The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 008 Marc Gelfo: Peak Performance & Peak Practice: Science, Tech, & Mindfulness (There's an app for this!)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number eight. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now your host, Dr. Rene Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. Today, I speak with Mark Gelfo, horn player and founder and CEO at Modacity, an awesome new practicing app that I discovered recently and just love. If you've listened to episode number two with Jason Heath, you might remember how enthusiastically

Starting point is 00:00:46 Jason spoke about Modacity and how he also loved practicing with it. I was really intrigued because what he was describing was so cool and incorporated so many features that I would want in a practicing app if I could create one. So Jason was really great. Thanks, Jason. And offered to introduce me to Mark. And he and I had a super fun conversation. Mark has been combining music and technology since he was five years old. In college, he studied cognitive science and computer science. And after applying the knowledge he got from those degrees to practicing the French horn, he became an internationally touring symphony musician playing with the San Francisco Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra.

Starting point is 00:01:29 As I've mentioned, Mark is co-founder and CEO at Modacity, and in his words, he loves building software to help create a world where everyone makes music. I've downloaded the Modacity app, and I've been using it. It's really great for organizing, focusing, and keeping track of my practice. It keeps everything I need in one place. I can set goals, make practicing playlists. it has a great metrodrone function yes you heard this correctly metrodrone i can take notes it's very easy to record myself i can see statistics on my practice and it has a really cool deliberate

Starting point is 00:02:08 practice function that helps with self-analysis it's all stuff that we know about and tools and strategies that i definitely aim to use all the time but the app makes it so easy there's no excuse to skip any of those good habits. I love it. In fact, I love it so much that I'm challenging myself and you guys to a month of mindful practice using modacity. So stay tuned after the interview for all the details on that. Today, Mark and I talk about all things mindful practice, his approach to mindful music making, and we discuss some of the features of modacity. If you want to know even more about Mark, I strongly recommend you download episode 515 of the Contrabass Conversation podcast and listen to Mark's conversation with Jason Heath. It's a great episode, and I'm going to put a link in the show notes for you guys.

Starting point is 00:03:04 And I'll also put a link to a blog entry Jason wrote about modacity and a link to a YouTube video he made about how he uses the app. All right. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Mark Gelfo and that you walk away as inspired as I did after speaking with him. Let's go to the show. Hi, Mark. Thank you so much for joining me today. My pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. I heard about you from Jason Heath, who was speaking so enthusiastically about the amazing app that you created on the show a few weeks ago. I have since downloaded the app. I read about you and I am totally fascinated. it. First of all, because I feel like we both share a very similar view on our approach to practicing, but also because I feel like you've created something that is, in my opinion, a very important tool for musicians. And I would really love to talk to you about both today. On your

Starting point is 00:04:10 Facebook page, the description says, Mark Gelfo, Practice Living Music, Effective Tips for Holistic Artistry, Drawing on Cognitive Science, Movement Arts, Nutrition, Wellness, and Mindfulness. living music i just i love that and it really is at the core of the mission behind this podcast and my blog and the work i do with my students and myself so mark i would love to discuss practicing and talk about the app modacity in a few minutes and before we dive into this i would love to hear about your musical journey and your career in your own words so if you don't mind can you please tell us a little bit about you, how you got to where you are, and how your path has unfolded. Sure. Thank you for that intro. It's great to hear it from somebody else, these ideas. And

Starting point is 00:05:01 the idea that we can live music and that that's a practice is so important to me. Even this conversation that we're having is a form of music making. And even for the people listening, language is processed in many of the same areas of the brain that music is. So I love this idea that we can live musically and practice musically. And it started for me in the womb. I was a drummer, kicker boy. And inside my mom, she said I was constantly pounding rhythms and trying to get out. She thought something was going to happen here. And I was a very active kid and discovered my grandmother's organ around the age of five. And I think my family helped me pick out a melody, take me out to the ballgame. And so I started piano lessons, very traditional

Starting point is 00:05:56 Western pedagogy piano lessons. I think I probably got hit on the hands when I played a wrong note and never even knew the possibility of improvisation until maybe my teenage years. And I don't remember how I found improvisation, but nobody had even mentioned it to me. I started coding when I was eight, which is fairly young. And all throughout high school and middle school, I was doing science stuff and doing music at the same time. I played cello, violin, clarinet, and eventually landed on the horn, which has remained one of the primary challenges and sources of joy in my life since. So I was playing horn. I was having a great

