Practicing Away from Your Instrument, Part 2

The first entry in this series is a bit esoteric. It is based on the idea that we are not just WHAT we do, but also on HOW we do. Those who succeed at a particular task tend to be people who believe that they can succeed at that task and then work hard towards achieving their goal. And people who believe that they can succeed at a particular task tend to believe that they can succeed in other tasks.

So we can also say that if we believe that we can succeed in one thing, we are more likely to believe that we can succeed in another. All too often I have had students (of all ages) tell me that something is just too hard for them. And often, this is a running theme for these students. A new technique, a memorization request, a more difficult piece of music, learning to use the sustain pedal--these are all "too hard". 

The first and most basic way to start practicing away from your instrument is to adopt a new and improved outlook! This is also a technique used in cognitive behavioral therapy, in which we learn to notice, challenge, and change our damaging/unhelpful thoughts! The first step is to just notice when we have a thought that something is too difficult for us to achieve--and to try to notice this thought without judging it (or ourselves)! The second step is to challenge this thought and see if it is correct. In other words, have there been times in your past when you have thought something was too hard and you achieved it in spite of that? And the third step is to change our thoughts--this we can do by replacing our negative thoughts with a positive alternate. For example, instead of thinking "this is too difficult", we can decide to replace this with "this will be a challenge, but I will be able to do this with some work!" After a while, this will become a more common way of thinking!

How we approach our life will be, for the most part, how we approach our music--at any level and at any age!

Practicing Away from Your Instrument, Part 1

I vividly remember an experience in graduate school where I was to be performing several selections from George Crumb's "Makrokosmos, Book 1". I was down to the wire on my memorization, and these pieces are not the easiest thing in the world to memorize! For those unfamiliar, Crumb uses not only the keys of the piano, but also the body of the instrument as well as the strings to create unique sounds. For example, he has the pianist put metal thimbles on four of his fingers to play specific strings, either tapping them or strumming them, to create a ghostly sound. 

By "down to the wire", I mean that I had a performance in a matter of a couple of days and had yet to memorize any of one complete movement from this set. I was extremely tired and couldn't make it to the practice room (even though only a five minute walk away). So I laid the music out on my desk and left it there for two days. Every time I passed my desk on the way to the kitchen, bathroom, bed, etc., I would consciously look at the score for a couple of minutes and "feel" my way through the piece. After two days, I made my way back to the practice room and was stunned to find that I had memorized this entire piece without playing a note. It had happened solely through "mental practice"!

The next few posts will be about how one can practice away from your instrument and how to make the most of this time and how to have fun with it!