Author: musicalitywrld

Surely such a high-level performer is long past any concerns of stage fright or performance anxiety, right? That’s not always the case. In this conversation Annie shares invaluable insights on how top-level professional musicians think about and actively tackle performance anxiety.

We talk about:

• The relationship between performance anxiety, flow states, and getting into “the zone”.
• The specific components of Annie’s own peak performance toolkit and what you might like to try for yourself.
• The lessons she learned from interviewing some of the original Hollywood studio musicians of the golden years.

This conversation will enlighten your overall view of performance flow states – and leave you with some specific tips to help you reach your full performance potential.

Watch the episode:

Links and Resources

• Annie Bosler Online
• The Healthy Musician: Dealing With Nerves & Performance Anxiety
• 1M1: Hollywood Horns of the Golden Years
• Composed Documentary
• Kenny Werner – Effortless Mastery
• Don Greene Books
• Chuck Kriese Books
• Annie Bosler, Don Greene, Kathleen Tesar – College Prep for Musicians
• Maxwell Maltz – The New Psycho-Cybernetics
• Musicality Now – The Keys to Performance Success, with Dr. Don Greene (Winning On Stage)
• College Prep for Musicians Instagram

Transcript

Annie: You got it. Hi, I’m Annie Bosler, and I co-authored College Prep for Musicians, and I also produced and directed 1M1: Hollywood Horns of the Golden Years, and this is Musicality Now.

Christopher: Perfect. Very good, thank you. Cool. Great. Let’s get started. Welcome to the show Annie, thank you for joining us today.

Annie: Thank you for having me, I’m super excited to be here.

Christopher: You have an incredibly impressive CV in terms of the musicians you have performed with, and you are a french horn player, to boot. A fascinating individual to begin with, but you’ve also co-authored a really terrific book and produced a very interesting movie, and given talks that are super fascinating. There’s a lot to talk about, but I wonder if we could start at the beginning and learn a little bit about Annie Bosler the musician. Where you came from, when you started, and what your own musical trajectory has been like.

Annie: Sure, so, I actually grew up in South Carolina on a farm, a beef farm with cows, and so for me, I was kind of a little bit of the black sheep in the family in terms of, the one who did music. Now that I live in Los Angeles, everybody’s like, “What are you doing?” I grew up, very fortunate to be get to drive an hour and a half each way to take french horn lessons, and one of the big highlights of my high school career was I got to play in an all-state band, which, I know a lot of people have done such a thing, but for me, it was really a game-changer. We played a piece, Nimrod, by Elgar, from the Enigma Variations, and it was one of the things where I was sitting on stage at all-state, and I was just in this wash of sound. If you know the piece, there’s not honestly that much of an amazing french horn part, and so it was being in this huge wash of sound and I just, it just changed my life and I just said, “I want to be in the middle of this sound forever.”

Annie: That just is basically what started everything, and so from there I went on to do my undergrad in french horn, and I had a similar experience when I went off to college and I got to hear the Pittsburgh Symphony on a pretty regular basis. I had never heard Alpine Symphony, and so I think I was a freshman, and I got to go sit in the Symphony Hall, and it was the same experience. I mean, granted, I wasn’t in the orchestra, but I was in the audience, and the same wash of sound happened again. It was so intense that I cried the whole performance. I mean, I’ll start crying if I talk about this too much, but I cried the entire performance. I cried the whole bus ride home. I cried for the next hour after it, and I just said, “I have to be a part of this.” That took me then to Los Angeles for a Masters and Doctorate, and I’ve been very fortunate to get to do many different things where I get to be in this wash of sound all the time. I feel crazy fortunate to be a professional musician.

Christopher: Amazing, and I won’t reel off the names of all of the incredible musicians you’ve played with over the years, but I wonder if you could pick out a few highlights? I know that you were recently performing at the Grammy’s, for example.

Annie: Yeah. I was really fortunate to get to play at the Grammy’s just this last weekend, with Ariana Grande. I played second horn there, it was a lot of fun. I’ll tell you the one that I would say is my parents’ favorite highlight, which is funny because my mom’s always like, “What kind of concerts are you doing? Okay.” Then, but when I called about this one, she’s like, “Oh, you’ve really made it.” It’s, I got, I was really fortunate to get asked to play on a CBS special which honored The Beatles, and I think in my lifetime, I never ever once thought I would get asked to play with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the two remaining Beatles, but we did and they had four french horns on the stage, and we did Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club and also Hey Jude.

Annie: It was one of those things where we showed up not knowing at all who we were going to play with. They just said, “It’s a special honoring The Beatles,” and we didn’t know which artist we would play with. To get asked to play with them, obviously, is beyond a highlight. When we showed up on stage, we had just known we were playing Sergeant Pepper’s, and then we were asked to play Hey Jude on the spot. It’s a good thing the horn section had, we all had listened to it, known it well, but, so we just put the chords in with the group and it was just amazing. My mom and dad obviously were over the moon, but I think for them, that was a, “You’ve now made it in music.” Even though I had done millions of concerts before that, that was a big highlight, so.

Christopher: It’s hard to beat playing with Paul and Ringo.

Annie: I, yeah. I just, I can’t describe it. It was, and it was world live national television, so it’s not a tiny bit of pressure, but.

Christopher: Well, that’s one of the things I most wanted to talk about with you today, is musicians and pressure. Obviously this would be a theme in your book, College Prep for Musicians, where certainly in the US, the audition to get into the college to study music is a huge thing and potentially a seriously intimidating thing. That, yeah, I’m sure many of us who haven’t gone that route can only imagine, the intense pressure for teenagers. Obviously, performance anxiety and the pressure of performing is something that pretty much every musician and music learner has to grapple with at some point. I’d love to hear a bit of your perspective on that, and maybe we could begin by just talking about how you experienced that for yourself growing up, before you became such an expert in the topic. What was it like for you?

Annie: Sure. I mean, I’ll be straight-up and honest. I deal with it every day. I deal with performance anxiety no matter what concert I play. I think any professional that doesn’t say that they do at some point might not be telling the truth, because I really do. I think everybody does do it. I think some people have more tools and more experience, and they’ve learned to tackle it, but I’ve felt everything from all the physical symptoms to, definitely the mental symptoms where you’re going to miss this note, this is not going well, whatever. It’s something that I work on, honestly, all the time. I’ll tell you when I first experienced it, was I was fortunate to play college tennis. That was part of my college experience, I was on the tennis team there, and I would find myself honestly choking in matches. What would happen was, I was always better than the player, and I would get to the point where I should have beaten the player, but I would always feel that I wasn’t good enough to win somehow or I wasn’t good enough to tackle it, and so I had a coach …

Annie: This was, honestly I dealt with this mostly before college, but I had a coach in high school. His name was Bill Jolly. He’s like a second grandfather to me, honest, or a third grandfather to me, honestly, but he basically taught me how to win. What he taught me was, there’s all sides. The physical side to playing, and there’s the mental side, but he taught me a lot about visualization. My dad also was a college football player, and so he grew up listening to things like Maxwell Maltz, “Psycho Cybernetics”, which if people have never listened to, that’s a great start. Anyway, so I tackled it really through tennis before I hit the music side, and so I would do a lot of visualization on the court and off the court, trying to really recreate points in my head and work on closing points and winning points.

Annie: The way that translated to music was, I started to use the same … Excuse me, I started to use the same visualization process when preparing for auditions and preparing for big concerts, or concerts. For me, the visualization is something that not a lot of musicians know about from the athletic side that I think is super important, and the way you do it is, you just start from the beginning. You picture yourself, you picture the stage or the place you’re going to perform, even if it’s a lesson or you’re going to go play duets with friends or whatnot, you picture yourself walking into the room. You picture yourself, all the feelings that you’re going to feel. If you’re going to feel nervous, you picture it, and then you picture everything up so when you sit down, you play, and then if anything goes negatively in your mind, you, I always will pause and try to … You accept it, don’t say, “This is terrible,” but you accept it and then kind of pause, and then walk yourself through it in a positive way.

Annie: Whenever I give talks in front of musicians, I will do a visualization, and I always ask them. I’ll say, “Okay, pick a piece of music in your head, and visualize it from start to finish.” Then, when we’re done with that a minute later, I’ll say, “Okay, raise your hand if you made a mistake,” and literally 90% of the room has made a mistake while listening to it in their head, which is hilarious to me, because you haven’t even played your instrument. The visualization is really fascinating because on the sports side, you’re working out the points in your head and you should always be winning the points, or at least seeing a positive version of it going through. On the music side, you’re seeing the same thing happening. You’re seeing a positive experience take place of that piece, and so I think it’s something that a lot more musicians can use. My husband is also a french horn player, and when he or I are preparing for big auditions, we always talk about it a lot. “How’s your visualization going? Are you seeing yourself play great?” I think that’s something that everyone can use.

Annie: If you like, I’ll take it back a second to all the other sides of performance anxiety, because there’s obviously a lot. There’s the physical side and the mental side, but I would say every … Preparation is a very big part of me handling performance anxiety on a day to day basis, and also really making sure I get a lot of sleep. If, I find that the chatter in your brain, and to be honest, I didn’t really understand that other people heard chatter in their head until I was in my early twenties and I came across Don Greene’s, the famous music performance psychologist, I think he’s been on your show before. I came across his material, and then I was like, “Wait, other people hear things in their head?” I was like, I just thought I was this crazy person who heard voices in my head that were telling me how I was going to play this piece. Then, once I realized that those existed and I could actually control them, or at least, not control them but use them to my advantage.

Annie: One of the big tools I use of Don’s that I got from one of his books is that you name the voice in your head, and I always think that you give it a funny name. Something you don’t encounter on a daily basis in your life, so I used Bartholomew because I don’t have any Bartholomew friends, and mine’s a, I actually think my voice is a female voice in my head, but I call him Bartholomew just because I like that one. Whenever, technically it’s a she, I guess, comes in my head, I send it outside the door. If I’m on stage, I pick a door, and I saw, “Bartholomew, you’re going to go outside that door and you’re going to stay there until I’m done, and I will pick you up on the way back. We’re still hanging out, but you’re going to stay there until I’m done with this performance,” and so there’s multiple … If I’m in a show, there’s often 10, 15, 20, maybe 100 times, I say, “Bartholomew, you’re there.” That’s where, I use that tool all the time.

Annie: I’ve used things, I mean, honestly, I’ve tried so many things before, but I would say the other big factor I think is hydration. Whether you’re a string player, a percussionist, a pianist, particularly when it’s particularly voice, hydration is huge. I’ve talked to a lot of nutritionists over the years about how much should you hydrate, and the biggest number I’ve gotten is take half your body weight, turn it into ounces. Let’s just say you weigh 120 pounds. That’s 60 ounces of water. That’s what you’re supposed to drink every single day. That’s not Gatorade or Coke or coffee or tea, that’s straight-up solid water, and I think for things like dry mouth, just climate, altitude changes, if you happen to be traveling to play a show, this is super, super important. The water is really key and clutch in terms of this, and so what I do is if the concert’s on a Saturday, I try to count basically 72 hours out from that show, and that’s when I start to hydrate. I’m always constantly preparing, and my husband, he plays lots of big studio stuff, and so he’s all the time carrying, he has has a 32 ounce bottle of water and I can’t even tell you the number of times he fills that. I mean, he’s a little heavier than I am in terms of weight, but he’ll feel that up just a ton of times a day.

Annie: The last thing I would say that’s really big in terms of the chatter is sleep. I think, I have a one-year-old, which we were talking about earlier, but I have a one-year-old right now and so sleep is sadly something that’s few and far between sometimes. It’s a constant battle to get enough hours. I always find if I don’t have enough, that chatter is crazy loud, and going really strong. My recommendation is, just try to get sleep. There’s all these books and things about how many hours you should get. I think it’s up to the person. Some people can function great off, I know some big-time professional french horn players that only get six hours a night and they function fantastic. I know others that get eight to 10, and that’s great, but I think it’s just up to the person. There’s many programs out there you can try.

Annie: Just to go back to it, I think I experience it on a daily basis. I work on it on a daily basis, but the difference, I think, between someone who doesn’t do this day in and day out and someone that is a professional is that, I would say, there’s just more tools, and you have to find the tools that work for you and just have a gamut of tools in your tool bag, basically. You just go to them if something’s not working, so that’s what I would say in terms of a crash course in dealing with nerves.

Christopher: Fantastic, thank you, yeah. I know that solely, to hear from someone like yourself who’s played with the big names and had such a fantastic career, to hear that you experience performance anxiety and that you are actively using these kinds of tools that people hear about as part of your toolkit, that in itself I think is hugely valuable, because I think otherwise, there’s a risk that we see them as the crutches that beginners need, and real professionals wouldn’t need to do all that stuff and actually, as you say, the vast majority, if not all professional musicians, experience these symptoms and have their toolkit of ways to handle it, or reduce it happening in the first place.

Annie: I’ll just throw out there real quick, too, there’s a great documentary by John Beder. I’m pretty sure it’s called Composed. He goes, I think it’s an hour and a half long. I saw it premiered in LA, it’s fantastic, but he goes through musicians that … He talks to hundreds of musicians, and he does lots of surveys, and we’ve had a lot of conversations, he and I, about different things. He proves that, that so many musicians are dealing with what we’re talking about, and just how do they deal with it? What do they do? I think there’s a lot, between Don Greene’s material, John Beder’s documentary, I think there’s a lot of places and ways that people can look into getting their, sorry. I think there’s a lot of ways people can expand their toolkit.

Christopher: Absolutely, and one thing I loved in your talk, The Healthy Musician, which I saw a video of online, was that you shared the survey you had done of hundreds of musicians, asking them, “What’s in your toolkit? What do you use regularly to cope with this stuff?” We’ve already touched on a few, like visualization, and being careful about sleep, and hydration. The other two that really stood out were meditation and breathing, which maybe go hand in hand to some extent. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about those.

Annie: Sure. There’s a whole world of meditation, and there’s thousands of ways to meditate, spiritual ways, non-spiritual ways. Personally, I use one, there’s a voice teacher named Irene Gubrud, and her stuff, I met her in Aspen at the music festival and she was a voice teacher there, and she also ran a meditation class which honestly changed my world. She has a bunch of different types of meditations, and my favorite of hers is just straight-up a breathing meditation, which I feel like as a wind player, a brass player, we breathe. That’s something I need on stage, and I find, particularly for me, if I feel nervous, my breath is one of the first things that go. My philosophy on it is that it’s just like practicing. It’s like playing a million third-space Cs, or whatever. If you, the more you meditate, the more you have it in your system, and it’s a recall. You can recall it on the spot, on the stage, and so for me, if I start to feel uber nervous, I’ll go back to the breathing. I’ve done her tapes so many times that I can literally hear her voice in my head and my whole body just goes like, “Oh.” It’s amazing.

Annie: Another thing I just learned in the last few years, because I’ve been fortunate enough to work a lot with Dr. Don Greene, is he has a centering technique and he sells it on his website, winningonstage.com. I’ve started using his also in the last several years, and so between Irene’s and his, I feel like I’ve got a really good toolkit of kind of things to hone in on. I mean, nothing still goes perfect. I play french horn, but, I feel like I have some good tools to go to. Don’s, it’s centering, and it takes a whole to master it. I mean, not a while, but repetitions. What I would say with that is, it’s interesting, because I use, for his centering technique, I use the stand pole. Basically one of the things is, if your eyes go above eye level, it usually means you’re accessing left brain. If I’m kind of up here talking, I’m thinking and I’m accessing left brain, but if, so he picks something below eye level, and so, and left brain is where all the chatter is. It’s something below eye level, so centering takes you there, and it’s a process.

Annie: He has kind of three different forms of it, basic, intermediate, advanced, and once you get through all the forms, then you can start to do it really quickly. I bet I have centering down to a blink of an eye, that’s how fast I can do it. For me, if I look at the stand pole I’m centered, and so all of the right-left brain stuff, right brain is a lot of visualization. Sometimes, sorry, visual stuff, like movies, that kind of thing, in your brain. If you’re starting to daydream a little, that’s right brain. Left brain is more the chatter, and so for me, if I center, it’s, boom. I’m right back in, and so I bet I center 150 times a concert, sometimes, or if I’m in a recording session, because a lot of the times what happens is they’ll go to a different instrument or they stripe, which means they record the strings, then the brass and the winds, and then percussion, or however they decide to do it. We’ll be sitting there for sometimes 45 minutes, and then you have to come in a bunch of times to record your parts, and so every time I’m centering, centering, centering, centering.

Annie: If you, I’ve watched some other players too. It’s kind of, Don calls it the wink-wink club. If you’re on stage and you see people kind of do this thing, you can kind of tell who’s centering and who’s not, or who’s using meditation and who’s not, by how they approach their entrances. I would say I’ve watched some big-name folks who do similar things, and it’s really cool to see that happening. My husband uses it all the time, I use it all the time. I think meditation, and just, there’s … Centering is great. There’s a million forms of meditation out there, so there’s, you can meditate on a feeling. You can do everything from breathe into your heart, really open that up, feel feelings of love, feel feelings of calm. The visualization is obviously great. You can meditate on a word. I mean, there’s just so many different types of meditations, and so my one biggest piece of information, I would say, is it takes practice. It’s something that you could use, even if you’re not on stage as a musician. Let’s say your professional life is you talk, or you lead meetings, or you just have to write a really intense email. Learn to use one of these skills and do it over and over, and then it will actually bleed into your playing on the stage, and all that kind of thing. I hope I answered the question.

Christopher: Absolutely, and I really appreciated a comment you made in that talk, because you just said something about centering and how you can do it now in the blink of an eye, and you said something a bit similar about meditation in that talk, which was, now that you’ve done meditation regularly, you can kind of remember the feeling of being calm and at peace, and just tap into that directly in the moment. That’s definitely something I’ve found really valuable from meditation is, yes, it kind of sets you up for the day and yes, you kind of develop this mindfulness, but it also just gives you a very visceral sense of what it means to be in that ideal state and that’s something you don’t need to sit there for 20 minutes to get to, necessarily. You can just kind of channel.

Annie: There’s even a great app out right now called Headspace. If you have it, I think it’s an annual fee, but it’s got all kinds of different meditations. Kenny Warner has a great book called Effortless Mastery, so, and I mentioned Irene’s stuff and Don’s stuff. There’s so many different great tools, again, for your toolkit. That’s the most important, I think, is just, fill that kit up with all kinds of stuff. If something’s not working, you go to the next thing. That’s at least what I try, but again, I still play french horn, so you know.

Christopher: We’ve talked a little bit about the kind of toolkit you can have to, as it were, stop bad things happening and avoid performance anxiety, but there is a flip side, which is kind of the getting into the zone or getting into flow, that you talk about a little bit when you speak. I wonder if you could share your experience with that, and maybe the relationship between performance anxiety at one end of things, and being totally in the flow at the other end of things?

Annie: Sure. For me, I first experienced what I would call the zone when I was playing tennis. It was a wild thing, because I had always, there’s a fantastic tennis coach that I used to go every summer and work with. He taught at Clemson University in South Carolina and his name’s Chuck Kriese, and he wrote some amazing books. He’s really big into the mental side, and he would always talk about the zone. In tennis, they call it treeing. It’s like, there’s all these different terms for it, but I never experienced it until one tennis match one day, and I just, it was crazy fascinating. The ball was coming across the net, and it just literally felt like the whole things was in slow motion. It was almost like I could see every particle or every thread or hair on the ball. It’s just coming across the net, and you go to hit it, and you hit the ball, and you’re back in real time, and then it comes back at you and it’s just back in slow motion. This experience was surreal, and I just was like, “This must be the zone.” I didn’t think about it in the moment. It was after the whole match was over, and honestly, the entire match was like that. It was the coolest feeling ever, and I was just in it, just going through the motions. I mean, I won the match. It was like, again, I was right in the moment for the whole thing, and so I kept thinking to myself, “Wow, I wonder if I can experience this on horn, or in music?”