Starting point is 00:06:45 time in high school band and decided that I loved music enough to give my life to it and promptly applied to five music schools and didn't get into any of them. It was kind of a shock. And I thought, oh, well, what am I going to do now? And I'd gotten computer science scholarship offers from basically all five of the sister schools of the music schools I applied to, like Eastman, for example, University of Rochester sent me a scholarship offer. Cincinnati School in music didn't accept me, but they sent me a scholarship offer for computer science. Northwestern didn't accept me. They sent me a scholarship offer for computer science. And so I thought the path was fairly clear. I headed up to Northwestern and started computer science. And

Starting point is 00:07:34 within year one, I had been studying Chinese and very fascinated in language acquisition and how hard Chinese was. And I discovered this thing called cognitive science, the study of how we think, how we process information, what is consciousness, what is mind, and how can we research it in a way that actually creates positive impact in the way we live our lives. So applied cognitive science became my passion throughout that undergrad. And I was thinking about how can I learn Chinese a little bit faster? How can I shave some time off of my character writing and came to realize that the reason I hadn't really excelled in my auditions or musical career to date was because I hadn't been practicing very well. After that, I was still

Starting point is 00:08:31 extremely passionate about music, ended up going to Indiana, starting a second undergrad in horn and audio engineering and within a couple years I won an audition and I was living in Hong Kong playing in the Hong Kong Philharmonic surrounded by very interesting new culture Hong Kong of course is a westernized place and but I had enough Chinese to to experience the culture from that angle and i started learning wing chun kung fu which i think is similar to alexander technique it's like chinese alexander technique the wing chun that was invented by a woman who was looking at the leverage of the body and how we can create great power with very little force very little forcing. It's all about relaxation, mindfulness, awareness. And that, that plus my meditation

Starting point is 00:09:33 practice, which had been key to winning auditions, convinced me to continue diving deeper into my passion for learning, practice and life well lived. And all of those elements you mentioned before, nutrition, body movement, somatic awareness, emotional intelligence. It all comes together in the practice of music, the art and the science of music. So that's what my career is all about. And I'm happy to share it today, whatever I can. Wow. Talk about versatility. This is so incredible. And we can definitely see that you do have this passion for learning. I really love how holistic the approach is. I mean, you mentioned neuroscience and deliberate practice technique and martial arts and spirituality. I think that is truly a unique approach. And I want

Starting point is 00:10:27 to hear more about this in your bio. And you mentioned it a little bit earlier that your scientific focus is on human learning. And so often when we practice an instrument, we focus on the doing part. We play, we repeat mindlessly, and then great. We think that things will magically get better. And if we just play them over and over enough time, and we forget that really taking the time to understand how we are learning is so crucial. And that's where the difference is between successful musicians and others. I love that you call yourself a neurosymphonic French horn player. That's a great term. Can you unwrap this a little bit for us? Neurosymphonic. Yeah, that was a fun one. It's really all about honoring what modern

Starting point is 00:11:19 science knows about how our brains contribute to our experience. A major part of that is the fact that our reality is not outside in. We're not just perceivers of reality. There's not like, I'm, I have a piano in front of me, okay, where we're talking right now. And there's, we tend to think, okay, there's some light waves bouncing off this thing. And so I'm seeing a piano. But actually, the fact that I think there's a piano in front of me is constructed from my understanding of what the visible boundaries are, the colors, like my knowledge about what this thing is, and that I bought it. And it gets just deeper than that when you look at relationships and meaning and identity. We create our reality. And neurosymphonic honors our creative capacity

Starting point is 00:12:14 while speaking to my love for the symphonic tradition, which in my opinion is a paragon of excellence in in musicianship in teamwork in community the symphony is a model for society in some ways an outdated model in other ways a really beautiful ideal to explore so it's kind of the merging of the modern and the traditional that's amazing i think i really do hope that we meet in person one day because i would definitely love to continue this conversation um you know in trying to get to know you a little bit better I listened to the Contrabass Conversation episode with Jason Heath it was really fascinating and interesting and um for the listener it's episode 515 and I'll put a link in the show notes but in the episode you talk

Starting point is 00:13:08 about how you were able to be sometimes more successful than horn players in your studio even though you were not a music major and because of the way you practiced you know And I feel like, unlike most musicians who only, you know, quote unquote, study music in college, you majored in cognitive science and computer science, as you said earlier. And I feel like this intellectual and scientific approach is really the key to unlocking so many problems we face on the instrument. So can you please speak to that a little bit? How do you practice now, Mark, that you have all of this knowledge? What is efficient practice for you? I would love to talk about that, but I absolutely need to sidebar the conversation and talk about success for a minute. Because when you say that I experienced more success than some of my studio mates, in one way, that's true. And in another way, it begs the question, what is success? because each and every one of us has successfully lived our path, our individual life paths with music more successfully. For example, say I had a studio mate named Fred.

