The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 016 Chloé Trevor: Practicing Efficiently & Enjoying Performing

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 16. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you had a fantastic holiday and I send you my best wishes for the new year. It's so great to be back behind the mic and I'm really excited about what I'm working on for you guys in the year 2019. It was really fun to look back at the amazing guests that graciously agreed to speak with me this fall. And if this is your first time listening to the show, I encourage you

Starting point is 00:00:57 to check out the past episodes because this all-star lineup of incredible musicians offered amazing and priceless advice and insight. You can hear from violinist James Ennis, Nathan Cole, and Holly Mulcahy, violists Matthew Lipman and Marina Thibault, bass players Jason Heath and Kaveh Rastegar, flutist Mimi Stillman, horn players Denise Tryon and Mark Gelfo, soprano Wallace-Djunta, trumpet player Paul Marcello, percussionist Jason Hohheim, composer Jim Stevenson, and the last but definitely not the least, the fantastic performance psychologist Don Green. In the next few weeks, you're going to hear from New York Philharmonist Anthony McGill, trombone player Nick Platoff, pianist David Jalbert, violinist Amy Beth Horman, and Emmanuel

Starting point is 00:01:55 Abraham, cellist and meditation teacher David Eby, and many more in the months to come. Today, I'm so excited to start the new year with a wonderful guest, violinist Chloe Trevor. Chloe is quickly becoming one of the most talked about and sought after musical ambassadors to the new generation of violinists. Critics have acclaimed her for her dazzling technique, excellent musicianship, tone, poise, and professional grace, and for her bold personality, unafraid to exalt in music and ability. She's appeared as a soloist with orchestras and in recitals worldwide. She spreads musical wisdom and her message of positivity to her hundreds of thousands of

Starting point is 00:02:43 online followers, and she has founded the Chloe Trevor Music Academy, an intensive two-week program for string players and pianists with the mission of helping young musicians develop the life skills and musical tools necessary to become healthy and well-rounded artists. If you're not already a follower, check her out on Instagram at Chloe Traver underscore violin, where she posts about practicing and performing, posting videos and giving out awesome detailed technical instructions and doing this with great humor and a truly wonderful musical insight. Chloe and I discuss practicing and performing from several perspectives. We talk about dealing with injuries, practicing mindfully, how making practice videos can

Starting point is 00:03:32 really help us progress faster, how to prepare for performances, and many other things. As you'll be able to tell, I had a great time talking with Chloe. She has so many wonderful tips and tricks in store for you, and I know you will enjoy this episode. Let's go to the show. chloe trevor it's truly wonderful to have you on the show today i've followed you on instagram for about three years now and there's so many things i love about what you do first of all begins with fantastic violin playing and musical artistry but i find that you convey so much enthusiasm

Starting point is 00:04:19 for what you do. And you're so generous with your fans. You constantly post awesome videos of all kinds. Some are of your performances with orchestras. Some are really funny little musical clips that you put together. And there's a great number of practice videos where you teach your fans and give them incredibly detailed practice tips and answer all of their questions. And I love the way you reach out and connect with your audience and you do it in the way that is so engaging and offers them so much value. I'm really excited that we have this chance to talk today. Well, thank you. That's so sweet to hear. I'm really excited to be on the show as well. As I've mentioned, you're a wonderful violinist and you know a ton on how to practice mindfully

Starting point is 00:05:03 and efficiently. But before we dive into this nitty gritty of practicing, I'd love to hear your story in your own words. So can you please walk us through your musical journey and how you got to where you are today and how that path has unfolded for you? Yeah, let's see how succinct I can make this. So my parents are both musicians. My mom was a violinist in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra from the early 80s. And my father, Kirk Trevor, is a conductor. He conducts orchestras all around the world. And he was the assistant conductor to Eduardo Mata when he met my mom in the Dallas Symphony. And so they were always kind of looking for little violins for me. My dad secretly always wanted to play the violin when he was younger, although he ended up playing the

Starting point is 00:05:58 cello because that was the only instrument left for him. And my parents said that I would watch my mom practice a lot. And so they always thought it'd be fun to find a little baby violin for me, which they did find when I was about a year and when I was a year and a half they found a one that actually played and I would kind of carry it around a lot as a little security blanket type thing and my mom would help me you know play some open strings and play little songs on it and things um which I started taking more serious lessons probably when I was about three and my mom taught me until I was eight or nine, when I then started studying with another violinist in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Arkady Fomin. And I studied with him until I went to college.

Starting point is 00:06:48 And during this time, I started having multiple lessons a week with him, you know, two to four lessons, two hour lessons every time a week, and started having a lot of concerts. Started traveling internationally for performances, started winning competitions, kind of traveled the world from the age of 12 through college, and felt like I kind of had a pretty strong career going at that point, which then stopped once I got to college, which was kind of funny. Because then you get to college and then you have no time to do anything, right? Yeah, you have to do papers on Mahler symphonies. Right, exactly. So I went to the Cleveland Institute of Music for my undergrad degree, and I studied with David and Linda Cerrone there. And then I went to the Shepard School of Music at Rice University, where I did my master's studying with Kenneth Goldsmith. And after that, actually

Starting point is 00:07:51 during my master's, I went through a pretty intense time in my life where I actually ended up having to take off about a year from playing violin because of a playing injury that was related to just my body type and things that were kind of going on with my hands that were just the way that my body's built. So it was like a perfect storm kind of situation where, well, your hands do this and you play violin, so you're going to have this problem kind of thing. And that came to a head during my master's. Took off some time from school, took off time from playing, stopped performing, wasn't actually sure if I'd ever be able to play again. And during this time I started teaching about 30 to 40 students a week because I had nothing else to do

