Your Own Lineage

Each of us has a powerful lineage as a musician. Some of the people in our lineage are not teachers but parents or others who encouraged us and helped us become the musician we are now. Composers, performers, particular concerts or recordings we remember, venues, and instrument makers, all are part of our lineage. Everything that has inspired us and contributed to our development is part of our lineage. We have a huge heritage.

We often take our heritage for granted and become disconnected from its power. Yet whenever we take a moment to reflect on what we’ve inherited as musicians, we are moved. The power of music, and of our rich tradition, instill deep appreciation in us. We may even feel reverence and awe.

This deep feeling we have for our lineage is precious. If we tap into it, it can help us let go of negative emotions we may be prey to—including self-doubt, stage fright, and depression. As soon as we stop and reflect on our lineage, we feel something shift inside us. We see ourselves as part of something bigger than we are. And it is, in fact, our connection with this larger reality that compels us to perform. We feel so much love and appreciation for the music we play or sing that we are willing to open up to the living flow of this music, and to give it to our audience.

We need to remember that we are so much more than our self-consciousness and self-judgment. We are part of a magnificent tradition, and we are its representatives to the public. We have every reason to be proud of that, and it can give us confidence as performers.

Although we of course need much more than an appreciation of our lineage to have confidence onstage—including a reliable technique and thorough knowledge of the music—true confidence cannot arise if we do not invite it by feeling a heart connection to our inheritance. For we are a living part of our lineage. We are part of its continuation. This means that in connecting with our lineage, we are connecting more deeply with ourselves.

So although we may have many thoughts about who we are or aren’t as performers—many doubts and judgments and concepts about ourselves—we need to realize that performing is not about those thoughts. It’s not about us. It’s about what we love.

Your Chance to Regain Your Connection

Connecting with your lineage is only the first of three steps in the Fearless Performing Exercise, which I will teach in the last of my three free teaching calls, on May 20^th. Wherever you happen to be that day, at 8:00 pm Eastern Time, you will have a chance to learn this seven-minute exercise and to experience its power. Everyone on the call will be invited to play or sing a minute of music (with everyone’s sound muted). We will then do the exercise together, and then play the same minute of music, to experience how the exercise has transformed it.

As you will discover, this exercise connects you to your deepest communicative power. It gets you past self-consciousness and into your truest motivation to perform. It connects you with who you really are as a performer, underneath all the self-doubt and self-judgment. It brings out your very best. And it can be shocking to discover how powerful your best can be.

What Is Confidence, Anyway?

Confidence is not something we have to paint on, like make-up, before facing an audience. It is rather a deep self-knowing, an experience of being in direct contact with the core of who we are. We cannot really create it; we can only discover it within ourselves, by cutting through whatever is in the way. It is so intrinsic that it can never really be taken away, only buried or hurt by things that have happened to us. And we can recover it and cultivate it by making the effort to reconnect with the fundamental truth of who we are as performers.

Sometimes performers need the support of psychotherapy to get to that truth. Certainly all of us need the best teaching we can find to master our instrument and the music we are playing. But without the courage to break through to the deep core of our musicality, of our communicative power, we cannot be our most powerful selves onstage.

If You Can’t Join Us 

If you can’t be with us for the call on May 20th, here are a few steps you can take to begin to access the living power of your musical lineage.

1. Think of someone who has meant a lot to you in your musical growth and development.

2. Reflect for a moment on what that person gave you as a musician and why they have been important to you.

3. Extend that moment of reflection long enough to feel a shift in your internal energy—an increase in warmth or a sense of being touched or moved.

4. Play or sing a phrase of music, drawing on that internal energy.

Coming Home

Our lineage is like a big, extended family; it is our tribe. It provides us with a sense of belonging, of having a home in the world. And the music we make is the language of our tribe.

When we go out onstage to perform, we need a way to feel at home there too. If we remember that performing is about transmitting the power of the magical language of our tribe, we can begin to find that sense of home onstage. And we can offer whatever we have to our guests in that home—to our audience. 

I hope you’ll join us on May 20^th to learn all three steps of the Fearless Performing Exercise, and to experience its power. I believe it will lead you to discover a more powerful performer in yourself, more comfortable in your own skin, and more confident in transmitting the magic of music.

I wish you much joy and success in making music.

Madeline Bruser

P.S. If you’d like to immerse yourself in the process of connecting with your deepest musical potential, I invite you to come to my summer program, Mindfulness, Confidence, & Performance: A Transformative Program for Musicians, July 27  to August 3, in Erie, PA. Only two spaces are left for performing participants; 17 for non-performing participants. Some wonderful people will be there.

Q&A of the Month

How can I deal with performing when one or more individuals in my ensemble are very nervous? It can agitate me. I’ve read about how a wonderful master musician can inspire people in his ensemble to play their best simply through the warmth and generosity that he emanates. How can I learn to be like that?

Your questions show great intelligence and wonderful intentions.

Ensemble playing can be very intense. Because it’s a form of intimate communication, it can feel like heaven or hell, or anything in between. Every little nuance can feel significant when we’re making music.

We each tend to bring out certain things in other people, and it’s important to seek ensemble partners who bring out your best. As in any other close relationship, it’s best to find people you naturally connect with, players who understand you well and play well with you with a minimum of verbal cues or conflict. And in performance, it’s best to play with people who are more or less your equals in knowing how to handle their nerves.

But it’s also important to be open to learning from others in an ensemble, so you can grow and become more adept at performing with others. We can sometimes learn a great deal from challenging situations, such as the one you describe. The more comfortable you become with yourself, the more skill you will develop in working with other people.

It’s normal to be nervous about performing. So it’s essential to know how to work with your nervousness and rise above it. If you find that a particular member of your ensemble is so nervous in performance that she can’t relax into the music, you might suggest that she consult someone who specializes in helping musicians deal with stage fright. The Fearless Performing Exercise, which I’ll be teaching on the May 20th free teaching call, could be extremely helpful for someone like this.

You are definitely on the right track when you refer to master musicians whose warmth and generosity have a positive impact on fellow performers. Such artists radiate these qualities to their audience as well. The Fearless Performing Exercise is designed specifically to help you get past self-consciousness and develop this kind of warmth and generosity in performance. I hope you can join us on the call. These qualities may actually be a lot more accessible to you than you think.

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

By his third lesson with me, Michael, a gifted young pianist, had already begun to get familiar with the new physical approach I was teaching him. His hands were no longer tense, and he had freed up his wrists, arms, and shoulders a lot also. But when he finished playing his Bach prelude, he said he wasn’t satisfied with how his hands felt—he wanted his movements to feel more fluid. I knew that for his hands to move more fluidly, he needed to start focusing less on technique and more on the music. He had accomplished the first step—of acquiring basic, efficient coordination—and he was ready to refine his coordination by opening up more to the beauty and flow of the music. I also knew that by tuning in more to the sounds he was making, he would play with more sensitivity and expressiveness.

To help Michael relate more strongly to the music, I suggested that he sing the left hand part of the opening phrase while playing the right hand part. If you’ve ever tried doing this, you know it takes some effort; it requires you to fully hear two musical lines at the same time. But Michael has a well-developed ear, and he did it remarkably well. Next, I asked him to repeat the same process, but to pay close attention to each harmonic interval he played, and to notice how it affected him inside. He went more slowly this time, taking time to focus intently on each harmony. Finally, I asked him to just play the phrase with both hands and notice how it sounded. The music became vibrantly beautiful, and his face lit up in a dazzling smile. “It’s music!” he exclaimed in delight. I asked him if he could explain what he meant, but he was at a loss for words. “That’s all I can say. It’s music!” His joy and excitement touched me. It was as though he had just run into a long lost friend.

What Michael experienced at that moment was something that had only occasionally happened to him in the past. As he described it later, “I didn’t intellectualize about what I was playing. I just heard it. I felt it.” He got out of his head and in touch with his hearing on a deep level. For all the years and countless hours he had spent practicing, he had an unusual experience in that moment of the real, visceral power of making music. He had indeed run into a long lost friend.

Our Birthright as Musicians

All of us, as musicians, are born with a special ability to respond to sound. Our love for music is more intense than other people’s—so intense that we feel compelled to become intimate with music by producing the sound with our instrument and our own body. Yet, like Michael, in the innumerable hours we spend mastering our instrument and learning repertoire, we often lose our intense connection with music and start running on automatic pilot. We get caught up in trying to meet performance deadlines, or in pushing ourselves to play pieces at full tempo. Or we mindlessly run through a piece, thinking it sounds just fine and ignoring the fact that we actually feel no great joy in the act. And sometimes, as Michael later said about a lot of his previous practicing, we try to imitate what we’ve heard on recordings, forgetting that we can think and listen for ourselves—that we can make a genuine, personal connection to the music we’re playing and really release our vital, creative energies.

In short, although we work so hard practicing our instruments, we often don’t receive the tremendous nourishment that music can provide. And it’s often because we don’t take  time to deeply drink in the sounds we’re producing. We put out more than we take in. In doing so, we neglect our needs as artists and as human beings—our need to engage fully with music and to truly express ourselves. As a result, quality suffers—the quality of our playing, and the quality of our musical lives.

To add insult to injury, we often assume that the reason we don’t feel satisfied with how we’re playing is that we’re still not working hard enough. Or that we’re not talented enough. Or both.

It doesn’t have to be this way. 

How Practicing Really Works

Of all people, we musicians need to reclaim our birthright to enjoy music, as we’re making it. We need to enjoy it to the fullest extent possible. Of course, we need to work to develop technical ease, but if we want to have something truly wonderful to give to an audience, we also need to focus much more than we usually do on enjoying the miraculous reality of musical sounds 

Michael’s hands did move much more fluidly when his ears were more engaged with the music he was playing. But more importantly, the sound he produced was vibrantly alive—it was infused with his personal energy. And even more important than both of these results, Michael learned a core lesson about being a true musician: he learned how to have such joyous experiences more often. He met the power of his own mind—the amazing power of paying full attention to music as he was making it.

Michael told me later that although he had had moments of vividly hearing music while practicing slowly in the past, he had never realized that slowness was a key to this experience. After that lesson, he deliberately practiced more slowly, and had repeated experiences of this intense connection with music. But then he often found himself reverting to his habit of playing fast, and stopped enjoying the music. “It’s a weird impetus to play fast,” he said. “It’s much more personal the other way.”

So How Do You Learn to Play Fast?

The real key to vivid engagement with music isn’t slowness. It’s attention. But most of us are so used to speeding through all of our activities, including our practicing, that we need to slow down a lot at first in order to discover the power of attention. As we develop our listening capacity much more, it operates fully at faster and faster speeds. In other words, practicing is as much about training our ears as it is about training our muscles.

The Surprising Ability of Your Own Mind

At the beginning of this month, I gave my first of three free teaching calls, addressing musicians from various parts of the U.S. and Canada, and even one person calling in from France. The point of all of these calls is to help musicians bring more mental power to their practicing and performing, and to discover abilities that have not yet fully come out. On this first call, I gave instruction in mindfulness meditation, a simple practice of sitting still, noticing your breathing, and continually letting go of whatever thoughts arise. 

We did this technique together for 10 minutes. (Yes! We actually muted everyone and had 10 minutes of total silence on the phone.) Afterwards, many participants contributed wonderful questions and comments. And three days later, one of them posted a beautiful article on her blog, titled “Slowing Down to My Own Speed.” I was very happy to read that those 10 minutes had already transformed her practicing. After learning to slow down her mind through the instruction I gave, she was able to let go of habitual expectations of herself and settle down with the pure joy of genuinely making music.

