The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 050 Barry Green: The Inner Game of Music

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 50. 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're doing really great. 50 episode that feels like a big milestone. So I wanted to celebrate in style by bringing someone big whose work I feel is so important for all musicians. And I'm talking about none other than bass player and author Barry Green. Now, if you don't know Barry yet, you're welcome, because you must know him. Barry is the author of

Starting point is 00:00:58 the essential book, The Inner Game of Music. You've heard me and several guests talk about this book on the podcast before. And you've also heard about the series of books that have inspired The Inner Game of Music. For example, The Inner Game of Tennis from the episode with Milan Milislavljevic and The Inner Game of Gaul from the episode with Nathan Cole. So you know what profound impact these books and the principles in them I've had on myself and my guests. And I'm so happy that Barry accepted to be on the show to have this very, very important conversation with me. Barry served as principal bassist of the Cincinnati Symphony for 28 years. And more recently, he was principal bassist of the California Symphony and Sun Valley, Idaho Summer Symphony.

Starting point is 00:01:44 As former executive director of the International Society of Bassists, he's currently living in San Diego while teaching at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and he's active as a bass soloist, clinician, and motivational speaker. Barry was the first bass player to solo with the Cincinnati Symphony, and he's known for his creative and eclectic Green Machine and Green Man concerts, including the bass in jazz, folk, rock, funk, hip-hop, contemporary, and world music in combination with dance, voice, art, and theater. Barry has written three books on the mind, body, and spirit of performing musicians, and I think that as classical musicians,

Starting point is 00:02:27 these are works we should absolutely own and read and apply. In addition to The Inner Game of Music, which he wrote with the author of The Inner Game series, Timothy Galloway, he's written seven Inner Game of Music workbooks. His second book, The Mastery of Music, 10 Pathways to True Art History, is based on interviews with over 120 world-famous musicians on topics of courage, passion, creativity, discipline, and humility. It deals with qualities of greatness from the human spirit that transcends all professions, and it includes conversations with artists like Dave Brubeck, Bobby McFerrin, Joshua Bell, Frederica von Stad, Christopher Parkening, Evelyn Glennie, Gary Carr, Jeffrey Kahane, and many more. His most recent book is called Bringing Music to Life, and it explores three techniques of breath, pulse, and movement that allow musicians to channel expression through their bodies. I'll have links to all of these in the show notes and at mindoverfinger.com.

Starting point is 00:03:30 And I encourage you to visit Barry's website, innergameofmusic.com, where you can find more information on all of this, as well as examples of his lectures. In today's conversation, Barry talks about principles of the inner game, including what we should focus on, why we need to turn up the music and how this simple act can transform our playing and change our life, how we can reach the state of relaxed concentration, how effective experience-led learning is, and how to set effective goals. There is so, so much value in our discussion, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I'm pretty certain you'll want to take some notes and listen to it again. Let's go to the show. Barry Green, such a great honor to have you on the show today. Thank you. Nice to be here. Barry, The Inner Game of Music is a timeless book.

Starting point is 00:04:36 It's always relevant. I read it a few times years ago and I've had so many takeaways and so many of these principles have stayed with me and I could say evolved with me throughout the years. And it was so great to read the book again, well, many times since then, but also recently in preparation to speaking with you today. And I hope we reach new audiences, maybe younger folks that might not have read it yet, because I feel like it's one of those books that all musicians must read. And one of my favorite things about the inner game is that it's not a gimmick to get you to win a job or reach outer goals. And early in the book, you write, and I quote, when you are playing the inner game, the quality of your experience comes to be as important as your actual success. And that's what I love about it.