Starting point is 00:08:46 and found that I really really loved teaching I've been teaching honestly since I was about 12 or 13 but it wasn't until that moment when that was all I did that I really discovered what a passion I had for it. So when I then got back into playing, which was in 2013, I combined all of my teaching and performing and kind of relearning how to play the violin with Instagram, because 2013 was also when I started my Instagram account. And so I started posting things about violin, about teaching, about practicing about concerts about everything in my life that was music related and suddenly found that I had an audience there which I didn't expect at all I kind of just started Instagram for myself as a kind of maybe journal photo journaling kind of thing and it really grew into something

Starting point is 00:09:49 very unexpected so from that point you know I got back into doing concerts and into playing recitals And now creating the Chloe Trevor Music Academy, which honestly really grew out of Instagram, is kind of a culmination of all of what I just described, which is pretty amazing. And here I am today. That's great. You know, I love how your story is such a great illustration of someone who had some obstacles in her way. And really, it sounds to me like you really made the best out of it. And I think it's Perlman who says, when you teach, you learn. And what you said out, you know, you brought this back into your own playing. And I saw a bunch of those videos about where you talk about the hand injury. And unless I'm wrong, you have to deal with hyperflexibility as well, correct? Yes.

Starting point is 00:10:46 I definitely send all of my students who deal with that to your videos. And I say, you know, check out her account. She's got some great videos on this hyper flexibility that you're dealing with. And yeah, and I think it's such a great illustration of that, of really taking what life's, you know, what life throws at you and growing out of it and contributing back to community. As you say, it's unexpected, but it's really great for us because you're bringing us so much value. It's fantastic. Yeah, that's good to know about your students. I should probably post a lot more on the hypermobility issue and dealing with injury and all those kinds of physical stress things. I haven't posted a lot about it just because, or more when I was, you know, a few years ago, because there's more of a stigma around being a quote unquote, injured musician, you know, but really, and that's something that really bothers me. Because one of the reasons that I was injured for as long as I was, was because of the stigma and because you're not allowed to talk about it and, you know, because you're not allowed to talk about it, then you don't find help because the people that could help you, you're not talking to. So I, when, when kids message me, you know, I always try to give them as much advice as

Starting point is 00:12:01 I can, you know, when they send me direct messages about pain or injury or things like that but i probably i've been wanting to for about a year to um start posting a lot more about my experience with that and talk about it there's not enough around this issue and it's probably one of the most important issues for musicians to be honest or any athlete but especially musicians i think musicians more so than athletes are you know it's a taboo subject absolutely And it's not something that's talked about a lot. And for example, I don't have hyperflexibility. Therefore, a student who is dealing with it, it's great for me to know that I know someone I can reach out to and ask about it and get information from because it's a completely different way of approaching the mechanism of the fingers. And the more people talk about it, the more conversation there is about it, then the more tools all of these students can develop and acquire. Right. Yeah, I think it's really important.

Starting point is 00:13:02 You mentioned the Chloe Trevor Academy. I'd love to hear more about that. Can you tell us about it a little bit? Oh my gosh. How much time do you have? Yeah. The Choir Cover Music Academy is a two-week summer camp, summer festival for string players and pianists ages 12 and up currently. We're going to see how it evolves over the next couple of years. This is currently, 2019 will be our second year. So we're still in the beginning stages, but it's already really exciting. um string players and pianists uh pre-college college students and we're working on opening up a kind of adult auditing program for those who don't really fit into the student or um college age categories but still want to learn and we have so many different programs we have orchestra we have chamber music we have private lessons there are so many masterclasses with our amazing guest artists and faculty. I'm really super excited about our Eurythmics class, which is taught by Sonia Hu, which is, she's one of the teachers at the

Starting point is 00:14:16 Cleveland Institute of Music. And Eurythmics was one of the best things that I got out of being at CIM. So I was like, this is definitely needs to be at my camp. And she's fantastic. We also have theory and ear training for the pianist. So we have, you know, piano literature, piano history, collaborative classes duo classes there are a lot of seminars that we have about career guidance type things things about social media things about practicing things about auditioning for schools auditioning for orchestras just all those kind of topics that kids want to know about and we also have oh we have conducting classes and we have recitals and a lot of concerts for the kids to attend and i'm not quite sure how we fit all of this into two weeks but we did it last

Starting point is 00:15:00 year and it was crazy um and right now we're it's being held at steven f austin state university which is in nacogdoches texas it's texas about two hours east of dallas um next year it will be held from july 28th to august 10th and our registration just opened recently so we have early registration going until january 15th and then we'll still be taking applications through i believe may 1st and we're really excited to see the kids that we have this year last year we had 100 students attend from 10 different countries, which is pretty fantastic. I did not expect for our first year at all. But we have a scholarship fund so that we can help kids that are coming from other countries or those who are in the States but can't necessarily afford

Starting point is 00:15:48 the tuition, although we have made the tuition extremely affordable. My biggest passion is making making music education affordable and available to everyone who wants it because i know on instagram i hear from kids all the time saying that they can't afford private lessons or they can't afford an instrument or they can't afford to go to a camp they can't afford all these things that they would need to be able to basically have a career and be successful right they have the the motivation and the desire there but maybe limited funds for you know whatever reason. And so I said, well, we're going to have a two-week camp. We're going to make it as affordable as possible. So we have tuition at $1,400 right now, which comes out to $700 a week.

Starting point is 00:16:36 And I think with the amount we get, there's like 100 to 120 hours of training, I think, that goes into the entire camp. So you break that down and it comes out to a very reasonable price. Wow. Oh, that's amazing. I really hear your enthusiasm and the sense of mission that drives you with this project. And I think it's so great that it seems to be such a thorough and all-encompassing experience. And I was seeing some posts from last year's session, and it looks like so much fun. Yeah, the kids are really excited. They're all like, when is the registration open so we can apply for next year? I'm like, here it is. That's exciting. It was really exciting. It was like a dream come true this past summer. I couldn't believe it when it all came together,

Starting point is 00:17:21 just watching it it was really amazing that's fantastic and i'm gonna put a show um i'm gonna put a link in the show notes for the registration and the website for the academy that would be fantastic chloe you're a seasoned performer and you tackle the most difficult repertoire and play recitals and concert with orchestras all over the u.s and the world and i think we can learn so much from hearing about practicing and performing from your angle so i hope you're ready because I have many questions for you. Go at them. First, I'm curious to find out what you think broadly of mindfulness.

