April 25, 2012

About twenty years ago I had a wonderful student named Greg. He was an amateur—he’d been a semi-pro tennis player for years, wrote beautiful short stories and poems, and just loved the piano.

Greg knew he’d never be a virtuoso—he was too old to develop the coordination to play fast. But he practiced with great attention to detail and learned to make real music. I’ll never forget one lesson of his in particular, when he played a Chopin nocturne so beautifully that all I could say afterwards was, “How much do you want me to pay you for listening to that?”

Greg worked with me for several years and even had a few lessons with me after he moved to Vermont, when I was up there on vacation. He bought a beautiful old Steinway grand and stuck to short pieces he could handle that he really loved—certain Rachmaninoff preludes, Chopin nocturnes, some Debussy and Schubert, and his own improvisations. He had a wonderful, inquisitive mind, and it was always a pleasure to work with him.

I don’t remember him ever once saying that he wished he could play fast pieces—he somehow knew what was comfortable for him, and he got deep satisfaction from practicing and occasionally playing for friends.

The Lure of the Race Track

I’ve often thought of students like Greg, who have accepted their limitations and found real fulfillment in playing the piano. So many pianists I’ve taught, both amateurs and professionals, have pushed themselves hard to play a piece fast before they’re ready, only to end up with more tension and less music coming out. They say things like, “But the piece is supposed to go fast! Everyone plays it that way!” Or, “What if I never get it up to speed?”

No matter how I respond to these comments and questions, the only thing that helps is if I show them how to enjoy the details—the sensations in their hands, or the way each sound affects them—things that get them to slow down and really experience what they’re doing.

Speed Comes When You’re Ready

Often, after they’ve stopped trying to play fast and they’ve been focusing for a while on such details, all of a sudden speed just comes, because they’re in synch with themselves. Their body and mind are ready.

Of course, many students will never be able to play fast—maybe they weren’t born with the ability to do it, or maybe, like Greg, they started too late, or didn’t get enough help with their technique when they were young.

A Secret of Success

It’s easy to get caught up in comparing ourselves with other people who can do things we can’t do. But almost every musician, whatever their instrument, has some kind of limitation—whether it’s how fast they can play, the size of their hands, the kind of repertoire that suits their personality, or how long it takes them to learn and memorize a piece. We may not realize it, but the most successful ones have figured out what they do best and have stuck to that.

A few years ago, Greg came to say good-bye. He was retiring early and moving to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, because he liked the feeling of the place and a lot of artists lived there, including musicians. I thought he’d just relax there, practice the piano, read, and hang out with some of the artists he met. And I guess he did all that.

But a couple of years later, I got an e-mail from him out of the blue, saying that an amazing thing had happened. A well-known cellist was walking past his house, heard him playing the piano, and asked the neighbors who he was. She’d heard his heart coming through his playing.

She and Greg began playing together and performing at a beautiful venue in town. Soon they were playing in the most important cultural center in Mexico—the gorgeous and historic Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City—where they received a standing ovation and a wonderful write-up in the newspaper.

The Power of Being Yourself

Greg never went looking for something like this to happen. It came to him, because he was true to who he was and had let himself play in a natural and comfortable way. Although his story is somewhat dramatic, I’ve seen many similar things happen to other pianists I’ve taught, both amateurs and professionals.

You never know—maybe something like this could happen to you. The next time you find yourself frustrated with how fast you can play, see what happens if you just let go of that idea for a minute and focus on how your hands feel, or how each harmony is affecting you. Let yourself enjoy the small things from moment to moment. And then wait and see what happens. 

If you’re like any of the people I know who have tried it, little by little something big will grow.

I wish you much joy and success in making music.

Madeline Bruser

P.S.  Are you curious to discover how focusing on small details can open up your playing in a big way? Schedule a sample lesson and find out. Or come for a free consultation.

Q&A of the Month

I was a little stunned by the effect of the listening work—the singing—in last month’s video, and also by how hard it was for the pianist to hear the bass line while playing the right hand. Then I tried doing it myself, and it was really hard for me too. Is this typical for pianists?

Yes. Really hearing everything you’re playing is hard for almost everyone. But it gets much easier with practice. And once you discover how powerful it is, you realize it’s a shortcut to playing on a much higher level. There’s nothing like it. When you get used to hearing this fully, you start to feel you’re missing something without it. So it grows on you that way.