Starting point is 00:05:30 It's really a profound way of approaching music making mindfully that really leads ultimately to performing our best. But before we dive into the principles of the inner game and of all the wonderful other works that you've written since then and developed. I would like for my listener to really hear about your journey. So can you please tell us about you, how you got to where you are today and how that path has unfolded for you? Certainly. My first exposure to the inner game personally was in 1979 and 1980 when I was teaching on a leave of absence from the Cincinnati Symphony at Indiana University. And I was always

Starting point is 00:06:21 a fan of skiing, winter sports. And in Indiana, which is not famous for its huge mountain ranges, they happened to just open up a ski facility. And this is Brown County, which there are some hills. You might call them bunny hills. And I thought, oh, this is awesome. I'm going to go skiing at this new place. And it was an opportunity where my brother, who was a much better skier, we had attempted to ski together in California, which is where I'm from. He actually has a physical handicap, and so I have a physical advantage over him. But when it comes to the mental side of learning and tennis or any sports that the intergame has been known to be available for, he has dominated his little brother. And so this was a chance for me to take some lessons. and at the new ski place and then go back to California and see how that holds up to my big brother.

Starting point is 00:07:35 So I did that, which was the traditional approach to skiing. And this was my first introduction to the inner game because it was literally old school. Do this, do this, hold your body this way, turn this way, put your foot there, all of these myriad of instructions. and um it was okay i mean it worked for the hill but when i went back to squaw valley which is where they had the winter olympics in california i got to the top of that hill and i just froze i mean all of those lessons didn't do me any good i was paralyzed by this knowledge and the

Starting point is 00:08:14 instruction and my brother just shot down the hill and um i kind of scooted down on my rear end and when i finally got down to the bottom he said well i said okay how'd you do it and he said well i didn't use the inner game of skiing to teach me how to ski but if you want to know how i learned on my own you should read the inner game of skiing and that describes my own process best of any other thing that I, he had known. And so I thought, wow, this is my opportunity to finally read an inner game of music, inner game book by Timothy Galway. And that I had heard people using my symphony colleagues for a long time, whether it was an inner game of tennis, inner game of skiing, later the inner game of golf. For such a long time, I really didn't have

Starting point is 00:09:17 an anxiety issue with my playing but I knew that this was supposed to be really good stuff but I certainly had the issue with skiing and so I said that's it I'm going to go finally read an inner game book and I read the inner game of skiing and after reading that I could see what musicians have been excited about over the last several years and how helpful this could be not only for your playing but for your teaching. Its uniqueness was precisely what my brother said from the beginning. This is not a method that you need to follow step by step but most people that are excited about the inner game feel that it's something that describes their own experience when things work. And this philosophy has been around for thousands of

Starting point is 00:10:19 years. It's Eastern philosophy. It's just based on simple concentration, paying attention to what works for you. And so it's really not my book. I mean, it's just my sharing of my own observation of what other people have found helpful for themselves and track and paying attention to things that work for myself. And I've observed that, but I haven't been following those pathways oftentimes because I've been confused by my own doubts and fears

Starting point is 00:10:56 and that inner voice that we have learned to recognize through the inner game books. this is such a great journey thank you so much for sharing and i mean there were so many principles in this books that as i mentioned earlier really made a strong impression on me back then and have since stayed with me and evolved with me through my own experience and i definitely have several questions for you but you and i were talking right before we started recording and you mentioned that you had prepared some points that you wanted to discuss with us. So why don't I just let you take over and get all the wisdom that you have for us today?

Starting point is 00:11:44 Well, I'm happy to share this area with your audiences. It sounds to me like the interest of your audience is primarily in the area of practicing and learning. and the inner game is about three skills to overcome the distracting inner voice that takes us away from what it is that we want to do any physical activity whether it's sports whether it's dance theater music education when you're doing something it's easy to get distracted and be concerned with what we call outer games where it has nothing to do with what we're doing It's just result orientation, achievement, not, as you mentioned earlier, the quality of our experience.

Starting point is 00:12:36 And that what we've learned with the inner game is that the only game that we can really have control over is doing what we do best. And when you put your attention on things that you have no control over, like the outcome, whether you're going to be successful, whether you win an audition, whether you get the approval or the awards or the acknowledgement, of your work, or thinking about post-concert parties, then you cannot connect with what it is that you're doing. And that the only thing that's important is you being at your best and tuning out everything else. And so from the inner game standpoint, the whole concept can be summarized in four words um those four words are turn up the music okay so what we do is you find ways to get into the music and make it louder so it drowns out the distractions um and that's all it's about uh the way we turn up the music is that there's like three dials or there's three