Annie: It wasn’t until I was in my, I guess it was my Master’s or Doctorate at USC, University of Southern California in LA, when I was taking an audition, and I … It was like we were talking about earlier. I had put in all the, we were preparing for an audition for someone to play principal horn on Ein Heldenleben, which has giant horn parts. I did all this prep. I was super ready, and I was always the person, I would always do good in auditions but I’d never really want something, on horn. I’d been doing great in tennis. When I first met that coach that I was telling you about, Bill Jolly, he took my tennis game from, I was 104 in the state, to four, in six months. That’s what he had taught me, all these mental and physical skills about how to take things to the next level. In tennis, it was like I always, trying to figure out, “How do I get to this next level?” I mean, sorry. In horn, I was trying to figure out, “How do I get to this next level?” I was curious if I would experience this on horn, and so I was, I did all the preparation for Ein Heldenleben.

Annie: I was super prepared, tons of repetitions on every excerpt, and then was doing tons of meditation. I hadn’t met … Sorry, at that time, I didn’t know Don’s centering technique, so I was using Irene Gubrud’s meditation. I was doing that, I did it right before I walked into the audition. I did it several times earlier in the day, and I really could feel and recall that real centered, calm feeling that I was feeling from her meditations. I walked into the audition, I played everything down that they asked, and it was literally like the whole audition went into slow motion. I’m playing the opening to Heldenleben, but it felt like it took a year. I did the next excerpt, it felt like it took another year. It was, the whole thing was in slow motion. My time was, from what I know, great, but I came out, won the audition and I got to play principal horn on that. I know that’s a college audition, but to me, that was the first gateway into, “Whoah, I can actually do this on french horn.” It was just mind-blowing, and honestly, it opened up a whole other level, and it really connected, for me, the sports to music. Music connection, in terms of the mental game, so that’s when I first experienced the zone and that’s what it felt like to me.

Annie: I’ve asked a lot of top level professional principal horns, “How many performances a year are you happy with?” They said, “A year?” They’re like, “In my lifetime, I’ve been happy with three.” To me, that was another mind-blowing thing, and it’s like, to think about someone who in my opinion is so amazing, and who I never hear miss notes, to hear them say, “I’ve only been happy with three performances in my life.” I would also say the same thing for me. I’m not positive I could count how many performances I’ve been happy with, because it’s like, you can always pick something apart, but I think when you experience something like the zone and you can get yourself there more often than not, the world is very happy with your performance. If that makes sense.

Christopher: Absolutely, and this was something I was really keen to ask you about, because these days, a lot of people are talking about flow, and getting into flow. I think what we just discussed in terms of performance anxiety and centering and so on can really help someone get into that flow state of kind of effortless high performance, but I feel like what you just described is even a notch beyond. It’s so much more intense and vivid, and I’m really curious to know, for you, is that standard now? Anytime you’re in a high stakes situation, you flip into the slow-mo mode and everything goes amazingly, or is that the rare extreme of what you’re generally aiming for and expecting?

Annie: No, I would say that it’s the very extreme for what everyone is aiming for. If you go watch any, I mean, I would say the top, top athletes in their field, I think, can get themselves there the fastest. I would say the top, top musicians, the same, or maybe they, yeah. I mean, I would, yeah. I would say the top musicians, the same. I experience it every so often, but I think … I mean, granted, I said I have a one-year-old right now, so my sleep is not that amazing. I would say, when all the factors align, when you get the great sleep and you’re really prepared, and you have the water, and all these different physical things, and you’ve been meditating or centering and really working on the mental game, I think they align more often. I would say the zone is something that we’re always chasing. I don’t think it’s there for everybody, all the time, because there’s too many variables. I think you experience it sometimes for a few measures in a concert. Sometimes you experience it for a phrase, sometimes you experience it for half a page. Sometimes you get the joy of being there the entire time.

Annie: I would say, for professionals, I would probably say that most everybody is chasing it all the time, and it’s like that … They always talk about, I’ve surfed a few times in my life, enough to catch one or two waves. You catch that one wave and you’re just like, “Oh my God, I’ve got to do this again,” but, I think it’s the same for the zone. You catch the zone and you’re just like, “I’ve got to find that again.” I would say for anyone that’s experienced it, and you want to get back there, look at your toolkit, and what are you missing? Then, for anyone that has never felt it, just keep adding to your toolkit and kind of look at your preparation or your mental game, or how you’re preparing your physical self and just see kind of where you might have some holes, and try to work on that. I would say, I feel like I’ve had some great concerts in the last year and a half, especially since having a kiddo, but, or I’d say two years, but I would say I feel like for me, the zone has happened for measures at a time, not necessarily for an entire performance lately. I probably personally need to get back to my own toolkit as well, if that makes sense.

Christopher: It does, thank you, and that’s so fascinating to hear about. I love that in this instance, the concession prize is you perform really well and you avoid performance anxiety. If you don’t flip into that particular optimal state, it’s still, you’re doing all the right things, so it’s not like a, win everything or lose everything. It’s all kind of part of becoming a high performance musician.

Annie: Yeah, and the study I’ve never seen, which, if anyone out there is interested in doing a dissertation or a study, I would be curious to see, of those three performances or five performances that the top, top, who we consider the top in professionals experience, is that, are they in the zone for those or are those just their average day? Does that make sense? Then, but then the ones that they’re describing as their top three, are those … Sorry. I don’t know if I’m explaining this right, but what I would say is if those top, the ones that the top professionals are considering their highest achieving performances, are those in the zone and everything else they’re doing just an average day, or kind of where does all that fit? If anyone wants to do a dissertation or a study on that, I’d be very curious to see where all that falls.

Christopher: For sure. A lot of this comes up in your book that you co-authored with Don Greene and another author, College Prep for Musicians, and I know that there are certainly some in our audience who are going for that college degree or auditioning to get in for that college degree, or they may be parents of kids who are aspiring to. I wonder if we could just share a little bit about what’s in that book, and why it’s so important that that manual exists for people.

Annie: Sure. I was very fortunate to co-author College Prep for Musicians with Dr. Don Greene, the peak performance psychologist, and Kathleen Tesar, who’s now the head of admissions at Julliard. We tackle it from three different angles. I tackle it from the teacher-student angle, Kathy tackles it from the head of admissions angle, and Don tackles it from an audition, performance angle. I think it’s a great, very valuable tool. It’s something I wish I had had, when I was growing up, and part of the reason, at least my passion for co-authoring, is that when I was growing up in South Carolina, my parents, I had a general contractor father who played college football, and my mom was a farmer, or is a farmer, and so, we didn’t have much background in terms of what to do for someone who’s interested in majoring in music. That’s really my passion, and since then, one of my specialty areas is I really work with a lot of high school students who are planning to go off to college to major in music.

Annie: The book is fantastic. It goes through all these different sides. It really is a guide and walks you through how to cover every angle of doing the college admissions process, everything from how to do your pre-screen tapes to taking the audition. Don goes through a lot of his techniques, and he tailors them to high school students, which I think is fantastic. They’re also very, a good entry level, so for anyone listening that might not want to get into his centering course or into some of the other courses he offers, or his books, honestly, you could read, I think it’s chapter six and seven on his material, and it would be great entry level into all of his techniques, including mental rehearsal, visualization, preparing for auditions or preparing for big performance. Then, Kathy tackles the book from the admissions side, which is amazing because there’s always so many things, as a student or a parent, you’re wondering, “Well, how does this really work?” She kind of goes into all of those, and she’s got almost 30 years or 30 years plus of experience in college admissions, so I feel like we can cover a lot of factors and really make it accessible to someone who is really interested in going into music.

Christopher: Awesome, thank you, and as I said, I wanted to make sure we highlighted that, because I know there are some in our audience who are just like, “Amazing, I’m so glad that exists. I’m going to go buy it now.” As you say, actually, I remember from when I spoke with Dr. Greene, those chapters in that book are a really great summary overview of his work, whether or not you’re aspiring to a college degree. They are kind of universally relevant. There was one other project I know you’ve done which I was really eager to hear more about, and I might feel really stupid in a minute, having asked this question, but I want to know why it’s called what it’s called. That’s your documentary film 1M1: Hollywood Horns of the Golden Age.

Annie: Yeah, so, I … First of all, so 1M1 is what you see when you go to a recording session and you see on the stand. A film, when you record a film, it’s divided into usually eight reels. They kind of piece the film into that, separate segments. It obviously goes back to the history of making films, and so they don’t necessarily need to divide it necessarily into eight reels now, because it’s all digitally filmed, but so the number in front stands for the … Sorry, so the number in front stands for the reel, and then M is for music, and then the number at the end stands for the cue. Within a reel, they could have, I don’t know, five cues of music, or 18 cues of music, or 47 cues of music. It just depends, and so, how short the cues are, or how long, or how much music they want or not. When you go record a film, you don’t always know the name of the film. Sometimes they’ll give it a random title, a working title is what they call it. You’ll show up, and sometimes you don’t even really know what you’re recording. Then, so it’s always 1M18, that means reel one, music cue 18 is what you’re working on. That’s where the title of the film comes from, so 1M1 would be the first cue of the first reel. The first thing, usually, you would hear in the movie.

Annie: That’s what it comes from, but the, so the film is, it’s a real huge passion project. I started it in my early twenties, actually, and have basically done everything wrong in film-making in terms of making a documentary and had to come back and redo half of it. It goes through the history of film told through the eyes of french horn players, so it goes through the history of studio music. I was really fortunate when I first started this that there were about, I guess, about 13 or 14 horn players from the beginning generation of studio musicians in Los Angeles still alive, so the guys that played on Bambi. They did everything from Bambi all the way up to Jaws, and that whole generation of folks. I was fortunate. I spent, I don’t know. It’s still technically going, because I’m still working on the rights to some things that are in the film in terms of music and pictures, but the project was really about a 10 year project, and so I did 165 hours of interviews.

Annie: I was fortunate to also get to interview John Williams for the project. He’s amazing, just an amazing human, obviously, but just great to interview. I got to interview John Williams, and then the Mancini family was fantastic. They offered some of their archives to the film, and so it’s a big passion project that tells the story of film music through the eyes of french horn players, which in my opinion, there’s a lot of good horn parts. It doesn’t get better than that, and, yeah. That’s what the film is about, and the project’s about. Sadly right now it’s in the screening process, so I have to screen it if people want to watch it, but the trailer is online and there’s a website up about it. Very soon, hopefully in the next six months to a year, we’ll have it out so that people can watch it and see it.

Christopher: Amazing, and yeah, I’m eager to see it myself, having watched the trailer. I’m glad I now understand the title. I don’t feel too stupid for not having known that. That’s quite a cool insider tip.

Annie: No, it’s one of those things where, yeah, if you don’t know, you don’t know, but it’s like a … 1M1 is, yeah. Anyway, we’ll leave it at that.

Christopher: I have to ask, as someone who does a lot of film and TV score performances yourself these days, were there any really interesting tidbits or insights, or did talking to those kind of original crew change your perception of your role and how you play in those situations?

Annie: Let’s see. Yeah. I mean, what was really fascinating about doing this project is, all of this generation of guys honestly kind of became like adopted grandparents to me. When I did my recitals for my Doctorate in USC, it was amazing, because half of them, or all of them, would sometimes show up to the recital. Everybody in the, my other professors or even some of my friends were like, “Annie, what are you doing? Why are these people here?” You’d have 10, 15 of the most historical french horn players, at least from Los Angeles, in your audience.

Annie: I really developed an amazing relationship, and through that, just got a lot of really great, valuable information, everything from just how to kind of keep the mental, they would all talk about the mental side. A lot about sight-reading, and how important it is to be a good sight-reader. Los Angeles is an interesting city, just even outside of recording work, in that you can show up and have to sight-read an opera for someone the same night because they got sick, or sometimes there is no rehearsal for a concert. It’s just, you show up and you play the show, or there’s one rehearsal and it’s just an hour before the show. I’m sure that’s the same in multiple other cities, but as a freelancer, we experienced that quite a bit. Just the importance of sigh-reading, and just honestly the history of french horn and just the studio scene. I think just the importance of it in film, and just kind of how it got from where it is to where it is now, and mostly through great players that were here. I think that that’s been really interesting. I’ve gotten to interview the older generation plus the current generation, and the generations in between, and so just learning the history has really been fascinating and helpful, and makes you really honor the tradition that is LA. I think that’s been the biggest thing I’ve learned from them.

Christopher: Fantastic. Well, I have really enjoyed kind of digging into the world of Annie Bosler. You have such a variety of interesting projects and expertise, and poking around your website was a really good time. I’d really encourage anyone watching or listening to do the same. It’s anniebosler.com, and of course we’ll have a direct link to that and each of the projects we’ve mentioned in the show notes. Annie, any parting piece of advice for our audience on the topic of performance anxiety or musicality in general?

Annie: No, I think your show is great. I would say, listen to a lot more podcasts to get more areas, but I would just say, for anyone that’s dealing with nerves, just try to put more things in your toolkit. Try to help it out. I mean, it’s like I said, I’m always working on it. I’m always open to new things, and I’m always trying to see how I can help myself too, and so, ask professional friends, if you have them. Try to see what they really do, and try to have an honest conversation. I think you’d be surprised how many people really are working on this all the time as well.

Christopher: Wonderful. Thank you again, Annie, for joining us today.

Annie: Thank you all, so I really appreciate it. It’s been a lot of fun.

The post How The Best Play Their Best, with Annie Bosler appeared first on Musical U.

Mark has taken ideas and techniques from the world of performance psychology and drawn them in to a clear, coherent framework. He does a fantastic job of tying the underlying concepts behind performance to practical tips you can apply right away in your own musical life.

In this conversation we talk about:

• The non-musical activity that helped Mark draw together the latest research on peak performance into a practical system for musicians.
• The difference between “good” autopilot and “bad autopilot” when it comes to performing.
• The specific things you can do to defuse the negative physical and mental reactions to performance situations.

You’ll love the insight in this episode – whether you’re gearing up for your first performance, or you’re a touring veteran. Jump in and learn how to play your best!

If you’d like to learn more from Mark then click the button to register for his free upcoming Musical U masterclass.

Register Now!

Watch the episode:

Links and Resources

• • Play in The Zone
  • Unlock Your Performance
  • Unshakeable Foundations
  • Play In The Zone YouTube Channel
  • Musicality Now – Note2Self: “I Love This!”, with Lisa McCormick
  • Musicality Now – More Mindful, More Musical, with Susanne Olbrich
  • Musicality Now – About Mindfulness for Musicians

Transcript

Mark: Hi, I’m Mark Morley-Fletcher from Play in the Zone and this is Musicality Now.

Christopher: Welcome to the show Mark. Thank you for joining us today.

Mark: Thanks so much for having me on.

Christopher: So I came across you obviously through your project playinthezone.com where you touch on all these fascinating topics of performance anxiety and preparation and peak performance and getting into the flow. And it’s made me super curious to know about your own musical background. I know only the barest highlights. So I’d love if we could start off with telling a bit of your own musical story. What were your early music experiences like?

Mark: Yeah, absolutely. I’d say it’s a little bit mixed because I was very serious into music when I was really young as a chorister. So before my voice broke, doing a lot of choir singing. Thinking back, I think my first ever paid solo performance would have been age of about 12 just singing two or three lines in, I think, it was Mendelssohn’s Elijah, but up on stage with a couple of professionals and a whole choir behind me. So that was quite an experience. But that wasn’t something that I really continued with after the voice broke and I hadn’t really done the instrumental stuff alongside it. I’m one of these many people who learned the piano for a bit, gave it up and have spent the whole rest of my life regretting giving it up. So I’m sure many people can relate to that.

Mark: But where I really got back into it again was picking up the guitar in my teens. And I think the difference there probably was I didn’t hate it, but I’d been talked into picking up the piano, whereas taking up the guitar was my idea. And so it was a little bit less formal perhaps. I had various teachers along the way but a lot of it was just my own learning. But that was where I really started to get into things and to find my own way. I guess I’d say I started out with rock music, blues, that sort of thing. And then as I got a bit older and met a few different people, I started getting into jazz more, really studying that. Eventually starting to play in a few bands, getting out and playing function gigs, all those sorts of things. And before I knew it, I looked back and this was a huge part of my life.

Christopher: And I’m always curious to know whether someone took formal lessons or was coupling together their own education, whether they were playing mostly from sheet music versus figuring things out by ear. You said you found your own way with guitar. What did that look like?

Mark: It was a bit of a mix of both. So I did have a couple of different teachers to start with but I was also doing a lot of self directed learning. So I probably started off for the first six months or more just learning myself and then got a teacher to try and take that a bit further. That wasn’t quite the right fit. He was a bit more of a classical background and we did some finger style stuff but it didn’t quite gel with me so I was exploring other things on my own. I found another teacher, great guy who was much more into the rock side. As it turned out later, he had done a whole load of serious jazz work and all those sorts of things. But sadly when I was having lessons with him, I didn’t have an interest. So I kicked myself for years afterwards that I could’ve learned so much and didn’t.

Mark: One of the things that I found really impressive about him looking back, because this was when I was at school at the time, was he never forced me to play stuff if I didn’t want to. So I remember a couple of lessons where I’d go in, I didn’t feel like playing and so we’d just chat about what was in the news or something like that. Very interesting that he’d let me do that. But the great thing about it was as soon as I showed any interest in picking up the guitar or trying something, he’d be right in there and encouraging it and getting me going. So I don’t know for sure but I strongly suspect that that never forcing me to do something when I wasn’t up for it really helped keep the enthusiasm there, which I’d lost with the piano lessons earlier.

Christopher: Roughly what age were you at that point?

Mark: So I would’ve been about 16, 17, 18.

Christopher: Yeah, that’s interesting. I think it’s crucial at that age. I love looking back because for me singing was my primary instrument in those teenage years and I can just remember, now looking back I’m like, “I was quite difficult sometimes.” I wasn’t a stroppy teenager, I wasn’t moody, but there were definitely mornings where singing scales at 8:30 in the morning before a full day of school was not high on my preference list and I’d do it begrudgingly and it would be fine. But I remember I had the opportunity to go back to that same teacher for lessons a number of years later, I was auditioning for an acapella group and I did a few brush-up lessons with her, and it was really nice to go back as an adult and be a bit more mature about the whole thing.

Christopher: But it just made me very conscious of how I had been a little bit, not hard to handle, but I think all teenagers are at that age. There’s the enthusiasm coming and going and I think the best teachers can allow for that and compensate it rather than try and keep everyone strictly on their path.

Mark: Yeah. And I can really relate to that enthusiasm coming and going because there’d be times when I just didn’t feel like doing anything and times when I literally locked myself in my room for four hours or whatever and practice incredibly focused, just straight through. So real bursts of massive activity and periods of just not applying myself at all.

Christopher: Yeah. And it’s definitely not something to just put in a box labeled teenagers because we know full well with our members at Musical U, motivation is a crucial part of the whole thing. And the mindset that goes into keeping a consistent practice habit or staying on the same path for more than a week or two is tough for adults even if you consider yourself mature or you can sometimes force yourself through it. The reality is we are emotional beings and you need to give yourself a little leeway I think to ebb and flow with the motivation. So maybe we can touch on that later because I know that community and peer support and expert support are part of how you teach online these days so maybe we can circle back to that question of motivation. But before we do, when did peak performance and performance psychology become so interesting to you and when did you start to specialize in it?