Starting point is 00:14:25 Fred has been way more successful at living a Fred life than I have. You know what I mean? Yes. And success in music school was defined with mind-boggling narrowness. And I just bought into it. I never even questioned it. And I really want to encourage listeners to think about what success can be for them, because, yeah, it meant winning a job. And so I applied myself and applied my scientific thinking that we're going to get into in a minute, applied those processes to accelerate my development and be more efficient to win a job. But I hadn't even realized, for example, that there was the possibility of creating my own musical career and finding product market fit by doing small experiments with an audience and iterating on my musical offering based on what was most authentic to me, rather than trying to bend myself to become a successful symphonic player. absolutely and i love that we're living in a time where i feel things are changing and we are allowed to explore more avenues that maybe we were more limited to in the past but

Starting point is 00:15:42 thanks for bringing it up yeah that's the invitation to consider success and then the question is well yeah i know where i want to go how do i get there and science yeah the cognitive of science has a huge, uh, I would say that science offers a lot of research and objectively validated approaches to that. And so does, so do wisdom traditions and so does meditation and mindfulness. And there's a increasing synergy or overlap between them. For example, the reticular activating system is a part of our brain that filters out reality based on a conscious thought so if i think to myself red red red red oh red red red okay even just saying that i'm finding more and more red in my environment at first i was looking at this keyboard no red and

Starting point is 00:16:38 then oh i found a red light and then a red call a cable and then i found a red notebook and now i'm going to switch it to green green green green green and i'm finding more and more green in my environment as I say that word. And the same is true for things that I'm grateful for, things that I'm grateful for, things that I'm grateful for, things that I'm grateful for. Oh, wow. I just called in a whole bunch of gratitude. And what you focus on grows in your awareness and in your reality. Science is proving that and wisdom traditions have preached that for thousands of years. So that's one example of how you get what you want is positive focus. A lot of people say, I don't want to miss this note. I can't miss this note. And that tense negativity is a very

Starting point is 00:17:27 ineffective strategy. If we're just going to look at it and evaluate it, it's a strategy, but it's not an effective strategy. A much more effective strategy would be, I want to get this note. I want to get this note. This is what it sounds like. This is what it's going to feel like this is why I want to get the note. This is how much I'm going to love it when I nail this note. Can you feel the difference even in your body as I evaluate those two strategies? Absolutely. It's a completely different paradigm. Yeah. So as far as practicing, I think a relentless focus on what you want, which of course is informed by discovering sometimes what you don't want and then

Starting point is 00:18:05 and then refining your concepts, staying organized, making sure that you repeat learning stimuli at an appropriate pace. So I could probably cram the entire Bach cello suite number six in a single day onto the horn and spend five hours practicing it. I'd make some progress. But if I didn't revisit it for another four weeks, it would be a really wasted five hours of practice. Whereas if I did five hours distributed over five days, I'd be much more likely to walk away with some long-term learning and improvement. I so agree with that. The analogy I use sometimes with students is the one about brushing your teeth. Well, you can't brush your teeth for an hour on Sunday.

Starting point is 00:19:00 and then forget about it for the rest of the week. You have to do it every day. Yeah, that's the idea. And managing all of that, to me, was really annoying. Especially as a creative, high-energy musician who has a thousand ideas per day, there's like a thousand things I could practice at any given moment. And deciding which one to do and how long to do it for

Starting point is 00:19:28 and when I'm going to do this and when I'm going to do that was an overwhelming task, especially because I just wanted to focus entirely on performing. I know that analyzing is one of the things that gets in the way of performing well. So we don't want our analytical mental circuitry to be very active during the act of performing. And if you're trying to manage your own practice session and really put 100% of your heart and soul into performing a passage, then it's hard unless something else is managing the time and focus and scheduling element to really, really pour yourself into the music. So that was one of the reasons that I wanted to create Modacity. That's a perfect segue. Please tell us about it. I started