Starting point is 00:18:03 You know, what is mindful practice to you? You mentioned teaching from a young age and having to deal with the injury. And I can only imagine that it brought a lot of mindfulness in your own practice. So I would love to hear your opinion on this big topic. Sorry to start with such a big question. That's okay. Mindful practice is definitely one of the most important aspects of becoming a successful musician, because anyone can sit in a room and practice mindlessly for hours and hours and get literally nowhere, which I actually have personal experience with. You know, there have been many times in my teenage years where it was very much quantity over quality, where I just thought if I put in the hours, then that was all I needed to make, you know, make to a degree, you know, you do need you need both, because there is an aspect of muscle memory and teaching your, you know, training your body how to do something. But if you don't have the hours without the mindfulness, then you're just, you're not learning anything. And that took me a little bit of time to understand. I think because I'm very, I'm very driven and motivated to just kind of think, look, look at numbers in terms of like, how many numbers can I log into this, you know, instead of getting into the nitty gritty, what's going to really help me.

Starting point is 00:19:32 So that took me a while, which I think I started to learn more. Honestly, I think when I that year off that I had to take from practice from playing violin where I was only teaching, because during that time, I had to really start explaining to students how to practice efficiently and effectively. um and like the quote that you're saying about perlman before uh i definitely learned a lot about myself and my own playing and how to practice efficiently and how to practice mindfully from teaching um so i think everyone definitely needs to spend a significant amount of time teaching their instrument in some capacity whether that's you know just finding a friend you know like if you're if you're a teenager if you're 15 and you find one of your friends that wants to learn how to play an instrument like try to teach them how to play that instrument you know for free not like not as like a teacher but let's try to teach figure out how to teach someone

Starting point is 00:20:30 to do what you do because it'll make you think about it differently so that's definitely one of the aspects of mindful practice i think also another aspect of mindful practice for me that i really started to learn in college was practicing scales i actually think that i may be the most mindful about my practicing when I'm playing scales, because I discovered just how many things you can think about and focus on and really kind of zone into when practicing scales. Things like using your entire bow. Do you go all the way to the frog? Do you go all the way to the tip? Which tone lane are you in? Are you getting the best sound all the time? Are there shakes in your sound how are you holding your bow how are you doing vibrato how are your fingers landing

Starting point is 00:21:22 on the strings how are your shifts are they smooth or not um are you getting are you hearing your bow changes or are they you know hidden um is it in tune is your vibrato beautiful like there's i think i've come up with a list of like 30 to 50 things that i can think about while practicing scales. And that is really great practice for me because I do that at the beginning of every practice session. And if I get used to being in that kind of mental zone, it'll help me for the rest of my practicing to kind of, you know, take those things from practicing scales over into the rest of my practice, which is really helpful for me. You know, I love what you just said about the scales because I also had a at a certain point in my life practice scales mindlessly and

Starting point is 00:22:14 but now I can really tell when a student comes in and they've played scales all week or they've practiced scales all week because it sounds completely different because as you mentioned earlier you can walk in the room and play scales for 20 minutes without actually solving anything But it's when you really start to make the scales sound as beautiful, as musical, not in the sense of, you know, using full vibrato and all of these things, but, you know, a beautiful sound, beautiful bow stroke. This really translates in the playing later on. And that's actually, you know what, a great segue for my next question, which was going to be about your practice process. You know, how if you can unwrap your process for us a little bit and, you know, what does a practice session looks like for Chloe Trevor? I know they they're all different, but, you know, maybe give us a general idea.

Starting point is 00:23:08 Well, I can give you what my ideal session would be and then I can give you like what a more realistic one looks like, because I think I can do the ideal one sometimes, but I just don't typically have enough time for them. I love that. Let's do it. Yeah, an ideal practice session for me starts with anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour of scales. And I really love practicing scales at the beginning because it gets my fingers so ready to do everything else. And if I don't put in the more time I put into scales at the beginning, the better the rest of my practice session feels. So I always like to get as much of that in there. Doing, you know, the acceleration method of starting with really, really slow single bows all the way to playing one or two scales in one bow. And then going into thirds, going into octaves, six harmonics, all of those, and arpeggios. The more of that I can do, the better I feel. But that doesn't happen very often. Usually I only get in, you know, well, I'll talk about that one after. Around 30 minutes to an hour of sales. And then I love to be able to play some sort of etude after that, whether that's a part of a Paganini Caprice or something from, you know, the Furillo or Don't etude books or any of the other etude books that are out there,

Starting point is 00:24:36 just like kind of go through something. And I might pick something that feels familiar, or I might pick something that I kind of want to sight read through and get my fingers used to something new. I'm doing that for maybe another half hour. And then I love to be able to play some Bach because that gets my fingers into another whole, you know, more like a chordal kind of position depending on which one I'm playing. But generally my hand feels different when I play Bach. And so I like to always get in a movement of two, a movement or two of Bach for a half hour to an hour or so. Although sometimes when I get onto Bach, I could end

Starting point is 00:25:13 up being there for a couple hours. And I love that term. You just use chordal frame for your hand because it's really what it is. And if you can have this frame ready that just, you know, it carries through fast passages and lyrical passages for, you know, use of vibrato and all that stuff. I love that term. I'm going to start using it. Yeah, really like Bach and scales. If you get some of those in every day, like it really just starts solidifying all of your intonation, like so much better than anything else, in my opinion. Then after doing some Bach, I like to play through something that is super, super familiar to me, whether that's a show piece or another kind of um etude sometimes I like to just play through