On April 22^nd, I will give the second free teaching call, on Body and Sound Awareness. And this time, we will also mute everyone for several minutes, but not so they can sit still, just breathing. Instead, during that time, everyone can try out a sensory technique using their instruments. It will be a different technique from what I had Michael do, but it works for every instrument, and it’s designed to have the same effect. I invite you to join us!

Musician, Heal Thyself

Meanwhile, think about your relationship with music and with your instrument. Remember the first time you felt the desire to make music, and ask yourself how that desire has played out in your musical life. The next time you’re about to practice, stop for a minute. Look at your instrument (or if you’re a singer, visualize it), and reflect on how miraculous it is.

Who made it? How? What is it made of? Where did those materials come from? How many years of evolution went into the instrument that you are fortunate to possess right now?

Think further: Who wrote the music you’re about to play? When did they live? What did they go through to learn to write such music? How many years has it survived, with its meaning still intact?

And further: How do all the parts of your body contribute to the sound you produce with your instrument? How long has it taken you to learn to make those sounds as well as you can now? How many millennia of human evolution are behind the physical and mental capacities you were born with to make music?

Take at least a minute to reflect on all of these things.

Now. Pause for a moment. Listen to the silence. Feel the energy in your body as you’re about to make the first sound. Open your heart to the music, Then make that first sound. 

How did you like it?

Can you imagine continuing to practice with this kind of connection to the music?

I hope that this simple exercise will help you discover that it really isn’t so hard to get back in touch with who you are as a musician, and with the amazing opportunity you have to practice your instrument. Enjoy it, while you can. As often and as fully as you can. You and your audience will benefit.

I wish you much joy and success in making music.

Madeline Bruser

P.S. Click here to sign up for the free teaching call on Body and Sound Awareness. And If you want to have an amazing, transformative experience, check out my upcoming summer program, Mindfulness, Confidence, & Performance. Only three spots are left for Performing Participants. If you have any questions about the program, or what level of participation would be best for you, please feel free to contact me. I’ll be happy to talk to you. 

Q&A of the Month

I have trouble solving technical problems when I’m playing romantic music. I get so wrapped up in it emotionally that I typically don’t even realize my hands are tense till my teacher points it out. How can I practice romantic music and be more aware of my body at the same time?

This is a great question, one which many musicians grapple with. Our passion for romantic music is a strength we have, but we also need to develop a command of our passionate energy, so that it doesn’t sweep us away into destructive habits. I think a lot of practice-related injuries develop from this particular issue.

Working with passionate energy is very challenging. It’s also perhaps the main discipline of being a musician. We are in love with music, and we have to continually expand our ability to relate to it with understanding and receptivity, rather than overwhelming it with our emotional intensity. It’s very much like loving another person.

Once we understand this fundamental issue, we can relax with our intensity and appreciate it as a good thing, yet also continually remind ourselves to pay closer attention to musical and technical details—because that is where success and fulfillment lie. One surprisingly helpful thing is to begin every practice session with two minutes of just sitting still and noticing your breathing. It clears your mind and slows down the nervous system so you can relate to the music from a less stressed place.

Sometimes playing a passage twice as slowly as you want to can reveal amazing things in the music and in your technical approach. At first you may feel it will be boring, but then if you apply your attention to what you’re doing, incredible awareness and joy can develop.

It’s also essential to find out if your technical approach is completely efficient. If you have any questions at all about whether or not your coordination is totally natural, seek out the most expert advice you can find. Some teachers are known for this. And if you consult a technique expert, ask lots of questions and trust your own experience with the techniques they show you.

You can’t really separate technique from music, and an interesting thing can happen if you forget about the music for a moment and deliberately focus on the mechanics of producing the sound: very often, the result is that more music comes through—your body can move more freely because you’ve lightened up your approach.

On the other hand, playing extremely slowly and noticing how each sound affects you inside can work a profound change in your practicing. It can help you work less hard, because you become more receptive and less active. (The upcoming free teaching call is all about this kind of practicing.)

The best advice might be to try practicing everything more slowly for a week or more. Just give your body and mind a chance to operate with more physical comfort. Then, when you go back to playing faster, try to make comfort your top priority, and really focus on that. Whenever you realize that you’re less than completely comfortable, slow down and try to notice exactly where the discomfort is. See if you can let go of the tension in that part of your body. In this way you can take care of your body, just as you take care of the instrument you play. Remember that your body is an instrument—a precious one. 

I once attended a clarinet master class taught by Richard Stoltzman at the Manhattan School of Music. The audience had just filled the 400-seat hall when Mr. Stoltzman appeared onstage pulling a luggage cart, apparently either just arriving from the airport, or ready for a flight after the class. After we had greeted him with applause, and before he spoke a word, he simply stood and looked around, taking in the environment—the rows of people sitting on the ground level and up in the balcony, the lighting, the furniture on the stage, the quiet, the atmosphere. He seemed to be getting his bearings in the new surroundings he suddenly found himself in—a contrast to the street or the airport.

After we’d waited for what seemed like a full minute, he slowly began to speak and proceeded to teach the class with an arresting spaciousness, as well as with his characteristic brilliance and playfulness. His energy seemed to flow naturally from simply being open—from taking time to ground himself, to feel what it was like to be on that stage, in that hall, at that moment.

There are many ways a performer can make an entrance. Nightclub entertainers often bound onto the stage beaming big smiles, aiming to lift the spirits of their audience. Rock stars may saunter onstage, playing it cool or hot to appeal to their fans. And many fine classical artists approach center stage with glamorous elegance, radiating a warmth that fills the hall. All of these ways of meeting an audience can be fine, and even great.

But Mr. Stoltzman’s unhurried ordinariness on that afternoon as he faced us from the stage has stayed in my mind as a striking example of simple, uncontrived being. He let us see him in an almost private way in a public situation. His presence was strong in its bareness, its quietness, its intense realness. It gave us a glimpse of the receptiveness that lies underneath his colorful playing and personality. It was clear that this master class had nothing to do with the teacher’s ego. It was all about genuinely relating to his students and to his audience.

The Power of Being an Ordinary Person

It’s hard to describe a moment like that, when someone onstage is not putting on a show—when his ordinary presence strips away our preconceptions of who he is and reveals the unadorned person. It’s an intimate experience, and it opens us up to the music or teaching they are offering. Each of us at such a moment can connect with what is most genuine and unadorned in ourselves.

Mr. Stoltzman maintained his remarkable receptiveness throughout the class, taking time to tune in to the heart and mind of each student he worked with. Respectful and gentle, he listened to their words as well as to their playing, and gave them time to absorb what he was saying. He didn’t rush to give them solutions to problems; instead, he experimented with them, letting them try out ideas and see if they worked. I am still grateful for the example he set, of a great performer who didn’t try to call attention to himself. He didn’t need to. His humility and kindness were magnetic.

Getting Off the Fast Track

Although performers like Richards Stoltzman seem to be born with a natural gift for communicating through music and through their personal presence, all of us can develop our own communicative gifts to a much higher level than we usually think. I have seen many ordinary music students become magnetically present in performance through using their minds in a skillful way. It all begins with slowing down and tuning in to the present moment, just as Mr. Stoltzman did onstage that day.

Slowing down like that is unusual in our culture. We are so accustomed to speed—in school and work settings, on television, on the Internet, and in our own minds—that the very act of taking time to simply observe what’s happening often brings up guilt and self-judgment. We become suspicious of ourselves or of anyone else who seems to be wasting time by doing nothing.

Yet more and more articles have been appearing recently, in The New York Times and other publications, on the value of slowing down—of practicing mindfulness, taking short breaks in the work day, and going on vacation. Scientists have finally declared that the human mind works better when we don’t push it so hard, and that people are more productive and effective when they give themselves more of a chance to breathe.

Connecting with the Extra-ordinary

You can begin training yourself to be more present by periodically stopping in the middle of an activity and noticing what your five senses are perceiving. Right now, after you read this sentence, stop for a moment and notice what you are seeing, hearing, smelling tasting, and touching, and what it’s like to do that.

Does it feel good to stop and do this? What do you notice? Try it again, now, for another moment. 

Can you picture yourself making a habit of interrupting your day to engage in this non-activity?

If you practice such awareness often, while sitting still, with nothing much happening around you, the most ordinary things begin to hold your interest more, and your awareness becomes very sharp, as though you were viewing the present moment through a magnifying glass. You experience a very focused, undistracted state of mind. This is the powerful practice called mindfulness. Anyone can do it.

Observing Your Own Mind

The most basic mindfulness practice is to notice your breathing while sitting still and upright. This technique is called mindfulness meditation, and it’s great to do it with your eyes open. That way you learn to handle being aware of your environment while your attention is primarily on one thing. This is amazing preparation for performance, when you experience a heightened awareness of the environment yet have to focus on what you’re doing—using your instrument to make music.

Placing your attention on your breathing helps your mind and body relax. And as your mind relaxes, you also become more aware of your state of mind. From moment to moment, you may be happy or sad, comfortable or uncomfortable, bored, distracted, restless, or freaked out. All kinds of thoughts may come and go, and you become an observer of your own mind.

Your mind may be full of many things—memories, plans, worries, and general mish-mash—and you may not enjoy all of them. But if you stay with it all, you will gain something valuable: a distance from all of these thoughts, and a stronger and stronger realization that they are just thoughts. They are not you. You are the person who is watching them.

Flipping the Switch

Although I’ve given basic mindfulness instruction in previous issues (see Grandma’s Recipe for Space in the article Creating Space for Music to Flow), I’ll be giving precise instruction in this simple but powerful technique in a free teaching call on March 4, which you are welcome to participate in. One of the key details covered in the call will be a part of the technique that I call “flipping the switch.”

This step makes it easier to be an observer of your own mind—to notice when you’re caught up in habitual thinking and to let go of your thoughts. It helps you get out of your head and come back into your body and your sense perceptions. And as your mind becomes more free of habitual thinking, it opens up and becomes be more creative as well as more receptive.

A Few Steps You Can Take

Whether you can participate in the call or not, here are a few steps you can try the next time you’re preparing to walk onstage:

1. As you’re anticipating the moment of your entrance, notice how you feel.

2. Know that the feelings you have are full of life energy, and that you can use that energy creatively in your performance. Appreciate this vibrant state, no matter how nervous or uncomfortable you may feel.

3. Remember it’s normal to be nervous before a performance, and that the most successful and famous musicians feel this way.

4. Appreciate your bravery in being willing to face your audience. Take time to extend warmth to yourself this way.

5. As you’re about to step onstage, take time to notice your physical sensations—your foot touching the floor, your clothes touching your skin, your body moving through space. Keep feeling your bravery and appreciating it.

6. As you enter the space of the stage, take time to notice the light, the people, their applause, the atmosphere, your excitement or nervousness.

7. As you sit or stand in position to perform, continue to notice the details of your sensory experience.

8. If you’re performing with others, take time to notice them and to feel your connection with them.

9. Take a moment to experience the silence before you begin.

10. Trust your intuition about  when to make your first sound.

11. Whatever happens, stay with the energy of the music, and of sharing it with other people.

12. Know that being perfect is not the point—in fact, it is your vulnerability and humanness that will connect you to your audience more than anything else can. 

Performing is a special opportunity to experience that each ordinary moment and perception contains the power of the extraordinary. Trust that with practice, you can go deeper into this experience and discover more of what it means to be present and to let yourself be seen by your audience. 

 I wish you much joy and success in making music.