Starting point is 00:20:17 exploring it a little bit, and I am totally fascinated. And I feel like it encompasses so many tools that are helpful for all the musicians that you know you can carry around in your pocket like this can you talk to us about this a little bit um you know how it came about and what does it do it came about when i first started at indiana and i was fresh out of computer science and i had a practice journal for the first time in my life i was so proud i got some little Moleskine journal from the bookstore. And day one, I wrote the date and I wrote the time and I wrote what I was practicing. And OK, 15 minutes later, I wrote the time and I wrote what I was practicing. And it was pretty simple now that I think about it. But it was a it was a staple of

Starting point is 00:21:07 my practice life. And I thought, what if I could just do this on a computer and it could record the time for me and track my time and help me manage my learning. And I wanted a tuner and a metronome and recording tools to organize my recordings all in one place. And that was almost 20 years ago. I don't want to date myself. It was a while ago. And I've been thinking of it ever since I when I was taking auditions, I would write code to generate audition rounds automatically or to make sure that I was hitting each audition excerpt with enough regularity and all of that helped but I felt like there was a lack in the world of a really comprehensive systematic application to manage music practice and that that's where Modacity came in I started

Starting point is 00:22:08 building it last year november 2017 is when the company got off the ground we launched in march 2018 and it's starting to get to the point where it's rich enough in features that people are really falling in love with the app and i just met with a flute player here in the sf bay area a pro flute player and she said that she had done peleas peleas and melisande this beautiful Farré piece and that she had practiced the flute solos of Modacity and that afterwards three colleagues came up and said that she had made them cry during the performance. I was really touched to hear that. And I think anybody who plays professionally knows that that's a very rare compliment in the orchestra world. It's a nice one to receive. Oh, for sure. So talk to us about

Starting point is 00:22:59 the technicalities. What does Modacity do? Well, first it gets you organized. So on day one of modacity, you're going to type in the things that you're practicing, whether it's etudes, exercises, pieces of music that you're working on, and then other practices. Meditation is a practice for me, visualization, breathing, those are all practices. Even setting up my workspace is a practice that I track on modacity, tuning my horn. And so you'll enter in the practices and then you create playlists. My Monday playlist, for example, is physical ease. My Tuesday playlist is articulation and rhythm so i have various exercises warm-ups that i put on each day's playlist and then i just hit play and start my practice session then you can budget your time using countdown timers or

Starting point is 00:23:51 it just tracks all your time for you and then it gets into the real fun which is actually practicing with the app there's a self-recorder that it makes it very efficient to record yourself playback record yourself, play back. And that feedback loop is one of the core tenets of learning. Everybody knows that you need feedback to learn, but the pacing of that feedback with self-recording is something that has been quite slow traditionally. Yeah, okay, I'll record myself at my recital and I'll listen back and reflect that there's a whole host of things that I could have improved. And then I'll work on those things for six months and have another recital and then record myself and listen. It's incredibly inefficient. You should be

Starting point is 00:24:35 recording yourself every five minutes, probably at least. I record myself, I listen back like every one to two minutes, generally speaking, unless I'm playing a longer passage. And that rapid feedback loop where I can listen at half speed, I can listen at double speed, I can scroll the waveform and really, really look at what's going on, helps me identify what I want to improve. And then there's an improve button very conveniently in Modacity, where I just press the improve button, choose the area of improvement that I want to make, for example, articulation. And then the app suggests some strategies to make those improvements. And you can use those strategies, like an example of a strategy for improving articulation would be

Starting point is 00:25:25 on brass would be to sing the articulation that you want ta ta ta ta ta or da da da da da or and then to bring it back to the instrument so you test that strategy record yourself testing it and if it really really works then you say yes and then it saves it for you and it's right there in your history in your log and it's a very positive and streamlined way to make focused high priority improvements in playing then i retain them using the note taking feature i just take notes slap them onto practice items and say oh yeah you know remember to sing the articulation in your head or remember to do this remember to do that remember to feel the space behind you as a strategy that i've been playing with really being aware of the physical space behind me when i'm