Starting point is 00:26:03 something like Sarasate's introduction and um Tarantella or maybe something like Sigourney or something um that I've played for years and years and just kind of get myself into that zone where my hands are already warmed up so that I don't have to think too much about that and I can just play through something and feel solid with it and feel the musicality coming through um i've learned a lot over the past few four or five years about how your your mental state and how your your brain responds differently to things that feel familiar as opposed to things that feel, you know, new and unfamiliar. And sometimes that which is also the reason I start with scales, sometimes just getting my hands and my brain synced up to doing something that I'm so

Starting point is 00:26:57 used to, my hands start feeling really solid and really sure of themselves and my brain like anxiety comes down. Sometimes if I don't have a lot of time to practice something, and I have to jump into something that feels new and not super secure i my my heart rate goes up um my hands don't feel solid they feel kind of shaky they feel like there's um like live wires in them that makes them feel like they're moving more than they really are i don't know if that makes any sense this is something i've been yeah i've been learning a lot about this over the last few years when i've had to relearn how to play my instrument basically over the past few years and when I came back to it and played things I'd sometimes feel like I've played this for years

Starting point is 00:27:38 but suddenly my hands don't feel good and it would be the most like terrifying feeling which would then become a vicious cycle where the anxiety would make my hands feel worse and then my hands feeling worse would make my anxiety worse if that makes sense it was like the stress reaction so if I can play something that I I know that I know that I know that I know it kind of sets my my brain and brings the anxiety and stress down to have a really productive rest of my practice session which after that I'll go into something you know one of my concertos or recital pieces or something try to pick a few passages that I really need to work on do them slowly figure out how to practice them effectively and efficiently maybe find a passage that I want to record for

Starting point is 00:28:26 an Instagram video either just for a video or for like a practice uh teaching video um because honestly doing those helps me practice better which is why I always I always tell the students I'm like you want to learn how to practice better start posting things on Instagram for your practice sessions um it's kind of funny that works but um which is one of the reasons one of the main reasons I do it it actually helps me practice better and then I typically would also like to wrap up with another movement of Bach or something before I put everything away so that's like my ideal practice session what my average practice session looks like is probably something more like 10 to 20 minutes of scales depending on how much time I have um and then maybe a movement of Bach

Starting point is 00:29:15 and then kind of jump into whatever I need to work on um so it's really not ideal. I try to find a balance between those two things where I, depending on how my hands are feeling that day, I might spend more time in scales or trying to get everything to feel a little bit more solid and secure. Um, and if they're feeling good, then I might be able to jump into, you know, a Shostakovich concerto or a Cacciatorian concerto or something, and just do a little bit of, um, wood shedding on a passage, just giving me trouble or slow practice to work on some intonation or something I love that because it's like you say we always you know all of us out there we think that there's time for the ideal practice session but in reality

Starting point is 00:30:01 those days are rare and it's such a great incentive to learn how to practice efficiently right yeah for sure I love that idea of playing the piece that you know really well right after your Bach and before. One thing I talk with the students is this idea of priming to, you know, preparing both physically and mentally for the practice, setting up the space so you have everything you need and you're comfortable, but also taking the time to identify your goals and maybe make a little plan of what you want to practice. But that sounds like another form of priming to where you just like kind of building this physical and mental confidence in your playing. And I'm guessing there are pieces that you enjoy as well. So it's like bringing this

Starting point is 00:30:50 joy and this fun in the practice session. I think it's such a great way to put yourself in the prime state for work. I love that. I'm going to have to try it during one of my next perfect practice day sessions. Aren't those great when you have those? I'm always telling students, I think a lot of kids think that once they get to college, they'll have time to practice because they're so busy like in high school and stuff and I'm like you won't have time to practice once you get to college or they think that once they're if they're in college they're like well I'll have time to practice after college I'm like yeah no never I mean so I'm trying to to tell them to you know practice as much as possible before college to to me personally that means even taking off a year

Starting point is 00:31:35 or two before going to college maybe um if that's an option you know and uh that playing as much as practicing as much as you possibly can before college combined with yes figuring out how to practice efficiently because that ultimately is the most important thing and it's so true what you say about recording those videos for instagram because it's a form of performance well it is a performance. And it just intensifies the focus in the practice, I feel like. It does. It does a lot of different things, honestly. And I know that you have, you know, we'll discuss things about performing later on too. But recording videos does so many things for you in terms of being able to listen back to what you've just played really easily.

Starting point is 00:32:24 I record 99.9% of my videos on my phone so that I'm able to listen back to them really easily instead of using some kind of DSLR camera, which would be more complicated. So you can record, listen back, record, listen back, record, listen back, and hear that that didn't actually sound like I thought it did, either in a positive or a negative way, usually negative, where I'm like, oh i thought i did that better it's not you know um so you start learning from that um you know what your audience hears when you play which i'm you know i imagine back what 100 years or something or not even that far obviously like it wasn't that long ago that people didn't have this technology available to them to really hear what they sounded like imagine what practicing

Starting point is 00:33:13 would be like then that would be really sad like we have so much at our disposal right now that we can pull up YouTube videos or anything on Spotify within a second. And we can record ourselves and hear back within a second. I mean, it's amazing. And we really take advantage, we should take more advantage of it than we do, I think. And so being able to listen back really helps practicing. But one of the things I find the most intriguing about recording videos for Instagram is it actually puts my mind and body into the performance, physical state and mind state so that I get to practice performing. Because people ask me a lot about things like stage fright or nerves and how to work on things like that. And I'm always telling them the way

Starting point is 00:34:03 to work on it is just to do it as much as possible, perform as much as possible. And yes, it's a little bit different. You're not sitting in front of an audience or standing in front of an audience while you're recording an Instagram video, but it does still get your body and mind into that almost like fight or flight response for, for a performance. And you get to practice that as much as possible. And that I've noticed it helped me in performances as well. So I try to tell people to definitely record themselves also for that reason absolutely and you know I was going to ask you how you maximize the results and bring productivity in your practice and we've already talked about many aspects but you have more examples for us on how you get those