Mark: So it’s been interesting to me for a long, long time. I can’t remember if I got into that as an undergraduate, but certainly as a postgraduate and still playing in all the function bands, this, that and the other, I came across a Kenny Werner’s book, Effortless Mastery, if you’re aware of that and was fascinated by that and that was a start of digging into a whole load of different resources in this area. But that was always very much a nice thing on the side and I could see how it was really going to help and I wanted to do it and I kept trying it for a bit and then falling off the wagon or not quite being sure how to put it into practice. So I guess you’d say it’s been a nice ongoing thread for the last 15 or more years. But it was really only probably about four or five years ago now that I got very heavily into, “Okay, how are we going to make this work properly?”

Mark: And as… I don’t know how many of the listeners know, but in my opinion, there’s a lot more out there in the field of sports psychology around peak performance and performance anxiety and stuff than there is available in music. So it was perhaps not a surprise that that’s actually how I really came across it. I’d taken tennis up much more seriously a few years before suddenly found myself playing the odd tournament, whereas before I’d just gone out to hit for fun, and was right back in that situation where, “My goodness, I’m getting ready to serve at the start of the match and my legs are shaking and my arms are shaking and what’s happening here?” Because to go back to the musical journey, that’s certainly something I’d experienced playing in bands and getting up on stages but through 10 years of doing this repeatedly and getting exposed to it and just getting more familiar, that had gradually decreased certainly in most situations. We can perhaps talk about different situations causing different things later.

Mark: But I thought this is something I’ve got through. So it was a real surprise to get on the tennis court and suddenly think, “Wait a minute, here is this thing again that I haven’t felt for five years and I thought was gone and totally different context.” So I didn’t feel as at home and you’ve got that result. And I was lucky enough to find a tennis course that did focus very heavily on the mental game side of things, went and did a three day training course there and I couldn’t believe how much progress I made how quickly and what was equally fascinating was so A, this was me thinking, “Well, if I had this in music 10 years ago, that would have been amazing.”

Mark: But even more than that, I found I was able to push through a lot of the bad stuff that was holding me back, but found that there was still further to go on the other side. There was potential to raise my game beyond where I thought I was capable of. And so that definitely left me going back to music saying, “Well wait a minute, I’ve got unfinished business here. If I can do that in tennis, what am I leaving behind on the music side of things?” And so I got really fascinated at how much can I bring of this to music. And like you say, you mentioned the community and all sorts of things like that. The other piece of the puzzle, if you like, there was the way in which this experience had happened in tennis because as you said, I’d been following the peak performance and the performance psychology stuff for years in music. And I kind of got it and occasionally something would work, but I never really got it to really bed in or to stick with it or to get the full amount out of it.

Mark: And there were a few things that I realized were there in the tennis course that I hadn’t had in the music. So it was the community, it was having a whole group of other people there who were keen to do this, who were motivated and that provided both motivation, looking at what they were doing but also accountability. Because I could look at them and think, “Right, if I’m just going to slack off here, I’m letting these other guys down.” So that really helped. It was having some instructors there in person just to keep bringing you back to doing it because it’s the same in tennis as it is a music. There’s so much technical stuff you can focus on and it’s really tempting to do that because that’s what it feels like always has the effect. So it’s very easy to fall back into, “Oh, I’ll just check how my backswing was or what am I doing with my foot position?” Or stuff like that.

Mark: And having someone there to say, “Nope, you’re meant to be thinking about what is going on in your head instead,” stuck me with it when otherwise I might not have done that. And finally it was having a real structured approach. There was a very definite, here are the things we’re going to work on, here’s how long you need to do each one, here’s the order, here’s how they all fit together and you could see that as a system. Whereas what I’d done on the music side was I had a whole load of great information, a whole lot of great ideas. And in fact, when I look back at that tennis course, I didn’t learn a huge amount that was completely new. But going through it in a structured way rather than just me sat at home going, “I’ve got a hundred different tips here, which one should I use? When should I try another one?” It’s just that much harder to stick with it and get things out of it.

Mark: So that was really when I decided let’s bring this back to music and really have a go of applying it. And I guess it was seeing what might make a difference in terms of the structure but also seeing what results were definitely available. Because I’d seen this massive increase for me in tennis and I really wanted that in music as well.

Christopher: That’s really interesting. I’m reminded a little bit of a unrelated area where the same thing maybe happens. You described there what I’m sure is very familiar to a lot of musicians who’ve been gigging a while, which is the nerves go away over time and you’re glad about that, but you don’t really understand how it happened and you just trust that if you continue it’ll be okay. And from, we’re talking about playing by ear at Musical U, sometimes people will be like, “But my friend Bob, he’s been playing in a band for 10 years and he can just do it and so why would I need to do this ear training thing?” And part of the answer is, “You’ll get there a lot quicker than 10 years if you do the ear training thing.” But part of the answer is there’s a real downside to just letting it happen passively and automatically, which is your friend Bob has no idea how he can do what he can do, which means if the random night comes up where he is off his game and those nerves come back, he’s got nothing to do about it. He’s doesn’t have a toolkit. He doesn’t have the mental models to handle that.

Christopher: And I think a similar thing is true here where yes, over time you get less prone to nerves in performing. But if you can equip yourself with the structures and the tools and a clear understanding of how you overcome those nerves or how you reach peak performance, you’re in a much stronger position and you can get there a lot quicker.

Mark: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And I’d add one further thing to that, which is that not everyone does get it from just putting in the hours and hitting and hoping if you like. It’s definitely the case for performance anxiety. I think it’s the same for ear training as well. Some people, if you just give it enough time, it will naturally sink in, but that’s not guaranteed. So the other side of it is do you feel like taking that chance? Now you can say to yourself, “I’m just going to keep getting up on stage for 10 years and hope that it will get better” and it might not.

Christopher: Absolutely.

Mark: And actually the other one I would mention, I alluded to earlier, different situations and I definitely found when I first got up on stage playing in a band, that was one thing. The nerves were there and as I got more used to it, they went away. They went lower again, not completely away. And then as I started taking more solo spots in a band, nerves a bit higher again, because this is unusual for me. One thing that really got me though was the first time I ever played a solo guitar gig. So I got asked to play solo guitar, a half hour set at a friend’s wedding, and I did so much practice for this. I was really happy with all this stuff I’d put together. Totally fine. Looking forward to it. By this stage I would quite happily get up in bands and play all sorts of stuff and I didn’t really get nervous.

Mark: And so I assumed it was going to be exactly the same for this solo gig right up until the moment when I’m setting up my guitar. Totally fine. No idea that this is going to come, I sit down, I get the guitar there, I’m playing in basically a classical guitar position so I got legs on a footstool just really easier for the finger style and all of a sudden my body just starts shaking massively. Totally wasn’t expecting this, really disconcerting. So two things here actually I find really interested, one is, put yourself in a slightly different situation and you could be right back in there. So I didn’t have these techniques to deal with performance anxiety at the time so I just had to deal with it and I frankly don’t think I dealt with it brilliantly but it would have been really helpful even if I wasn’t getting it all the time to have that then.

Mark: Second thing, which is related to how you do deal with performance anxiety, is your perceptions of the situation and your emotions about it are huge and they can be very misleading. So it’s one thing I’ll never forget, feeling this body shaking massively. My legs are going all over the place. I looked down at them, they’re not moving. I can feel them shaking hugely, but my eyes are saying no, they’re absolutely steady. And that difference, it comes up a lot in all the mental side of music, that the way you perceive you think things are happening is not always accurate but that can totally affect your decisions, your feelings, all those sorts of things because you feel the body shaking massively, you interpret it in a negative way. This makes you more worried. Things get worse and at that point you might actually genuinely start shaking in a noticeable thing. So yeah, so many different experiences there.

Christopher: Yeah, and I think you touched a moment ago on the reason I was so keen to invite you onto the show, which is, these days there is a fair amount published about performance psychology and blog posts and books and Ted Talks and all that kind of thing. But I think to the average music learner, it can feel like such a jumble of cool ideas and tips and tricks and this is the one true method versus just try a bit of everything. It can be really confusing if you’re trying to actually practically put it into practice, into your practice, into your performance and you are one of the few individuals I’ve come across who has very thoughtfully tried to aggregate everything that works and put it in a clear coherent structure for people and I know that you have a number of areas you consider are important to think about and to work on to get to that level of peak performance reliably. I wonder if we could talk through some of those.

Mark: Yeah, absolutely and I think I’d just say as you’ve hinted at before we start out that there is no one correct way to do this. This is something I find really useful that works for me at the moment. It may be that I will change things up or do it in a slightly different way in the future. To be honest, I would love, like you say, if I could make it even smaller and even more concise, that would be amazing because, as you wrote, you said, “I think one of the hard things is there’s so many things for me to think about. Shall I even bother doing any of them?” But yeah, if we talk through some of those areas and why they’re important and what you can do with them. Does that sound good?

Christopher: For sure, yeah.

Mark: Yeah, so it’s a nice lead on from what we’ve just been talking about. The first thing that I look at is responses to pressure, pressure situations. And there’s two really big concepts here. The first is when you’re in a pressure situation, your body will have a physical response that we’re all pretty familiar with, the heart rate goes up, you get the butterflies in the stomach, you might get the shaky arms, all those sorts of things. But they’re also your mental response. What happens to your thinking process and your emotional response, how you feel about it. So that’s one whole thing. And I’ll say a little bit about some of that in a second.

Mark: The other thing that you can do here is it is your perception of pressure rather than actual pressure. So if you imagine being out on stage, giving a Ted Talk say, in front of however many people in the audience and you know there’s millions more going to be watching on video, that is a very high pressure situation, you might think. But if you imagine you’re on the same stage, the auditorium is empty, the cameras are there, but they’re turned off, no one else is ever going to see this and you give the same talk, you might feel no pressure at all in that part of it. So what you’re doing and the surroundings you’re in are basically exactly the same. It’s whether you perceive pressure or not that has that big impact on your physiology and your emotions.

Mark: So one of the other things you can do is change what you see as a pressure situation. But going back to the physical and the emotional responses. The first thing that I would say about these is they’re normal and they’re healthy and it’s totally okay to get these responses because if you go back into it, this is an evolved response to being in dangerous situations. And it’s not always the right response in the modern world when what we’re dealing with is what we worry about other people thinking or something like that, but it is basically a sign that your body is working perfectly normally. So probably the biggest issue with some of the performance anxiety things around pressure is feeling that we shouldn’t be feeling this. And that makes you feel worried because you’re feeling anxiety and therefore you start to feel more anxious and you can go around in a bit of a loop.

Mark: So the simple, most helpful thing about that is just to feel okay with it. And once you’ve done that, there are things that you can do to change that physical response. But first of all, it’s fine. Secondly, most of those things don’t have a huge impact on how well you’re actually going to play your instrument or sing or whatever it is you’re doing. There are some that will but the vast majority of them just feel unpleasant.

Christopher: I think that’s huge. Sorry to interject.

Mark: Yeah, please.

Christopher: I can remember, for me growing up, it was the butterflies in the stomach that was the symptom of performance anxiety and I can remember so clearly in my brain it was, “I’m feeling this way, I’m not good enough. I’m going to screw it up.” Very clear, logical progression in my brain and just knowing that, no, that’s a physiological response. It’s normal, it’s my brain perceiving a threat, but it doesn’t mean anything about my preparedness or my ability to perform. I think that’s huge.

Mark: Yeah, and it’s really interesting the way that you say, like a lot of us do, “Oh, I’m feeling this, this is bad. I’m going to screw it up.” Because one of the biggest things that makes it a bad response, if you’d like is, is the emotion and the thinking we put on top of it. Really interesting thing is if you look at the physiological response to excitement, very, very similar. If you imagine going on a rollercoaster, you might well get those same butterflies in your stomach, all those sorts of things. But you see this as a very good situation. So actually the physiological response is pretty much the same in both cases. But the emotional response, I’m worried about this, I think it’s bad versus Oh how exciting. I’m really looking forward to this. It’s that that turns it from something that’s really unhelpful into something that can be positive.

Mark: And just to give a helpful tip on one way to actually do this, because it’s very easy for me to sit here and say, “Oh, just see it as fine and it’s great.” And what does that actually mean? It can be a bit harder to do in practice and some good days you might manage it and others you don’t know. So one little thing that I like to do is actually physically talk myself through some of these things. So just the attitude of bring it on or I love it when you get these feelings is a great way of specifically saying to yourself, it’s okay. And if I am on my own in a room with no one else around, I will literally say these things out loud.

Mark: I remember actually back to the tennis one before a local club, a doubles final, I was feeling that just at home before going out. So I was sitting there going, “Oh, I see I’ve got some excitement here. I love it. Come on, bring it on.” Not doing that on the court when other people would hear me but you could try that. But I will definitely actually think the words as I go through that because it’s putting if you’re just thinking, “Oh, I want to accept this. I want to lean into it.” It’s easy to think, “Well I should do that,” but you’re not really feeling it. But if you’re actually thinking or saying the words, “Oh I love it, give me more of this.” It’s pretty hard to do that and not mean it.

Christopher: Yeah. Well I think I’m really reminded of a past guest on the show, Lisa McCormick, who has this note to self method for managing your inner game and she really recommends just responding to that frustration with, “I love this,” just having that little mantra so that when you get frustrated in the practice room, you just stop and you’re like, “I love this. This is an opportunity to learn. This is what I should be doing. I’m willing.” And I know that if you’ve never tried this, it might sound a bit hard to believe a bit. You might have that instinctive response that it’s disingenuous, like I’m saying it but I don’t really mean it so it’s not really going to work. But I think there’s this research that shows that smiling produces happiness, not just vice versa. And if you make yourself physically smile, it can lift your mood.

Christopher: And I think this is similar where even if you consciously know you are choosing to put that thought in your head, the subconscious mind doesn’t really know. That thought is in your head, that’s what it’s paying attention to. And I think it can be really effective to have that proactive response rather than, as you say, just trying to be okay with it to be like, “No, I’m going to replace that bad thought with this positive one. I know it will serve me better.”

Mark: Yeah. And a lot of this comes down to the, what you might hear talked about, as the challenge threat access. When there’s something difficult, you can see it as a threat, “Oh, this is really bad. It’s going to make things worse.” Or you can see it as a challenge. Here is something I’ve got to overcome and I really like that way of looking at it because you’re not putting yourself in the, “I’m just going to pretend that everything is perfect.” The challenge mentality is saying, “Yeah, this is tough, but I am up for it.” And that makes just such a huge difference.

Christopher: Absolutely. So that was the first area was that physical and mental response, is that right?

Mark: Yeah, absolutely.

Christopher: Oh and sorry, before we move on, I’m sure listeners would be annoyed if I didn’t ask about something you said in passing there, which is that you can change your interpretation of what you perceive as pressure. Tell us a little bit more about that because it sounds unlikely.

Mark: So it’s basically what do you feel is going to be the outcome of a particular situation? So if I’m getting there up there on stage and I’m looking out at the audience and I’m thinking every single one of those is judging me. If I make a mistake, they’re going to be writing it down in their little notebooks. Note to self, note to anyone I know, never get Mark out to play again, all that sort of thing. We’ll go around and tell our friends, no one will talk to me. That is a serious situation. But if I’m up there thinking they’re going to really enjoy it, if I make a few mistakes, they probably won’t even notice. And this is where knowing some of the research on this is handy, people notice far fewer mistakes that you make than you would realize.

Mark: So if I’m thinking they’re probably not going to notice, even if they do, there’ll be listening to the wider expanse of what I’m playing and the whole thing rather than that one bit. And they’ve seen me play nine times before and I was great each time. So even if I do play badly this time, they’re not going to say, “Right, well forget all those other ones and we’ll only go with the 10th one.” So there’s a lot of different ways you can do this, but that would be two different ways I could perceive the same situation. What happens if I make a mistake? And so the pressure is much less because I’m not concerned about the outcome. And there’s lots of different ways you can do it. Is it because, well, maybe they’re going to react in whatever way it is, but I don’t care how they react or maybe I’m just getting overly anxious about stuff I think they’re going to do, which is not true at all.

Mark: Or maybe I look at it in terms of the bigger life picture. Okay, maybe they’re going to react badly. I’ll get a bad review or whatever, but Hey, this is one gig. I go back, I hang out with my friends, I have a great time with them. That doesn’t affect that part of my life. I’m healthy. There’s a lot of different ways you can do it. Does that help?

Christopher: Yeah, that’s super cool. So you’re taking the same physical situation, but you’re diffusing the pressure by reinterpreting what’s going on in that physical situation. Is that right?

Mark: Yeah, and it can be as simple as anything that works for you. I think, I can’t remember which one, but certainly some of the tennis players are talked about as just being really excited when they got to a major final because a lot of people would see it as, wow, so much pressure. Everyone’s watching me. What if I lose? But a great way to flip it around, I think it was Jimmy Corners who used to use this a lot, I’m sure others have, is saying there is no way for me to achieve what I want to, to win the tournament, to get better, to keep being the best in the world without being at this point. This is maximum opportunity, if you’d like, rather than maximum threat.

Mark: So it’s not necessarily that easy to do, but that’s what you’re looking for because to give a very basic example of how the perception of threat is what’s important. Let’s imagine you’re walking on a path in a forest and you come around a corner and there behind a tree is this huge bear. Okay. You’re going to have a massive reaction to that. The fight and flight thing is going to kick in. But let’s imagine that you come around that corner and what you see there is a rock that looks like a bear. You’re not going to have that response because that’s not threatening. And the interesting thing is it’s that perception that’s right. If it genuinely is a bear, but you see it and you think it’s just a rock, it’s not moving. It is genuinely dangerous. But you will not have that response to it. And equally, if it really is a rock, but you think it’s a bear, you better expect you’re going to have that massive adrenaline spike and all those things hitting you. So it’s the perception that drives that rather than the reality of the situation outside you.

Christopher: Terrific. Well, I’m glad, you often hear it talked about you just need to get used to handling the pressure, but I think what you’ve just shared puts a lot of practical detail on that in terms of what it can actually look like to learn to do so, so that’s really helpful. Before we move on to another area I should ask, are these sequential, is a matter that you must first sought out pressure and how you handle it and then you can move onto this next thing? Or are we talking about a group of topics that all work together?

Mark: It’s definitely a group of topics that all work together. I do teach them in a specific order because I think some of the exercises that you do flow nicely that way, flow into others and some of them you just want to be doing for a bit longer. But frankly they’re all standalone topics. They’re all useful but I find actually they tend to bleed into each other a fair bit. We’ve probably already touched on one or two of the things that will come up later as separate topics and I haven’t found a way and I don’t think it would be helpful to say they’re all separate things. In fact, at the risk of going off on a little bit of a tangent, again, it comes back to one of the other really interesting things I got out of looking at how the tennis players work with this stuff.

Mark: In a fascinating interview I got to see with the guy who used to be head of mental training at the Bolity Area Academy, so he’s produced a lot of the top grand slam players and he’s very specific in saying we deliberately train all this stuff together. Yes, you will do a little bit of mental training in a classroom occasionally, but it’s not like you go and do your practice on the court and then at some other point you have two hours of mental training and all this. They’re always trying to bring it together because ultimately that’s how you’re going to use it. It’s no good if you’ve been playing your instrument, doing all your technique. And then at some other point you’ve been doing your mental training and then you get up there on stage, it’s like right, got to bring these two together. Never done that before in my life.

Mark: So a lot of it is, even with the mental stuff and the technical stuff, is how do I try and train them both, maybe not at the same time, but have them always linked in a way. And I think it’s exactly the same for all the different components. If I try and give you, here are six different components and they will be separate things that live in boxes, that’s no good to you as a whole musician when you’re trying to perform as one thing. So I think it’s pretty natural that they’re going to just link into each other.