Starting point is 00:26:15 playing and that's that's the uh basics of it you hit the finish practice button get a little thumbs up and that's a practice session well spent I love that you know I feel that it almost takes a ritualistic aspect to it you know I talk a lot to the students about priming and I feel like that is really a good tool to help with that I know that for me in my life it's very important and priming might be something that takes 30 seconds such as maybe just establishing goals for the day. But if I'm preparing for an audition, priming might take an hour, it might be an hour in the practice room before I play a note, if I really take the time to, you know, do a little bit of yoga, goal setting, planning the practice, maybe do some visualization, all of that. And

Starting point is 00:27:05 this, you know, it's the term you use, strategizing is so important. And a lot of times, you know, I don't want to date myself either. But, you know, I've, there's so many tools I've accumulated, throughout the years definitely the notebook you know things such as recording myself and sometimes for students it might take years to develop all of these and I feel like you've put all of this in an app very well organized you can carry it with you everywhere and as a professional who spends a lot of time in traffic I think it's really great that I can have this with me at all times if I, you know, you get to a gig early and you have everything that you need with you right there, you know, taking the recording so useful. And then for students who carry so much stuff and,

Starting point is 00:27:58 you know, they show up at lessons and they forgot their practice book, but no one forgets their phone. So I, um, yeah, I really love that. I, I feel like it's, you know, addresses so many issues we have with making sure that we are staying on track we're staying focused um helping us set goals helping us organize everything and i just i i the more i'm you know using the app the more i love it and did i hear correctly that you also have a um you know an option for support oh yeah that's one of my favorites uh just right there in the app you can chat with us anybody who needs a little practice tip or just feeling frustrated we're always that we're always there for you and that's that's really fun that's one of the reasons that a lot of people say that

Starting point is 00:28:56 they've you know purchased a lifetime subscription is they just love they love the uh interactions with with the team that's really that's it's truly awesome truly awesome mark i feel like We would need to talk for a couple of hours, but I know you have to get going soon. I've downloaded the app, and I think it's fantastic. And I can guarantee you that all my students are going to hear about it. And I know that Jason Heath, for example, has made a video on how he uses the app. I'm going to link to that in the show notes. And of course, you know, links to the app itself.

Starting point is 00:29:34 um and again i really maybe i need to fly to san francisco so we can you know fully nerd out on practicing for several hours um yeah i i'm so glad that you are a believer in priming that's so important and i did an experiment over the last week where i identified five areas of mastery on a particular horn technique called multifonics when you sing and play at the same time Ooh, tell us about it. Yeah. And like five basic stages, singing and playing, locking in intervals, moving the top note while keeping the bottom note steady.

Starting point is 00:30:11 This is a lot like double stops on a string instrument, but you're doing it with your voice and your lips on a horn. And I only practice these five areas for like one minute per day. I just had a timer in my playlist, my Multiphonics Mastery playlist, one minute each and just go through it, five minutes total. But this idea of revisiting it and priming it in conjunction with the notes that I took each practice session allowed me to make rapid, rapid progress on this thing. And I think that a lot of it just came from activating the circuitry, the neural network around this skill. It was very fascinating.

Starting point is 00:30:55 So just glad that you're recommending that to people. And then the other thing I really quickly want to share is that just last night I was out to dinner and someone mentioned this incredible breathing video exercise. And the natural response is, yes, I can't wait to watch that. Where do you put that? You put it, you open up your phone, right? And most people will make a new note in their notes app or Evernote if they're really advanced. And they have some kind of system that probably has a 20% success rate.

Starting point is 00:31:28 of actually making it into their practice. But what I did was I loaded up modacity and I added that item to a playlist. And I know that the next time I practice that playlist, it's just going to be an item on there. So it's really cool when I get little practice items from people or I'm at a gig and I'm like, oh, Lydian scale. Wow. I need to practice that more. Okay, cool. I make a practice item for it. I schedule it for later and I know I'm going to practice it. It's a really cool way to operate. Wow. And can I get the link for this breathing exercise from you to put in the show notes? Yeah, sure. I'll make a note to give that to you. And you know, I have to say too, I feel like we're a little bit like timer soulmates because I thought I was the only crazy person

Starting point is 00:32:11 using a timer in practice. But for me, it makes it so much more fun. I set goals within the next five minutes, here's what needs to get done. And I don't know, I've been using a timer for many years. And for me, it's one of my favorite practicing tool. Yeah, there I think that there's a contingent of human beings out there called the timer tribe, who really likes working with timers. And there's a proven there's a little dopamine spike when you finish the timer and you do your thing, it feels really good. And then there's a whole other tribe of people that really hates timers. A couple of them, we started to hear from a couple of people in Modacity, like, can you please remove that timer? I hate seeing it. I just want to relax.