Starting point is 00:34:50 results to happen quickly in the practice room well let me put it this way I know how to do it better i don't always actually do it better which is you know like do do as i say not as i do kind of thing um no i i know how to do it better and i should do it better but what i always tell students is to make a plan before you practice um which is why it's great to have things like practice journals uh i don't know if you're familiar with like two set violins practice journal that they have no i didn't know they had um i think they've linked yeah they started selling a practice journal i guess they haven't done too much with it lately but like a couple years ago um and it has like a layout for each page about like what are three things you want

Starting point is 00:35:40 to work on and what are notes that you want to do while you practice and then like conclusion stuff that you can write down so it kind of guides you along what to what to write out my problem is that when i actually get into writing something i tend to have too much to right? So there's like not enough space. And that's honestly my problem with so many things is I'm like, I can't do this every day because if I do, I'm going to spend like 30 minutes of my practice time just writing in the journal, which maybe I should just do anyways, because it is really productive. But having a plan, knowing what you want to accomplish. Some people, for me, a lot of the times that looks like actually writing down the times, how long I'm

Starting point is 00:36:22 going to practice something so that i can put a timer on be like practice scales for 20 minutes you know or like write down practice scales from 1 p.m to 1 20 p.m and then i can check that off um having having a list like that is a good plan but also a more detailed plan of like what parts of your piece do you want to work on or what aspect of scales do you want to work on do you want to work on tone today do you want to work on vibrato today do you want to work on bow changes what do you want to accomplish in this part of the tchaikovsky concerto do you want to make sure that the hand frame works better? Do you want to watch in the mirror to make sure that you're doing this appropriately? Are you going to record this and listen back for intonation? Are you going to

Starting point is 00:37:00 practice with the metronome from 90 to 115 on this spot for 20 minutes? You know, things like that, like get as detailed as possible and decide how, like, because first of all, it makes you think about what you need to practice. Because a lot of times we go into practicing, not thinking about what we actually need to do, just thinking I need to do something. So it forces you to slow down and think what's not working, figure out what's not working, write that down, and then figure out a plan to fix it, and then actually execute it and be able to check it off when you're done. And that to me is the most effective way to practice combined with what I talked about earlier with warming up and getting your body really comfortable. Because if you're not warmed up and

Starting point is 00:37:45 ready to do those things, no matter how much you plan out, if your hands aren't primed to be able to play well, it's not going to help. So the warming up and the priming combined with the plan and you can probably get it down into a pretty compact, succinct list, but you can do, you know, four hours of practicing within an hour to an hour and a half if you plan it well. That's so true. You know, one tool I've discovered recently, thanks to another guest on the podcast is the modacity app i don't know if you've ever heard about it i don't think so what is it you should check it out today because um it has everything you just mentioned so you can create a practice playlist you can take notes it has a timer incorporated in it and the record

Starting point is 00:38:35 button is always accessible and it's so easy it has automatic playback and delete um so i find myself recording myself constantly with it it has a pretty cool metronome that they called the drone drone tuner i think because the no metro drone that's what it is that this pretty cool metrodome metro drone function and um also a mindful practice setting where you can send prompts to yourself you know prompt yourself to practice uh tone and they make suggestions on things to focus on or you can create your own type them in there and at the end of the day you get all of your stats you can get the stats for the week and there's a star system where if you know you want to keep track of your progress you can give yourself some stars and see if you're reaching your goal it's pretty cool i

Starting point is 00:39:24 have to say that for me it really feels as though um i was describing it as as though it brings you know it sets my mind for mindful practice the second i turn the app on so i've been enjoying this app a lot i'm looking at it like i just downloaded and it's free which is amazing i mean it seems like they're in-app purchases but this is amazing this literally looks like a bunch of the different apps that i've downloaded um like metronomes and and things like um keeping track of stuff and like having lists like all that stuff all in one yeah that looks amazing i'm definitely going to check this out so that looks super cool yeah thank you you're welcome i've been having a lot of fun with it yeah you just mentioned apps and metronome and recording do you have a favorite

Starting point is 00:40:14 practice tool in the practice room um probably i mean just my phone for recording in general but i mean i love i mean i'll see this this new one but i always use metro timer for my metronome and clear tune for tuning stuff and the do you know the the drone tuner yes drone tuners is really neat and most i mean my my recording stuff i just do with the regular camera and everything but um i it's hard because like like even with this the modacity one that you're talking about it's hard because i do really find that i can have more productive sessions like if i can really get the electronics out of my space that's true you know which is hard because it's like well i want to use these tools because it'll help me be efficient but i also like know i guess it just

Starting point is 00:41:12 depends you know you go from one day to the next like maybe one day i'll use electronics in a practice session another day i'll be like put everything on silent and do not disturb and put them in another room i know my uh teacher at rice always insisted that we keep our phones like in our lockers like when we go practice which I don't know if anyone like implemented that but that was you know he wanted to make sure that we were not getting distracted which is really important and especially because of um all the social media work that I do and everything it is beyond uh easy to get distracted by any kind of notifications coming in or things that I think about I'm like oh I need to remember to check on that and I just do it because I think about it at

Starting point is 00:41:52 that second my phone's right there you know but it is better when I don't have it there we have to master the airplane mode yes airplane mode and you know we talked about fun a little bit earlier and for me that's something that's taking a lot more space in my practice than it used to because I find that if I figure out ways to make practicing more fun and challenging in a enjoyable way I end up being more productive is there ways that you make practicing fun or maybe bring meaning in your practice? I really, I feel like I keep going back to this, but for me, Bach is one of the things that makes practicing most fun and meaningful and enjoyable to me. If I'm able to put together