Madeline Bruser

P.S. In the second and third free calls I will teach two more techniques that will magnify and intensify your stage presence while you’re actually making music for an audience. I hope you can join us. 

Q & A of the Month 

I’m studying with two different piano teachers at my conservatory, and their ideas sometimes conflict—particularly on technique. Although I value what each teacher is giving me, I get confused sometimes about which advice I should follow. Do you have any suggestions?

This is an interesting and timely question. Collaborative teaching has become more common recently, and it puts each person—both the teachers and the student—in a challenging situation.

First of all, it’s good that these two teachers are at the same school and are therefore aware that you are working with both of them. Hopefully, each of them appreciates that they can learn something from the situation just as you are learning from both of them. It’s a little like being a musician with an injury—they may have only one instrumental teacher, but they also have to listen to the advice of their doctor, their physical therapist, and maybe some books they’re reading, all at the same time, and decide which advice makes the most sense to them at any given moment in the recovery process.

The most important thing is for you to trust yourself. Listen to your body, trust your own intelligence, ask a lot of questions, and see what really makes the most sense for you. Nevertheless, it’s important to understand that some teachers have very clear methods for helping their students develop, and a student may not always know the reason for a particular approach until weeks or months down the road, when they’ve worked with it enough to integrate it into their playing.

If you feel that you’re really being pulled in two different directions, do what you can to minimize the conflict. For instance, you could request different repertoire for a period of time and concentrate on pieces that create less confusion and conflict. Then go back to the other repertoire when your mind is clearer and see if you can understand the issues better and find new solutions.

Do be careful about your technique. If a passage feels tense or uncomfortable, explain the problem to one or both of your teachers and do everything you can to find a way to make it easier to play.

If one teacher is suggesting musical ideas that you really like but the other teacher doesn’t agree with them, talk to both teachers to try to understand their way of thinking. You can learn a lot this way, and it can help you practice more intelligently. It can also make you a better teacher yourself.

I myself never had more than one teacher at a time, but all of my teachers disagreed with each other on certain things. Each teacher was valuable in a different way, and the process of sorting out their conflicting ideas was extremely useful for me. It forced me to think for myself, and to delve deeply into many technical and musical issues. I think this is how the teaching and performing traditions evolve to a higher level.

At some point in your career, you may find yourself confronted with a choice of committing to one particular approach, in order to refine your technique or take your playing to a new level. Again, trust your instincts and feel your way into any new situation. Being skeptical is a sign of intelligence, and you can learn a lot from all of your experiences.  

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

January 25, 2013

At the beginning of this new year, many of us have made commitments to ourselves, invigorated by the idea that we can let go of the past and start fresh. After celebrating the holiday season and perhaps taking time off from work, we feel more ready to tackle new projects and accomplish new things. This time of renewed inspiration is so important. No matter what disappointments we may have experienced in the past, we need to remember that our life is full of possibility, and that we can do a lot toward making our dreams come true.

In reflecting on this time of renewed inspiration and commitment, I found myself remembering a particular brave young pianist who signed up for a workshop series I taught several years ago. I’ll call him Alan.

Alan took this series on natural piano technique hoping to recover from a playing-related injury. He knew that if he didn’t recover, he couldn’t keep playing—his performing career, like that of so many injured musicians, would come an early end. With no way of knowing what the series would be like, or if it would help him recover, he broke through his initial resistance and registered for the five weeks of workshops and private lessons. It was a leap of faith. 

And Then It Began

After years of rigorous conservatory training, Alan was shocked when I asked him and the other workshop participants to practice no more than 10 minutes at a time, with only one hand at a time, during the first week of the series. Checking every little movement his fingers made seemed bizarre to him—he had to play so slowly that he had no experience of making any music, or of really playing the instrument. It was completely different from anything he’d ever done or ever heard of. But as he felt his hands gradually becoming more relaxed at the piano, he began to—somewhat—trust this new approach.

The Moment of Crisis

Everything went pretty well until around the middle of the five weeks, when Alan realized during a workshop that he could neither remember how to play the old way nor reliably play the new way. He felt completely unsure of himself and of where he was headed. He said he felt confused and scared, and he started to cry.

But as he heard encouraging words about his progress from me and from the other participants, he began to calm down. And as he saw the others improve while going through the same process that he was going through, he felt somewhat reassured. Finally, because he knew he couldn’t go back his old way of playing, he felt he had no choice but to continue.

Gradually, Alan became more familiar with the new approach, and it started to feel more comfortable and reliable. By the end of the series, he had fully recovered from his injury and was playing freely, though slowly. Within a few more weeks, he gained speed as well.

Alan’s leap of faith, coupled with five weeks of brave and dedicated perseverance, had brought him to the victory he’d hoped for. In addition to recovering from his injury, he had acquired a new piano technique that would prevent him from being injured again, and that enabled him to play more freely and expressively than before.

What We Can Learn from Alan

I tell this story because it illustrates what it’s like to really keep a commitment to our own growth or to anything that’s important to us. No matter what joy or good intentions we might start out with in any big endeavor—whether it’s learning difficult new repertoire, taking our technique to a new level, or perhaps something in our personal life, such as getting married—there will inevitably be times of great challenge, times when we may question if we have what it takes to see it through and to really succeed. While we can relax with the knowledge that we’re always growing, we can never know exactly what we’re growing into, or what it will feel like to actually make a desired change.

Alan’s bravery is an inspiring example for all of us, and we can learn a lot from his experience. So if you are facing a time of change and growth, and you know that many challenges lie ahead of you, here are some things from Alan’s experience, and from my own, that you can remember on your journey.

1. Keep your motivation to change in mind.

2. Know that fear is inevitable when entering unknown territory.

3. Also know that you contain the seeds of the growth you want to accomplish.

4. Appreciate yourself for having the inspiration and courage to commit to change.

5. Seek out companions or allies on your journey, or reassurance from friends who have overcome obstacles in their efforts to make important changes in their work or life.

6. Find a guide, or guides, in the form of a teacher, mentor, or even a book, to keep you on course and informed of your progress.

7. Trust your own intelligence as you work with that guide.

8. Appreciate that in feeling afraid yet moving forward anyway, you are being brave. Take time to extend warmth to yourself as you appreciate your own bravery.

9. Realize that this bravery is making you a stronger person for the future challenges you will face, including performing onstage.

10. Focus on the progress you’re making—maybe write down the small steps and signs along the way. Return to your allies and guides for support.

11. Celebrate successes.

12. Remember to relax and breathe all along the way, balancing being serious about your goal with taking pleasure in simple things around you in your daily life.

What I Can Offer You

If you need support on your musical journey this coming year, here are a few options I can offer you.

1. Three Free Teaching Calls

March 4 – Mindfulness Meditation for Musicians

“The change was gentle, gradual, and profound. It put me more in touch with my innermost artistic aspirations.”

Yegor Shevtsov, pianist, Faculty Manhattan School of Music Pre-College 

April 22 – Body and Sound Awareness (with instruments)

“This work has been a career- and life-changing experience. After playing for years successfully in Broadway shows and having just completed a Masters in woodwinds, I felt that I had come to a professional and personal impasse. This approach helped to unlock physical, mental, and emotional barriers and has brought joy back to my performing.”

Michel Gohler, Masters in Multiple Woodwinds, New Jersey City University

May 20 – The Fearless Performing Exercise (with or without instruments) 

“Doing this seven-minute technique before each performance quite honestly transformed my experience of performing. I actually found myself enjoying the moment, and feeling like I could lose my ego to some extent and just ‘give’ the music to the audience. It’s just turned my way of thinking around about what performance is actually about.”

Felicity Corrie, cellist, Cambridge University Alumna

Click for more information.

2. Two monthly classes 

Mindfulness Meditation for Musicians – first Tuesday of every month; next class February 5.

The Fearless Performing Exercise – first Thursday of every month; next class February 7.

Click for more information; scroll down.

3. Skype sessions or private sessions in person

To help you play with greater expressive freedom. Wonderful for working with tension, injuries, stage fright, and everything in between.

Click to contact me.

4. The weeklong summer program:

Mindfulness, Confidence, & Performance: A Transformative Program for Musicians

July 27 – August 3

This is a tremendous opportunity to receive guidance and support in a non-competitive environment. An extraordinary program offering challenges and solutions that bring lasting enrichment. 

Click for more information.

5. A free consultation

In person or on the phone, to help you decide what option is best for you. 

Click to contact me.

Like you, I have made commitments to myself for this coming year. They include helping more musicians discover and fulfill their deepest expressive potential. I’ve had the great good fortune to discover that my potential was far greater than I realized. My primary interest now is to pass on what I know to you, my fellow musicians.

I wish you much joy and success in making music.

Madeline Bruser

P.S. If you participate in the free calls you will receive a written description of each technique after each call to guide you in your practice of the techniques.

Q&A of the Month

I’m curious about your own experience with some of the techniques you described in last month’s article—the ones you’ll be teaching on the free calls coming up. How did you discover these, and what was it like when you first tried them?

Wow. That’s a big question! But actually, learning the first one, mindfulness meditation, helped me discover the other two.

I discovered meditation through friends who were doing it. They weren’t musicians, but I sensed something about them that made me want to try it. They had a way of really listening in conversations, and they seemed to have a deep understanding of how their own minds worked. It was this quality of presence and depth that first drew me in—I wanted to experience more of that in myself. But then, when I actually tried meditation, I didn’t connect with it, so I didn’t continue after the first two days. It was only a year later, when I’d played an unsuccessful audition, that something told me meditation could help me become more relaxed and confident about performing. From that second time of trying it, I’ve stayed with it—which has been for 35 years. It immediately felt like coming home—to relax to a level that I had never experienced before. But many people find it much more challenging the first time, and then get used to it and find it transformative.

The second technique, body and sound awareness, just came naturally to me over the course of my experience with meditation. Meditation makes you much more aware of what you’re perceiving. So sounds and sensations became more vivid—which was a revelation during my practicing.  Music opened up before my eyes, and ears, without much effort on my part. I soon saw that I could lead other musicians toward that kind of awareness even if they didn’t meditate, by working directly with their experience with their instruments.

The Fearless Performing Exercise came to me from a spiritual practice I’ve done for many years, in the buddhist and Shambhala traditions, in which we take a few minutes to reflect on our lineage—the teachers who have passed down the tradition of meditation. Because remembering them has great personal meaning, it opened my heart easily. I wanted musicians to have something similar, so I translated it into their terms. I also added the idea of reflecting on two other fundamentally important things that put us immediately in touch with the energy of our heart, our communicative power. When I first had this kind of experience myself it was pretty mind-blowing. An intense energy became available to me right away, which opened up all of my communication with other people enormously. 

If you sign up for the free teaching calls, you can experience all of these techniques yourself.

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

December 25, 2012

Although I didn’t grow up celebrating Christmas, I’ve always felt the spirit of the season and been moved by how this particular day transforms so many people. Their joy in giving and receiving gifts, in expressing love, generosity, and appreciation, is beautiful and contagious. 

The anticipation and planning of this special holiday remind me of the ritual of giving a concert performance: We plan and prepare, with excitement and care, and then the moment comes when we give our gift to our audience. It can be a wonderful and powerful experience.

But usually, giving our gifts onstage is a lot harder than buying a present, wrapping it up, and putting it under someone’s tree or into their hands. It involves complex and demanding preparation, and even if we’ve learned the music extremely well, we may nevertheless lack confidence at the crucial moment of performance.

Often, the reason we lack confidence onstage is that we’ve never fully discovered the gift we have inside of us. We’ve carried it with us all our lives, and we’ve perceived it to a degree, but we’ve never fully unwrapped it and seen how beautiful it really is.