I recommend that you don’t try to do too much of it at a time. It’s hard work, and a little goes a long way. But as you get more used to it, you’ll naturally want to spend more time doing it. It’s just so nourishing to really hear all these sounds. It’s shocking at first—and you realize you’ve been missing so much. It’s like opening a door to a huge world that you didn’t know was there.

My mother-in-law gave us a book one Christmas that I have often brought into piano lessons to show my students. The book is titled Monet: Waterlilies, and in it are many fold-out reproductions of these extraordinary paintings. What is most special about this particular book is that several pages show a close-up of a detail from one of the paintings. Each time you zoom in on one of these details, you experience the shock of how gorgeous, vibrant, and powerful it is. Every juxtaposition of color, every texture, is completely brilliant and astonishing.

The reason I show this book to my students is that we, as musicians, have exactly this opportunity when we practice—to zoom in on details and revel in their beauty. And it is only when we revel in that beauty ourselves that we can reveal it to others in performance. 

The Challenge of Listening

The best piece of musical advice I ever heard was from guitarist Oscar Ghiglia in a master class. He told the student, “You have to listen to every note with your whole heart.” 

This is easier said than done. We often get overwhelmed by the innumerable notes on a page of music and gloss over many of them instead of appreciating them to the fullest. We also often get caught in our concepts about the lines and textures we see on the page and about what shapes or colors they might imply. If we don’t listen really closely, from moment to moment with our whole heart, we can end up with a somewhat superficial performance.

Loving a piece of music is a lot like loving another person. No matter how strong our love may be, we tend to filter what we hear through our habitual ideas about what the other person—in this case, a composer—means to say. As we know from our personal relationships, we often think someone means one thing, when, in fact, he or she intends something quite different. It may only be after much confusion, arguing, and inquisitive conversation, that we finally discover what they have been trying to tell us.

Fortunately, when we feel at odds with a piece of music we’re living with, we can easily go back and re-examine the details of what we thought we heard. We may still experience great frustration with a musical phrase—we may even feel like giving up at times. But the answer often lies in just taking a fresh start and listening to it more closely. If we can manage to look past our frustration and focus intently on the exact sensory reality that is in front of us, with an open heart and mind, the true message in the music may reveal itself to us, and we can create a genuine performance.

The Magic of Slowing Down

To zoom in on the details, we need to slow down. We need to give ourselves time to take them in. This is much easier with music than with another person, because notes on a page will just sit there while we take all the time we need to absorb them, whereas another person might talk or yell faster than we can handle it.

But these notes have more power than we do. If we get frustrated or confused as we grapple with the complexity of a great piece of music, we can’t blame the music for the problems we’re having with it. We have to admit that it’s our own limitations that are preventing us from being in synch with it. We know we’re in the presence of genius, and we have no choice but to humbly find our way toward comprehending it. 

At the same time, however, when we connect deeply to the power in a single sound or phrase, we exercise and develop the power of our own talent.

Intimacy with the Musical Fabric

A great performance is great through and through. The weave of the fabric itself—the horizontal lines and vertical sounds that work together to make it a piece—has complete integrity. Every fiber is alive with meaning.

But in our passion for music, we often rush into a beautiful phrase or passage without noticing many of the amazing details that make up this musical fabric. We may hear the seductive melody but not respond fully to all the harmonies that go with it. If we’re playing in an ensemble, we may hear our own part but not deeply feel all the changes from consonance to dissonance and back, as our own sounds blend with those of others. When this incomplete hearing happens, we disconnect from both the music and our own gift. We don’t come face to face with our full potential to meet the mind of greatness.

Fast Food Music

This tendency to disconnect from our own talent was strikingly obvious to me one day when I was coaching a string quartet. These four gifted musicians had learned a Brahms quartet in a week. As professional performers, they were used to working this fast, and they managed to negotiate all the notes at quite a clip. But the music rushed by without any sense of them hearing each other. Only when I asked them to listen to one sound at a time and really aim to be in tune with each other did they play in harmony and reveal some of the beauty that Brahms had created. Whereas their rushed performance of the entire movement had left me completely unmoved, each of those moments of true harmony was literally music to my ears, really nourishing me.