Starting point is 00:32:58 We need a timer tribe Facebook group for sure. Yeah. So before I let you go, I know you have another call very soon. Let me take you through a quick round of rapid fire questions. Let's do it. So for the people who are wondering a little bit about what it's like to live the life of a performer and entrepreneur. Can you tell us a little bit about what your life looks like? It's exciting. It's highly variable. It's extremely challenging. It used to be a lot more lonely until I realized that that was kind of killing me inside. And I made it a point to have teammates and to have accountability buddies and to co-work as much as possible.

Starting point is 00:33:38 So I'd advise against trying to work at home in your pajamas all alone every day, all day. I think it's just extremely exciting. It's different every day. And it requires a lot of tenacity and persistence and dedication, which are good things to have. And if you don't have it, it means you're working on the wrong thing. Wow. You mentioned a lot of great qualities here. Are there any other skills that you think musicians studying today or, you know, about to enter a career should acquire in addition to, of course, learning to play their instruments? Yeah, learning to play an instrument is not the primary skill for a commercial musician, in my opinion, because it's really easy to have a great, I mean, it's all about marketing. It's all about commercial viability is about making money. And that's not about being the best musician that you can be. It's about being the best music business person that you can be. So having the skills for like outbound sales, inbound sales, product market fit, managing your money well so that even if you are making money, you're not spending more of it than you make. All of that's really, really important. And of course, the artistry is part of that. But there's a way to synergize it when you understand marketing and product development and business development so that you can work on your most authentic form of artistry in a way that resonates with an audience and generates a livable income. That's super possible. It's more possible than it's ever been. So true. So good. How about a performance that stayed with you throughout the years,

Starting point is 00:35:17 you that lives music? Oh, there's so many. The one that comes to mind immediately was in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. And it was a tour with San Francisco Symphony and we were playing Mahler One. It's a very deep piece in my heart. Mahler is one of those composers I grew up with. and I had a dear friend in the audience and it just you know when the horn stood up in the finale and I had memorized the last page so I didn't have a music stand I was just like looking at Michael Tilson Thomas conducting surrounded by this wall of sound and Mahler's name in gold gold leaf on the balcony of the Concertgebouw in the back balcony it was just like one of those

Starting point is 00:36:06 incredible moments of joy and arrival and satisfaction and gratitude and wonder that this boy who thought he would never get to play in a symphony orchestra was getting to experience this moment. Wow, I think I just got goosebumps. Yeah, I definitely got them. And I'm gonna guess that maybe one of your favorite tool in the practice room is modacity. You have a favorite function on it oh boy it it is my favorite tool i hate practicing without modacity now every now and then i'll pick up the horn and doodle or toot or do something but every day that i practice now it's with modacity and i practice a lot more now that i have the app because it's just so much more enjoyable but yeah i'd say that the deliberate practice function

Starting point is 00:36:54 is something that I know every time I use it, it's radically effective. And yet even I, the creator of this app, fail to use it as often as I should. So I'm going to publicly commit to using the deliberate practice feature a little bit more. Sounds great. We can all, you know, have a little accountability partnering going on here. How about a favorite book that you would recommend to our listeners? Oh, man, the first one that comes to mind is not always the best one that comes to mind. So I'm going to share a few. The first was Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery by Eric Franklin, which is a book that covers the entire complexity of the human body, every body system, and how you can use imagery to improve its function. For example, right now,

Starting point is 00:37:42 if you just imagine that your shoulder blades on your back are like rags, like if you take a dish rag and you wipe a pair of glass and you wipe it circular, that your shoulder blades are just gliding on your back and that they're completely free. Doesn't that change your state a little bit? There's all these visualization exercises in there. I'm pretty sure we're all trying to do this right now yeah you gotta you gotta do it or imagine uh like water flowing down your shoulders through your elbows through your wrists and out your fingertips warm water flowing out your fingertips it's like oh such a nice visualization another book boy i've read so many books i would look at the lean startup by eric reese and he talks about using the scientific method to develop