When we don’t fully unwrap the gift we carry inside us, it can feel like a burden. We sense that it’s there, and we want it to just leap out of us and victoriously take the stage. But we feel frustrated because we don’t know how to make that happen.

Some of us do unwrap our gift when we’re alone, practicing our instrument—music flies out of us, and our heart soars. But when an audience is watching us, we somehow hold back or clam up, and people never get to see or hear what we’d hoped to share with them. Only part of it comes through.

My Gift to You

My gift to you today is to offer you three free calls you can participate in to help you unwrap your gift. I’ll be hosting these calls in early 2013, and in each one I will teach a valuable technique and answer a few questions from callers. I’ll also talk a little about a weeklong summer program I’ll be teaching next year where you can work with these techniques in depth and enjoy the unwrapping process along with other musicians.

I’d like to tell you a little about that program now. So at this cold, dark season of the year, here is a picture of where you could be next summer:

This is the beautiful campus of Edinboro University, in Erie, Pennsylvania, and the program is called Mindfulness, Confidence, & Performance: A Transformative Program for Musicians. It will take place July 27–August 3, 2013. 

In addition to the lake and trees, we will have practice rooms, classrooms, and a concert hall, plus dorm rooms and a dining hall. We will have lots of workshop sessions in mindfulness techniques, with and without instruments, which everyone can attend, plus daily discussion groups, and even some time to drive to the beach on nearby Lake Erie. All participants—those who play or sing in the workshops and those who don’t—will have time to practice their instruments each day and apply the techniques taught in the workshops. And on the last night, all performing participants will be invited to play in a celebratory concert for the local community. 

This program is designed for those of you who are ready to jump in and bring your music making to a new level.

To tell the truth . . .

The program is a great gift to me also. I’ve taught six weeklong programs similar to this one, and the chance to see people open up their playing so much in that span of time is very special. Discoveries happen every day, and people find out they can do things they never knew they could do before. For me as a teacher, this is as rewarding as any performance I’ve ever given. I get to offer my gifts, and to see people take off and fly with what they receive. It makes my year.

But participants gain the most. Here is a snapshot of three of the techniques I will be teaching at the program, and in the free calls:

The First Technique: The Present of Your Presence

In the September issue, I wrote about “Grandma’s Recipe for Space.” This means mental space, and the recipe, which is actually 2500 years old, is for something called mindfulness meditation. If you’ve never tried meditation before, you might think it’s weird, or that it’s not for you. But it’s actually pretty ordinary and straightforward, and it helps your gift breathe, so that it can come fully alive and show its true colors.

If you’ve read Grandma’s Recipe, you’ve seen that there’s not much to it. You just sit still, with your eyes open, and notice what’s happening: your breathing, your thoughts and sensations, and your environment. That’s it. 

So what’s the point?

Well, one point of just sitting there and noticing simple things is that this kind of heightened awareness happens every time we perform—we’re acutely sensitive to the atmosphere in the room, every little sound, and every little physical sensation we have. So the idea of meditation is that by practicing noticing these basic things, we’re actually preparing ourselves for dealing with such heightened awareness onstage. It becomes less of a shock. In fact, it becomes something familiar, and we start to feel at home with it.

So how does that make your true colors come out?

Well, as you sit there, just breathing, your breathing relaxes, which makes your body and mind less tense. So you start to feel more free and open, and musical energy can flow through you more easily. It can be quite surprising to see and hear yourself actually playing with more vibrancy and precision by using less effort. All because there’s less in the way—less tension obstructing the musical flow.

This means more of you is coming through. In other words, you are more present. And that means stronger stage presence, too.

So this simple little technique called mindfulness meditation is very potent. In fact, it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever learned to do.

That doesn’t mean it’s totally easy. Learning meditation is like learning an instrument—it takes practice. But at the summer program, you’ll have time each day to build up familiarity with it, get the hang of it, and ask questions as you go. You’ll also discover the magic it works in daily practice with your instrument—more ease, focus, and enjoyment will start to happen. 

In the first free call, we’ll actually practice mindfulness meditation—which will be quite interesting. When the few minutes of silence are over, you’ll feel different. And you’ll have a chance to press a button on your phone to ask a question or offer a comment.

If you live in the New York area, you can also learn this technique at one of my monthly classes at my studio.

The Second Technique: Polishing One Jewel at a Time

The second main technique is called Body and Sound Awareness, and you do it while practicing your instrument.

The idea here is that usually when we practice we’re so busy producing sound that were not fully hearing or enjoying the sounds we’re making. The music isn’t nourishing us as much as it could. Notes may fly out of our instrument at an amazing speed, but not a lot of music is coming into us. This is why many musicians become frustrated with practicing. And because they aren’t as nourished as they could be by the music, they  don’t have as much to give to their audience as they could.

At the summer program we’ll be learning to take in a lot more beauty while practicing our instruments. Everyone will feel more nourished by the music they’re making, and more ready to give it to their audience.

With this technique, you play or sing a single phrase, focusing intently on the quality of each sound, and how it affects you inside. Because of such caring attention, more comes through–each sound becomes more beautiful and shines like a jewel. The whole phrase becomes more brilliant.

On the second free call  I’ll give exact instructions in this technique. First everyone will do what’s called a body scan, which will heighten your body awareness. Then everyone will play or sing a simple musical phrase, very slowly, and I will guide you through the process of noticing how each sound affects you inside your body. Don’t worry! I’ll mute everyone for this part so you’ll only hear yourself playing or singing. Then I’ll unmute everyone so you can comment or ask a question.

After the call you can try it out further with your instrument. And I’ll e-mail you a story that describes exactly how a young violist used this technique to accomplish an amazing breakthrough one day at my summer program a few years ago.

We’ll be using this technique a lot at next year’s summer program, with a variety of instruments, and I’ll be guiding each performing participant through it in detail.

The Third Technique: The Pièce de Résistance

Finally, next summer and in the third free call, you can learn the Fearless Performing Exercise—a mental technique for accessing deep communicative power and for transforming stage fright into confidence.

I developed this exercise for the 2006 summer program, because I wanted musicians to have a quick, powerful method for bringing out their very best in performance. Since then, my husband has been teaching it to actors, a lawyer friend has taught it to lawyers, and I’ve even taught it to some people who wanted more confidence in challenging business situations. Although it has to be adapted to fit each group of people, in all cases, wonderful results have come.

For me, the word “fearless” conjures up images of medieval warriors in battle, with shields, swords, and helmets, charging forward to meet the enemy. Yet I’ve used this word in the title of this e-zine and of this exercise because in our modern day concert world, we often cower in fear onstage as though the audience were our enemy. Many performers think of their audience exactly that way—as something to be conquered.

But audiences generally come to concerts to be moved and uplifted, not to attack us. And the real enemy we face is within ourselves. It is our habitual reaction to the natural and understandable fear of exposing our hearts, and our level of expertise, in front of other people.

Many of us have been conditioned to fear judgment, and even humiliation, when we expose ourselves in this way, and debilitating stage fright often results. In some cases, psychotherapy can be helpful. But we can also learn other ways of discovering and nurturing actual seeds of bravery that we all carry within us.

A Story of Fearless Performing

In the wake of recent violent events in the news, I’d like to relate a story of how one brave musician reacted to real hostility that did come directly from his concert audience as he was about to perform for them. Although no one in the audience was carrying a weapon, he nevertheless faced a large audience that was expressing hatred toward him.

In 1960, pianist Byron Janis was selected by the United States government to begin a cultural exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, after years of intense animosity between the two countries. His first concert in Moscow followed the news that an American spy plane called the U2 had been deployed against the Soviet Union, which outraged the Soviet people. On the day of the concert, a man in the street recognized Janis and fired an imaginary machine gun at him, shouting, “Americanski, nyet!” When he walked onstage that night, many members of the audience greeted him by screaming, “U2! U2!” Their hatred was palpable, upsetting him intensely.

But somehow, as he sat at the piano and waited for them to quiet down, he found himself thinking, “I am not your enemy. I just ask you to listen to my music, which I want to play for you without rancor but with love.” From that place of love and courage, he gave his concert. At intermission, he received a long ovation, And at the end of the entire concert, people in the audience streamed toward the stage, some of them weeping. Deafening applause and cheering went on for 20 minutes, and one woman shouted, “You make us love America!” 

It was Janis’s deep devotion to music and deep motivation to play from love that enabled him to rise above the hostility of his audience and to melt their hardened hearts. Although we may not feel up to meeting the kind of challenge he faced that night, we do share such devotion and motivation. Underneath our fear of performing, we always hold within us the power of our devotion to music and of our desire to share it with others.

Seven Transformative Minutes

The Fearless Performing Exercise is a seven-minute technique for bringing that power to the surface—to bring out the best in us in performance. This is the third main technique we’ll be working with in the summer program, and you can receive instruction in it on the third free call. If you live in the New York area, you can also learn it in one of the monthly classes I give at my studio. (January 3 is coming up.)

The exercise takes seven minutes, and in addition to helping performers get past stage fright, it also connects you to your deepest communicative power. On the free call, we’ll take one minute for everyone to play or sing a few musical phrases (with phones muted), then we’ll do the exercise, and then you can play or sing the same section of music again, to experience how different it is. Then we’ll talk about it. At the summer program, we’ll do this exercise as a daily practice, and you’ll discover how it affects all of your activities, including your practicing and performing.

If you’d like to find out the dates and times of the FREE calls, send me an e-mail and you’ll be among the first to know. And please feel free to write anytime with comments questions—about the summer program, or anything else related to fearless performing.

Have a wonderful holiday.

I wish you much joy and success in making music.

Madeline Bruser

P.S. Click for more exciting details about the summer program.

Q & A of the Month

I’ve seen some of your articles about mindfulness, and I understand that by paying attention to technical details I can practice more efficiently. But how can I get past the level of just paying attention to details and really become free and expressive with a piece so I can really perform it well?

Mindfulness does mean paying attention to details; you’re right. But as each of those details becomes clearer, you start noticing more details—you notice what else is going on around those details. So let’s say you’re focusing on keeping your thumb relaxed while you’re using your other fingers. And you get to the point where your thumb stays relaxed without your focusing on it anymore. Then your mind is free to focus on the next thing. On the smallest level, it proceeds in that way, taking you into real ease in playing whole phrases and finally a whole piece.

At the same time, as your mind becomes clearer, you become more aware of when you need a break from such fine detailed work, and when you want to try another approach to a piece—such as letting yourself enjoy the quality of sound in certain chords, or going over parts of the piece that you’re already comfortable with in order to enjoy them and to take them to a new level of freedom and expressive depth.

So mindfulness is about more than little details. It’s about noticing how the music makes you feel, what you’re interested in doing from one moment to the next, and if you need a break to get up and stretch or walk around or just rest. Everything is included. Mindfulness gives you a chance to get to know your own mind and to trust it more and see where it can take you. Practicing mindfulness meditation trains your mind to be more awake–more conscious of what’s going on–and that spills into your practicing.

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

This article contains a video.

I once zoomed in on Peter Serkin’s hands with binoculars from the balcony of Carnegie Hall. He was playing an extremely virtuosic contemporary piece that had his hands running all over the keyboard. I wanted to see one specific thing about how he used his hands, and if it was in agreement with how I play myself and how I teach.

I was looking to see if his fingers were up or down—that is, if the non-playing fingers were raised above the keys while other fingers were busy playing, or if they were simply resting on the keys until they needed to play.