Starting point is 00:13:49 sub areas that are all about music and when we um absorb ourselves in our awareness techniques our commitment techniques and our trust techniques um then they push out the distractions of doubts and fears and anxieties and agendas and all the other things and um so we're replacing we only have like 100% attention. And when half your attention is in fighting fears and inner thoughts and concerns, we're going to amplify the inner connection to the task of music. And then those figures change. The polling goes from 50-50 to 70-30 to maybe 90-10. And we have the control to do that so that's the inner game and i mentioned there's like three master skills that we use to achieve this what we call state of relaxed concentration uh and a state where

Starting point is 00:14:58 you're both alert and yet you're calm because you're able to access everything that is in your nervous system that you've learned your physical memory without external distractions so that's our end goal and the the three windows that we use or dials that we use that are all about music have to do with awareness techniques which are paying attention to what's going on just what you can know sights sounds feelings and what you understand commitment techniques which probably are more in the area that we should explore today that very much have to do with, well, how should we prepare? I mean, commitment is a great word. Sometimes we call them will skills or goals. I love commitment because it implies there's something on the

Starting point is 00:15:57 other side of the word commitment meaning well what are you committed to well as musicians we need to know what we're doing that means how does the music go and we need to know how are we doing it and that has to do with well do you play with your hands do you play with your breath what fingerings with bowings with what breathing articulations whatever it is that make make Bach sound on the flute like it would sound on the piano or whether it were sung or in a group and so these commitment principles which is one third of the three skills take place in advance you got to know what you're doing and how you're doing it and then what I like to say is we just

Starting point is 00:16:47 put on our Nike t-shirts and we just go out there and you do it and the final technique of the inner game are what we call trust skills. And that is really a tricky word because it could be misleading, just the word trust. There are different words actually for the intention of the word trust in other languages, which I've found when I go into countries that don't speak English. But the word trust is the best one that we have to apply in one lane or one area to being a metaphor that you trust the energy, you trust the calmness, you trust your past experience, you trust the way your teacher plays, you trust the way you play when you're at your best. You trust the lullaby, you trust the dance, you trust the funeral march, or you trust the

Starting point is 00:17:53 smoothness or the texture of water or the lullaby or the beauty of something. These are things that inspire music and that are more trustworthy than a whole page of black 16th notes or Italian words that say, vivace, as fast as possible. And, you know, that could be intimidating, right? And distracting. And yet when you realize it's a race or it's energy or this sforzando is just an explosion or something that represents an eruption,

Starting point is 00:18:31 then it becomes real because that was indeed probably the inspiration in the first place of the music. So what you're doing is you're tapping literally into what it was that inspired a composer to put something down on paper and then use the rhythm and the terminology to make it readable for hundreds of years later on a piece of paper. and then we have to bring it back to life but the purest form is to go back to the source of what it was that the composer was inspired to describe in music and these metaphors are what we call trust metaphors the downside of trust the confusing side of trust is that it's a wonderful word that can also be used for just believing things are going to work out well

Starting point is 00:19:31 I believe in that and I think that's wonderful but that's not going to help you when you're when you're terrified you got to be doing something about it and so that word the English word trust could mean okay I just trust it's going to happen that's not the way we're attaching the meaning of the word trust to the metaphors of what inspires the music that we would be playing. And so those are the, you know, that's the inner game side of it. I'm fascinated though with my own experience teaching at all levels where I've got kids that are fifth graders just starting music, and I have doctoral students at Ohio State. And so I love being present when the light bulb goes off or on, and there's illumination and there's passion in music.

Starting point is 00:20:37 Um, so that's what for me is important is seeing this, this growth. The commitment area is one of the most primary areas. It's like your first stop because so much, so often, whether it's a college level or a high school level or middle school level, the students just don't know how it goes, how the music goes, what the tempo is. They can't sing it. They can't write it down necessarily. And then when they are playing a particular passage and the thing breaks down and I ask them, well, where did it go wrong? They don't know. Or they say, well, it's between these notes. And I could say, well, what fingering are you using there? And they say, I don't know. Let We try it again, and it's, well, either the second or the third finger.