Starting point is 00:38:37 a business by treating it as an experiment to find out how to build a successful business and it's just as valid for startups as it is for musicians wow that's really interesting i never heard of this one and i'll put a link in the show notes for all these books what about um a piece of advice that you've received and that you would like to pass on it's gonna be okay i love it love it it's gonna be okay it's gonna be okay that's very good yes so before i really let you go do you have a quick actionable tip that our listeners could implement today in their musical lives yes state of being is a primary fundamental for creating music so many musicians and systems of music learning

Starting point is 00:39:31 prioritize the right note at the right time and that's really all you got to do but it's so much more than that and if you can get your state right your state of being your physical state your emotional state and your mental state aligned with what you'd like to perform. It's such a massive lever and it's worth doing. It's worth taking the time for. That's my tip. That's a great tip. I hope you have a mic right there and you need to drop it big time right here. So tell us, where can people find you and connect with you? Yeah, just visit modacity.co to download the Modacity app and get started with a little bit more fun practice. And if you'd like to get in touch with me, it's mark, M-A-R-C, at modacity.co.

Starting point is 00:40:20 Mark, thank you so much for being here today. I'm so glad I've discovered you and your work and the Modacity app that I think I'm going to have so much fun with in the months to come. And all of this, thanks to Jason Heath. You know, so many things you said today, I feel are so important for musicians to hear. And I really cannot thank you enough for taking the time to chat with me my pleasure happy practicing everybody and remember those shoulder blades keep them free and and if you start a accountability group on the modacity page on facebook you know i think i'm i'm gonna sign up for that yeah that's we're trying to like figure out what social features are going to work for the app that's the next step we'll keep track of this

Starting point is 00:41:03 thanks so much mark thank you guys so much for listening I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Mark Gelfo now if you're interested in taking your practice to the next level join me for a month of mindful practice this challenge is perfect for you if you're looking to deepen your work speed up your progress and reach a specific goal. Join the Mind Over Finger tribe on Facebook and jump in the challenge. We are going to be there for each other for inspiration, accountability, and support. So here's how it works. And don't worry, I'm going to have all of this info in the show notes as well. First of all, hop on Facebook and join the Mind Over Finger tribe at facebook.com slash groups

Starting point is 00:41:56 slash Mind Over Finger tribe. Secondly, think of one to three practice goals you have for the month of November put them in writing and share it with us on the group it could be anything from learning a new piece to working on something you want to fix in your technique I would be specific like don't say I want to improve my left hand but rather say something along the lines of I want to improve my shifts but don't have a closed mind and be aware that things might shift throughout the month and you want to allow that without of course losing sight of your goal the next thing you want to do is download the modacity app from the app store or at modacity.co the app is free but there's a prime membership version with lots of great features and guess

Starting point is 00:42:48 what mark and the team at modacity is offering participants of the challenge access to all the Prime membership features for free for the whole duration of the challenge. So visit modacity.co slash mindful hyphen music hyphen upgrade for your free upgrade. Then starting November 1st, practice every day using Modacity and share a daily practice inside or a win with us in the group and on social media using the hashtag mindful practice challenge. And I'm going to be right there with you sharing my wins and my insight in the group and social media using the hashtag mindfulpracticechallenge. After the end of the challenge on December 1st, share with us in the group what you've learned and how you've progressed throughout the month. During the

Starting point is 00:43:39 challenge, both Mark and I will pop in the group for some live action, talking about mindful practice, sharing some tips about modacity, and there will also be benchmark celebration on day 10 and 20 with possibly some free swag from modacity in addition to this i will randomly select from the people who stick with the challenge two people who will have a free 45 minutes private mindful practice consultation with me where we can look at how you work what you're trying to accomplish and how to strategize efficiently to get you to your goals this is going to be tons of fun guys don't forget to find Modacity on Facebook and Instagram

Starting point is 00:44:21 for added inspiration as well next week get ready for a really interesting conversation about mindful practice from a vocalist's perspective with the mezzo-soprano Wallace Junta there was much to learn for the instrumentalist

Starting point is 00:44:37 that I am if you have the chance, please take a minute to head over to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review and if you think of someone who might find value and benefit from the mindful practice challenge please share it with them or if you're a teacher maybe share it with your students again thank you i will see you in the tribe and a bientot

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 008 Marc Gelfo: Peak Performance & Peak Practice: Science, Tech, & Mindfulness (There's an app for this!)

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