As I expected, those fingers were down. How else could they be ready to play a split second later? And how else could his muscles be minimally engaged, to keep tension to a minimum, so that he could play so fast and so easily? It was beautiful to watch the effortless fluidity in his playing.

When we zoom in on a performer who has mastered their instrument, we gain inspiration for our own practicing. It shows us what is humanly possible, and how beautiful our technical equipment could be.

How to Zoom In on Your Own Hands

When you’re sitting at your instrument, you don’t need binoculars to zoom in on what your hands are doing. But it can be easy to miss crucial details and to not get where you want to go with your technique.

Zooming in effectively requires three things: inspiration, mental clarity, and facts.

Just as I was inspired watching Peter Serkin’s hands, I hope you find some inspiration in this close-up of my hands, playing the same section of Chopin that opened last month’s article:

You can see that in all the passage work, my fingers rest on the keys when they’re not playing (except in two places, which I will explain later).

In addition to the inspiration you may gain from watching a video, or from zooming in with binoculars at a concert, let’s talk about the other two ingredients you can use to effectively zoom in on your own hands. 

Give Your Mind a Chance

The first challenge in working with physical details while practicing is that there are so many other things going on. We get overwhelmed with the complexities of the music, with our emotional responses to it, and with our anxiety about meeting the deadline of a performance, lesson, or audition. In the middle of all that, it can be hard to even notice how your hands feel. In fact, many musicians get so caught up in practicing, and in pushing for results, that they don’t even realize how much tension is in their hands and arms until it builds to the point of injury.

So in order to begin working with your instrumental technique, you first need to clear your mind of other issues that are screaming for your attention. If you can manage to slow down the racing thoughts in your head, and ease up on your tendency to drive yourself too hard, you can gain enough presence of mind to clearly observe the delicate, precise movements of your hands, and you can find solutions to technical problems more quickly and easily. You can even notice how your sound quality improves as you train your hands to move in a freer, more refined way. 

Grandma’s Recipe

Such presence of mind is also known as mindfulness. In the September issue, I described a simple technique for increasing your mindfulness, which I called “Grandma’s Recipe for Space.” Part of this recipe is called mindfulness of breathing, and doing it for even two minutes can make the difference between productive practicing and total frustration.

So the next time you’re feeling frustrated during practicing, I encourage you to stop practicing for a minute or two and to try Grandma’s Recipe: Just sit comfortably upright and take two minutes to do two simple things: 1) breathe, and 2), notice your breathing. Try it even if you’re skeptical. If you’re like everyone else I know who’s tried it, you’ll come back feeling more clear-headed and ready to practice with more focus and enjoyment.

Know the Facts

In addition to inspiration and mental clarity, it helps to have some solid, scientific facts to encourage you in your pursuit of this technical mastery and beauty. For now, we’ll look at one basic fact of how your hands work.

Your hands are obviously of major importance in your instrumental technique. Even if you are not a pianist, looking at these two photos of my hand can help you understand something crucial about how to use your hands.

In the first photo, you see my third finger putting down a key while the other four fingers are relaxed and resting on the keys.

This is the way Peter Serkin’s hands looked through my binoculars. And it’s also how my hands look in the video.

In the second photo, you also see the third finger playing a key, but this time, other fingers are raised above the keys. 

The problem here is that when your fingers are raised above the keys, you’re using muscles to hold them up. Those muscles are in the topside of your forearm. And the muscles that bend your fingers, to play, are in the underside of your forearm. So if you bend and lift at the same time, as in the second picture above, you are contracting both sets of muscles in your forearm simultaneously and creating unnecessary tension. Doctors call this co-contraction.

That extra tension is enough to create a constriction in your forearm, which inhibits both speed and expressiveness. And it happens to be the single most common cause of injuries among pianists.

Putting the Ingredients Together

Nearly every new student who walks into my studio for the first time has this habit of keeping their fingers raised above the keys, to at least some extent. Many of them know it’s not a good habit—and have even had teachers who advised against it—but they don’t know how to change their habit. Others were instructed to raise their fingers as a kind of calisthenics for the hand—an approach that doctors agree is destructive and potentially injurious.

A habit is like a code in the spinal cord. In order to change that code, you need to put your brain in charge and deliberately do something differently, repeatedly. Even ten minutes of slowly and carefully making sure that your fingers are down will make it more automatic—you will already begin to feel that the old habit is starting to weaken, and the newer one is starting to take hold. 

Most people who have never taken the time to focus like that are surprised by how much mental energy it takes. Often I ask them how their hand feels after a few minutes of playing in the new position, and they answer that they are so busy focusing on doing it the new way that they don’t even notice how different the physical sensation is. But usually they quickly realize that it feels better, and they describe it as “more relaxed,” “less strained.” “Easier.”

So acquiring physical ease takes mental work. 

The Mental Key

The key is to follow the idea of the mindfulness of breathing technique: For every single thing you do, you actually do two things: First, you put down a key. Second, you check the other four fingers to make sure they are resting on the keys instead of being raised above them.

This is mindfulness in action. You are exercising the specific natural capacity of your brain called mindfulness. And each time you exercise it—each time you complete these two steps of moving a finger and checking the rest of your fingers—you are strengthening that part of your brain. Scientists have even located this part of the brain, in the prefrontal cortex—behind your forehead. And they have observed that as people practice mindfulness, the cells in this part of the brain multiply, strengthening this natural mental capacity.

Caveat

As you practice using your hand this way, remember that the fingers are not designed for power. The arm is designed for power, and the fingers are designed for sensitivity, precision, and refined control. So don’t try to get a big sound. In fact, even if a finger isn’t yet strong enough to produce any sound, just put the key down with minimum effort. Don’t force anything—you will gain strength within a short time.

Mom’s Recipe

I’m not a grandma yet, but I am a mom. So we could call my method for training your fingers to rest on the keys “Mom’s Recipe for a Tension-Free Hand.” Here is what you do:

1. Play one note with minimum effort.

2. Say “check,” to yourself, as you remember to check each of the other four fingers to make sure that they are relaxed and resting on the keys.

3. Relax your mind along with your hand. Don’t think about the next note.

4. Repeat these steps for each note you play.

It helps enormously if a teacher guides you through these steps during one or more lessons and catches where little things are obstructing your progress: If your wrist height changes too much, your knuckles collapse, your shoulders hunch or roll forward, or your hand remains in a stretched position longer than necessary, it can hamper the process. And most people need someone else there to catch the times when their focus slips and they fail to notice that a finger is working too hard, is unnaturally curled or straight, or is sticking up in the air.

But if you follow this recipe for ten minutes at a time over the course of a week, playing with one hand at a time, and without playing anything else during that week, you can succeed in changing your habit of raising your fingers above the keys—at least 95% of that habit will be gone, and your hand will work with wonderful new ease and efficiency. Even one or two ten-minute sessions a day can be enough to accomplish this goal in a week’s time.

Of course, there are other factors that come into play—like adjusting the bench to the right height so that you have optimum leverage with your fingers and arm. And aligning your torso and arms for maximum efficiency. But that would take too many paragraphs right now. If you’re interested, you can read all about it in the chapter called “Basic Mechanics” in my book, The Art of Practicing.

What About That Left Thumb?

Aha! You caught it! Yes, my left thumb is momentarily above the keys in this video when my fifth finger is playing the bass notes. That’s because I’m using a particular arm movement to bring out the bass line and to create momentum in negotiating the arpeggios, and the angle of my arm in this movement results in my thumb leaving the surface of the keys. But the thumb is still relaxed, just hanging from my hand instead of sticking out or up.

And That Place Where Your Right Hand Hits Keys from the Air?

That’s something called forearm rotation. Too much to go into here, but basically, in this case, it allows you to momentarily throw your hand to the side, which gives you enough arm power to bring out certain notes in certain kinds of patterns.

It may all sound very complex, and it is. But once you know how the different hand and arm movements work together, and you get used to doing them, it feels simple and natural.

Mindfulness Brings Heartfulness

The word mindfulness may sound very cerebral, and you may think that practicing with this kind of attention to detail will take you away from your heart connection to the music and to your instrument. But the opposite is true.

When we clear our mind and take time to focus on one detail at a time, something magical happens. Our heart opens. We start to develop a new appreciation of each small thing we’re doing and experiencing. Practicing is indeed extremely complicated. But when we slow down and deal with one thing at a time, it becomes a series of simple moments. These moments gradually come together into complete phrases, and finally into a whole piece that has integrity and beauty, and that flows freely and naturally.

An Invitation

I invite you to come home to the natural clarity of your mind and perceptions, and to the natural warmth of your heart, by practicing with mindfulness. Practicing doesn’t have to be a struggle or a chore. If you understand the facts about how your hands work best, you can master the details of using them by slowing down enough to notice their amazing ability to move gracefully and to touch your instrument with ease, sensitivity, and love.
 
It’s worth the time it takes.

I wish you much joy and success in making music.

Madeline Bruser

P.S. If you want to be sure that you’re using your hands just right at the piano, I invite you to arrange a lesson, in person or on Skype, or to contact me for a free consultation. And If you have a question about piano technique–or anything else related to performing –I invite you to submit a question for possible inclusion in next month’s issue of Fearless Performing.

Q & A of the Month 

I tried sitting more still at the piano as you suggested in your last article, and I don’t see how you can avoid leaning forward. It feels like the music is making me lean forward, and that it’s necessary. How do you manage to not lean? Isn’t it maybe good for some people and not for others? 

This is a really intelligent question, and I appreciate that you’re skeptical. I was skeptical myself for many years, and resisted someone’s advice to change how I use my body at the piano. But then my playing changed, and I found that I could express myself more when I move less.

Using your body this way is something you have to be open to and ready for. There are a number of physical things you have to focus on to make the change work. You need to be aware of the physical feedback from the instrument when you’re upright. There’s an equal and opposite reaction from the piano when you spring forward from your fingertips with your arm. You can feel three contact points—your fingertips, your seat, and your feet—and in between, the energy is flowing back and forth and ricocheting from those points. It takes some guidance to experience this, but there is a diagram in my book, with arrows showing how the different physical forces work.

With everyone I’ve taught who feels they “need” to lean forward, it’s almost always because of a deeply ingrained habit, rather than a real need. The exception is when your hands have to play at an extreme end of the keyboard and you can’t reach the keys without leaning slightly toward them. 

How I “manage” to not lean forward is a question that goes quite deep. It’s clear to me that the change in my posture was a direct result of seven years of mindfulness meditation practice. In that practice, you sit upright and still, no matter what is going on inside you emotionally. Storms and waves of passion and panic may all be flooding your system, but you just sit there. You learn to accommodate a lot of energy without reacting so much to it. You actually feel your emotions even more strongly than before, but you get used to handling it all.

This is an amazing discipline for a musician, because our job is to allow powerful musical energy to flow through us to our listeners. The more our habitual reactions are in charge, the less power we have to transmit the music to an audience. If we are bound up in habitual tension, we squeeze some of the life out of the music instead of opening fully to it and giving it to others.

All that said, it doesn’t mean that you have to practice meditation to find this kind of stillness. Doing the kind of mindful listening work I described in the last article helps tremendously in gradually changing the habit of overexerting physically. You become more receptive, so you automatically become less active. It’s all about that balance between being active and receptive. Usually we’re overly active and not sufficiently receptive.

Changing your approach definitely requires guidance from a teacher. A movement teacher, such as a teacher of the Alexander Technique or a Feldenkrais teacher, can be extremely helpful. A qualified piano teacher could then help you further.