Choosing to Feast

It’s so tempting to rush through practicing or rehearsing when you have so many notes to handle. And you may have a deadline you’re working toward. Nevertheless, you can always choose to see a piece of music as a feast for your ears. The performance will go by quickly; you can use your practice time to savor every sound.

As often as you can, take the time to fill yourself up with the beauty and power of every sound. Open to it, drink it in, and notice how it feeds your system. Just as if you were standing close to a painting by Monet, notice all the juxtapositions of one harmonic color next to another. Allow yourself to be less active and more receptive.

The Hard Part

It sounds sumptuous, this feast—and it is. But as we turn our attention to each sound we discover not only the beauty and meaning in the music but also our difficulty in fully opening to it. As with the string quartet I coached, we too have to make an effort to take in all of the sounds we’re producing.

Cellist Vivien Mackie wrote of this effort in her wonderful book, Just Play Naturally. At 21, after winning many prizes, she went to take ten lessons with Pablo Casals. After she played for him for the first time, he said, “You do not know what you are doing.” They proceeded to work, and with each note she played he said either “Flat,” or “Sharp.” She had not realized that she had been playing out of tune.

Three months later, Mackie was still working with Casals, and she had covered only three lines of the Haydn Concerto. She wondered if she’d ever get anywhere at that pace. But she stayed on, and a year later she was zipping through the repertoire, because her ears had opened up enormously.

She stayed for three years altogether and brought her transformed playing and her well-earned wisdom home to England, where she has continued to help other musicians discover their true potential. 

The Courage to Meet Your Own Greatness

Vivien Mackie was an uncommonly open and aware young musician who recognized the value in what Casals offered her, even though many other musicians had already praised her highly. She made the brave choice of setting aside her professional success for a time and pursuing the fulfillment of her deepest musical potential.

In the video below, gifted pianist Phoebe Pan also courageously steps beyond her familiar way of playing and makes an effort to go deeper. Although it’s challenging for her to open her ears on a new level, her effort brings her greater expressive freedom.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

I find it interesting that when Phoebe describes herself as being “in a box,” her body is moving a lot as she plays, seemingly expressing the kind of freedom she wants to have. Yet when she listens more and moves less, she obtains a more genuine freedom—an inner musical freedom that comes from giving herself time to more fully hear the sounds she is making. The “box” she was in before was made out of her habitual over-activity. When she learns to balance being active with being more receptive, she achieves the kind of musical freedom she wants.

Preparing to Share Your Gift

We get very involved with the athletics of practicing our instruments—the complex activity of using our bodies to produce sounds. We need to remember that our greatest gift as musicians is the gift for hearing and appreciating those sounds. If we can fully unwrap this immense and magical gift, we can then truly share it with others.

Each time you stretch your hearing beyond its habitual level, you are making more room inside yourself for the power of musical genius to flow through you. If you practice doing this when you are alone, you will be much more ready to let it happen in performance.

I wish you much joy and success with making music. 

Madeline Bruser

P.S. If you’d like to learn more about how to develop greater expressive freedom through listening, read my book, The Art of Practicing: A Guide to Making Music from the Heart. Also, if you’d like to know how I could help you connect more to your own gift, you’re welcome to come for a free consultation.

A young pianist once told me how he had practiced for his jury exam at music school. The exam was scheduled for nine o’clock in the morning. Being very nervous, he decided that the best way to prepare would be to practice all night. That way, he figured, he would feel as secure as possible. To keep himself awake, he periodically ate coffee grounds from a spoon. When 9 a.m. came, he walked in, sat at the piano in front of the jury, and found that he couldn’t play a note. His body and mind were completely wrecked. 

Now, compare this story to an opposite one, told to me by a piano professor at a university. When he was a student, he once practiced very hard for his teacher’s weekly performance class but then didn’t play well in the class. Since all that practicing hadn’t helped him perform well, he decided that for the following week’s class he wouldn’t practice at all. After a week’s rest from the piano, he felt relaxed and played wonderfully in the class, stunning his teacher and fellow students. 

What can we conclude from these two stories?

Certainly, we need to relax and get our rest. But we all know what would have happened to the second pianist if he had continued to go week after week without practicing—stiff fingers, confused mind, faulty memory . . . 

So how can we find a balance between these two extremes? How can we develop reliability and freedom at the same time? 

Would a week’s vacation from the piano work for you, if you were performing difficult repertoire at an important venue, with a critic in the audience? What kind of preparation would work best for you then? And how would you know? 

