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Much of this reminds me of a book I read in the 60’s. Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. It enforces art of positive thinking! In performance it’s possible your mind can work against you with distractions and possibly an intimidating audience. I try practicing in different settings: inside, outside where people in the neighborhood walk by and can add distractions, in front of the tv turned up to add distractions etc. I’ll even try to imagine Stochelo or Bireli are listening to add a little pressure! 🥺 But, the whole idea is to imagine yourself performing in a positive situation to increase confidence.
According to many who had to cure nerves in different life situations, visualization can be a lifesaver. I went busking by myself a few times and during the next gig I felt relaxed more than usual. I think this is the easiest solution and while I can't be positive yet that the two are related, seems to work.
Another addendum to this evolving material is something I came across recently. I subscribe to Noa Kageyama's newsletter and one of the recent ones was especially interesting to me. It's the interview with Hans Jensen who is a classical cellist, educator, university professor etc...
Several extremely interesting points he made are in there, stuff I really subscribe to. He talks about how there are no limits when it comes to playing the instrument, everything can be developed (7m), says how when he was younger he thought differently and that he was wrong. Says to play fast, you have to practice fast (12:24) but to do it in short bursts. Talks about nerves (16:15) and what to do about it. Practicing (22:00), sense of timing (34:00) and technique and how they go hand in hand. When you're practicing slow you should still play in time (39:20). And much more
If you followed this thread and read my "two mintes" thing, you know that I don't subscribe to incremental tempo increase. I go to fast immediately approach, spending time in the slow zone mostly to solidify fingering and very little in between*. Mr. Jensen thinks so as well but there is another classical musician, trombonist, Jason Sulliman who is against incremental tempo increase as well, only he says you should almost never practice slow. The only exception he makes is when you're making a physical change in your playing and/or technique. He actually has master's in kinesiology and motor learning which I understand he went to study because he was curious to learn more about this process because of his own practice.
I believe slow practice has its place and for me the biggest benefit is that it's so much stress and headache free. But we're on the same page when it comes to practicing to play something really fast. You take very small chunks and build. He also said as small as two notes, which I wrote about in my article too. Great interview and other interesting links around the page too.
*this is when I'm learning something written, waltz piece, someone's solo, new lick etc...I love improvising in the slow zone, especially over unfamiliar tunes.
A little update here, something interesting I heard the other day...a few days ago I went skiing and was on the chair with a couple of other guys as the ski lift was moving over this double-black run. We saw somebody that was trying to get down it. It wasn't really skiing, it was a struggle to stay on their feet and get down safe, in one piece and uninjured
That's when one of the guys on the chair said out of the blue "there's no learning there".
I said, man, that's a great point, there's no learning when you struggle. Then I realized it's the same when you're playing the instrument. Especially improvising. If you're trying to get better at it playing over a song at tempo and you are constantly struggling, then you're not learning. You have to slow down enough where you have control over the situation but feel a challenge.
Another gem of an interview from Noa Kageyama. This time he intervied a concert pianist, Ignasi Cambra. Ignasi is also blind. There are several very insightful moments throughout but the biggest for me was when he explained how during the performance, he's now telling himself to just listen to what he's playing. Vs thinking about what's coming up and how is he going to pull it off. Which can get you in all sorts of trouble as he said. I've heard about this mental trick from Noa before but it had a lot more impact hearing it from someone who plays and performs music at a highest level. I tried it at a few occasions and I felt it's a great way to calm your mind and felt I was able to be more comfortable and relaxed and in turn played better. Really great, highly recommended
I love this quote from Eric Johnson from his recent Fretboard Journal interview. He was referring to the period before he recorded Ah Via Musicom.
"My vision was better than what I was really capable of doing, but I could hear it in my head. Which I think is how you become better at whatever you do, you have to visualize it or hear it first. Then you have somewhere to go."
I'm not sure if I mentioned this around here, but Tim Lerch said something replying to someone's comment on one of his videos that's like an entire book on practice in a single paragraph:
To incorporate things into your playing, you:
-learn the fundamental technique
-do many repetitions
-apply creative exploration
-slowly incorporate into your playing
Itzak Perlman on the importance of slow practice:
Fix what doesn't work:
"If you don't know what's wrong, you can't fix it by just repeating it again"
About the model of self-regulated learning:
Set goals and meet those goals. Monitor the progress, evaluate progress and head towards that goal.
This last video is especially interesting because it talks about two types of musical memory: serial cuing and content addressable memory. Say, for example you learn a whole solo. If you play it just by serial cuing, one phrase leads to another and if you make a mistake you're likely have to go back all the way and start the whole thing again. When you can access things from it by using contest addressable memory, not only can you recover easily if you get lost, but this is what you need in order to extract bits and pieces from it that you can use elsewhere and that become a part of your musical vocabulary.
Say, for example you learn a whole solo. If you play it just by serial cuing, one phrase leads to another and if you make a mistake you're likely have to go back all the way and start the whole thing again.
I knew a guitarist of a different genre who would do this, things were usually OK when he started his leads on the right measure/beat but would quickly become a train wreck if he didn't...it was kinda crazy because he'd memorize these nice solos/progressions but his ears just couldn't hear it if he came in on the wrong beat
Yeah I'm noticing this for licks as well. I'm using Anki and I'm cutting up a solo I transcribed. On my cue card I'm listing what part of the measure it starts on if it's not on 1.
I have definitely transcribed a lot of full solos and then couldn't perform anything from them unless I started from the beginning, which is pretty pointless.
That's was exactly the case with me for a long time. I remember when I learned the first solo in this genre, Minor Swing. There was no extracting this and that lick to use it someplace else. The thing was one 1.5 minutes lick, couldn't do anything but play the whole thing. Now I know the name for that. Which she says that content addressable memory, like most everything else, is a learned and practiced skill.