time spent on three distinct categories: 1) Creativity, 2) Productivity/Management, and 3) Education/Entertainment. Part of the speaker’s point was that productivity and management tasks are necessary and often prioritized first. But those tasks often benefit from fueling the parts of the brain that are activated during creativity/learning/entertainment time.
This got me thinking about how I spend my own days. Granted, I have a very different schedule from a monk. But many of my waking hours are taken up by tasks related to productivity and management. At best, I experience entertainment in the form of having the TV on in the background as I continue to wade through my near-constant stream of emails each evening.
My most disturbing realization, though, was that I haven’t dedicated much time toward being creative in the past several weeks. I have been working toward a recital, which means a lot of slow, careful repetition and endurance building. I certainly exercise creativity in my musical decisions while playing my solo music, but I am often focused on shoring up technical aspects of the music. Because I’m focused on a specific set of pieces, I am not often putting myself in the position to create a new interpretation from scratch. Instead, I’m constantly tweaking music with which I have a high level of familiarity.
I believe that the idea of breaking the day into different types of tasks or actions can be transferred onto the practice session. I have often viewed the practice session (and the lesson, for that matter) as a pie chart with different categories, including warm ups/fundamentals, études, solos, etc. But what if we changed the categories? What if instead of moving from task to task we moved between types of tasks, making sure to exercise different parts of our brains?
In the Practice Room
Like the aforementioned monk, I have chosen to break the practice session into three types of tasks. But I have made some slight changes to the categories in order to optimize them for music. Entertainment and creativity are closely linked in the practice room, so I have combined those categories. Productivity and management tasks, however, are not exactly the same thing in music, and are therefore separated.
The Practice Session:
Maintenance/management: This part of the practice session includes warm-ups and fundamental exercises. These tasks are incredibly important because they give us the technical ability to play any music that we might find on our stand on any given day. This segment of our practice is often the most tedious, but the most necessary.
Productivity: This part of the practice session is devoted to learning and improving upon our current musical works-in-progress. It includes slow, methodical practice, repetition of phrases and sections of music, and drilling the parts of our music that give us the most difficulty in performance.
Creativity/Entertainment: This part of the practice session feeds the soul. It is the time when we set aside our self-assessment and join ourselves to the present moment. It may be a run-through of a work-in-progress during which we simply focus on creating a unique musical interpretation in the moment. It may be reading new music, or returning to an old favorite. Whatever the musical material, the point of this part of the practice session is to exercise our musical mindfulness; To purposely set aside the elements that we focus on for the bulk of our practice session (namely our mistakes) by focusing solely on the music. Ignoring errors is harder than it sounds, but it can provide a great sense of freedom of expression.
It is this final part of the practice session that I have noticed myself to be lacking. This week I’ve been experimenting with incorporating at least ten minutes of pure creativity and/or entertainment into my practice sessions. It may sound obvious, but this type of activity can easily move to the bottom of my priority list when a stack of music for an upcoming performance is demanding my attention. The results so far have been positive both mentally and physically. Practicing for the purpose of exercising my creativity contributes to my physical endurance while it nourishes the part of my brain that I rely on to make music in the moment during a performance.
**I am still trying to track down the link to the original TED Talk. Apologies for not having the source available here!
Musical Meditation: Spiegel im Spiegel
The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt spent the early part of his career composing in neoclassical forms and experimenting with twelve-tone music and serialism. After some of his early compositions were censored by the Soviet government, Pärt entered a period of compositional silence. Instead of creating new works he turned to the past, studying plainsong, Gregorian chant, and the polyphonic vocal works of the Renaissance. He emerged from this period an entirely different composer.
Pärt called the compositional style that he developed during this period tintinnabuli. If you know anything about Pärt, you probably know that word because you were made to memorize it for a music history class. Inspired by the clarity and simplicity of early vocal music, tintinnabuli (meaning “like the ringing of bells”) featured the building blocks of Western music: simple triads and unembellished notes. Spiegel im Spiegel, written in 1978, is an excellent example of his meditative, minimalist style, and is perhaps Pärt’s most beloved piece.
The title of Spiegel im Spiegel translates roughly to “mirror in the mirror,” or possibly “mirrors in the mirror.” Triads revolving around the tonic in the key of F major are repeated on piano in a seemingly endless pattern with slight variations. A violin melody composed entirely of long tones within the F major scale contrasts the bell-like nature of the accompaniment. The piece progresses slowly but undeniably as the two lines interact, building and relaxing to form peaks and valleys. The music reflects upon itself like a mirror, giving the impression that the piece is part of an unending pattern, of which its performance can only convey one tiny part. Spiegel im Spiegel, like many of Pärt’s later compositions, creates a truly meditative experience for both the performers and the listeners.