What does it mean to prepare for a moment in which everything is unpredictable? 

Driven by Fear

Although practicing all night is a very extreme form of pushing yourself, most of us have experienced the futility of lesser forms of overworking or pushing ourselves to gain a sense of control. We may over-practice a particular passage, try to play fast before we’re ready, or clench our muscles in an effort to force expressiveness into a phrase. Even if we recognize that these habits create tension that obstructs the free flow of the music, we may not know how to free ourselves from our habits.

We also may not realize that there’s an underlying fear, a lack of trust operating with these habits. Our effort to exert control over ourselves and over the music we practice often stems from a fear of being inadequate—we’re afraid that if we just relax and work at our own pace and in a more natural way, we’ll never develop the ease and mastery we long for—or at least, not in time for our deadline. 

Preparing for the Hot Seat

Like the pianist who pulled the all-nighter, we may think that pushing ourselves hard will make us extra-ready for our big moment onstage. But actually, if we make a habit of pushing and tightening, we set ourselves up to deliver a pushed and tight performance. A lot of the beauty and joy we’d hoped to transmit to our audience gets buried under our habitual tension and stress.

When we leave the practice room and enter the spotlight onstage, we still may cling to our habits, but we discover that something much bigger than us is running the show. That something is the intense, living energy of the present moment. Since we can’t stop in the middle as we did during practice, we need to accept and flow with whatever is happening—including surprising new things in our performance, the atmosphere around us, and the rawness of our nerves. We may have had all kinds of plans for our performance, but these plans may be overwhelmed by the power of the situation.

What we really need to do to prepare for this spot-lit moment is to push ourselves less in practicing—to notice when we’re getting tense, and then to let go and enjoy every move we’re making and every sound we’re hearing. To experience a state of flow. The more we can get used to this experience in practicing, the more we’ll be ready to let it happen when we’re out there in the hot seat onstage.

What IS Flow?

People have said a lot about the state of flow. Letting go—being spontaneous and in the moment—sounds wonderful. And it is. 

But it doesn’t always feel wonderful. It can feel scary, confusing, and disorienting. If we’re not really used to it, it can throw us, and we can lose our confidence.

We need to understand what this famous state of flow really is.

Flow is very different from getting caught up in the passionate or powerful energy in music and getting carried away to the point of losing your balance. When you’re in a state of flow you feel effortlessly in command. No matter how fast, intense, or complex the music is, you have a certain sense of ease and natural awareness. Everything is in synch. Rather than feeling rushed, you feel like time has stopped. You are fully present. Everything is flowing easily through you, transforming your body and mind. The audience feels it when that happens, and you feel connected to them through the music. 

Sometimes when we let go and flow in the moment, our emotional experience is very mixed. We may become so vulnerable through letting go that we don’t even realize that our performance is deeply moving. It takes true courage to perform in this way—feeling raw and open, not knowing if your performance is good or not, if anyone likes the product of your vulnerability.         

Trust

Yet regardless of what we think about this experience of flow, we have to practice trusting it. It’s all we really have that’s genuine. It’s the only place from which we’re free to be human and to express the best that’s in us. It’s the only place where we’re not run by our ego, but by our pure love for the music and for sharing it with an audience. Where we’re willing to take a chance.     

So how can we get used to this state? How can we encourage it in our practicing and performing, and how can we learn to live with the fear and trembling it sometimes brings up in us? Beyond that, how can we learn to celebrate it for both the challenge and the freedom it creates?

Making Friends with Fear

The first step is to begin to accept the fear and discomfort that often arise when you let go of control. If the pianist who practiced all night had instead been able to relax with his insecurity about his jury exam and to accept the fact that his performance might not be perfect, he might have been able to open up and express himself in front of the judges. Instead, his desperate search for security drove him to construct a kind of maximum-security prison, which gave him no space to be human and which destroyed his performance entirely.

Although his approach was completely extreme, it was really just an exaggerated form of his familiar habit of pushing himself too hard. And for all of us, even the most painful and uncomfortable habits often carry the false comfort of just being familiar. We may know such habits are not healthy for us, but we get trapped in this false sense of comfort. We get trapped in our “comfort zone,” a confining place that limits our possibilities.         