Starting point is 00:42:41 some sort of fun Instagram video that's combined with practicing, that's something I really enjoy doing that I haven't felt like I've been able to do a lot of lately um being kind of emotionally and mentally overstressed and drained a little bit lately and I want to figure out how to do that because it is like you say it's really important and um teachers who are able to combine that aspect of fun with discipline I just like have the utmost respect for them I'm just like, you are amazing. Teach me how to do that. Um, cause I know I can definitely get a little bit bogged down with either one of the things and I don't always feel like I combine them as well as I'd like to. Um, and having, having joy in your practicing and your performing and just joy in

Starting point is 00:43:32 general about music and what you do in life definitely, um, helps you learn better, helps you create those like mental synapses faster um and which will help you you know learn more easily uh be more productive have better performances and i think we kind of downplay that i mean maybe not downplay but don't don't promote that idea as much that you need to have fun um when you're doing your work i think we think like well it's work i'm not supposed to be having fun um so i think just looking for looking for that fun and anything you can do um sometimes that'll be like me practicing something and and just noticing all of a sudden like hey this piece is literally like this part that i played literally sounds like this other piece there's

Starting point is 00:44:27 this really funny part in the second movement of the shostakovich violin concerto number one that literally has like the exact same notes as moon river and i was just like what is happening here this is really weird because like those two things like juxtapose next to each other it's something you'd never think of and so just you know i don't know always looking for the joy and humor and stuff um sometimes i'll I can find humor in some like severe uh slip up that I have in practicing just be like what was that like that was the most ridiculous thing ever and just like laugh about it instead of getting frustrated you know um yeah and I think that applies that goes for performing as well for

Starting point is 00:45:17 sure I know people get down on themselves a little more you know too much and then that really takes the joy out of music making and you know speaking of performance you've mentioned how to face your performance anxiety by performing a lot more and do you have specific ways that you prepare mentally when you are preparing for a performance so when when people talk to me about nervousness and stage fright and I mentioned before that I always tell them they need to just practice performing as much as possible. I know that this is true because like I mentioned earlier that I had to take off a year to two years from playing concerts. And honestly, before that time, I never really experienced what I think people are describing when they talk about stage

Starting point is 00:46:07 fright. I'd been performing since I was four, you know, and so I was used to getting on stage and playing every month or you know sometimes multiple times a month uh from a really young age and so it was pretty natural to me to walk on stage and play in front of an audience of you know 50 to 2 000 people then when i had to take off time from performing and i came back to performing suddenly it felt a lot different suddenly i felt this kind of panic and and sick feeling and shakiness and all those things that people would describe to me and I said is this what people are talking about when they talk about stage right because this is awful I was like I remember the first like couple of like concerto performance that I had coming back to performing and I was on stage

Starting point is 00:46:58 playing the piece and thinking this is a nightmare like thinking I this is horrible if this is the way it's always going to be like I don't know if I can do this anymore and it was it was really terrifying. Like I'm kind of laughing about it, but it was really scary. Um, especially because I knew that I had been fine before and then suddenly had this feeling and this, this panic that was overwhelming. Um, but it did, it did get better. I mean, I'm back now when I perform, I feel like I did, um, when I was younger before I had to take off the time. And I know that's just because I've I you know put in the you know 50 to 100 performances but you know from the time from 2013 to 2018 now you know or I don't know how many it's probably more than that but

Starting point is 00:47:49 and just knowing that it got better every time I got on stage every time I went out and played something it got better that's how I know that the practicing of performing really is what's important because you learn basically you just learn your body's responses to stress and then you learn what you're able to cope with what you're not able to cope with and how to channel that energy into your playing i always tell what i would always tell people before was like oh i don't feel nervous i just have this kind of like excited energy that if i didn't have that I wouldn't be able to perform and I know that also because I have uh tried using beta blockers like twice in my life I think for performances um and both times when I did it was like

Starting point is 00:48:43 I felt like I was just stand like just sitting in my room on the computer somewhere except I was standing on stage in front of people and it was the most bizarre like I couldn't get into the performance zone and and it i felt so disconnected and it was like while i was calm it was like not a good feeling if that makes sense um i don't think that that is the answer i think the answer is like you need to have that energy you need to have that excitement and that kind of nervous energy for a performance to be meaningful for it to be effective for it to impact people and yourself because you know you perform for other people but it's also um part of nourishing your own soul i think as as performing musicians that's a part of what we do um and so

Starting point is 00:49:32 just performing a lot as much as possible which goes into the whole thing i talked about with recording yourself and and then just knowing before performance you know what what you respond well too like I know that I can't really eat a whole lot like definitely not a full meal probably about like five-ish hours before a concert because I'll feel too sluggish or I'll feel kind of sick knowing what kind of things you can eat knowing that you need to have a lot of water around you knowing you need to get a really good night's sleep the night before whether that means you don't get as much practicing in as you want you know that you need that rest um knowing you know the week of a concert how to kind of space out your practicing in a way that you'll be ready by

Starting point is 00:50:22 the concert day uh knowing things about like what you're going to wear is comfortable uh are your shoes comfortable is the dress you're wearing comfortable is the jacket you have on does that work all these kind of little tiny details you start learning more and more as you perform and you start feeling more and more comfortable when you're on stage. So I think that's kind of just what I've learned in that in that regards. It's such a great reminder because, you know, especially for young musicians, maybe still in college out there, because sometimes we prepare a whole semester for a jury or studio recital and the school cannot, you know, there's so many things that we need to

Starting point is 00:51:00 do while we're in school. The school cannot provide us with unlimited amount of performance opportunities. And I think that if the students could think about that and take ownership of this and really set up performances for themselves, because it's so true what you say. And as you use the word channel and you channel this energy into your playing, the only way to know what that energy feels like and how to channel it, as you explained so eloquently, you need to do it. You need to experience it and learn from it. And that's something that I think if each students could really, I don't know, start concert cycles and start playing for each other and just really seek out performance opportunities or create them when they don't exist to really get this