Although Spiegel im Spiegel was written for violin and piano, it has been performed and recorded with cello as well. But the simplicity of the piece’s construction allows it to work in a wide variety of instrumental combinations. It is helpful, though not completely necessary, for the instrument playing the triadic line to be a string or percussion instrument. The gentle bell tones can be performed with the most ease on an instrument that creates its own sound decay. I had the opportunity to play this piece on my own instrument (tuba) with harp playing the accompanying part. I have returned to it many times since then because its mystical, calm character is so unique in classical music (or any other kind of music).
Although Spiegel im Spiegel is simple in its construction, it should not be mistaken as an easy piece to perform. Wind players, in particular, will find that a piece composed entirely of long tones presents its own unique physical and mental challenges. Its transparency demands that the musicians stay in the moment, experiencing the music beat by beat along with the listener. I highly recommend that all musicians experience it at least once. I have even been known to play along with a recording when I don’t have a collaborator close at hand!
Please enjoy the video performance above, along with this delightful interview of Arvo Pärt by the Icelandic musician Björk:
Anxiety is not an Emotion
This week at UNI we are looking forward to a visit from Dr. Noa Kageyama, who is probably best known among musicians for his blog, The Bulletproof Musician. Dr. Kageyama is an expert in performance psychology, and currently serves on the faculty of the Juilliard School and the New World Symphony, working too help orchestral musicians prepare for auditions. He regularly presents masterclasses and seminars on performance enhancement and overcoming performance anxiety around the country.
Amid the lead-up to Dr. Kageyama’s visit I have been checking in with members of my studio about how performance anxiety affects them. Some version of “nerves” is present among almost all of us musicians in performance, and it is worth noting that they aren’t always a bad thing. Sometimes the energy and adrenaline that course through us on stage are exactly what make performances unique and memorable. But when that nervous energy snowballs into a reaction that causes us not to perform at our potential, it is generally characterized as performance anxiety.
I am looking forward to hearing more on Dr. Kageyama’s research and conclusions in the arena of performance anxiety (more on that later). But the conversation brought me back to something that I originally heard from a mental health professional in the context of generalized anxiety. What she said has stuck with me since that moment: “Anxiety is not an emotion.”
We often connect anxiety with our emotions because our emotions are most definitely wrapped up in the experience. And anxiety is certainly something that we feel. But anxiety is actually not the emotion itself. Anxiety is a uniquely human reaction to emotions that are verging on unbearable. The example given to me was this:
When a gazelle is grazing in the Serengeti and is interrupted by lion, the gazelle fears the lion and runs for its life. Its instinct for flight in the face of fear saves its life. But later, the gazelle doesn’t scold itself, saying “I was so STUPID to graze over there by that lion.” And it doesn’t worry about the future, asking “What if there’s a lion at the place I choose to graze tomorrow?”
For us humans, anxiety is everything surrounding a particularly negative emotion like fear, sadness, or anger. But for performers, it is most often fear. We badly want our listeners to enjoy our performance, or we want to make a good impression on them. We want to get the job. We want to convey the meaning we have found in the music we play, and we fear that we will not. That fear is often simply not there in the practice room, when we are playing for ourself alone. Anxiety comprises the mental and physical reactions to that fear.
In the Practice Room
Understanding the emotions from which our various forms of anxiety originate is a crucial step in successfully dealing with that anxiety. This process is simply a skill that can be developed over time with practice. Luckily for us musicians, we’re very familiar with practice.
As a musician trained in the conservatory model, I have consumed plenty of content on defeating performance anxiety, particularly in the arena of auditions. Much of what is recommended deals with simulating performance conditions in one way or another so that the performer can examine their mentality, practice regularly in “performance mode,” and over time become desensitized to the worst symptoms of performance anxiety. I do recommend exploring all of the options available for this type of practice, as detailed by Dr. Kageyama and others.
However, I also recommend taking some time, either in the practice room or not, to examine the underlying emotions that can cause performance anxiety. Emotions are not our enemies. They are helpful and necessary to us, and they make us human. They are our friends. They don’t need to be scary, but instead simply need to be unpacked and examined in the light. I don’t remember having a fear associated with performance when I was banging away on my Mickey Mouse drum set as a child (as evidenced on many home videos). But as I advanced, and as the stakes got higher, that fear, along with the accompanying anxiety, did appear. A major turning point in dealing with it was the realization that there was simply an underlying fear of what people would think if and when I make a mistake. A close examination of that fear went a long way toward taking away its power over me.