Christopher: Got you. So what is the next one you would teach after pressure?

Mark: So the next one, and I think in many ways the most fundamental thing, is self-belief. And it might come as a bit of a surprise to say, “Hey, we’re going to train self-belief.” Maybe less of a surprise that it’s important, but a lot of people think it’s something that you have or you don’t but it’s definitely something you can work on. And I think the other thing probably to clear up pretty early on is what exactly it means to have self-belief because it is not saying, “Everything is going to go perfectly. I’m going to play every note in this piece correctly, 100%, no matter what.” It’s much more about knowing that you’re going to show up and give it your best effort. If things go a little bit off track that you will make the appropriate adjustments. You may not be able to keep them perfectly on track, but you’ll roll with it and going back to that perception of pressure thing, knowing that you can handle the consequences, whatever they are, because that’s a huge part of it.

Mark: If you know things can go not according to plan and I will be fine with that, then you can feel confident in yourself rather than this feeling I’ve got to be 100% perfect, otherwise the world ends. That’s much more a situation when who can feel self confident in that case because there’s always things that can happen that are external to you. So it’s first of all about having a realistic perception of self confidence. But then it’s about finding ways in which you can always have a positive way to look at the way things are and where you are as a musician while still keeping them true. Because if we just go into straight positive thinking and I am the best musician in the world, I always play everything perfectly. That might be helpful if you could completely believe it, but I don’t think there’s anyone out there who is going to be saying those things to themselves and going, “Yeah, I’m on board with this. Totally fine.”

Christopher: Maybe Kanye West.

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

Mark: But it’s a question, a lot of what I come back to is, what is actually going to be helpful? And it would be lovely if you could just have that unshakeable, I am the best musician in the world thing, but you’re not going to believe it. So actually it’s going to act against you. So what you’re looking for is something that is a really positive way of looking at things, but is definitely true. So it’s if you’re feeling self doubts about, “What if I messed this up? I made a mistake last time I did it.” It’s about saying, “Yeah, but the nine times I played it before then I got it right.” Can I find something positive to look at? Or maybe, actually I’ve been getting it a lot wrong in the practice room for quite a lot of times, but actually every time I practice it, I’m getting slightly stronger. I can feel that I’m getting closer to it.

Mark: It doesn’t necessarily have to be about perfection. It’s about how can I take the situation that I’m in and see the positive side. Because for every single set of facts, there’s a million different ways you can look at it that are true, but it’s a question of choosing the ones that are helpful and finding something in there that’s really going to give you that confidence. And I guess to give two practical things for people to do with this, the first one is do some work in advance. It’s all very well thinking, right? I’ve always got to find the positive thoughts, find a positive spin on things. Then you get into the situation and all of a sudden you get hit with this doubt, whatever it is. It’s like, “What if I mess up this part of the piece?” And you’re suddenly, “Okay, I’ve got to think what am I going to do here? What am I going to say here to be positive? How am I going to think to myself?”

Mark: And the last point you want to be doing that is just before or even worse, right in the middle of a performance because you don’t want to be dealing with that. You probably won’t come up with anything. And if you do start thinking about it, you’re taking all your mind off the music. That’s not helpful. So for big things like that, just do some thinking in advance. What are the strong points I’ve got that I can rely on that I can bring up? So some of it might just be really just simple words of encouragement. You can do this or whatever, talking to yourself doesn’t require anything there, but it’s a whole lot more helpful than having those nagging doubts going around in your head.

Mark: And other ones are just what you’ve done in the past that essentially gives you the right to say something like, “You can do this.” And you don’t have to go through talking through these things. But if you’ve done a bit of thinking before and thought to yourself, “Okay, I had this piece in the past, it was challenging. There were a couple of small slips in there, but I always kept on track and I got through it.” And you can think of two or three cases when you’ve done that. Then when you’re up there and you’re saying to yourself, you can do this, you’re knowing this is built on something solid rather than this is just hopeful positive stuff. So that’s one of the things you’re looking to do. You’re looking to build up a really solid but very simple, you don’t need a lot of this stuff and it doesn’t need to be complicated, just something that’s positive.

Mark: And the other thing that I’d encourage people to do is get creative about where you draw these things from because it’s all very well if you’re in your comfort zone, if you like, this is another gig. I’ve done lots like this. But what if it’s a new situation? And so the first thing is you can, it doesn’t have to be exactly the same, if I’ve got through a piece when I had some slips and I was playing a solo guitar gig and now I’m worried about it in terms of a band gig, it’s not exactly the same situation, but the general concept is the same. And you can even get creative if it’s something that feels completely different. So let’s say for the first time I’m now going to be playing a gig on a huge stage in front of thousands of people, whereas before the maximum I’ve ever played for was about 50 or 100 or something, that can feel and it is a massive step up and maybe I’ve genuinely never done something like that.

Mark: But what I might look at is say, “Well remember the first time I played in front of any crowd at all, that was a step up from never having done it. And I did that okay. So clearly I’m the sort of person who can successfully take a step up. This is just another step up.” So it won’t always be the exact same, but if you look around you will probably find examples you can use to say to yourself, “You know what? I can do this.”

Christopher: Excellent. Yeah and that’s definitely another of those things that we’re at risk of assuming just happen naturally and if you’ve got self confidence and self-belief, that’s great and if you don’t, you don’t. But as you’ve so vividly explained there, it’s something you can build very consciously. I know that for me, outside the realm of music, but when I stepped out to do my own thing and be an entrepreneur and try and start a business, suddenly I had to really think about my self esteem. It was all well and good when I was in school or university or employed. I could have a very clear sense of my identity and why I had reason to have good self esteem but out in the wilderness suddenly I had to really do something really to make sure I maintained that sense of self worth.

Christopher: And I know that picking up a book on self esteem in that period definitely helped me see that, “Oh, okay, this is something that I could be conscious about and develop a methodology for and equip myself for rather than just hoping it magically happens and I avoid the pain of it not happening.”

Mark: Yeah. And actually just to throw one other item here in there that you’ve brought up there is just take the time on a regular basis to give yourself a little pat on the back and recognize things you’ve done well because I think people generally, but particular musicians when we’re looking to practice, we’re always looking for what is not so good so I can fix it. Very easy to lose sight of all the good stuff you’re doing every day, but it just flies under the radar. So a great way to build confidence is maybe just once a week look back and say, “What are three things that I did well this week at the end of every practice session?” Maybe what are three things that I did well. Just something like that so you’re feeding your brain a constant list of I can do this, I can do this. Here was something that was successful. Because that’s what’s going to build up your confidence levels rather than if you’re always noticing the bad stuff.

Christopher: Absolutely. So that was self-belief. What comes after that?

Mark: So something very closely connected to that in a way is the concept of letting go. So it’s just feeling free to let the music come out, let your hands, whatever it is you used to play your instrument, do what it knows how to do rather than trying to really consciously control it. And the belief is really important here because if you don’t have that self belief, you’re going to really struggle to let go. But it’s this thing that basically, once you have a technique, a process, in your subconscious brain, if you like, that part of your brain can perform it much, much better than your conscious thinking because conscious brain is hugely powerful, but it’s very slow. It can’t deal with that much information. So if you get in that situation where you’re now about to perform and all of a sudden you think all the pressure’s on, I’d better get this right. I’d better really control it. That is unfortunately, that’s the worst thing you can do. Because as soon as you step in and try and take control, you’re actually making it much harder for yourself.

Mark: A nice illustration of this that I came across, I think in the sports psychology literature, is if you imagine eating with a fork. You put some food on the end of your fork, you open your mouth, you put it in, close your mouth again, chew. You don’t even think about it. You might not even look happens really easily. Now if you imagine a lighting a match, opening your mouth, putting the match in and closing it again, so that’s actually totally fine if you do it right because you close your mouth around it, there’s not enough air for it to burn, the match goes out. You don’t get burnt.

Mark: But that’s not what happens because we’re back to perception of consequences again, you’re worried you’re going to burn yourself. All of a sudden your arm is probably going to tense up because you know you’ve got to get that match in the right place, otherwise you’re burning your mouth and this thing that you can do totally on autopilot, you’re now thinking about it. It feels really weird. You’re probably going to miss the center of your mouth. Maybe even your mouth totally if you even try and do it. But it’s exactly the same motion as the fork. What is different is you are now physically trying to control it because you are worried about the results and that’s the difference between letting go and trying to control your playing.

Christopher: And how do you do that? How do you stay in the subconscious autopilot when you need to?

Mark: So I think the staying in it is one thing we’ll talk about focus in a bit and I think it’s more… I like to look at things as two stages, if you’d like. The first thing is can you get into that right side of your brain, if you like. And the second bit is, well, how do you stay there? And most of the time it’s not a case of holding yourself there. It’s rather noticing when you drift off and coming back. So it’s one of the ones you probably do a fair bit in practice because you’re not so worried about the consequences. The issue is actually the one worst time to do it is when people most tend to actually do it, which is when the stakes are higher.

Mark: So I like to get people thinking about consciously just being aware of what does it feel like to let go? Can I notice it? And then when I see it works, can I deliberately let it happen if you get that feeling that you want to take over. So one thing that I exercise that I to use with people is just find some very repetitive phrase to play. So if you’re playing something rock or funk or whatever, something with a groove, a short phrase with a groove is great, but it doesn’t have to be a groove. It can just be any repetitive phrase, even if it’s a classical piece or whatever. So something simple and repetitive and just get going round and round that. And you should notice at some point that it almost just starts to play itself. And it should feel really good and flowing while this is happening because it’s in your short term memory, it’s in your muscle memory and your fingers can just do it.

Mark: And two things can happen here. One is you stay with it and you just notice how that feels and you’re starting to see, “Okay, this is what happens when I’m not having to make it happen. It just happens.” Another thing that is surprisingly common is you notice you’ve gone into this, you think, “Great, I’m letting go. It feels great and Oh, what’s happened? I’ve taken control over again.” And there’s a couple of reasons why this might happen. One is because you’re suddenly realizing, “Oh, I’m not doing this. I need to be in control.” Right? You realize you’re not willing to let go. But that’s an interesting thing to notice and to work on. The other even more paradoxical, and I’ve seen this a lot, is it feels good. You’re not doing it. You want to take the credit for this.

Mark: So it’s like something good is happening. I must know that it’s me who’s doing it. I will come back in and take control, thanks hand. And then it falls out of it again. So that’s a really counterintuitive one, if you like. Because it’s working and you don’t want to say it’s not me doing it. It’s just happening on autopilot. So surprisingly amount of the time you will get that happening. And in fact, when we get onto the subject of flow, that’s often what’s happening when you fall into flow and you fall straight out again. You think, “Wow, this is great. Must have more of this.” And you’re straight in there-

Christopher: You broke it.

Mark: Yeah, exactly. What you can do. So that’s just a little exercise that you can do. Just play a groove and see if you can notice what it takes to go in and out of letting go.

Christopher: That’s really valuable. I’ve had such a vivid example of that this year in my drum lessons where I’m learning a new instrument and there’s a lot of sight reading exercises and my sight reading is pretty good, but on drums it takes quite a lot of conscious effort and almost every lesson I will have the experience you just described where I have to pay attention with my conscious mind to decipher the notation. I get going, I figure out how to play it. I’m playing it, I loop around a few times, I’ve got the hang of it and now my conscious mind kicks back in and it’s like, “Oh wait, I wasn’t paying attention there for a second.” I played it right but I better get a grip on things again so that I can make sure it goes right again. It’s like I don’t trust my autopilot. And then as soon as you step in, as you say, you break that flow, you break that letting go and the thing tends to fall apart.

Mark: And this might be a really nice time to move onto the next topic that I look at, which is focus because we need to be a little bit careful about this auto pilot thing because, if you like, there’s good auto pilot and there’s bad auto pilot. So the good auto pilot is when you’re just letting your subconscious get on with doing what it needs to do and it’s got all the information to do it and you’re just stepping out of the way but still involved and driving, I guess, the higher motivation, what am I trying to do with this whole phrase or what emotion am I trying to get across? Or let’s just remember that I’m here to do music.

Mark: The bad auto pilot is when you start to play all right, whatever it is on the drums, and you’re thinking, “Hmm, what will I have for supper tonight? I wonder what that person there at the back of the hall is thinking.” That’s not going to be helpful. And one of the reasons for that is because you don’t feel like you’re actively doing it, but it’s all the information that is coming in from outside through your eyes, through your ears, the feeling in your limbs. It’s coming into the brain and although you’re not consciously doing stuff with it, that is what your subconscious needs in order to keep things going properly.

Mark: So this is where focus becomes really important. Is your focus in the right place to give you all the information you need to play at your best? And are you avoiding being distracted by those thoughts of well, what should I have for dinner? Or even worse, going back to the self-belief stuff, some self doubt or actually getting out of the present moment is the big danger here. So it’s thinking ahead. “Oh, this is coming up. I hope I don’t mess that bit up.” Or even, “Oh this bit’s going to be great. I can’t wait to get to the end. I’m playing so well or whatever.” And things in the past when you’ve made a mistake or you haven’t played something as well as you like and you need your attention to be right here on what you’re playing now because playing music, any instrument, singing, whatever it is hugely complicated, all sorts of small muscle movements involved. There’s all the time aspect of rhythms.

Mark: If you’re playing with other people, you’ve got to sync with them as well. So much stuff in there, it takes a huge amount of your brain power and if you’re trying to do that while you’re thinking of other things, yes it can happen, but it’s going to be at a much lower level than if you’ve got your full focus there.

Christopher: That is a really valuable distinction that I don’t think I’ve heard anyone else lay out so clearly that you need focus, but that is not the same as saying your analytical mind needs to be wearing and generating thoughts and I think it’s a slightly subtle thing. Maybe you can just recap that again to make sure it’s clear to everyone, the distinction between conscious mind versus autopilot and keeping focus without falling out of that letting go in the flow state.

Mark: Yeah, so it’s keeping your attention on what you need to do without holding it there too tightly or actively thinking, really struggling to think. It’s this, when you get people saying it, it’s completely true, but not very helpful, saying, “Don’t try, just do.” It’s that sort of thing. A lovely way that I think it’s Timothy Gallway talks about it in a game of tennis, and again, the music and other ones is this concept of relaxed concentration. So your concentration is there, but it’s not held there in a vice-like grip and you’re straining. It’s there relaxed. And we’ll talk a little bit about flow, I think in a second, which is a great way to do this.

Mark: Another metaphor that I love, which I think I came across literally, is a physical one, might even have been about how to hold a deck of cards properly, but it talks about holding it as you would a little tiny bird. So it’s got to be tight enough that the bird can’t escape, but you mustn’t crush it at the same time. And that’s what we’re looking for. You’ve got to hold your attention, your focus, where it wants to be, but as loosely as you can so that you’re not straining things. If that makes sense.

Christopher: It does. Yeah. And I think it neatly makes a bridge there to the mindfulness meditation that’s come up a few times on this show before and the relevance of that to music, that ability to control your attention without it meaning you’ve got a thousand thoughts in your head and in fact meaning the exact opposite.

Mark: Yep. And as I was saying, I think this is one of the reasons why flow is so helpful and such a good thing to chase. And for anyone who doesn’t know what the concept of flow is, it’s often called being in the zone. It’s that state of peak performance. There’s been a lot of great research into it where human beings just seem to do whatever task they’re doing at the height of their powers and it’s very tightly related to focus. And one of the reasons for this is in flow, your concentration naturally does become effortless. And this is such a tough thing to do to hold your concentration in the right spot at the right intensity. But when you get into a state of flow, that’s what tends to happen naturally. You’re so absorbed in what you’re doing that it almost takes more effort to lose concentration and fall out of it than just to stick with it and that that’s really what we’re aiming for.

Mark: You’re not thinking very analytically about it. You’re just so interested in what you’re doing that you’re almost watching like an observer who’s never seen this before. It’s like, “Oh, let me see what happens.” Not forcing it but just paying attention to everything.

Christopher: And so is this a separate topic in the way you approach these things or is this a subset of focus?

Mark: I bring it all together because, again, flow is much bigger than just focus but focus is a huge part of it and if you know what it is that you want to be focusing on, that is a huge part of the battle and I think that was my number one tip for listeners on what to do about focus is the very first thing is to think do you even know where you want your focus to be? Because this is something that we just take for granted a lot. It’s like I’ll focus but on what? So there will be different things that will be different for different people, for different genres, for different points in pieces.

Mark: But for me it’s things such as it might be keeping my muscles relaxed. Are my muscles relaxed because I know that helps me to play well. It might be feeling the pressure under my fingertips as I fret the strings if I have a tendency to fret too hard and if that’s what’s required. It might be just really paying attention to the sound that is coming out of my instrument. It might be listening to the other musicians if I’m in a band, and that’s really important. It might be locking in with the rhythm if that’s what’s needed at that time. So there’s no one right or wrong answer, different situations, different preferences.

Mark: But having an idea of where it is I want my focus to be is what allows me, if I notice it drifting off, to bring it back. Otherwise I’ve got this thing that I know I need to do something with, but it’s like a tool. It’s like well, do I go and hit this nail over here with my hammer of focus or that one or shall I bang this or whatever. I know I’ve got to be doing something with it, but I don’t know what. So as soon as you’ve got an idea actually this is where it wants to be. That’s a large part of the game.

Christopher: Yeah. And again, I think that’s an analogy to the meditation where you might choose to focus on your breath purely because it stops your mind going elsewhere. How important is it what you choose to focus on? You just gave a lot of examples. Are we talking about you should focus on this because that’s what will help you play well or is it you should focus on something because that will help you stay in the zone?

Mark: So it’s a bit of both. So as I said, there’s a bit of personal preference and with all these things you want to experiment a bit and find out what works for you because it will be different for different people and it might change over time. The other thing though is it goes back to what we were talking about about good auto pilot and bad auto pilot. If I’m daydreaming, looking up at the ceiling thinking what I’m going to have for dinner, that’s clearly not helpful. So think that you need information coming into you to allow yourself to play the music even if you’re not consciously making all those decisions. So your focus wants to be somewhere where it means you are getting all that information.

Mark: So if I’m a bass player in a band and it’s really important for me to lock in with the drummer, then having my attention on the drummer would be a great choice. It could be on the whole band as well because I’m getting the drummer there. It could be on something related to that, but if I’m paying attention only to the exact tone of voice the singer is getting, that’s probably not going to be so helpful for me. And certainly if I’m thinking about stuff that’s way outside the band, but you’re depending on what the music is and what your goal is, that might be different. If you’re a lead singer in a group and you really want to connect with the audience, it might be more important for you to have your attention out there than some of the other things.

Mark: And this also might shift at different points. So let’s say there’s a part where it’s out of time and I’m singing as a lead singer and I really want to connect with the audience, but then it goes into a very tight groove after that, I might make the decision beforehand, “Okay, I’m going to be focusing on the audience at first. Then when we get into the groove, I’m going to be listening to the whole band and locking in with the rhythm because that might serve me different at different points.” But as long as I’ve made that decision, then I can make sure my attention goes there. Whereas if not, I’m just flying by the seat of my pants the whole time.

Christopher: Got you. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That’s really helpful. So what would the next area be after flow?

Mark: So the next area is how you react to mistakes. Because like it or not, mistakes are things that are going to happen. So first of all, no one is perfect. But secondly, I like to look at it as the only way you can even come close to playing no mistakes is if you’re playing it really safe. If you’re pushing the edges at all, if you’re trying to use all the potential that you’ve got, chances are you’re going to go over that line at some point and there’ll be a mistake there. So it will depend a little bit on your attitude to these things. It might depend on the type of music you’re playing. For me, I do a lot of improvising and jazz, so perhaps it’s a bit freer there, but I certainly, even in the classical world, I would rather hear a performance where there were some amazing parts and the odd mistake than something that was technically perfect throughout and just have no fire behind it.