Starting point is 00:51:49 experience of practicing. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing this. This was really great. Yeah, in that regard about performing as much as possible in school, I know that my both schools I went to my, my teachers had weekly studio classes. And I know there were a lot of students within the studio who didn't necessarily want to play, like didn't want to perform. But that's a great place. Like I try to take advantage like every week, I was like, I need to play something every week, because this is a, I get to practice performing. And so I think things like that, if you have a weekly studio class or a bi-weekly studio class, try to have something ready to play. Every time is going to be one of your best tools to use to practice performing. Do you have a performance ritual now? Not really. I think it's just kind of what I was mentioning before. You know, like knowing what I can and can't eat, knowing when, knowing how much time I need to feel prepared, knowing whether I need to take like a nap the afternoon before a concert or things like that. I just basically feel like I try to listen to my body as much as possible and do what it needs to do to feel comfortable for the concert, which honestly lately haven't needed as much.

Starting point is 00:53:10 I feel a lot more comfortable just feeling like I can go on stage at any moment and perform, which I think really just comes from the practice of doing that. I know some people have different rituals about like, I need to eat this thing before, I need to do this for this many minutes before, and I can get too much in my head about that. So I try not to focus on things like that. I think it's more helpful for me. It's knowing what we need and what works best for ourselves. Yeah. Chloe, this is such incredible and valuable information for the listeners of the podcast. Thank you so much.

Starting point is 00:53:45 How about a round of rapid fire questions before we wrap this up? Yeah, sounds good. So for the people who are dreaming of a career that resemble yours, can you tell us a little bit about what your life looks like? Craziness. My life looks different every day, which is probably the most frustrating and exciting thing at the same time because it's hard to make plans. You know, I can have days where I have nothing except needing to practice and needing to work on Instagram and some social media things and maybe see, you know, some of my friends. And then I have other days where I'm traveling all day to go to a concert, other days where I have rehearsals. I still do some gigging in terms of, like, I sub with the Dallas Symphony a lot. So I get to do that, which is amazing.

Starting point is 00:54:30 um master classes i don't teach as much privately now as i well nowhere near as much as i used to or as much as i would like right now but my life is um not uh scheduled or organized not organized it's not it's not consistent enough to be able to teach weekly lessons to the same people all the time that makes sense it's just it's basically a lot of chaos and i'm still trying to figure out how to minimize that because it's it's really challenging it's fun but you know it can get overwhelming at times for sure it's not definitely not as glamorous as people would think and if people think it is i feel like people probably think it is it's not but it was fun what skills do you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning to play

Starting point is 00:55:21 their instrument learning to be nice people um that's definitely something that we don't i feel like we don't put enough emphasis on especially as musicians because we spend so much of our time just practicing by ourselves in a practice room um learning how to be social and how to make new friends make acquaintances um be be good colleagues and role models to other people That was something that I kind of had, I feel like I kind of had to learn the hard way. Like in my undergrad at CIM, I did not make as much of an effort to meet people or go out with people and like make connections and have fun and stuff as I think I should have. And that definitely contributed a lot to my overall stress and unhappiness at that time, I think. And, you know, we need human connection and we need to learn to be kind to people. We need to learn how to balance our lives so that we can have that and also be productive in our craft. and i think that's probably one of the hardest things to figure out which i still feel like i'm trying to figure out and we need that also for our craft anyways because you know if if we're not

Starting point is 00:56:39 nice people we're not going to be able to make those connections um and learn learn from other people that's another thing like learning to have an open mind and always be the being the eternal student you know yes yes anyone can teach you something like everyone has something to teach you just learning, learning to be just the best person that you can be and not necessarily the best musician. That's one of the things that we definitely try to implement at the Collaborative Music Academy, because that's one of the things I had to learn. Like I said, I had to learn the hard way. And I think really is the most important thing for musicians, for any career probably for life in general yeah not taking so seriously that you can't be a good

Starting point is 00:57:27 person first what a great answer chloe is there a performance that has stayed with you throughout the years and why probably the one that i'll never forget um is when i performed the tchaikovsky violin concerto with the dallas symphony orchestra at the myerson symphony center in I believe it was 2007 I think um that was an amazing performance for me the the Dallas Symphony is an orchestra that I've literally grown up with like I've been at concert since I was two weeks old and for that concert my mom and my teacher Arkady Fomin were both on stage with me playing in the orchestra and uh in 2014 my my teacher passed away from colon cancer and this past summer my mom passed away from breast cancer and so just like remembering

Starting point is 00:58:24 that performance that they were there with me um getting to play with me and like the i mean and that was my dream too was to be able to play a solo with that orchestra and the fact that they got to share that dream with me is something I'll never forget. And it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life for sure. Wow, that's a very moving memory. Sorry to follow this with such a down to earth question. But do you have a favorite book that you would like to recommend to our listeners? I have two books that I would really like to recommend that kind of go into the whole mindfulness thing. And I loved these books even before you messaged me about this podcast uh one is the talent code by daniel coyle and the other is talent is overrated by

Starting point is 00:59:15 jeff colvin and they both i mean they're they're practical books you know they're self-improvement and business type books but they are to me some of the most motivational and inspiring things to read because they talk about how you become successful at something like why some athletes and some musicians like you know have skyrocketed to success in their their abilities and why other people haven't you know and and people like to look at those people like i don't know yo-yo ma and um michael jordan like for example and say like well they must just be more talented and more whatever than than the rest of us right um but these books talk about it's not talent it's the fact that they did you know these things xyz with this environment