It’s a profound thing to experience, and a big thing to accomplish. I encourage you to keep working in that direction and see what happens. You’re of course welcome to try a lesson on Skype or in person with me, or with another teacher of the Art of Practicing.

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

With Halloween approaching, I thought I’d show you a clip of my piano playing that spooks me a little.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

What spooks me is how still I’m sitting while the music is flowing so freely. I know all the reasons for it—how the body works, why I’m sitting so still, and what is going on inside me—but there is always something mysterious about it for me.

Making music is a mysterious process—partly because we can’t see inside the body, where the musical impulse is coming from. We can’t see the liquids and tissues inside the body that are literally being moved by musical vibrations. We can’t see the emotional energies flowing through our system as we respond to the sounds that we love.

Changing Our Focus
Such stillness looks strange to us because in our culture, we are doers. We focus a lot on being active and accomplishing things. Of course, it’s good to get things done. But we overdo it a lot—we overwork, overexert, over-practice our instruments. Tension and injuries often result. And on the deepest human level, we often miss out on discovering our full expressive potential.

The culture has begun to change a little. Many musicians are getting help from bodywork specialists in the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, and other methods. And we have begun to learn about injury prevention and recovery. We still need more training in these areas.

We also need to focus much more on our experience of sound. This invisible aspect of our process is central to being a musician. As important as it is to master the outer body mechanics of using our instrument, the inside of the body—in our organs, nerves, and bloodstream—is where the music lives.

What It Takes
Chopin created an incredible challenge for any pianist who wants to master the Fantaisie-Impromptu, and it took tremendous work for me to become free with this complex little masterpiece. Although of course, the hands have to work completely efficiently and smoothly to negotiate this section at tempo, the biggest issue for me was to hear everything that’s happening in this intricate musical texture. While the right hand is playing scalar passages in sixteenth notes, the left hand is playing arpeggios in triplets.

In order to clearly hear both parts simultaneously, I spent countless hours at the piano playing one hand while singing the part of the other hand, going very slowly and gradually stretching my listening capacity. As I became conscious of the impact that each melodic and harmonic interval had on me, inside my body, whole phrases began to come to life and to flow naturally and easily from my fingers.

Nevertheless, every time I picked up the piece after a break from performing it, I found I had to do this work anew. I had to focus again on every interval and harmony in order to bring the music fully to life all over again—to keep it fluid and free. “Mastering” it once didn’t mean I’d permanently nailed it. It meant I continued to be its humble servant.

Shifting the Balance Between Active and Receptive
Listening with such focus takes effort, but this effort is not physical. In fact, if you’re busy moving your torso around a lot while you play, it’s hard to be aware of how the sound is affecting you inside. It’s like trying to appreciate what someone is saying while you are busy moving your body. It’s just easier to listen if you are more still.

But if you practice listening with great focus, your inner, receptive capacity will develop, and you’ll probably feel much less tendency to lean forward or sway around while playing. There’s just so much satisfaction in being deeply engaged with sound.

It is this inner satisfaction that explains how I could sit so still while playing so freely. Although I may appear detached and uninvolved in this performance, it felt like magic. I felt extremely alive inside, filled with the beauty of this amazing music, with waves of sound in all colors flooding my system. Because I wasn’t so caught up in being physically active, I could experience the joy of being deeply receptive.

How Listening Affects Coordination
In addition to the musical effect of such close listening, it’s important to understand that when you hear music clearly, your coordination improves. The reason lies in your nerve cells, also known as neurons.

Our movements depend on our motor neurons. These are the nerve cells that connect xthe brain to the muscles. But we also have sensory neurons, which connect the brain to our sense organs. What makes it all work together is a third kind of nerve cell—the inter neurons. These communicate between the other two types of neurons.

What this means is that when our muscles are more relaxed, we can hear better—the absence of unnecessary muscle tension reduces static in the nervous system, and it’s easier for the sensory neurons to do their job. By the same token, when we hear music more clearly, we also reduce static in the nervous system, so our muscles get clearer signals from the brain. Our coordination becomes more refined. This is why my listening work with the Fantaisie-Impromptu not only gave me a deeper connection to the music, but also resulted in my fingers working with more sensitivity and precision.

I find it very helpful and reassuring to have this knowledge about how the body and brain work. We are whole beings, and each part of us affects our other parts. So it’s understandable that we find practicing so challenging. We often try to improve our playing by focusing on one particular aspect of practicing—such as hand movement or dynamics—when what really helps may be something else, such as listening intently to each sound. We’re always feeling our way and learning as we go. It’s a creative process, and solutions to musical problems are often not where we expect them to be.

But in addition to this challenging aspect of practicing, we can also find great rewards in our work process. When we engage every part of ourselves in it, we learn so much. We are continually growing, which makes us feel alive and motivated to work further.

What IS Freedom?
Recently I received an interesting reaction to this video. A young pianist told me that although it was perhaps the most fluid piano playing he’d ever heard, he didn’t want to look like that when he played. It looked stiff and rigid to him—not free. It didn’t fit his concept of what making music should look like. I felt sad about his reaction—I know what he is missing in rejecting what he saw. Yet I also saw intelligence in what he said. He was afraid that if he gave up his familiar way of thinking, he would lose something he cherished—his freedom of expression.

I knew that his reaction came from the same place as my feeling of being spooked. Somehow, true freedom doesn’t always look the way we think it should look. Somehow, freedom often means giving up who we think we are in order to discover who we really are. Way, deep inside. Beyond trying. Beyond showing off. Beyond everything that isn’t completely genuine and unforced.

When we experience real freedom, our habitual self, our ego, disappears. We can become one with the music. We can fulfill our talent. The vastness and depth of great music can flow freely through us, unimpeded by blocks in our listening.

You know it when it happens, even if it’s just for a moment. And audiences know when a performer is engaged deeply like that. They can feel the music striking their hearts and minds as the composer intended. Everyone feels their humanness, together, when great music is given to them authentically, unfiltered by the performer’s habitual concepts.

Yes, it’s a lot of work for us. And we often have to give up what we think is freedom. But this work, this great discipline, is a route to true freedom—to discovering how well we can really play.

An Invitation
I invite you to take the opportunity to experience such freedom. Allow yourself the time to notice how every pitch and harmony in a phrase affects you inside. Go extremely slowly and give yourself the luxury of enjoying every sound you make. See what happens in a week’s time. You could jot down a few of your observations during the week as you discover what it’s like to expand your receptiveness—to become more deeply acquainted with your magical gift for responding to musical sounds.

This kind of practicing is very different from what most of us are used to. If you have any questions about the process, I’d be happy to hear from you. Please feel free to send in a question for possible inclusion in next month’s issue of Fearless Performing.

I wish you much joy and success in making music.

Madeline Bruser

P.S. It can be hard to do this kind of work on your own. If you’d like support and guidance on your journey to musical freedom, come for a free consultation.

P.P.S. This kind of freedom brings a whole new dimension to performance, and creates a new relationship with stage fright. If you’d like to come to my new monthly class to learn the  unique, simple, and potent Fearless Performing Exercise. Class meets the first Thursday of every month, beginning November 1. For more information, scroll down to the Upcoming Workshops on this link.

Q & A of the Month

I tried “Grandma’s Recipe for Space” in your last issue and found it made my mind really crazy. It didn’t feel spacious at all. But then after the ten minutes was finally up, I did feel more spacious than before I started it. Can you explain this? 

Everyone has this experience, especially when they first try the recipe. When you sit quietly with your mind, your mind seems very loud. You notice how busy it is, how much chatter is going on all the time. But when you’re busy doing things during your day, you don’t have time to notice all the chatter in your mind. It’s there, but you don’t notice it.

It’s like riding in a car, speeding down the highway. While you’re in the car, you can’t really see how fast you’re going. You’re just sitting in the car, and maybe talking to someone, or listening to the radio. But if you sit on the side of the road and watch any car speeding by like that, it looks really fast.

Grandma’s Recipe, which is the recipe for mindfulness meditation, gives you that roadside view of your mind. You sort of step outside of your mind and look at it, and you realize that it’s full of racing thoughts. 

What’s actually happening is that because you’re not doing anything but sitting there, you’re not adding to the contents and speed of your mind. And as you’re watching your mind race around, your mind is actually emptying out somewhat. When you stand up after that, you feel more space in your mind. You feel calmer, more refreshed.

It’s like cleaning your kitchen. While you’re busy washing dishes and wiping off the countertops, you’re very aware of all the mess, and it can be rather irritating. But even after cleaning up even part of the kitchen—say, getting the dishes out of the sink—you feel some sense of relief. There’s less clutter, more space. Grandma’s Recipe de-clutters your mind that way. It gives you more mental space. 

September 25, 2012 

At seventeen, I arrived at music school at Indiana University, full of ambition and excited about being surrounded by musicians and about studying with my new teacher, Menahem Pressler. The music building at the school is round, and before school even started, I began walking through the circular hallways looking for an empty practice room. As I literally walked around in circles, countless times, hearing dozens of pianists practicing away, I was sure that they were all better than I was.

At the time of my first lesson, Pressler was away on a concert tour, and his assistant met with me and assigned a set of exercises for finger independence, which Pressler wanted all of his new students to practice. I practiced those exercises intensely, five or six hours a day, during my first week of school. And in my panic about measuring up to the competition and pleasing my new teacher, I lost six pounds. I also came down with a cold. On top of that, I got my first case of poison ivy while walking in the woods on campus. I was a wreck, and I called my parents for sympathy.

A day or so later, the phone rang in my dorm room. “Madeline? It’s Mr. Pressler. How are you?” I was shocked to hear from him. “Fine,” I managed to say. “Your father tells me you’re not so fine,” he said. In a kind voice, he asked me to come to meet him that week, for the first time. I still get tears in my eyes remembering how relieved I was that he cared.

That phone call was the beginning of a wonderful relationship. Pressler is an amazing pianist, and he opened me up to a whole new world of sound and possibilities with the piano. But his kindness and warmth were equally important to me, and I worked for him as I did for no other teacher. He was direct but gentle with his critical comments, and he taught me to value imagination and creativity in my practicing. My time in the practice room became infused with curiosity and openness. It was about exploring music, the piano, and my artistic nature— not about proving anything to anybody, or struggling to get somewhere. (Or practicing finger exercises five hours a day.) Everything opened up inside me.

The Shift Toward Overwhelm

I feel very fortunate that I had those two years at Indiana, focusing on being an artist and enjoying practicing, before I hit New York City and started studying at Juilliard. From my perspective now, those two years, far removed from the stress of urban life and heavy professional demands, were like an extended summer, in which I had space to relax and to develop as I needed to.

As summer turns to fall right now, I’m aware of how the relaxation of summer is already giving way to the demands of a tighter schedule, increased activity all around me, and the challenges of bringing new projects to fruition. It’s so easy to get overwhelmed in the fall season, and to lose the spaciousness and freedom we typically have in summer. As inspired as we may be about new projects, new people, and the new concert season and academic year, we get anxious and feel more stressed in the midst of it all. We know it’s time to get down to work.

But it’s possible to get down to work in a spacious way. And it’s essential.

Balancing Abundance with Space

Like the abundant fall season, we musicians are rich in our gifts—abundant in a variety of colorful emotional energies and in our responsiveness to sound. We are so lucky to have these gifts.

But to come fully alive, our gifts need to breathe. When we give ourselves enough space to breathe, we have room inside of us to both receive and recreate all the richness in the music we play or sing—to respond fully to what we hear so that we can transmit it to others.