Mark: So that’s the first thing to look at is our minds tend to default to, “Oh, I don’t want any mistakes.” But actually think about, well, what are you throwing out if you say, “I will avoid mistakes at all costs.” Because typically the only way to do that is to play it very, very safe. And that may or may not be a trade-off that you’re willing to make.

Christopher: Yeah, I’m reminded of an analogy we use quite a lot here at Musical U, which is the idea of a music playing robot. And if you’re fully focused on instrument technique and playing the notation note perfect, excellent timing, never a wrong pitch. That’s all well and good. But we’ve got robots these days that can do that. We’ve got CDs that people can listen to. That’s not really why people come to listen to you play.

Mark: Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a lot more that you can say around mistakes. We touched on earlier the idea that actually people notice mistakes a lot less than you would think, particularly if you’re in a group or whatever. And even more than that, even if they notice it at the time, will they remember it after the performance is done? Probably not, particularly if the rest of it was good. So they might even notice it at the time but then come to the end of the piece, it’s not there in their memory at all. And this is a really interesting thing back again to how what we perceive can be deceptive. So for you as a musician, typically what you will notice is the things that go wrong. For you as a listener, and see if this rings true for you, what you’ll typically notice is the things that sound really good, that go right.

Mark: But when we’re up there playing, we’re in that musician role. So it’s very easy to think the audience is having the same perspective as us. They’re on the lookout for those bad bits, which is very rarely true. But again, that can skew our perception of whether a mistake is such a bad thing or not. So that’s the first thing is to just look at your attitude to mistakes because it’s one of these paradoxical things that the more worried you are about making mistakes, the more likely you are to make them. Comes back to that letting go again. If you’re worried about making mistakes, you want to take control. If you’re not worried about them, you’re happy to let go. And as long as you’ve done the practice, your body knows what to do. When things tend to go wrong is when you think you know better and you’ve got to control it. So that’s the first bit.

Mark: The other thing I find really important about mistakes is it’s not usually the mistake itself, the initial mistake, that is the problem. It’s the reaction to it. Because what will tend to happen is you notice the mistake, your body might tense up. You will certainly start thinking about it, “Oh, I can’t believe I made a mistake,” maybe one. Or it might be, “Oh, what will people think about it?” And then you might get an emotional response as well, feeling bad about it, feeling worried, whatever these things. But all of this stuff that you’re… So the physical tightening up is never going to be good for playing music, thinking stuff takes you right out of the present moment. You want to have your focus again.

Mark: Focus should be something that’s happening right now because that’s the only bit of music you can control. If your mind has gone to I can’t believe I made that mistake or I hope I don’t make another one or whatever, you’ve lost that again. You’re playing at a lower level and that’s when you’re likely to make another mistake and that will just make things worse and you can end up with a bit of a chain reaction. So this is the tricky thing, can you let go of that instinctive reaction to mistakes and just get on with, “That’s fine, it happened. I’ll address it later. Let’s keep playing.” Which takes a bit of practice. It is something you can practice. Find a piece that you know you are likely to make some mistakes in and just play through it with the aim to just keep playing as much as possible after them is a very simple way into it.

Mark: Another thing that people might find useful if you’re, like I certainly have been, in this category of musicians who notices these things because you want to get better, you want to iron out mistakes. When I get up and perform, I want to learn from it. I don’t want to have it as a black box. So this is the tricky bit for the performance thing, I want to be totally in the moment, not hanging onto anything that’s happened so I can give my best performance. But if I do that, my brain is going to be nagging away going, “Oh, but you lost your chance to learn from all the things that didn’t go right.”

Mark: So if you have a recorder there and you record the performance, that is a great way that allows you to do both. And you set the recorder going before you start to play and your mind just now knows I don’t have that excuse where I need to. Because it will be telling you, “Oh, but I need to go back and log this mistake because otherwise I can’t get better.” Well if you’ve got the recorder there, that doesn’t mean your mind won’t want to do it, but you’ve got a much stronger argument, if you’d like, to say, “Nope, let’s stay in the moment. Let’s stick with this because I can always come back and review the recording later.”

Christopher: That’s really helpful. I should hold back from making too many analogies to meditation, but I can’t help one move, which is often people give you the tip that if you find yourself getting into that with meditation where you have a good idea and you don’t want to lose that good idea so then you spend the rest of your meditation session trying to hang on to the idea. Some people are like, “Just have a pad of paper. Let yourself write it down so that you can then let it go.” And I think this is similar. I think for me what helped was just reframing as if it matters, I’ll remember it and then you can let it go. And just trusting in yourself that if it was a really good idea or in this case if it was quite an important mistake to learn from some part of you is going to remember that even if you don’t fixate on it.

Mark: Yeah, absolutely.

Christopher: So we’ve already covered a great deal and a lot of really actionable stuff, which is fantastic, but there is actually one more area you consider really important to cover. What’s that?

Mark: Yeah. And that is what I call the real world. And it’s a bit of a mishmash of a few things. Two big ones really. So one is, as we’ve alluded to already, I’m yet to find one magic exercise that works perfectly for everyone.

Christopher: What was the point if there’s no one perfect…

Mark: I’ll get there. Maybe not. But different things work for different people at different times and different instruments, different genres. So it’s good to play around with these things and just to know that all these ways of doing it are not set in stone. So the important thing for me though is when you’ve got an exercise is to understand what the principles behind it are. Because then you can think, “Well, how might I change it to work for me?” Because as long as you can do something that’s in the spirit of that then that might make sense. If you’re taking something and going, “Well, I don’t like this bit so I’m going to cut it out.” And that’s a fundamental part of it. That may not be be so helpful, but I definitely encourage people to be a little bit creative but just see what’s working and see what isn’t. And if something really doesn’t suit you or doesn’t suit your situation.

Mark: So for example, the examples I’ve given about where you might put your focus. If you’re playing an instrument or a type of music where that is totally not appropriate, then you don’t have to go with any of the examples I’ve given. But remember the thing that I was talking about where I’m saying it wants to be somewhere where you’re getting the information that is most important to you and you can work out well, I’ve got three ideas of what that might be. Let’s experiment with them and see which one works. So that might be one thing.

Mark: The other aspect of the real world is a lot of these practices you can do work great when you’re on your own in the practice room and most of them are set up so they should work at a gig as well or whatever but sometimes things don’t work like that. Really big example for me is going to jam sessions, which I do a lot as a jazz musician. So partly if there’s just a little bit of a routine I like to have before I play, just to get myself ready, only takes a few seconds. But if you’re getting up on stage on a jam session, I’m having to plug my guitar into the amp, check that’s all working. There were other musicians getting up at the same time, people are deciding what tune we’re going to play. I’m trying to work out if I know what the music is. Sometimes they’ll start before I’m ready. I just don’t have the option to do that. So what are ways that I can change that around so that I can still get some of the benefit, even in a situation where it doesn’t seem to fit and I can find ways to do that. That’s part of it.

Mark: But the other part is just accepting this is what happens in the real world. It’s okay. Just because I haven’t been able to do my little pre-performance routine as I would like, it doesn’t mean that I might as well shut up shop and go home or think it’s a lost cause. It’s that challenge mentality again. This is not how I would choose to do it, but you can bet I’m going to find a way.

Mark: And the other thing is just dealing with some of the stuff that the real world throws at you. So in terms of a couple of practical tips, it’s about minimizing the stress from the things that you can control. Because there’s always going to be stuff that might happen. Perhaps the sound system at a venue isn’t working and you thought you’d get to set up and sound check and you don’t, goodness knows the number of times I’ve had that happen. But there were things that you can control. So for example, a couple of quick tips for what I’m going the equipment that I’m going to take to a gig, I like to have a checklist for that so I don’t have to worry have I remembered everything? Might I forget something or even worse actually turn up there and realize that I have forgotten something. Really simple to do but very effective.

Mark: One step further, if you can do it, is if you know what you have to take to a gig and you have a bag that you always take, whether it’s your instrument case, whether it’s a separate bag, just leave everything you need always packed in there so that you don’t even have to find it, worry if you’ve got it, you just know that’s where it lives. I can pick up the bag and I know I will have my spare cables, my tuner, this, that and the other, my spare set of strings, they just live there.

Mark: So that’s another great thing to do and just allow yourself time so that you’re not rushing around. Just make sure you aim to get there early. It’s again, surprisingly simple and often doesn’t happen and on the off chance that you’re delayed on the way or whatever, you’ll still have time. You don’t have to rush, you don’t have to stress about it because there’s all sorts of other things, both the nature of the performance itself, the stuff that you can’t control, those things can affect how you’re going to play. So you might as well just take the small, simple steps to control the things that you can control.

Christopher: Fantastic. And you’ve addressed a question, I’m sure it was on people’s minds, which is what does this look like in practice? If we know these are the important areas, and then I imagine myself six months from now having mastered them all, what does that actually mean in practical terms? And I think you said at the beginning of the conversation something very humble, which was, “This is what’s worked for me.” In fact, it’s also worked for a great number of students you’ve had in your course and throughout your performance where you teach a lot of this stuff step-by-step. And I wonder if we could just paint a picture of using that course, paint a picture of what it looks like for someone to really study and to develop the toolkit and, maybe not master it, but really nail their peak performance.

Mark: Yeah, so a couple of things there. The first is this is not something that you ever finish. It’s just the same as a musical instrument or whatever. Even if you get to the point where you can play that piece perfectly and you go out and you perform it, if you want to play it again at some point in the future, you can’t just leave it for 10 years and expect you’ll comeback and it will be just where it was. So you do want to do some ongoing maintenance on this. But the way that I take people through it is we’ve got six modules in the course set up in those six topics that we’ve covered and there are exercises for each and you can just take them and go off on them. But what I offer is a setup that I call a boot camp which takes you through those modules roughly in six weeks and gives you the set tasks, the exercises, other tasks that I want you to do each week and some of those are right do this this week and then you’ve done it.

Mark: Others are start practicing this week and you will keep doing it next week and then we’ll take this to a slightly higher level in the third week. So there’s various different things going on there, but I’m walking you through all the key exercises in the course with this is how I want you to practice them. This is how long for, this is when you’re going to move on and do something else. Here are the reflections that I want you to make on that and the aim is at the end of the six weeks, you haven’t mastered everything because this is an ongoing process. Even if you get it to where you want to, you want to do some maintenance. But also just like anything, you never master a scale. You can always get better and better at doing it, as you brought up the meditation a lot of times, really important and relevant to this sort of thing, but you look at there are people who spend their whole lives practicing. It’s such a simple thing to do in concept, but you will keep getting better at it forever and this is very similar.

Mark: But what you’ve got at the end of the six weeks is you have had a taste and a good application to all the things in there, so you’ve got a pretty clear idea of which are the ones that are working best for you and which are the areas where you have most work to do. Because I’m a big believer in you’ll get much more mileage out of really doing one or two things well and sticking to them rather than trying to do everything and not sticking with it. It comes back to what I talked to about earlier about community and accountability and those sorts of things. What I’m really interested in is getting people progress. So if I was to say, “Spend five minutes a day on this” and you get a bit of progress, but people actually do it versus, “You need to spend two hours a day on this” and most people don’t even start, a couple of people try it for a week and then you stop. I’m much more on board with the five minutes a day and in fact that’s what I’ve got as an ongoing practice plan complete with a whole load of ideas about how you turn this into a habit, how you just make it keep happening and do itself.

Mark: And that comes down to picking well what is the most important thing for me to work on now? What is one exercise I can do to get better at it? And let’s put that as a regular daily thing. And there are little assessments as well, so you can then go back and say, “Okay, right, has that improved? Maybe it’s time to switch to another one.” But that’s really what we’re looking to do. Give you a six week way to get started, get a taste of everything, get used to doing the exercises and then say, “Okay, where do I need to put my focus now?”

Mark: And of course if you want to spend more than five minutes a day doing this, lovely. You will definitely see more results. But the really important thing is you will definitely get results from doing five minutes a day and that’s the most important thing to do. Just a little bit of this, it can make a huge difference to your music. How well you play? And the thing that I think has been under there, but I haven’t perhaps stated as strongly as I could do. It’s makes such a difference to my enjoyment of music and I see that for so many of my students as well. It’s not just can you play better if you’re not worried about making mistakes, if you can let go rather than trying to control everything, if you believe you’ve got the confidence that you can do this, you can just have so much more fun on the stage.

Mark: And I guess to come back right back to the start of the conversation, how did I get into this? One of the things that always really bothered me was I play music because I love it. I’ve spent years with it because I love to do it. And so it’s the question, well why should getting up on stage be such a chore? And actually I don’t enjoy it, either because I’m not looking forward to it or the one that I really used to get a lot, which is where I get off. I’d have played really well and I made two or three mistakes. I would beat myself up about those two or three mistakes and people would come up to me and say that was great. And I would then tell them about all the things I’d done wrong and I wouldn’t believe them. And I should have got so much pleasure out of it and a lot of the time I didn’t and that really frustrated me.

Christopher: Fantastic. Well, I can definitely see how nailing the peak performance and getting past performance anxiety makes an enormous difference to your enjoyment of music overall and that’s, yeah, a great side benefit to have to the main objective. Mark, when I came across your course I was so happy because as I said earlier this is a really important topic about which there’s a fair bit known, but I feel like music learners, myself included, have been lacking a clear, coherent step by step plan to actually put it into action and when we spoke previously it was immediately clear that you really know what you’re talking about and I’m sure that’s something everyone has seen today in our conversation. So it’s definitely a course, Unlock your Performance, definitely a course that we will be recommending to our members at Musical U and I’d encourage everyone to check it out.

Christopher: It was actually a website and YouTube channel that first caught our attention that’s playinthezone.com and you have some great blog posts and videos they’re touching on some of these topics. I believe you also have a free ebook, which might be an easy entry point for people into your world. Is that right?

Mark: Yeah, so the ebook is called Unshakeable Foundations and it’s just going through the nine key mindsets that the top performers all share. It’s very true for musicians, but frankly applies across sport and the rest of life as well. And so it gives you those mindsets you’re aiming for so you can see maybe you’ve got five of them and four you want to work on and just some really simple ways that you can take that forward and say, “How am I going to work on these? How will I know when I’ve made progress?” And like I say, that’s the foundation of all this. When you’re starting from those mindsets, beliefs, that’s when everything is built on much firmer foundations.

Christopher: Fantastic. Well, a big thank you, Mark, for joining us today and sharing so much really meaty detail about these topics that are often glossed over or talked about in a way that is totally impractical for people to actually get any benefit from. So a big thank you and we’ll have links in the show notes, of course, to playinthezone.com as well as that ebook and the course for people to check out.

Mark: Fantastic. Thanks so much, Christopher.

The post Your Peak Performance Toolkit, with Mark Morley-Fletcher (Play In The Zone) appeared first on Musical U.

In the past, “peak performance” and “performance psychology” were the exclusive realm of top-level professional performers. Now these ideas are becoming more accessible and applicable to everyday learners and musicians. Diane brings a unique perspective to to the world of performance.

In this conversation we talk about:

• How Diane rose to great success in the classical world, then put aside her violin completely – and returned to it later in an innovative way.
• The specific practical steps you can take to find your own connection with a piece of music.
• The three components of getting into the “flow” state – only one of which is normally covered when you hear about flow.

You’ll be excited to apply Diane’s fresh ideas to your own practice and performance. Dive in to this episode and learn how to be at your best!

Watch the episode:

Links and Resources

• Diane Allen – Own Your A-Game
• Diane Allen – Corporate Speaking
• My Violin Recital – YouTube channel
• Fingerboard Workbook by Diane Allen
• Bow Arm Bootcamp
• Special Musicality Now discount on Diane’s bootcamp and workbook
• Losing yourself in flow state | Diane Allen | TEDxNaperville
• Get Out Of Your Head & Into Your Heart | DisruptHR Talks
• Flow Genome Project
• Diane Allen Facebook
• Diane Allen Instagram
• Diane Allen’s Violin, Copper Dragon
• Diane Allen Twitter
• Diane Allen Linkedin

Transcript

Diane: Hi, I’m Diane Allen and I’m a former concert master of the Symphony Orchestra and currently a corporate speaker and I’m really grateful to be here today on Musicality Now.

Christopher: Welcome to the show, Diane. Thank you for joining us today.

Diane: Thank you Christopher.

Christopher: You have, probably, a combination of the most interesting backstory and most interesting expertise that I’ve seen in a long time. So I’m really excited to dive into it all with you and I wonder if we could start by just sharing a little bit of your own musical journey, how you got started in music and what those early years were like.

Diane: Oh, I’d be happy to. I have parents who were very active in visiting different cultural institutions. My brother Andrew and I grew up in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. And even though people joke about Cleveland being the mistake on the Lake, there’s all kinds of negative things about Cleveland. It’s a hotbed for world-class organizations, incredible Shakespeare festivals. They have an outstanding art museum. And then of course, the Cleveland Orchestra, world class organization. And so, my parents would take us, as little kids. We would, oftentimes, be the only children in the audiences. And I remember very specifically sitting way up high in the seats at Severance Hall in Cleveland. I was so little that my feet were dangling. I couldn’t reach the floor and they performed Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev.

Diane: And I remember the force of the music being so strong, it pinned me to the back of the chair. I mean, it was just so strong. I also remember this feeling of having chills all over me and my hair was raising, it was just the most amazing experience hearing that. And I loved watching the violin bows go up and down and up and down. And I loved hearing the super, super high notes that the violinists could produce. They would just cut through everything, you could have the entire orchestra be playing fortissimo, but those high notes would just really carry through.

Diane: And it’s funny because, fast forward, I was playing at a music festival, here in Oregon, and one of the bass players is the son of, I think it was a trombonist in the Cleveland Orchestra. And at this summer festival, we’re playing the very same Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev. And, this is decades later. So, this bass player friend Dave, I said, “Dave, this is a moment that I remember. I remembered being a tiny little kid, leg swinging, being pinned to the back of my chair. They were playing Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet.” He goes “I know exactly what you’re talking about. That was Lorin Maazel’s first recording with the Cleveland Orchestra and they worked really hard to make that riveting. And that was the concert, the live concert that you went to in preparation for their recording.” He knew exactly what it was. So anyways, it was a powerful experience. And then to have it validated years later was pretty cool.

Christopher: Absolutely. So clearly you felt a real connection with music from a young age. Were your parents musicians? Was it obvious to you that you would be doing that music stuff yourself one day? Or…

Diane: Parents were not musicians, certainly not my dad. My mom played some piano. And, I think that most of the cultural things that we did were led by my mom, who was also a painter. And then my dad grew to love music. He used to wake us up on Sunday mornings with John Philip Sousa marches because he would make pancakes or some special breakfast. And he’d wake us up by playing marches. It was kind of fun. So yeah, it became a big part of the family activities that we did as a family together.

Christopher: Gotcha. And when it comes to actually making music yourself, when did that begin?

Diane: I wanted to play the violin, obviously I was impressed with the Cleveland Orchestra and they said, “No, you can’t play violin until you’re eight years old.” And my mom was like, “No. Well, we start at six.” And, none of the violin teachers would take anybody. And this was at the Dawn of the Suzuki era. So Suzuki was, this tiny little radical thing going on that, if my mom had known, she probably would have found us a Suzuki teacher. But it just wasn’t prevalent at that time. So I started on piano because there was a teacher that would take my brother, sister and I, when we were six. And as soon as I was eight, I started violin. And it was such a relief because I struggle visually and to look at two staffs, the treble and the bass staff, as soon as I only had to focus on the treble staff, I was like, “Oh, this is so much easier.” Even though the violin was one of the hardest instruments to learn. I experienced relief, like okay, this is much better for me.