Starting point is 01:00:12 and um put it to that test and so i think it talks a lot about being mindful of what you do being mindful of what you think being mindful of how you practice um i always try to tell students things like every time you play something you're practicing it and you might if you play it sloppily you're teaching yourself how to play it sloppily and if you play it really accurately and precisely you're teaching yourself to do that so you kind of like always have this meter going of like and we'll play it more times super accurately and like the fewer amount of times you can play it sloppily then you'll do you'll you have a greater percentage of doing it well in performance right i call that anti-practicing yes like one of the things i had

Starting point is 01:01:00 to learn was that i couldn't just take a new concerto and try to play through it like quote unquote for fun right because that's the first time i'm doing it i'm like already teaching myself how to play it and if i don't do it right if i miss this if i play this one shift and i miss it the first time i've already like taught myself how to miss that shift you know so things things like that, I mean, obviously the books go into a lot of other aspects and things, but I think they're very inspiring and motivational to me because they kind of talk about how anyone can achieve success. Like, don't look at it as like someone has been granted this God-given gift that no one else can attain. Like, no, we can all attain it if we use our brains appropriately.

Starting point is 01:01:46 Yeah. Yeah. Great books. Is there a piece of advice that was given to you that you would like to pass on to the listeners to take every performance as an opportunity to learn and grow whether that means you have a bad performance or a great performance because you'll learn something from either one of those and to not get so overly critical that you can't that you can't realize that you're actually touching someone in that audience someone in that audience has a is having a really emotional and spiritual connection with you and what you're doing on stage whether or not you think you're having the most horrible performance of your life. Um, so always approach every performance with

Starting point is 01:02:46 grace and humility, no matter how it goes. You know, if, if you go off stage and someone tells you, you had a great performance, like never have this attitude of, uh, it wasn't that great tonight, or I didn't, I messed this up or I had this, you know, like people aren't, people aren't thinking that people aren't coming up to you and telling you you did a great job because they think you did poorly right someone will always be inspired by what you've done and I think that's what we need to focus on more when we perform rather than thinking oh I missed this shift oh I forgot this part of the music oh I did this or this people don't remember those things only you remember those things everyone else in the audience and in the orchestra or whoever's listening to you

Starting point is 01:03:27 will only remember how you made them feel when you played yeah and I think one of the most important things to remember as a performing musician this is such great advice it's a great reminder to really step outside of ourselves and i think we forget that too much we so focus on how we've achieved whatever goal we had in that performance and forget that it really is exactly the way you put it this someone else is having an experience with this performance and that's what they'll take away with them. Great advice. Thank you so much. Chloe, do you have a quick actionable tip that the listeners could implement today in their musical lives? Yes, I think everyone should try to actively listen to a lot more music and recordings of

Starting point is 01:04:21 their instrument. So for me, you know, I grew up constantly listening nonstop to recordings of hillary hahn and gil shaham um because those things listening to recordings like that will help you in a lot of things it'll help you in your musicality it'll help you in your intonation it'll help you in your tone quality um i i personally feel like my sound is the most similar to those musicians that i listen to the most not that i um not that it's like a replica of them but it's like that maybe cutting tone that you hear in like hillary's playing or or something about the vibrato and gil shaham's playing like comes out a little bit in my own and i think that's literally just because i listened to their stuff so much um that my brain

Starting point is 01:05:13 really took that on and started um figuring out this is what i want it to sound like how do i make that happen you know and if you're not listening actively to um to recordings and performances and things you don't know what you're striving for you're just kind of mindlessly playing and thinking i don't i just i know it wanted to sound good but what does good mean right good is arbitrary unless you have a goal in mind so i think like listening to recordings um with goal-oriented ears is probably the advice that i would give that's fantastic chloe uh are there any noteworthy project you're currently working on and would like listeners to know about well the color to our music academy 2019 is probably the biggest project i have coming

Starting point is 01:06:06 up, which will be next summer. And I'm still working on recording a new solo album with my pianist, Jonathan Tsai. We'll see if that finally comes to fruition this spring. It was something that we wanted to do last spring and didn't quite happen for various reasons. I have a lot of exciting concerts coming up, some in Mexico and Houston, and one that may be happening in Ireland in the spring, which is the place I've always wanted to go. So I'm beyond excited for that. Yeah, just there's always new things happening. But right now, the camp is probably the biggest project that I have on my plate. That sounds great. I'm going to put links in the show note to your website and Instagram page and the Academy's website as well. And I love those videos

Starting point is 01:06:53 of you and your pianist, so keep them coming. Okay, yeah, we need to do more of those for sure. Chloe I can't thank you enough for being so generous with your time and advice today you're a great source of inspiration for me and I think you're a wonderful role model for today's young musicians I had an amazing time talking with you thank you so much oh thank you it was a pleasure thank you guys so much for listening i hope you enjoyed this chat with chloe trevor there are so many things she said in today's episode that really resonated with me and i loved how she described what challenging ourselves to record and post a practice video can do for our

Starting point is 01:07:44 playing. And it's true, right? There's no other way to learn and master performing than by doing it. So if you're on Instagram and feel like having some fun and push yourself out of your comfort zone this week, post the video, tag me at mindoverfinger and let me know what the experience was like for you, what you learned from it, or just tag me in a post and let me know what your favorite takeaway from today's show was. As always, you can find the show notes for this episode and more information about mindful practice at mindoverfinger.com. And if you're looking for a community of mindful practice enthusiasts, join the Mind Over Finger tribe at facebook.com slash groups slash Mind Over Finger tribe. Next week, I'll be talking to

Starting point is 01:08:32 Nick Platoff, Associate Principal Trombone with the San Francisco Symphony. Nick and I had a great conversation talking about his San Francisco audition process before, during, and after. So if you're a young musician thinking of a career in a symphony orchestra and you're wondering what auditioning for a job entails, this is the episode for you. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a minute to head over to iTunes to rate and leave a review. It's very much appreciated and it will help other musicians and music lovers find the podcast. Again, thank you and à bientôt!

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 016 Chloé Trevor: Practicing Efficiently & Enjoying Performing

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