In a previous article, Getting Intimate with Greatness, I wrote about how to relate to the myriad of sounds in the music we practice, so that all of them can vibrantly flow through us. But there is an even more basic step we need to take. This step is to establish an initial spaciousness and openness to music before you even begin to practice.

To do this, simply sit still and take a moment to breathe and to feel your own presence, physically and mentally, before you engage with your instrument. In other words, before connecting with music, you need to connect with yourself—your living, breathing self.

You can think of yourself as a living, open vessel, with energy constantly flowing in from the world around you through your senses, mixing with your own energies, and then radiating and flowing outward to the environment and to others through the communicative energy in your speech, in the music you make, and in your presence.

When we are already filled up with stress and sensory overload, our system is clogged. Musical sounds have very little room inside of us to play, dance, flow, and make their magic. But if we can de-stress and unwind, our body and mind can open, and we can receive and enjoy new sensory abundance, so that it can flow through us freely and reach others.

Grandma’s Recipe for Space

Maybe you remember visiting your grandma as a child, and enjoying a level of relaxation that your parents didn’t have, because they were so busy making a living and running the household. Or maybe you remember a favorite vacation spot and how it felt to breathe fresh air and not worry about the usual things you have to do. When you came home from your time at Grandma’s or on vacation, you had new energy for life; you felt refreshed and ready to take on the challenges of school, practicing, or taking care of business.

Until the avalanche hit—the inevitable demands of work and life. Then your system started to feel the strain and to shut down and close off. Your vessel became too full.

To help you find that mental space again, here is Grandma’s recipe for creating space in your practicing:

1. Remember that refreshing time, the feeling of being able to breathe.

2. Take at least two minutes to do nothing but breathe. Just sit comfortably upright and notice your breathing. In, out—in, out. When your mind wanders, gently bring it back to your breathing. Being upright helps you be both alert and relaxed, as you need to be for making music. It also allows your lungs to fully expand with breath, which nourishes your entire system. Keep your eyes open, gazing somewhat downward, without trying to focus them on anything. This will keep you aware of your environment yet also focused on your breathing.

3. Then notice how you feel different—perhaps more calm or awake—or maybe you realize how tired you are.

4. Gently begin to practice your instrument, noticing how the first few sounds affect you. See if you can notice each sound coming into your body and changing you inside. This is what music does when you’re open to it. 

5. Continue practicing with this awareness—of sounds and inner sensations, as well as the sensations of touch and movement.

6. Notice when you begin to lose this awareness.

7. Stop.

8. Take one to three deep breaths and begin the process again—or if you prefer, go back to step 2.

After your practice session, reflect on what happened and what it means to you.

Surprise!

In case you didn’t realize it, Grandma’s recipe is 2500 years old—it’s the recipe for what is called mindfulness. It begins with mindfulness meditation—with awareness of your breathing—and it continues with mindfulness of sounds and sensations.

Mindfulness is the opposite of mindlessness. But it’s much more than just being careful and minding your p’s and q’s. Mindfulness is really the innate capacity of your mind to be aware of whatever is happening in the present moment. And the recipe above is a basic method for cultivating that capacity, by deliberately paying attention to something—in this case, your breathing, and then the sounds and sensations you’re experiencing. This simple act actually changes your brain each time you do it. The more you do it, the more you build the habit of noticing what’s happening in your daily experience—the sounds and sensations of practicing, the atmosphere in the room, the energy in your body in different situations that arise. Your nervous system actually changes, and you become less driven by habit and more aware of the present moment and its possibilities. You wake up to vivid reality and become more of yourself. More sensitive, more musical, more artistic.

All kinds of people have been using mindfulness techniques in recent years, including athletic teams, cancer patients, doctors, and business leaders. They do it because it gives them more access to their mental power and frees them from problematic levels of tension and stress. It also brings out their receptivity to people they’re working with, and it opens their minds to creative solutions they hadn’t noticed before.

And it has begun to make its way into the lives of musicians, who are overwhelmed with the demands of playing their instruments, job stress, and performance anxiety. I’ve been doing it for 35 years and have watched many musicians discover their true capabilities through regularly practicing this simple discipline.

If you’re concerned that adding this additional activity to your day will be too much, know that even ten minutes a day can make your practice time more efficient. So it actually saves you time.

Taking Care of the Vessel

Music demands so much of us—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Taking time to breathe is a way of taking care of ourselves in the midst of these demands so that more of our gifts can shine through in the music we make—more vitality, more richness and depth. More beauty.

Try it, and discover for yourself how giving yourself space to breathe can open up your playing or singing. If you live in the New York area, you are welcome to sign up for my new monthly meditation class.

If you’re interested in pursuing meditation but don’t live near me, I’d be happy to hear from you and to recommend other options for learning and practicing this mind-opening technique. In any case, feel free to send in a question related to this practice, for possible inclusion in next month’s issue.

I wish you much joy and success in making music.

Madeline Bruser

P.S. The meditation class for musicians will meet on the first Tuesday of every month. Space is limited. Reserve your spot now for the class on October 2^nd, at 8 pm.

P.P.S. If you’d like to find out more about how you can practice with more awareness, ease, and enjoyment, schedule a free consultation.

Stephen is a world-class trumpeter who has performed internationally and at the White House. He is also a conductor and composer, and the Director of Fulcrum Point New Music Project. He is a wonderful teacher, a former tenured professor at Indiana University, and guest lecturer at Northwestern University. Some of his trumpet wisdom appears in my book, The Art of Practicing. In this article he shares many refreshing thoughts and ideas, all with the inspiring energy that characterizes his gorgeous playing.

Enjoy!

Madeline Bruser

Adventure, Experimentation, and Discovery

By Stephen Burns

August 25, 2012

Summer is a season of adventure, experimentation, and discovery for many musicians. Music festivals and seminars abound in the most inspiring locales—from the majestic mountains of Aspen, Colorado to the lawns of Tanglewood; from the cloistered enclave of The Center for Advanced Musical Studies at Chosen Vale to the bucolic intimacy of Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music. These are often the first places where we experience the magical moment when our imagination and physical energies combine to create an inspired musical statement. And these unique events are also portals into the creative world of superior musicians.

I have fond memories of my first summer at Tanglewood, where I attended a series of master classes given by the great violinist Joseph Silverstein on the complete solo violin works of J.S. Bach. As a young trumpet student, what I found most intriguing was that the majority of his comments had nothing to do with playing the violin, but centered mostly around transcending technical challenges and allowing each phrase to breathe, sing, and dance according to very basic laws of nature. Through musical gestures and actual dance steps, he demonstrated how melodic and harmonic phrases were constructed upon subtle, yet quite ordinary systems of impulse and flow that we can experience physically. He talked about how each dance movement of the dance suites has a musical fulcrum point of tension and release. He even related the works’ musical structures to the architecture of great European cathedrals. I had never heard anyone talk that way about music before. It blew me away.

That experience instilled a lifelong passion in me for communicating the essence of music. Hearing Silverstein play and teach also propelled me into a lifelong search for expressive qualities and vibrant sound worlds, through assimilating, rather than imitating, the performances of great masters—including Björling. Rubinstein, Casals, Milstein, Caballe, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

The Magic of Re-Creating

We often forget that we are all creative beings. The argument in music is that the composer is the creator. But in order to actually live and be heard, their music needs to be re-created—either with strings and horsehair, wind and wood, brass and buzzing, percussive materials of all timbres, or even computers and electronics.

We make music with our heart and soul, our burning intellects, and discipline—that magical confluence of longing, motivation, and dedication. In spite of our strong aspiration to play better, the process often seems daunting and confusing. To realize our goals we must develop and maximize our ability to coordinate three essential elements of the creative process: imagination of an ideal, performance of that ideal in reality, and learning to bring our reality closer to our ideal through perceptive adjustments

Invocation of Your Ideal

The process of playing music is fairly simple: you hear it ideally in your mind and then you play it in reality. At the beginning, the ideal and the reality may be quite distant from one another, but through consistent and attentive practice the body naturally develops in the direction of producing the desired sounds.

Practicing without listening for an ideal concept of tone, rhythm, and musicality is a bit like navigating the ocean, while steering your ship with your eyes closed. You may find your way, but your chances are better if you develop your powers of perception and use your intuition and intellect to master the nautical knowledge you need for arriving at your port safely and with a joyous appreciation for the journey.

To stay inspired and energized through the long and challenging journey of learning a piece of music, it can be helpful to reflect on several emotional, physical, and intellectual similarities between playing a musical instrument and sailing the seas:

• A strong sense of adventure mixed with an innate awareness of our vulnerability
• The emotional thrill of riding the energy of the elements
• A visceral ebb and flow similar to harmonic and rhythmic movement
• The vastness and depth in exploring uncharted territory
• Tremendous satisfaction in the completion of a powerful journey

The Importance of Motivation

Before we embark upon our musical journey, it is important to identify and connect deeply with our inspiration and motivation. Why are we taking this trip, and where are we going? Being clearly connected to the purest of musical intentions allows us to simplify the process and trust in the coordination of mind, body, and musical expression. It also clarifies the entirety of musical intention: the whole phrase, the overarching emotional message, and every detail of Feeling, Intonation (melody in harmony), Rhythm, Style, and Tone—which gives us an acronym for putting music FIRST.

As a young and ambitious student, I had dreams of greatness that were based on an egocentric view—a desire to be the best, to beat the competition and rise to the top of the world’s ranks of soloists. If you reread the last sentence, you will see no mention of music, feeling, or artistic intention. I had plenty of inspiration, but the driving force was one of insecurity, neurosis, and aggression. These are extra, unnecessary layers that distance us from truly entering into the moment and creating every detail.

Using Your Imagination

In our creative process we need to engage our imagination and connect with our sound utilizing the essential elements of earth, water, air and fire. Conceptualizing beyond notes is not a new idea. Musical terms such as secco, dolce, fondu, and con fuoco direct us to create a quality of sound with additional sensuous attributes, which transcend the bare-bones notation.

Often simply observing and appreciating the movements and colors of nature can enhance our interpretations. One exercise is to take a passage and play it with full musical intention. (Recording this process helps.) Then take a moment and imagine the deep, brilliant blue of an evening summer sky just after sunset. Play the same passage again, imbuing the tone with this essence. The difference can be startling. Then shift colors—blood-red wine, or sunflower yellow—and repeat the passage. You can do the same experiment with taste, temperature, shape, direction, or material.

For rubato I often imagine the natural momentum created by a bouncing ball to help me viscerally connect with the energy of acceleration. Or I observe the movements of a bird coming to rest on a branch to capture the sense of placement for the final notes of a fast movement.

Everyone has memories of musical moments when their conceptual world of sound was blown away. That summer at Tanglewood my mind was blown again and again by the Boston Symphony musicians who would imitate each other—at times a trumpet seemed as rich as the trombone, or the flute disappeared into the strings. And Buddy Wright’s clarinet solo in the Rachmaninoff 2^nd Symphony was so otherworldly that the entire orchestra shuffled their feet in applause during the movement.

In the same way, we can invoke our favorite musical moment, as well as the qualities of our teachers and favorite artists. Hold them in your heart and mind, and let your music be infused with that energy as you share it through your musical offerings.

Making Friends With Ourselves

My very first memory of my summer at the Tanglewood Institute was not musical at all. In the beginning I was very nervous and shy, feeling that I wouldn’t be able to meet the exacting standards of the musicians around me, so I kept my guard up and practiced seriously. In line for dinner that first night I met a gorgeous, blonde violinist from California, who completely disarmed me by saying, “Hi. My name is Heidi. We’re going to be making music together for the next 10 weeks so we should probably make friends with each other.” It wasn’t until many years later that I realized that this was the most important and profound teaching of the summer.