Christopher: Gotcha. And so there was clearly a contrast from piano, but in the grand scheme of things, did you find it came to you easily? Was it something that you were able to enjoy from the outset? I speak to various people and some of them, it was a grueling first few years before they really got the hang of it and others, it was just joy and peace from day one. What was it like for you?

Diane: It’s hard to remember. I do know that my mom, I think her rule was, however long your lesson was, that’s how long you had to practice. So if you had a 30 minute lesson, you had to practice 30 minutes and then if you grew to 45 minute lessons and you had to do 45 minutes of practice. And so, I do remember being alone in my room going through the motions of practicing and feeling like, “Ah, I have to do this.” But because my mom made it so that we were consistent practicers, it paid off.

Diane: And then when you get to middle or junior high school, when it becomes a social thing, and you’ve got some practice under your belt because it was forced on you, I don’t want to say forced, but it was part of the deal, if you’re going to take lessons you had to practice. So the accumulation of the practice done by the time junior high school, then you compare yourself to other people and you’re like, “Oh look at that. I’m actually doing okay.” So, I think it became more fun, definitely when you got to play with orchestras and do other things and as you progress through school.

Christopher: Sure. And you have this very popular TEDx Talk, which you open with a violin performance and it’s clear you are, these days, a very creative and innovative player. Unfortunately, violin is an instrument where it’s almost redundant for me to ask. But was that kind of improvisation and creativity part of your violin playing from early on or was that something that came later?

Diane: Ah, big question. You know that. This whole thing, with playing an electric violin, for those of you who are seeing the video, you see my violin behind me, it’s called The Copper Dragon. It’s an electric violin. It’s carbon fiber. It’s hollow on the inside, which I like, a solid body doesn’t produce much sound, you could hardly hear it. But I can play it without plugging in and hear it. So, if I’m in a hotel somewhere, I can still play it and practice. So, it gave me an opportunity to have a violin that was light weight, wasn’t heavy, and that I could still hear it like I’m used to playing violin. And so, this is all really new to me. And I’ll come back to that in a second. All of my training was strictly classical and in all of it there was no improvising at all.

Diane: I remember once having a teacher say, “Write your own Cadenza to this Mozart concerto.” And, it was like being a fish out of water, to suddenly write a piece of music. That’s the only experience I remember in all of my classical upbringing. And so, I had taught so many students for over 30 years. It was like the violin factory over here. And produced some amazing recitals and standing room only recitals. The reason why I mention this is because, I taught my students how to get into the music at a very early age. Because I thought, if they’re going to play this really, really, really difficult instrument, they’re going to need a carrot. They’re going to need a reason why they’re playing. So I taught them as soon as possible, how to get into the music.

Diane: So the violin recitals I had, were always standing room only. Even if I got a bigger venue, it would still grow into standing room only because there’s nothing cuter than a bunch of little kids getting into the music. So, I was the queen bee violin teacher here in Bend, Oregon. I was the concert master of the symphony for 15 years, playing the same symphonies over and over and over again. I mean, between high school and all the way through my college training and then the professional playing, it was just the same symphonies over and over and over again. And I burned out. I had burned out. I was sitting in symphony. I was getting grumpy teaching. Students were leaving, they were departing and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what was going on.

Diane: I published some books, which we could talk about later. As soon as I published them, I felt like wow, I’ve done it. Those books were really important for me to get out. We were playing a symphony. It was Beethoven and I’m sitting in the orchestra and I was thinking, I need to take a leave of absence from the symphony because I’m just not feeling this. And during this performance of Beethoven, I said to myself, and I was like, well, what if this is the last Beethoven symphony that you ever play? Oh no, here come the tears. And at the time not even that riled me up on the inside. I was like all right, whatever. So I took a leave of absence and a year later I was like, I’m done. I sold everything, sold the violin, sold all my music, stopped teaching, done.

Diane: And so fast forward. I should look at the time line, I don’t know if it was four or five years. But it was just, what say it would be, so it’s 2020, so it was October of 2018. My husband and I went to a film festival and there was a documentary on creativity and it was about a bunch of counter-culture artists pushing the boundaries, figuring out their own standards for what they call art, even though famous art galleries in Santa Fe or New York City would say, well that’s not art. They were declaring, no, this is art. And it was a fascinating documentary. I came home that night and I couldn’t sleep and I was like, oh no, here comes the violin, it’s coming back.

Diane: And so I called my friend and I said, “Got any violins in the house? She goes, “Of course.” And so she brought over this purple violin and it was a pretty trashy violin, but I played a little Bach and I was like, “Can’t do it, can’t play the classical music.” I didn’t know why that was happening, could not play the classical music. And so I started the Cohen’s Hallelujah. I thought, okay, I like that song. I can connect with that song. So I played that song. There was a couple of Hans Zimmer pieces, for those of you who don’t know, Hans Zimmer is the composer for most of the movie music that you hear. The Epic, super epic movie music that we hear. And so there’s a couple of pieces by Hans Zimmer that I really liked.

Diane: So I downloaded the sheet music and it’s like, okay, I can connect with this and play it with this. And my husband, who teaches the base, knew somebody who played electric violin. And I asked him if I could borrow his electric violin. And that was, oh my gosh, this is it. And I had no idea what I was looking for. No idea. And I’m leaning towards the Hans Zimmer style of music. So after some discovery, I had a jazz singer friend who plays piano. She helped me just to say, okay here we’re going to play some chords and now just kind of noodle around and play with this. And it was very similar to the course that my brother Andrew created, the Circle Mastery course, I took that. What’s the name of that course Christopher?

Christopher: Circle Mastery Experience

Diane: Oh okay.

Christopher: And we should probably just address that. The Andrew you refer to there is Andrew Bishko from the Musical U team. At the Andrew you grew up with earlier, is in fact the Andrew, some listeners and viewers of the show would know quite well.

Diane: So I said, it’s funny because I’m an impatient person. And I said, “Help me write some music.” And he goes, “No, you have to experiment.” And I was like, “No, just help me.” And the Circle Mastery course is very helpful. And I still was kind of frustrated. I ended up just Googling or I think it was YouTube, but it’s like chord structures. I kept going back and forth between, do I start with a melody, do I start with chord structures? Like how do I do this? Like once I have chords I can make things up, that’s not hard.

Diane: I think that what’s really hard about creating your own music and being new to a instrument is you’re doing two new things at the same time. For me, I could think of a, oh those are the notes in the chord? I can play those notes all over the violin because I think I’ve played violin almost 50 years now. So I’m not dealing with doing two new things at once. But it is, like I said, very confronting, like being at this beginner level.

Diane: So I did a YouTube search of, I think I was just looking for how to create music that sounds like Hans Zimmer or something like that. And there was a video on there with a whole bunch of chord structures that they laid out and I think, I don’t know, there’s like 20 of them, maybe more like 15 of them that I started messing with and playing some baselines on the looper. Doing some arpeggiations that okay, what’s melody? Listening to the music and saying, those melodies aren’t very developed. They’re just maybe a couple measures long then over and over again, but just layered. And so it’s been fun. I’m still struggling with the looper and how to use it. That was a very long answer to a very short question.

Christopher: That’s a very good answer and I will definitely have a link in the show notes that Ted Talk I mentioned, where you opened with an amazing looped violin performance. And I’m hoping you might treat us to a bit of violin later in the conversation. Part of the reason I was keen to ask is that, I fear on this show sometimes we conflate improvising and playing by ear and writing your own music with expressiveness in musical performance. And I never want to give the impression that one can’t be a dynamic expressive performer full of musicality if you’re reading from sheet music. Obviously that’s nonsense to anyone who’s heard a really compelling classical performance.

Christopher: But given that you have this new kind of era of your music making, which is tied to that improvising and creativity in a whole new way, I think that’s helpful for us to kind of put that over there and say that’s one way that you are really in touch with the music. But actually if we circle back to something you said earlier, you were helping your young students get into the music as you put it, very early on and I wonder if we could loop back in your story to that kind of period and what getting into the music and connecting with the music means, if we’re not improvising and doing all kinds of dynamic nifty things with a looper pedal.

Diane: Yes, because the violin was so, it’s just such an uncomfortable instrument to play and it’s a high precision instrument. I would help them to hold the instrument and hold the bow and make a good sound, as fast as possible. I did use the Suzuki method, the Suzuki method is touted as learning by ear. But coming from my training as an orchestral musician, reading music was equally important. So I would just start them by ear, enough to learn how to play the instrument and then we would start in on reading music. But at the same time, for those of you who are familiar with the Suzuki books, the very first real song or a real piece of music by Bach is called Minuet One. And let me go grab my violin.

Diane: So the flow state that I talk about in the Ted Talk is the second step. And so what I’m talking about here when I taught my students to get into the music, was kind of like a preliminary step, it was like a stepping stone for them to be able to get into the flow state with their music later. And to feel really, really, really expressive. So it’s just crazy because I don’t remember in my upbringing, anybody ever telling you how to get into the music. I do remember my brother Andrew and when he was in, I think he was in middle school or high school, I can’t remember. But he had a friend who played the piano and I think he played jazz, and they would get together in our living room and do these jazz sessions or they would just play music together. I can’t remember what they were playing.

Diane: And I remember they would just get so into the music and it was just such a different level. I don’t know how he got there because I was never taught how, I think he just instinctually did it. I don’t know if his teachers taught or maybe because he was playing the flute and you’re using your breath, it was a little more connected. He started on piano and then played flute, was his secondary instrument. So nobody said anything, like how to get into the music. And it’s just crazy because in college, I’m at the Manhattan School of Music, New York City musical training. And this teacher, he talks about this concept of how you start a race, we count one, two, three and then you go and you start racing. And he says, okay, music is filled with one, two, three. It’s like, oh, okay.

Diane: So I would take my little four and five year old Suzuki violin students and we’d be Minuet One and I said, “Okay, we’re going to look for one, two, three. And so it goes like this, one, two, three. So simple. Anybody could hear that, but yet I didn’t learn that until I was in college. And so being able to suddenly hear that in music is pervasive. And when you hear yourself playing, you’ll hear that you yourself do that. Or maybe you want to incorporate it more. But when you become aware of it, then you start to shape it. Because we know how we count races, one, two, three.

Christopher: Gotcha. And just to make sure everyone’s following along, we’re talking about a very transferable mental model for how the music is kind of building tension and release or how it’s creating a shape. The idea that you would do something then maybe you do something similar and then do something different. Is that right?

Diane: I’m trying to think. There’s one spot in one of the Minuets where it somehow gets reversed. I’m a little rusty on this, but basically those Minuets, all of them do that. You have one, two, three. Over and over again. One, two and then the next phrase is super long.

Christopher: Interesting. Okay. So maybe I misunderstood. So is it more about the duration of the phrases than the similarity, would you say? And that’s why it’s compared to the race start?

Diane: Yeah, because you’re like two measures, two measures and then four measures.

Christopher: Interesting.

Diane: And so the teacher in college that talked to us about this, we were listening to symphonies, we would hear this within the symphonies. So just a really easily assimilated way for a tiny little kid to hear the phrasing in music. Then we would take a look at, there’s an A section and a B section and whether you read music or not, we know that there’s different forms of music. And so the A section might be you might call that a paragraph. The B section is a whole paragraph. And then the whole thing together might be the chapter or the whole piece, in classical music we have different movements. So each movement would be a different chapter and the whole thing would be a story.

Diane: So showing little kids all of these little breakdowns were things that they could connect to and to start. But the real bridge that I want to talk about was being able to get into how you express your music on a more granular level and which at the same time, when you get into that granular level of focus, deep focus and putting your intention into the music, these are the things that can get you into your flow state. And the flow state, we need to get into this right now, is that moment when you lose all sense of time and you feel one with the activity. You can be practicing and come out of it and realize three hours has gone by and it felt like five. It’s that kind of a feeling.

Diane: And you might have ideas and insights that come from out of the blue. You might feel completely uninhibited, alone in your practice room, where you could just let it rip and things happen in magical ways. Maybe things come together really easy out of the blue and you just feel like you’re in this state. So there’s a lot of things that are known. This is all been studied by an organization called the Flow Genome Project. They have done all of the neuroscience background behind all of this art. Literally when we get into the flow state, our prefrontal cortex shuts down, which is where our inner critic lives.

Diane: So that’s why we get uninhibited. It’s our prefrontal cortex is also where we store sense of time. So when that shuts down, that’s why we lose the sense of time. And then the neocortex amps up and this is why we get more creative and these things come. It’s like a physical thing. It’s a literal thought process that we could get into. It happens in the shower, it happens when you’re driving and you don’t know how you got home. So, in all these places we’re in the flow state and when musicians are deeply into the music, they’re in their flow state. Now there’s personal ways that you can get into the flow state.

Diane: And that’s what my Ted Talk is all about. And I don’t know if we’ll have time in this particular conversation to get into that. Because what I’m trying to do is build the pre-steps to that Ted Talk for musicians. So, understanding the structure of music is, it’s a language, it’s got scent, it’s got words, it’s got the notes together, create words, the words create, the groups of notes is a word, those create sentences, which we call phrases. Those phrases build up together to become a section and then, like I mentioned earlier. So when we get so focused on the granular level with intention of how we want to express the music with our deep listening and our deep focus. Okay. Intention, deep listening and deep focus are all proven ways by the Flow Genome Project, that we access the flow state. Okay. So it’s kind of interesting because I’m going to come at this from a technical level, but it’s a stepping stone to get in. So does that make sense? Am I talking English?

Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. And what was it in your own life that made you start thinking about flow or start looking up what the Flow Genome Project might be up to?

Diane: It was a performance fail that I had late in my career and I couldn’t get into the music at that concert, it was like I lost it. Which meant I went through the motions during that concert, I was not able to get into the music and it was really disturbing. And so that was the impetus for me to break down, well how do I get into the music? What is it that I do? And so that’s what the Ted Talk is all about. It’s all about that experience and how I broke it down and the system that I created so I could guarantee that I could get into the flow state at will anytime, anywhere.

Diane: And so let me, if you don’t mind, let me go back to these three steps to get people into flow, because we want to talk about how do you express music on that granular level? And so in the end of the Ted Talk, I play a line of music, which I’m going to play right now, okay? So basically you could say it’s four note groups. I’m playing a lot of four note groups, all that whole line of music is made up of four note groups. So it started off with… those are four notes. Okay. So the whole thing is made up four note groups. And in music, when it’s written like the top line here. And so for those of you who are listening, it’s basically four equal notes. They’re the same size, the same shape and if I were a beginner music student, and I didn’t know anything about how to phrase music, I’d never heard about words or putting notes together, I would play every note, they’re all the same tempo.

Diane: I would play, they’re all at the same rhythm. I would play… I’m just going to stop now because this is super boring. So if we have the same rhythm, how are we going to make that interesting? How do we get that to sound like it’s a phrase or that it’s not mechanical, how do we interpret that, I guess is what we’re really saying. So if I played four notes equally… Sounds like that. I could also play it like this… Just emphasizing the first one. In fact, actually, let me add the first note of the next group. So I’m going to play five notes. We have four notes and then we have the first one of the next group because it’s an arrival. So if I play…

Diane: I don’t know if that’s audible through technology, but I tried to play the first one louder, then three in a row quieter and then land back on the first one louder again. I could do like one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Where we’re at gross. We start loud, softer, getting louder. So if I took that idea with that scale, I’d play… It’s starting to have shape, but it’s also sounds a little nauseous, of doing the same thing over and over again. So that’s one suggestion. You can also do, let’s see, we could do groups of two. So we can have… So that’d be one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two. So earlier I had one, two, three, four, one. So I could do that and then maybe the next group I did the one, two, sorry. I can’t play and talk at the same time.

Diane: But the one, two, so that would be… Kind of a rough version of it. So you could emphasize any of those notes. And this would be something that my brother would say to go and experiment with. And in a group before, what notes are you going to emphasize more? Or what are you going to do less? So with a little kid, I would say if we go to the peak of that scale… There’s the arrival. But now we have this whole… That whole part. So this the arrival… So I would say to a student, I’m going to play one note, doesn’t belong to anything. What if I play two notes in a row? Oh those kind of belong together.

Diane: So we could put a circle around them in the music. We’d take a pencil and just circle those two notes. Okay, well if those two notes belong together, let me play the next one. That one doesn’t belong to anything. But what if I play two notes? Oh, that kind of belongs together. So you could circle those two. And those might be like the syllables in a word. Each note is a letter and then we’re just trying to find out what belongs together. So if I take both of those syllables, that kind of sounds like a word. So I do that scale. Arrive. Then we have… Okay, that makes sense?

Diane: So I would go through with students, we would go through entire pieces of music in this fashion and they would decide, oh, I like these two notes together and we would circle it. Or I like all of these notes together. And the funny thing is, is that in written music, and of course you can do all this by ear, but in written music you have so many lines. You have the stems, you have the bar lines and then you have beams that connect groups of notes. And when you do this circle exercise, what happens is, is all of those beams and those bar lines, you’re just doing circles all around them. It’s like they had nothing to do with the expression of music. Bar lines and beams visually look like you’re supposed to group those things together. But they have nothing to do with how you express music.

Diane: And so when you go through this exercise of circling what belongs together, that becomes for them, how they want to interpret those at a very granular level. So I’ll just finish this phrase, I’m stepping on my cord here. So this whole last thing, if I play it without any expression, super boring. And so I had decided that I liked, here’s the arrival, I liked this. But then I wanted more momentum. So instead of doing another four group, I did eight. So, and then I did another eight, and that’s how I decided to interpret that.

Christopher: Tremendous. I always like to speak for the engineers and scientists in the audience because I can relate to them a lot and just to make sure their curiosity is satisfied. What we’ve literally done there is make our own decisions about the volume and the timing of the notes in order to convey that grouping. Is that right? Is that what we’re playing around with in order to put those phrases in?

Diane: We’re basically taking a microscope and looking very closely at every single note and what notes belong together in what makes sense to us. And it’s that act that gets you into that deeply focused listening so carefully. That’s what’s going to trigger you to get into the flow state where you get so focused and you’re so one with the activity and it literally trips that physiological response in your brain to turn off the prefrontal cortex, amp up the neocortex and that’s where that creativity comes in. You can look and act, people can play really loud and they can move their bodies a lot and it could look like you’re into the music. But this is literally like no, when you look at it in this way, you decide how you’re going to connect all these things. Or if you’re in the middle of improving, you’re always looking to see what belongs together, how do you connect things. That’s what’s going to get you into that deeper level of focus.

Christopher: Wonderful. I love that so much and I can’t help but think of how I was taught or “taught” this stuff back in my school days. And as you point out, the visual representation of music can be so misleading. When I was growing up, I was taught a little bit about dynamics and phrasing and how to convey that, but it was in the context of this swoopy line goes like that. So that is one phrase. What can you do to convey that phrase? And it never crossed my mind and maybe not even my teacher’s minds that I might get to choose where the phrases were in the music. And, obviously there’s a conversation around respecting the composer’s intent and that kind of thing. But what I love about what you just demonstrated is you’re starting purely with the listening and you can relate it back to the sheet music. And I love that you use circles to distinguish from those kind of straight strict lines we normally go by. But you’re starting from the sound and you’re starting from the listening and you’re placing your own phrasing and expression on that, I just think is tremendous.