Novelty over Routine
In 2009, Ellen Langer and two colleagues conducted a “mindfulness intervention” with professional orchestral musicians which focused on the creation of novelty in musical performances. Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard, has studied and written on mindfulness since the 1980s. According to Langer, mindfulness is:
“The process of drawing novel distinctions. It does not matter whether what is noticed is important or trivial, as long as it is new to the viewer. Actively drawing these distinctions keeps us situated in the present. It also makes us more aware of the context and perspective of our actions than if we rely upon distinctions and categories drawn in the past (Langer & Moldoveanu 1-2).”
Langer believes that mindlessness (automatic, routine-based behavior) can lead to a life that seems predetermined instead of unique. She writes that mindfulness, in contrast to mindlessness, can help us break free of learned patterns that inhibit our intellect or creativity.
Langer and her colleagues brought the idea of focusing on novelty to their study of performance in the orchestra. The musicians (sixty highly-skilled orchestral players) were given Brahms’ Symphony no. I, a piece they had all performed hundreds of times. During the first performance, the orchestra was instructed to play “in the finest manner you can, offering subtle new nuances to your performance (Langer, Russell, and Eisenkraft 127).” The key to this study was that the musicians were not asked to notice specific novelties, but instead to create them. The idea of novel distinctions was translated directly into the creation of music.
As an alternate to this version of the performance, players were then asked to “think about the finest performance of this piece that you can remember, and try to play it (127).” This is an idea that is often used with great success in sports psychology. The expectation would be that musicians, like athletes, would perform better during the version in which they were trying to imitate the best performance in their memory.
What the study showed, however, was that both the orchestra and the 126-person audience preferred the first version of the performance. Langer and her colleagues found that in this case, a focus on subtle nuances and novelty led to increased enjoyment for all involved. This experiment would not have been possible without the hundreds of thousands of hours that each musician spent in the practice room building up the skill necessary to achieve nuances in performance. But it poses a question to those of us who practice: How does our practice prepare us for novelty in performance?
In the Practice Room
Perhaps one of the reasons that mindfulness can be difficult to employ in performance is because it is almost impossible to maintain in the practice room. I’ll be honest, my last practice session involved a fair amount of mindless, routine playing, because for brass players the most simple (and sometimes monotonous) exercises–like long tones and slow playing–are often the most effective at building consistent technique and endurance. I am often focused on building a piece from the ground up, which usually involves plenty of slow, careful repetition.
But Langer’s study is not really about eliminating routine completely. It is about intentionally choosing a point of focus. If I focus only on what I have thoroughly learned in the practice room, then I am only focusing on the elements of my performance that will be mostly static. Langer’s idea of mindfulness is to shift awareness in performance away from sameness and toward novelty or nuance. Specifically, the orchestral experiment suggests that if we focus our awareness on our own creation of nuance, we (and our audience) may get more out of our performance.
At first glance, this seems like a no-brainer. Of course we should be focusing on our unique musical expression during a performance. But sometimes it feels safer to focus within our comfort zone, which is established in the practice room. Sometimes the “novelty” that happens onstage isn’t necessarily welcome or intended! A solution to getting stuck in a practice-room mentality onstage, of course, is to regularly practice in “performance mode,” focusing on creating musical nuance. This is undoubtedly a healthy alternative to only hammering away at repetitive, technical practice.
I also submit that, looking back to Langer’s original definition of mindfulness above, a focus on noticing novelty (not just creating it) can benefit us in the practice room. As I repeat a specific passage over and over, I can focus on what is the same from one run-through to the next, and this will give me a good idea of how much consistency I’ve built. But if I instead focus on what is different from one repetition to the next, I may get more useful information. The novelties that emerge between performances might simply be errors that I wish to correct. But they could also be musical nuances that I may want to incorporate into my performance. Either way, an awareness of novelty, along with a commitment to creating nuance, will certainly tether me to the present while I play.
**Langer, E.J., and Moldoveanu, M.C. “The construct of mindfulness. Journal of Social Issues, 56(I) (2000), 1-9.
**Langer, E.J., Russell, T., and Esenkraft, N. “Orchestral performance and the footprint of mindfulness.” Psychology of Music, 37(2) (2009), 125-136.