It’s worthwhile to look into your habits and see where clinging to familiarity might actually be confining you to a somewhat narrow space in which your musicality can’t fully breathe. 

Small Steps Further

In last month’s article I wrote about the first ingredient of fearless performing—reliability—and a little about flow, which is the second ingredient. The video showed how young pianist Phoebe Pan achieved both greater reliability and greater freedom by altering her physical approach (see the article and video below).  In Phoebe’s case, adjusting her posture and increasing the flexibility of her shoulder allowed the music to flow more easily.

In the video directly following this paragraph, with my wonderful student Jad Bernardo, you will get a glimpse of how freeing up the hand and wrist can also create more musical flow. 

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

I find it remarkable that Jad had the insight to recognize that gaining freedom can be both wonderful and frightening. Even in taking this small technical step, he was able to go beyond his particular comfort zone and experience more of what he is capable of in his playing. And he was able to accept his fear and familiarize himself with it, so that the next time he performed he felt more ready for the experience of letting go.

The Comfort Zone and “The Zone”

What athletes call “the zone” is actually a place of freedom that you can get to in performance by recognizing how your “comfort zone” of habits actually confines you, and by learning to step out of it. Each time you leave your comfort zone and enter a place of greater freedom, you get closer to being able to soar beyond your comfort zone. It can be surprising how a series of steps can lead directly to this experience of taking flight.

Phoebe’s reaction to “the zone” was equally as intelligent as Jad’s. Where he experienced fear, she experienced delight and amazement. Fear of flying, delight in flying—both are very human reactions to freedom and letting go.

How do you construct your comfort zone? What happens when you step out of it? Take a look at your particular habits and at how you feel when you break free of them.   

It’s a great journey, being a performer. We have a remarkable opportunity to experience the challenge and the exhilaration of braving the unknown—of being fully human, and alive.

I wish you much joy and success in making music.

Madeline Bruser

P.S. If you have a performance or audition coming up and you’re not a big fan of practicing all night, I invite you to sign up for my Performance Coaching Package. Scheduling is tailored to your situation, and the package is being offered for a limited time at reduced rates. To decide if this package is right for you, I invite you to come for a free consultation.

Q & A of the Month

In last month’s video with the student, you asked her to feel “rooted to the bench” and to “sit really down.” What was that about?

Being “rooted,” or physically grounded, has a big effect on any musician’s playing, or singing. In terms of reliability, which is the first ingredient of fearless performing, there’s nothing more reliable than the force of gravity—which we usually take for granted. If we actually focus on how gravity roots us to the ground, or to the bench—if we tune into it—we have a great advantage. In her case, it helped her have more power and ease with her arms. 

Athletes understand this principle. If you watch a boxer deliver a punch, you can see him push his feet and legs into the ground as he’s about to use his arm. You can understand this principle easily if you mimic that movement in the following way: Sit solidly upright and deliver a punch into the air, straight ahead of you. You will easily feel power in your arm. Then give up your solid, vertical position by hunching over, so that your weight is no longer sinking straight down into the seat, and try delivering the punch. Immediately you will notice that you lose power. You lose power because you literally lose your ground.

The extraordinary mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was very striking in this regard. One reviewer commented that she seemed to draw energy directly up from the ground when she sang. I perceived the same thing in her myself. Her feet were solidly planted on the floor, and the energy seemed to move powerfully upward straight through her body and out from her throat. It was glorious. 

There’s nothing like this rootedness— not only for physical reliability, but also for confidence. It gives you a solid base from which to openly express yourself. My own playing, and that of my students, opened up enormously when I discovered this principle. Of course, you also need to use your hands and arms efficiently in order to make it all work.

In next month’s article I plan to get into listening, which is directly affected by this kind of physical groundedness. The stability allows you to be more receptive. So although you may be moving less, you can actually be more engaged with the music. 

Submit a question for possible inclusion in next month’s issue of Fearless Performing.

Ms. Bruser will speak about her approach and then help gifted young pianist Phoebe Pan (who appears in the video in the article below) bring more ease, fluidity, and communicative power to her playing, preparing her for the intense state of flow that happens in performance. A Q&A with Ms. Bruser and Ms. Pan, and a wine reception will follow the master class.

Klavierhaus, 211 West 58th Street

reservations and information: http://www.goldenkeymusicinstitute.org/salonseries.html

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

This article contains a second video, below.