Diane: And once again, this was a different professor, but it was the violin teacher that I had at the Manhattan School of Music. He was the one of painstakingly we would go through every single note in a Concerto like this. You’d have to buy two copies of the music because you’d have one completely trashed copy because of all the pencil. The thing is, its like any other technique. It’s hard at first, but then the more you do it, the easier it gets and the more engaged you feel with your work. And I think that’s really ultimately when somebody experiences somebody else who’s into the music, what they’re experiencing is, as they’re witnessing somebody being deeply engaged, deeply engaged, which is why I’m doing corporate speaking now because that’s a huge problem. Employee engagement.

Diane: And so I bring this, literally, I bring this, it’s like how do you get engaged and how do you trigger into being that in to experiencing your potential through the flow state? But the fun thing is, is that when you are a spectator, we can all think of those artists as those musicians that just knock us out. And it’s just so riveting to watch somebody whose so into the music. It’s contagious. Bobby McFerrin. I heard Bobby McFerrin at Carnegie Hall when I was at the Manhattan School of Music. And we’re talking New York City, okay. When you’re in the subways, you don’t look at anybody, you don’t talk to anyone. Everyone’s in their own zone.

Diane: And after Bobby McFerrin okay, I go down to the subway to go home. Everybody in the subway, because it was late at night, had just come from this concert. Everybody was friendly and happy and singing. Like you never see that in a New York City subway. And so it’s contagious and there’s even information about that. The heart, the electromagnetic field of your heart reaches out 15 feet around you. So if you are deeply engaged in your music, you are in that heart space, you are projecting it out 15 feet. So group flow, now we’re getting into group flow, is that then becomes contagious to those people around you. And then they get into their heart space and then that reaches out 15 feet. And this is why it ripples through, why you could have a riveting musicians on stage that inspire everybody in the audience and then everybody gets into that state. It’s called group flow. That is also proven in many ways.

Diane: The 15 feet, the electromagnetic field of the heart comes from the heart Math M-A-T-H Institute, where they study in depth the heart and all of the things having to do with the heart. And so there’s neurons in our heart, we have memory in our heart. And so the feeling memory is in our heart, a lot of our emotions are in our heart. So when we get to interpreting our music on that granular level and we get engaged in the music, we get deeper into that feeling memory of our heart. We’re in our heart space, it activates the heart. People 15 feet around hear it. Then it ripples throughout the audience. Does it get any better?

Christopher: That’s so fascinating and as you said before, we couldn’t recreate your Ted Talk here and I’m sure everyone watching and listening is already eager to run off and watch it, if they haven’t already hit pause and done so. But I think you said earlier that flow comes from deep listening and deep focus and intention and I feel like the scientific literature around flow talks a lot about the deep focus. And I’ve heard a lot about that and I loved what you just shared about the stepping stones of getting into deep listening. And I think you just touched there on the third aspect, which is what I’ve heard you talk about but almost nobody else talk about, which is the kind of emotional or heart side of getting into flow. Like I said, I’m not going to ask you to deliver your Ted Talk here, but maybe you could just give our listeners, our audience a little sense of what that’s about and why it’s important.

Diane: Right. So the day that I couldn’t get into music was horrifying because I had obviously, I let the audience down. It was embarrassing, it was humiliating. And it was something I had taken for granted. So, so I basically sat on the couch that night just trying to deconstruct it. And because I had so much experience getting into the music of my life, I could just sit on the couch, close my eyes, and recreate it. And I realized that I basically deconstructed it and it ended up highlighting purpose on what I’m doing and the purpose for it. So which, once again, is another known way to access the flow state, which is to serve a higher purpose. This is why in people who are developed in their religions and if they have a group service or something like that, it’s always something outside of yourself.

Diane: Something a lot far greater than yourself that you’re reaching for. It’s a bigger purpose. And so purpose, you don’t have to have religion to have purpose. But I’m just saying that’s an example that I think is easy for people to, yeah, we know what that’s like. So I had figured out that what I’m doing is I’m sharing. So when I’m thinking about those granular construction of how I get into the music, I’m sharing it, I’m sharing that message to the audience. That’s what I’m doing.

Diane: But why? Why is it so meaningful? Because there were some concerts, I’d be in the middle of performing a concert and I would be moved to tears, I could not hold it back. So then I would say, okay, I’m sharing in these concerts. Well why is it so meaningful? What’s going on here? And I realized it was unity. It was that act of having an entire auditorium, thousands of people combined together in one activity. That’s what would just move me. And then I just found other places like, oh yeah, anytime I had done the two or three times I did some sort of race for the cure of whatever. When you have thousands of people fundraising through doing a walk or a race or something like that, I’d be the one crying.

Diane: And I was like, it’s unity. That’s how I was able to figure it out. So the more ways you know how to access your flow state, we’ve talked about many today. Deep listening, focus, the having purpose, all of these things are different ways to get into the flow state. Did I answer your question? I think so. So that’s the next level, is the information that I shared on the Ted Talk. So I can guarantee if I know what purpose I’m serving, I can guarantee I could get into it, because I analyzed it.

Christopher: That’s really valuable. And I think you talk about having your flow strategy, it’s not this is the strategy of how people scientifically get into flow. What you just described is really about that personal gateway that can be combined with the listening and the focus to get you into that state. Right?

Diane: What is your personal flow strategy? And I gave some really funny examples. Thomas Edison had a pipe organ in his lab. Albert Einstein, he was known to not be bothered on his daily walks. Every day he would walk to Princeton and to home and everybody knew, do not bother him. That’s him when he gets into his flow state. They didn’t call it that at that time, but they just knew to honor that. And then Nikola Tesla, he insisted on squishing his toes when 100 times a day. So we had like these quirky behaviors, and you think about athletes and people who are highly esoteric as having these crazy habits that they do, but they do them. Meditation is another one, there’s just so many different ways. They do them because they know that when they get into that flow state, they’re in their best self and they’re in their highest creativity and innovation. For musicians it’s getting into music.

Christopher: Well, I love the clarity and frameworks you bring to this topic because I know that the flow state is something everyone can kind of instinctively relate to a little bit. And the idea of getting into the music and having that level of expressiveness is something everyone craves. But it’s rare for someone to say, oh, this is how it works, or this is how to get there. So I really applaud the deep thought you’ve clearly put into this. We did something a bit different for this episode, which is I guess partly, because you’re Andrew’s sister and you’ve very kindly dropped into Musical U to chat with our members a little bit. But we asked our members at Musical U if they had any questions for you and I’d love to just throw a couple of those out there.

Christopher: I’m going to paraphrase for brevity and to relate it to what we’ve been talking about more directly, but one of our members, Alynn was curious to know about this relationship between flow and improvising and practice and essentially she was using her music practice time to work on improvising and recognizing that part of getting into improv is getting into flow and that seemed to go together, but then getting lost in it. The way we sometimes talk about flow seemed anathema to diligent practice where you’re carefully thinking about what to work on. And what advice would you have for someone on that one, how to think about flow and improvising and practice?

Diane: I have a close friend, a psychologist who she calls it fused thinking. And I’m not going to do this justice the way she does it, but basically you have critical thinking skills and then you have creative creativity. And I’m sure that they figured out, okay, well when you’re in your creativity, these are the things that light up in your brain. And when you’re using the critical skills, these are the things that, it’s accessing different parts of your brain. And so if you think about those dreams that you have, that you remember, and then and they’re always a metaphor for something and you have to interpret what it meant. And so maybe you remember a dream. Okay, so the dream happened in your sleep, in a flow state.

Diane: But then when you wake up, you remember it. And so then you think, I want to interpret that. I want to learn what. So when you’re in the dream state or you could think about that as being in your creative mind. I’m just loosely doing this, it’s not exact. And then when you’re waking up and you’re interpreting it, you’re in that critical thinking. Okay. And so what happens is, is you start to become adept. Maybe you have a dream and you wake up and you already know what it meant. So that meant the time spent in each of those kinds of thinking, was much quicker going from one to the other. And so I think that just like anything in music, you have to practice everything. So yeah, you might structure part of your practice is, I have to do this technical thing and then I’m going to have free time where I just let it happen.

Diane: And then maybe it just happens out of the blue and then you’re like, woo-hoo, it’s happening and then you just go with it. Somebody else I had a conversation with, and I’m blanking on his name right now, was saying that he would get so lost, that his band mates would be making funny faces and that’s when he realized that he had gone on too far and he had lost so much track of time that he couldn’t figure out the form, yeah I think was the problem. So they would give him funny faces when he over went beyond or whatever in the form. So that meant that he was so heavily in the creative stage, he couldn’t access the critical thinking part. So being able to weave back and forth between the two, is a practice that you have to practice, and that’s what my friend calls fused thinking. Being able to quickly change from one to the other so that you can gain as much as you can from both aspects. Did I answer that in a-

Christopher: Absolutely. Yeah and you touched on the second question I jotted down there from Nikko, which was about getting so into flow at a jam session that you kind of lose your place and then you’re jolted back into reality. And he was asking for advice on that. So I think that’s really helpful.

Diane: And the other thing I don’t know, sometimes you answer intuitively. Because Nikko is also a violinist, as we put our violins up next to our necks, we breathe shallow and because we forget to breathe past the violin. So part of me sense that he might’ve also not been grounded. You have to breathe deeply to get beyond where the violin is and I felt like the deeper breathing and feeling like his feet were planted would give him that sense of being grounded at the same time as being in your flow stage.

Christopher: Tremendous. Well, I want to be respectful of your time because I said to you before we hit record, I could happily talk about this stuff with you for hours on end. And I think we’ve packed a lot in there and given people a real taste of what they can expect in your Ted Talk if they run off now to the show notes at musicality now they’ll come to get the link directly to that talk. Before we wrap up, I did want to ask about your book series because that’s something we haven’t really explored, but you said it was really important to you to get it out there into the world. And as far as I know it’s not related to the stuff we’ve been discussing or at least not explicitly. So what was that book series?

Diane: Well actually you could say it was, because if you’re playing on a fretless instrument and finding where the notes are on the instrument, it’s hard. It really is. And I had put together a series of books that are kind of like crossword for finding notes on the instrument. And they are ways for you to visualize where the notes are, to get really accustomed to half steps, which on a stringed instrument, everything is built from half steps. You become an expert in knowing what the half steps are and just in case you don’t know what a half step is, it would be like going from D to D sharp. That would be a half step.

Diane: If you go from D to E, that would be a whole step. I mapped out the entire fingerboard, so there’s seven books on violin, seven on Viola, and we did one cello book and one bass book. Once again, the goal was to teach my students as quickly as possible the technical aspects, because I knew that they had to get into music if they were going to continue with violin and most of my students, I taught K through 12 because of that. I mean I had longterm relationships with my students.

Diane: So these workbooks were a way to get them into knowing all of the notes, all over the violin at a really early age. I sent you Christopher, a list to include in the show notes, I also have a bow arm bootcamp, which is a phenomenal exercises that gets people really comfortable with the bow. And both the bow arm bootcamp and the fingerboard workbook series for any violinists, just email me and I’ll give you a really good deal on these products. Like really good deal. If you’re curious, you could learn more at the website, so we’ll include that in the show notes and I included my email address so we could have a conversation.

Diane: You can check it out if you’re curious. I could just email you the book and the bow arm bootcamp. But in my journey, I said that I had burned out and what happened was is I created these course, the bow arm bootcamp course and the books very close to the end of my career and it was kind of like the final thing that I needed to do to complete. To put these products out there and to feel complete with my entire classical music aspect of my music career.

Christopher: Tremendous. Well as somebody who first tried learning electric bass on a fretless, I’ll just underscore what you said there, about it being harder than one might expect to find them. I thought I had a pretty good ear and I wanted to be just like Rick Kemp on a couple of tracks where he plays the fretless bass and sounds incredible. Turned out it was pretty tricky. So-

Diane: That’s how I feel about writing my own music now. It’s like, what am I doing? So I get it.

Christopher: Cool. And I realize we’ve touched on, but not really talked about, what you do full time now, which is professional public speaking or addressing groups of people. And outside the world of music, we’ve obviously been talking specifically about music here today for musicians and music learners. But maybe just so that everybody is aware and we can point them in the right direction if they’re interested to know more. What do you do as a public speaker?

Diane: I have a really good time.

Christopher: Good answer.

Diane: Because I bring my Copper Dragon on stage with me. I open up with a piece of music. I get the audience involved, I give them a rhythm and a melody, make them play along with me. Then I tell them how to access their own excellence through the flow state and there’s a huge need. There’s a lot of corporations that are realizing they can’t treat employees like machines anymore. And how do we bring the humanity back? Innovation is a really important thing right now. And so getting into the flow state is what gets people so deeply engaged with what they’re doing. It gets them into that innovative stage. It gets them into having purpose. It’s cultivating the humanity. So I do a keynote that is multisensory and yeah, there’s going to be information. I have my brother and I also have a sister, she has some animation in there. She’s a visual artist. So there’s some pictures, there’s animation, there’s music and then there’s the message. And then hopefully people leave knowing their own flow strategies so that they can access their potential.

Christopher: Amazing. So you’ve been so generous sharing today, both from the very practical nitty-gritty through to the theoretical and high level concepts and I’m sure it’s been just as fascinating for everyone watching and listening as it has been for me, myself. Just wanted to end with a huge thank you again, Diane and a applause for the work you’re doing, because as you touched on at the end there, it is so important both for music learners and everybody out in the world. And I feel like this status quo in what we hear about flow actually isn’t all that helpful for helping us get there. So I really applaud the work you’re doing and thank you again for joining us today to share some of that.

Diane: Thank you for having me. I really want people to feel free and to have that sense of freedom in their expression. And it’s a huge part of my why and my purpose and like I described, to give people the opportunity to be the ones who start that chain of getting a whole group of people into that contagiousness state of being in your flow.

The post Getting Into The Music And Into Flow, With Diane Allen appeared first on Musical U.

In this inspiring conversation you’ll gain insight not only in to the business side of Jon’s career, but also in the ways he’s dedicated himself to improving his musicality.

We talk about:

• The two key areas of musicality he felt he had to improve, even though he grew up feeling like a very “talented” musician.
• How being a modern day A&R rep has helped his musical and entrepreneurial growth.
• How he’s managed the biggest challenge in making music his full-time gig.

Whether you’re serious about making a career in music – or you’re just a casual hobbyist – you’re going to enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at how business and musicality can help each other.

Watch the episode:

Links and Resources

• • Jon Magnusson
  • Adam Neely – New Horizons in Music
  • Passive Income Musician
  • Music Entrepreneur HQ
  • Rick Beato – Everything Music
  • Indepreneur
  • Udemy
  • Submit Hub

  Have you picked up useful ideas or techniques in your own musical journey so far that you think could inspire or help others on their path of exploring their musicality? Get in touch by dropping an email to hello@musicalitynow.com! We are always looking for new guests for Pathways and would love to share your story next.

  Enjoying The Musicality Podcast? Please support the show by rating and reviewing it!

  Rate and Review!

  Transcript

  Jon: Hi, I’m Jon Magnusson, and I’m a songwriter and musician from Stockholm, Sweden, and you’re listening to the Musicality Now Podcast.

  Christopher: Welcome to the show Jon, thank you for joining us today.

  Jon: Thank you very much Christopher. It’s an honor to be here.

  Christopher: I’ve been really enjoying following along a bit with your story inside your progress channel at Musical U, and I’m really keen now to share some of that with our audience because you’ve done something that I’m sure a lot of our listeners and viewers only dream of, which is to make music your full time gig, and before we dive into that, I want to know how you got to that point. What’s the backstory of Jon Magnusson as a musician? Where did you learn music, what did it look like for you?

  Jon: I actually started when I was really small, like eight, nine years old in the Swedish Musical School. We have a more or less free music education run by the municipalities of Sweden, so there I started to play the keyboard, and from the beginning I really felt I was pretty talented, but I was also kind of lazy, so if something didn’t go my way I tended to stop progressing, and just keeping on the level where I was at, at the moment. I didn’t really have someone who would really push me to take the next step, but I began to play guitar at 14, and was totally self-taught up until 30 years old, just played by myself, learning chords, so my progress was a bit slow, but at that moment I realized how much I really enjoyed making music, and I also went through a pretty rough period of my life, so it’s also got me thinking what do I want to do with my time.

  Jon: That’s roughly three years ago, when I decided that I wanted to make it my full time job, and at that moment I didn’t have any idea how to make it, but I understood that I couldn’t just rely on what kind of talent I had, so I really started learning music theory, learning to play guitar in a more structured way with internet courses, and also learning social media, how to build a website, all the business side around things. It took me roughly two and a half years to go from making a big loss, spending a lot money, to actually break even. In August, I was at the point in life where I could it full time.

  Christopher: Awesome, well there is so much there that I want to unpack with you, and let’s begin in that early stage because I think it’s interesting that you said you were kind of provided with this standard music education, but you also self taught yourself guitar, so could you talk a bit about what that kind of official music education looked like. What were they teaching, what weren’t they teaching, and then when it came to guitar, how did you go about learning to play guitar yourself?

  Jon: Yeah, the municipality music education is like every kid has the possibility to choose an instrument, and play in an orchestra, so it’s pretty based on an orchestral setting. There isn’t that much focus on writing music, or music theory. Mostly about an orchestra works, and playing together with others. Since I wanted to play keyboard, it wasn’t very easy for me to be able to play with the orchestral band all the times, especially like if it was a marching band, I was the one wearing the banner instead of playing an instrument, but I think that was a really good foundation, and a great way to make kids interested in music. What I wanted, like for me and others who are more interested in music, to be able to take it maybe a step further, but all in all it was the most important thing for me because my parents didn’t play music, even though they have always been very supportive, they didn’t come from a musical background themselves.

  Christopher: Got you, and you said right from the beginning you felt quite talented in music. What did that mean? What made you feel like, “Okay, this is for me?”

  Jon: I felt when I heard a song, I could more or less play it. Not right away, but not like I had a perfect pitch, but I had a pretty good sense of pitch, and musicality right at the beginning, so I was able to play easier pop songs and stuff like that pretty fast.

  Christopher: Great, and so then when you decided to add guitar to your arsenal, how did you go about picking up that instrument?

  Jon: Actually, I was doing a conformation. I don’t know the name in English, it’s like when you’re doing in the Swedish church, I had a friend who wanted me to join him, even though I’m not religious myself. The church has a really nice social program for kids where you can do different activities, and I choose to play guitar, so I took five or six lessons through that, and my parents bought me an acoustic guitar, and that’s how I started playing the guitar.

  Christopher: Cool, and then a couple of decades passed I guess, one will do anyway, and what were you doing over that period? Were you performing, were you writing music, were you just playing for yourself at home, what did your musical life look like?

  Jon: I mostly played at home, and also I really enjoyed writing songs, and I had a few songs that has gotten a bit of recognition amongst my friends and family, also got a few radio plays in other countries. I felt that I had some kind of potential, but at the same time it could take me one year to write a new song because I had to rely on inspiration and it wasn’t always the inspiration came that easy, so I wrote about one song a year, and recorded and released it, but I didn’t really make much progress at that time.

  Christopher: You released an EP over that period, is that right, This is All it Takes?

  Jon: No, that one is actually my latest. I released a few singles, and also an EP in Swedish that I’ve actually taken down from Spotify because I don’t think the quality is really good enough, so I use it like bonus content for my mailing list subscribers and stuff like that. Actually the first EP I released that was more of less professionally recorded and produced was the Psalm for Sinners EP, that I released almost three years ago, I think in March 2017.