Learning is the ongoing process of making friends with every aspect of our creative process—especially with ourselves when the reality of who we are falls short of our ideals, which it certainly will. What then? It is most helpful to acknowledge our humanity, with all of our strengths and weaknesses, and to work toward our ideal with kindness toward ourselves, clear perception, and a sense of humor.

Working With Emotions

How often have we reacted to making a mistake with an angry outburst or expletive? What does that ultimately accomplish? Everyone has stubbed their toe at one time or another—maybe walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night. But on the way back to bed, did you stub it again at the same place? Probably not—the body automatically remembers where that impediment was and avoids it with a few feet to spare. When we allow the body to perceive all elements of a situation—both positive and negative—it will naturally correct any error.

But if we become carried away by negative emotions while playing, we effectively obliterate our mind’s ability to perceive the exact musical nature of the mistake: was it too early, too late, too high or too low; into how many shards did we shatter that chord or note? Was the mind in a creative, singing mode or a critical, commenting mode?  The body needs this data—this clear perception—to learn, and to naturally correct itself the next time.

To develop your body wisdom, consciously notice your mind, body, and sound the next time you play. Is your mind completely engaged in the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic process of expressing the musical phrase? Is your body ideally aligned, energized, and relaxed? Was your process too passive or too aggressive? The moment to honestly assess your playing is when you’ve finished the phrase. You can reflect upon what you just played in an objective, positive manner.

Aligning Body and Sound

Musical imagination involves not only the conceptual mind, but also a conscious relationship with the bodily experience of sound. When you initiate a sound from an inspired state of mind, you can engage your body so that your seat or stance is grounded in earth energy, drawing richness and stability up through your legs and seat. Try doing this, and notice if the energy flows through your torso just as water and air naturally do in the process of living and breathing. Notice how your body relates to the natural world: Earth is a natural foundation upon which water flows, and air flows above. When musicians clench their abdominal, chest, and back muscles in an effort to make a more powerful sound, they actually inhibit the resonance of sound in the body.

You can think of the body as a lighting rod between heaven and earth. It needs earth in order to be grounded, vertical, and energized for most fully realizing our musical intentions. Ancient Buddhist teachers have described this open, vibrant state as similar to the result of properly tuning of the strings of an instrument: “Not too tight, not too loose.”

Discipline: Curiosity, Longing, and Dedication

Those words apply to our discipline as well. If we are too rigid, we lose the playful spontaneity of each musical moment. If we are too sloppy or distracted, the details often fall through the cracks. We often view discipline from the outside in—the idea of a disciplinarian imposing their will upon a student. But if we can stay in touch with our curiosity, longing, and dedication, we can even begin to experience our sound as a profound teacher. We can listen to each sound and sense whether or not we’re playing from our true inner voice. 

If you feel disconnected from your inner voice in a passage, try slowing it down to half the tempo, or even quarter tempo—until you feel the raw rhythmic and dynamic energy in the music—the subdivisions and chromatic alterations that give it texture and drive. This process can reinvigorate your enthusiasm and dedication. 

Finally, it is important to temper your aspiration with the understanding that there is no single, absolute way to play any piece of music. In fact, it’s best when the playing is fresh each time—when we communicate straight from the living moment of our heart, mind, and body.

You will encourage such freshness if, through all of your efforts, you remember to appreciate the endless possibilities in working with music—the genuine adventure, the mess of the experiment, and the joy of discovery.

Stephen Burns

Q & A of the Month

I struggle with a very competitive nature. I am always comparing myself to others and find myself constantly feeling inadequate. How do I let go of comparing myself to others? Also, how do I keep it from discouraging me?

This is a great question—one that many people struggle with. I think all of us, to one degree or another, tend to compare ourselves to others in different areas of our life. We tend to judge ourselves. Even reflecting on how universal this tendency is can help you relax about it a little. Then it has less power over you.

One key to working with this tendency actually lies in the experience of feeling discouraged. When we feel discouraged, it contains sadness, which is a core feeling, a deep heart feeling. If you tune into that underlying, painful sadness—“I wish I felt better about myself; I feel hopeless”—you are touching something raw and vulnerable in yourself. Realize that this vulnerability is good. In fact, it’s the place where music can really touch you, and from which you can make music authentically and connect with other people. You can feel proud of yourself for being willing to feel it and admit it–that you are not hiding behind a false confidence as so many people do, pretending that they feel completely fantastic about themselves and that everything is hunky dory.

Once you’re in touch with that core of sadness, you can take a little time to let it flow through you, just like music flows through you. We need to give feelings plenty of space to flow through like that—to respect and value them, and to take care of ourselves that way. Otherwise they can just pile up and create blocks to our energy. If you open to it and let it flow through, you might then find yourself more open to music. People usually play better after taking some space for themselves.

The other very important thing to do is to seek guidance from a good teacher—to make sure that the way you’re practicing your instrument is really serving you and helping you play as well as you can. No one can do it alone, and in seeking help from someone else, you are honoring your own intelligence—it means you already have the wisdom to sense that you could benefit from some guidance. So you could take heart from that and follow your intelligence. In that way, your intelligence will keep developing.

P.S. New York Area Pianists: There’s an amazing performer inside of you. If you’re ready to have someone bring it out of you, I have a couple of openings. Schedule a free consultation.

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

July 25, 2012

I recently took my daughter to the airport, to see her off to Colorado, where she was visiting a friend. Although I had taken her to the airport several times, this was the first time that I didn’t accompany her all the way to the gate; I said goodbye at the security line, and she went through security without me. She got herself to the plane on her own. Immediately, the thought came: Not too long from now she’ll be leaving us forever—leaving home, to live her own separate life. Tears came. Was it that long ago that we flew with her to California for the first time, when she was just a year old, and she got scared looking out the window seeing how far away the ground was? Will the 18 years of having her as this amazing guest in our home really be over not too long from now?

I sat by a window and watched planes come and go, waiting for hers to take off. My love for my daughter, the joy of being her mother, and the sadness of knowing she’ll be gone in a few years, filled me up and left me uninterested in reading the book I had brought with me. I was just a person with a heart, sitting there and feeling it.

The Golden Key

I tell this simple story because this experience, of feeling our heart, is an essential and often overlooked step in gaining confidence in ourselves, both as human beings and as performers. Although this soft, tender place in us may seem unrelated to the dazzling confidence we see in a great performer, it is, in fact, the very essence of our communicative power. When we believe in the power of an open heart, with all its vulnerability, and we treat our heart with care and intelligence, it becomes stronger. We can then harness its power so that it radiates and shines. It takes courage, but when the heart’s power shines full force, its magnetism is unrivaled. And confidence is just there. 

How We Lose Power

Because we often don’t believe that this soft place in ourselves contains great power, we  don’t pay attention to it during practicing. We sometimes ignore our heart and catch ourselves going through the motions of practicing without letting ourselves respond deeply to all the sounds we’re making. Or we practice like machines, repeating passages joylessly to ensure as much technical perfection as possible. Or we find ourselves struggling to make an emotional connection to the music—trying too hard to express ourselves or to bring out certain notes, or certain qualities, in a phrase or piece. And for many of us, voices in our head sometimes tell us to hurry up and push ourselves, which makes us tense and inhibits musical flow.

Such practicing does the opposite of what we need for gaining confidence in performance. It trains us to lose touch with who we are—with the humanness that connects us to music and to other people. It derails us from our communicative power, preventing us from developing conviction and confidence in what we have to offer.

Beyond the Music and the Moves

Practicing is a process of getting familiar with a piece and with the movements we use to play it. We need to develop physical ease—to be comfortable in our body, to feel that our body knows the piece and that we can rely on that. We also need to know it with our ears—to hear it clearly and thoroughly, and to respond to those sounds internally and to become familiar with that emotional content of the music and how it’s organized. These are daunting demands in themselves.

But we also need to train the mind for performance—to help it become strong and reliable. So many musicians, who have trained themselves to master a piece, say that they nevertheless lack mental strength to feel confident onstage.

Gaining Access to the Power

The key is to use the mind to pay attention to the heart. Then both our mind and our heart will get stronger, and we will be more ready for that vulnerable moment when we’re facing an audience.

In previous articles, I mentioned the benefits of connecting with the heart—in relaxing about making mistakes, in knowing your limitations, and in letting go of struggle and discovering simplicity. I will also soon be offering an audio exercise online for developing communicative power and confidence in performance. Here, in this article, I offer you a simple and far-reaching method for connecting to the heart at any time, in any situation. If you make a daily practice of opening up in this way, it can have great impact on the music you make.

A Little Goes a Long Way

Let’s say you’re caught up in practicing and getting frustrated. Or your mind keeps wandering, losing focus.

Just pick a thought to reflect on for a minute—something that touches your heart and reminds you of what really matters in life. It could be something like the story I related about taking my daughter to the airport—something that easily brings up feelings of love, joy, or sadness. It could be taking a moment to appreciate the opportunity you have to make music—to remember that not everyone has this opportunity. Or you could reflect on a sad story you read about in the news or on something sad that happened to a friend. 

I recommend trying it right now. Just stop and close your eyes for a minute, and reflect on something that touches your heart. Notice what happens inside you.

Most people say they feel a warmth inside of them from doing this simple exercise. This is because the exercise goes straight to the point—it gets you where you live.

Experiment

How does this lead to confidence in performance?

I encourage you to experiment. Try it every day, for a few weeks or months, and see what happens. Do it before you practice your instrument. Try it again when you lose focus. Do it anytime during the day when you want to get off the fast track, recharge, and remember what really matters in your life. It will help you see your practicing as a golden opportunity to connect to yourself. And it will connect you to music on a new level.

We definitely need to learn the music and the moves as well as possible, and to develop great coordination and a great ear. But in addition, the more heart we bring to our daily practicing, the more prepared we will be for our moment in the spotlight, when our heart is beating louder than usual. As we get more familiar with feeling tender and vulnerable, we gradually become comfortable with this experience and are less thrown by it onstage. And all of our warmth and openness will infuse our performance and communicate to our audience.

This is confidence in performance.

I invite you to send in any questions or comments you might have about this rich and rewarding process. 

And I wish you much joy and success in making music.

Madeline Bruser

P.S. There’s an amazing performer inside of you. If you’re ready to have someone bring it out of you, I have a couple of spaces open. Schedule a free consultation.

Q&A of the Month

No matter how many times I tell myself it’s OK to make mistakes, I have lingering regret about some of the worst decisions I’ve made in my musical career. I’ve done things that have affected my reputation and lowered my confidence for performing. What suggestions do you have? 

Sometimes we have to learn the hard way. And sometimes it’s very painful. Although there may be a few lucky people who have managed to accomplish great things without making a lot of mistakes, I think most successful people have some painful stories they could tell you.

I once attended a demonstration of kyudo—Japanese archery—at which the student-teacher talked about what is involved in truly mastering this discipline. I was very moved to hear him say, “A master is someone who has mde a lot of mistakes.” I recommend that you reflect on what this means, and also that you ask your friends, colleagues, and teachers how they feel about some of the mistakes they’ve made. Some people may cover their pain well, but everyone has done something they’re not proud of. Feel the pain, and appreciate how brave you are in doing so. The regret you feel may remain, but if you don’t try to avoid it, it can bring humility, as well as compassion for others who are in the same boat. Feelings like that can make you a better musician and human being, which can bring you greater success.

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