  Christopher: Got you, and let’s go back to that period of we may because I think that’s when you said you were kind of making this decision to pursue music more fully, and it sounds like, excuse me, it sounds like you’ve been really smart about that, if I may say, in the sense that I think a lot of people with the backstory we just described would have been like, “Okay, I’m going to do music, I’ll just kind of rely on my talent, and I’ll figure it out as I go, and I’ll jumble together a living from doing this, that, and the other, and I’ll hope that my talent is good enough to carry me through.” Clearly that’s not the route you’ve taken. You had that kind of strong start in the sense of feeling that connection to music, and having a good ear, but when it came time to pursue it more fully, you’ve been very thoughtful and deliberate, and specific about how to make it work, so could you take us back to that time when you were making that decision. What prompted it, and how did you both emotionally, and intellectually decide to go about it?

  Jon: That was just before I was writing the EP I was talking about, and I had one, or two songs finished, and I felt like, “This is okay, but if I want to make it good enough for others to listen to, I actually have to make it better,” so I actually started, because I didn’t have money to go to a professional school, so I started researching on the internet because I think the biggest problem is you can find so much stuff on YouTube, or on podcasts, but if you don’t have a plan, or a route to take, like I can watch Adam Neely’s videos, or Rick Beato’s videos, and it’s great inspiration, but it’s also on a level that’s too high for most people in my position, so I really need to have some kind of basic foundation to be able to use those more advanced videos as well. I actually started on Udemy, which is a site with a lot of good online courses, and I started with a musical theory course there, and also a guitar course.

  Christopher: Got you. I’m always impressed when I talk to people who have a mixture of humility and ambition. Clearly you’ve wanted to make it in music in some way, shape, or form, but you weren’t falling into the trap of being like, “I’m so great therefore I’ll make it.” You were recognizing that there were areas where you needed to improve, and you were being humble enough to go to Udemy, seek out the resources, and improve your skills to be able to make that happen. I think it’s a combination that often leads to great success, but it does take humility I think to say, “Okay, my theory isn’t that great,” and rather than saying, “I’ll just make up for it with creativity, I’m going to go learn the theory.”

  Jon: Yeah, it was like when I started taking music theory, I’d been playing instruments for 15, or 17 years, and I never heard the concept of musical intervals, it was just, “What is that?” I could read notes, or sheet music pretty well, but I had no idea what a perfect fourth was, so that was quite mind blowing, “Ah, this is why this song of mine works.” With cadences, when I was writing music I was doing a lot of that stuff, but I had no idea why it worked, and it took me so long having to listen to what song I’d write instead of having that theoretical knowledge that would have made it a lot more faster.

  Christopher: Got you, yeah, and I think looking at your story from the outside, it seems like at that moment where you were deciding to try and make it a full time living you would have needed to skill up in your musicality, like your inner skills, and the music entrepreneurship side of things, and I guess probably a third area would just be the emotional resilience and the personal development it takes to take full responsibility for your living. You know, that’s something that I think a lot of entrepreneurs at the early stages don’t anticipate, that it’s a very different thing in terms of identity and emotion to go out there in the world kind of all be yourself, versus having a nine to five job that provides you a paycheck each month.

  Jon: Yeah.

  Christopher: I think we kind of touched on the first one there. You were studying some music theory and maybe we’ll cycle back and talk a bit more about that side of things, but first, how were you thinking about entrepreneurship, or the personal development, or responsibility? Was that stuff that you thought would come easily? Was it part of your background, was it slightly intimidating to you, how were you thinking about those two areas?

  Jon: Three years ago I had no idea that I had to become an entrepreneur as well. That took me maybe one and a half year more to really realize. I think I had the same idealistic view that most people do, that if I become good enough, and get in front of enough people, someone will recognize me and give me a great record deal. It took me one year to realize that that wasn’t going to happen. It still happens for some people, but it’s very, very rare nowadays that someone gets discovered in that way, and also if you get discovered and don’t have any idea on how things work you are in a pretty bad negotiation position. No, I didn’t have any entrepreneurial ideas at all when I got started.

  Christopher: What did you do about that once it kind of dawned on you that you needed to learn those skills? Were there particular resources, or teachers you went to that helped you skill up in that side of things?

  Jon: Yes. I actually stumble over it, a bit more than a year ago I stumbled over Indepreneur who teaches marketing skills and stuff. The audience is mainly music artists, but also like digital creatives, and they teach everything from email marketing to running ads, and they have a system that the foundation of it, it’s a system where you take someone who had never heard of you, from getting that first touch when they hear your music from the first time, to becoming a subscriber of your mailing list to actually buying on of your CD’s, or T-shirts, so they have a really solid system, and then you can take different trainings that it’s all related to that basic system. That has been probably the most important thing to get me to the level to actually make money from what I’m doing.

  Christopher: Fantastic. That was Indepreneur, is that it?

  Jon: Yes.

  Christopher: Great.

  Jon: I can’t recommend it enough.

  Christopher: Cool, we’ll definitely have a link to that in the show notes. That helped fill in that side of things a bit. Tell us more about that period from say three years ago to a few months ago, I guess it was summer this year right, when you were fully full time with it?

  Jon: Yeah. I actually had a pretty great job as a social worker. I was a group leader in the Swedish social security system, so I had a pretty good paycheck that paid for all my plug-ins and instruments, and computers. Actually I did like the job, but I also felt I didn’t develop as much as I would have wanted, and I felt I didn’t want to become like the only career step for me to take was to become a boss on a higher level, and that didn’t feel intriguing at all. I started building my music on the side, so from doing a lot of different stuff like learning Spanish, or reading a lot of books, everything I did in my free time was relating to my music either by writing music, or playing guitar, or communicating with radio people, with vloggers, or building my fan base. I spent more or less all my free time the last three years on building my music business on the side.

  Christopher: Well you say pretty much all your free time, but I’m sure there are people in the audience who are like, “Oh that sounds great, but I have a kid so I couldn’t do that.”

  Jon: Yeah, yeah, I realize that, and when my kid was smaller it was a lot easier because she was totally fine with me playing guitar for her, or singing with her, or having her sleeping on my, I had a how do you call it, like you bury her some kind of a…

  Christopher: A sling?

  Jon: Yeah, a sling, and I could sit at the computer working, and I worked until she was eight, nine months old, and then I went on parental leave, so I had to slow things down pretty much a lot. When my wife came home from work I had a few hours to get some work done, but yeah, I had to prioritize my kid at that time.

  Christopher: Of course, and so was it kind of a hard flip then from being employed to being a full time music maker, or did you gradually transition from one to the other?

  Jon: Actually my parental leave came in very handy, and also I had a bit of a struggle with my boss at my old work, and he did some stupid things that ended up with them having to pay me a settlement. How do you call it, a settlement payment.

  Christopher: Severance?

  Jon: Yeah exactly, so that actually helped a bit a well because I was able to have a bit of money saved to really invest in my business, and then I went on parental leave, so the transition wasn’t that hard really. It was like instead of being home with my kid, I was being home with my music, so that was kind of good timing with everything.

  Christopher: Terrific, and if you don’t mind me asking, at that stage did you have some revenue from the music side of things, or were you starting from zero at that point?

  Jon: More or less, I was starting to break even, and actually that was when I started to, because I didn’t have much time playing, or working actively, I started to curate playlists because I always had a great interest in music, so actually my playlists are bringing in enough money to pay the bills and to build my own music. I don’t have to rush things, or I don’t have to sell a lot of things to my fan base because I have my music creation that’s a good foundation.

  Christopher: Interesting, so for anyone watching, or listening who’s never come across the idea of making money from creating playlists before, how does that work?

  Jon: It’s like I’m building playlists, I actually wouldn’t recommend it to everyone because it’s a lot more work than you can imagine, so I spend two, three hours of the day listening to new music and arranging playlists to work. The trick is to have enough famous artists on the list blended with new and unknown artists to make people interested in following the playlist, but not getting bored, so I try to keep it 50/50 between famous artists and unknown artists, and then I have promoted them on social media. Especially my jazz playlists and progressive rock playlists have gotten quite a lot of followers who are actively listening to the playlists, and then I use SubmitHub, which is a site where artists can submit music for consideration. It’s also very transparent, like I really try to listen to a lot more than you have to, to earn money, so I’ve got quite a high rating, so I get a lot of songs sent to me daily. It’s a lot of work, but it’s also really fun because I get to listen to a variety of music I don’t think most people come close to.

  Christopher: Where does the money come from?

  Jon: From the artists pays a fee for submitting to, and then I get a part of the fee and the SubmitHub gets a part of the fee as well for providing the service.

  Christopher: Got you, interesting, and the playlists would be on Spotify, or YouTube?

  Jon: Spotify in my case.

  Christopher: Fascinating. I think that’s such a beautiful example of how there are so many more opportunities these days to make music pay for you, or rather to make money with music aside from the traditional, “I have made a song, I will sell it to people on a tape, or a CD, or whatever the case may be.” It’s really inspiring I think, to realize the possibilities.

  Jon: Yeah, and I think a lot of people are using Spotify playlists as a fast way of earning money from starving artists, but since I’m an artist myself I know how important it is to actually getting value. If someone spends three dollars for sending me a song, and I don’t care, I think that’s, I know there are people who just use it to make a quick buck, but I really try to, if I don’t accept a song I really try to write good feedback. Especially if I hear some potential, but it’s not totally right for my playlist, I really try to express that in my reviews, and I think that’s why it has become so sustainable.

  Jon: Also, I’m not promoting my playlists to countries where there are a lot of fake listeners because there are a lot of playlists who has a fake following with people who aren’t real people, or who are more or less bots, or click forms, and I think Spotify is getting better and better at sorting those accounts out, so people who has been relying on fake plays I think they are going down pretty soon. Since I’m an artist myself, I have some kind of ethics with me in my creation.

  Christopher: I see. It’s kind of the modern day version of an A&R rep being a musician themselves.

  Jon: Yeah, yeah exactly.

  Christopher: You have to play both parts.

  Jon: Yeah, and for me that has been perfect because I can also use, like listening to a song and figuring out the chord progression, and really determine what is my taste. Why does some kind of music make me so intrigued, but some kind of music just doesn’t work for me. It also has been a way of me evolving as a musician and a music consumer as well.

  Christopher: You got to the point where this could be your all day every day, apart from you know, also being a dad and I’m sure other responsibilities, but music could be your main thing and clearly you had some training from the Indepreneur site, and I’m sure other resources to help you make sure the bills were more or less being paid and give you some freedom to explore what you wanted to do next. What have been the most important areas to work on since then? What have you been spending your days on to increase the chances of having the kind of success you want?

  Jon: I have tried to have like a 50/50 balance between actually making music and musical training, and 50% the more business side of things, creating playlists and building my social media. Actually the first few months I’ve been focusing more on getting everything set up, like my mailing list, my website, so when I’m able to record more music and release more music, I already have the business side of things set up. Actually now I’m coming to that place when I can really focus even more on making music, but at the same time I’ve been using a lot of my spare time to do ear training. When I’m walking from after leaving my kid at preschool, I’ve been listening to chord inversion training, or whatever, so I’ve really been using the time I have to focus on ear training. Ear training is quite easy to do as soon as you have some time. It’s harder to pick up the guitar and play if my kid’s asleep, but I can always lie in bed and do some ear training. That’s the stuff I’ve been focusing on the last few months, like the business side and my ecosystem, and then ear training.

  Christopher: You’ve been quite diligent about planning out your day. I remember one of your PJ posts, you were kind of laying out your schedule for the day in terms of what you’d work on when. Could you talk a little bit about that? I remember back when I first started working from home with my day job before I did my own thing, and it was really a learning experience to realize, “Okay, I’ve got a blank day, how do I fill this time, and how do I not just wander off and do something else?”

  Jon: Yeah, I almost never follow my schedule, but by having a schedule I at least have an idea of the things I have to do like I have to listen to all the songs that are sent to me and review them because that’s the biggest part of me getting paid at the moment. Then I have other things that, it’s good if I follow up on social media, and so I like some kind of priority list, but most often I don’t follow the schedule, but having the schedule keeps me at least somehow in the right direction.

  Christopher: If we come back to the music training, you’ve mentioned music theory, and you talked there about chord progression, or chord inversion, ear training, what have been the main areas you’ve been trying to improve there given that you’re a song writer as well as a multi-instrumentalist, how have you decided what to focus on in your musicality training?

  Jon: I’ve actually been using the Musical U roadmaps. They have been really helpful. Like I was talking about earlier, it’s so easy to start, “Oh I’m going to learn chord inversions.” You just start with an app, and you realize I can’t recognize any inversions at all, and you’re getting a bit unmotivated, but instead of starting from the beginning, even if I had a basic knowledge, it’s really good to get that foundation that you can get from a roadmap. I’ve actually been using that a lot.

  Jon: I started with intervals and I went over to doing melodies, and I’ve actually been doing melodies and chords at the same time because they compliment each other very well. Also, the rhythmic training has been great because that has been kind of a weakness. It’s quite mind blowing to see how little things has to do with inherent musicality, like just learning to speak rhythms has make it so much easier to figure out the rhythm of a strumming pattern, or whatever.

  Christopher: You’re talking there about using rhythm syllables, right, ti, tika, ti, ti?

  Jon: Yeah exactly, one, and two, and three, and four.

  Christopher: Got you.

  Jon: Yeah, and how everything kind of goes together. If I’m reviewing a song I can hear this is the chord progressing, this is a bit too standard for me, then I can say that I like the production, but the chord progression is a bit too standard to really stand out, so I can really use what I learn with ear training in other parts of my music business. I actually forgot what the original question was.

  Christopher: Just curious to know what you’re working on in that area, and I’d love to ask the follow up which is, what’s this all leading to? I maybe should have asked that question at the start, but what’s your vision? Now that you’re going full time with it, how do you imagine things being five years from now if things go perfectly?

  Jon: That’s a really good question. I actually, the playlist part I didn’t, I had no idea that I would think that was so fun and also so making it possible for me to actually make a living from music. In five years time I hope I am at a point where I make a pretty good living from music, so I can be able to jump on all the projects I feel like. I don’t have to answer to anyone like, “You can’t do this and that.” Full creative freedom is the five year plan.

  Christopher: Terrific, and what’s been the most challenging part for you so far, whether on the music side, or on the entrepreneurship side? If we think just about the last few months when you’ve been full time with it, are there any challenges that you hadn’t anticipated?

  Jon: It’s like when personal life catches up with you, to still keep that routine. Last month I’ve been really tired, but then it has really helped that I build up all the routines. I have a system to review songs and follow up with my social media. I think that’s really important. It’s quite easy when it’s summer and everything is light, and it doesn’t take 20 minutes to get your kid dressed for preschool, then life is quite easy, but some days it’s not like that. Then it’s really, really valuable to have a solid system to keep you on your feet, so I’m really happy that I spent the first months really building up a system, which is making it a lot easier to keep going even if I don’t really have the energy all of the days. Yeah, that is the most struggling part, but it’s like things are going according to plan so far.

  Christopher: Good, and tell me if you imagine someone watching or listening is say six months behind you and really wanting to go full time with music, but maybe they’re nervous, they’re not sure how to do it, they don’t know where to learn about what they need to learn, what tips, or advice, or resources would you recommend for someone in that place?

  Jon: I would really like my five year plan three years ago was that at this point I was going to work half time with music, and thanks to my severance package and the playlists I’m able to do it full time already, but building things slow, and really building up an ecosystem. How are you going to make people hear your music, and how are you going to keep in touch with them? What part of the business stuff because all the business stuff isn’t that fun. I have to be honest, but a lot of things are fun. To find out what’s actually working for you, and really getting that system in place that the Indepreneur teaches has been really valuable for me, so I can’t recommend that enough. Also, don’t forget what makes everything fun. That’s why I try to do at least one or two hours of ear training, or instrument practice every day because that’s the most important stuff. That’s what makes me want to do this. It’s finding a balance and building things slowly, and don’t think that things will happen overnight.

  Christopher: Got you, and I was going to wrap things up there, but I want to ask one more question based on what you just said, which is have you managed to find communities, or connections that help you? I know you’re a part of Musical U obviously, but I’m thinking more about the entrepreneurship side, or the business side of things, have you been able to find support and guidance as you need it?

  Jon: Yeah, also through Indepreneur, they have a Facebook group that’s really supportive, and I also have for my instrumental stuff, I have a lot of contacts. We’re helping each other, building our playlists, and getting playlist placements for our music. I have a pretty good network, and also I was running a network of independent artists like one year ago, but it became too much, so I had to drop it, but I still keep in touch with a lot of people from there. I got to know so many people thanks to the music. If it’s a lot of work alone, it’s also a lot of social contact.

  Christopher: Terrific, I think that’s, for me, certainly it’s such an important part of things to know that you’re not just by yourself in isolation, that you have other people you can commiserate with and support each other through your journey.

  Christopher: We talked a little bit about your singles, and EP’s, and your most recent one, This is All it Takes, would you let the listeners, the audience know a bit more about your current musical projects, and if they want to hear Jon Magnusson’s music where can they go?

  Jon: Yeah, like I said before, I started out making mostly Folk rock and Indie rock stuff, so that can be found under my own name, Jon Magnusson, but also the last few years I started making more instrumental stuff like Jazz and a bit of Progressive rock, Psychedelic rock, so actually the last release I did was yesterday when I released a Jazz piano piece that I wrote, but it’s arranged and played by an Italian Jazz pianist, so that one I’m really happy with. I actually have three main projects, but it’s Jon Magnusson, that is the most, which is mostly in the Folk and Rock, and then I have Beyond the Seasons, which is more Jazz and Progressive rock. Then also, my piano stuff that’s under the name of Georg Nielson, but I have links to all the projects on my website if anyone’s interested in checking it out.

  Christopher: Fantastic, cool, and for anyone who isn’t ok with Swedish pronunciation as you are Jon, and I mangled your name when we first started talking today, and called you Jon, for anyone who doesn’t know how to spell these names, you can head to JonMagnusson.SE, that’s the main website, and we’ll have a link in the show notes of course, and Jon I apologize for calling you Jon at the beginning if this conversation and was spelling out that name, but yeah sadly I think most of our audience would not know how to spell that, including myself.

  Jon: Yeah, yeah.

  Christopher: That’s the link, definitely check it out. I really have enjoyed diving into your website myself, and listening to some of your music, and what’s coming up for you in the next few months in terms of your learning, your training, and your releases?

  Jon: Well, I never know what will happen, but on next Monday I’m releasing a Jazz tune with my Beyond the Seasons project. That’s actually arranged and played by another Italian Jazz pianist, so I’m really excited for that as well. That’s actually quite mind blowing that I have a professional pianist that want to arrange and record my stuff that I have written. Then I actually, I don’t know, I think I will take some training in mixing to be able to record more at home and put out more instrumental music from my home studio, and maybe later next year I will start working on a new Jon Magnusson EP with more Indie, Folk, and Rock stuff.

  Christopher: Terrific, great, and one thing I just realized we haven’t mentioned is you’re a podcaster yourself, and everyone watching, or listening to this should definitely check out your own podcast that’s available in audio and video format, and you can find that also on Jon’s website, which we’ll have a link to in the show notes. Huge thank you for joining us today Jon, and sharing this journey. It’s been such an interesting one to hear about, both before the school inside Musical U, and in the conversation today, and I know it’s one that’s going to inspire and hopefully encourage a lot of people in the audience who’ve considered taking that leap themselves. Any parting piece of guidance, or wisdom to share with the audience?

  Jon: I think the important thing is to find what you enjoy yourself, and also decide if you want to, it’s totally okay to keep it at a hobby level because it is a lot of work if you want to make it as a professional, but also if you choose to make it as a professional, nowadays you can really go the independent way.

  Christopher: Fantastic. Thank you so much again Jon.

  Jon: Yeah, thank you. I really enjoyed it.

  Subscribe For Future Episodes!

  Apple Podcasts | Android | YouTube | Google Play (US only) | Stitcher | RSS

  Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

The post Pathways: Jon Magnusson appeared first on Musical U.