Starting point is 00:21:34 Well, bottom line, if you don't know how the music goes, if you don't know the tempo, the style, the rhythms, the tonality, and you don't know what fingering you're using or whether your bow is up or down, and you get to that passage, of course you are vulnerable. You are a host. It's like going out in the middle of the summer without mosquito repellent in the middle of a lake where you're just surrounded by mosquitoes. You're just going to get eaten up.

Starting point is 00:22:08 And when you're prepared, you do what you need to do and you insulate yourself from that. And that's where the commitment principle comes in, which is all about physical memory and advanced preparation. This is one third of the inner game. Oftentimes, the inner game is associated with magical trust skills. You make a transformation in your attitude, and it produces amazing results when you sing a lullaby with your instrument as opposed to play an adagio piece where your bow is tremble. And awareness techniques are fantastic for solving problems. They illuminate things immediately, and they're instant. But commitment is often, in a sense, it's old school.

Starting point is 00:23:07 I mean, this is what our training is all about, but it is an equally indispensable part, which for my own personal experience when I'm sharing the inner game principles, comes up so much. And so that's appropriate. That's why I'm really fascinated with this. And there's many areas that we could explore in that commitment area, period. Yes, absolutely. And I was really feeling when I was reading it, maybe that's an oversimplified way to say it, but one could say that maybe it boils down to letting go of the inner and outer expectations and returning to the present moment and to what's essential, which is why we love music and why we want to play it. And I feel that sometimes that's how we destroy the practice because we are so focused on executing outer goals, doing what our teacher tells you that we're completely tuning out of what our experience is. And that's one of the things I loved about the technique, which is why you were talking about clarifying our goals and making sure we have not just performance goals, but also experience goals. Correct. I mean, we're striving for a state of concentration where you're calm and alert and things work in a natural way. And when you put too much on your plate, you can't do that. I mean, the characteristics of any inner game instruction are two things.

Starting point is 00:24:49 Number one, it has to be simple. And number two, it has to be about the music, one of the awareness, commitment, or trust dials or windows that we're looking at. Everything else doesn't belong. And so when you put too much pressure on yourself and you start adding all of the outer demands and focuses, you lose your ability to just be simple and connected to what you're doing. Extremely important. So I know that was my number 14 point, actually. science has told us that the mind can concentrate on in a given moment which is kind of like a heartbeat maybe at the at a tempo of about 60 three to five things plus or minus two now

Starting point is 00:25:43 three to five so if you did three that means plus or minus two that means that some people could only concentrate on one thing per beat in 60 seconds. Five plus or minus two, that means somebody else could go up to seven things within a pulse of 60. Well, you could probably play 16 notes at the tempo of 60. And you've got 10 fingers, you got notes, you got rhythms, you got pitches, you got 10 fingers, you've got bowings or articulations, you've got expression, you have body posture, you have image, you have rhythm, you have pitch. I mean, come on. There's a lot of things that are going on in every millisecond of what you play. And so the bottom line is that we have to cluster and learn and program our body so that it can relax. And in

Starting point is 00:26:56 the given moment of time, ideally, you don't think of anything. It's all physical memory and it's a wonderful experience, but it doesn't usually work that way. But certainly reducing the amount of intentional focus of our energy to a very small amount when your whole body is working automatically. And the less, the better. And any time that you are focusing on any, even one simple thing, you are no longer paying attention to the rest of what you're doing. And this brings in another approach to music that I'm very passionate about. And that is that we play music when you think about it in a very mature way not by playing but by listening and what it is that we're listening to is that we're shadowing our own inner direction of the

Starting point is 00:28:01 sound and the energy of what it is that we're expressing in music with our outer instrument whether it's your voice or a physical instrument of any kind. And so what you're doing is you're comparing your passion and your understanding of what you know and what you feel and what you've trained to do with what's coming out of your body and what's coming out of the instrument on the other end of your body. And that's a listening process. And in a sense, it's a pretty simple thing. I mean, when you're teaching a lesson, for example, you often will play along with the student and you'll play a little louder than the student.

Starting point is 00:28:41 And so the student plays somewhat in your shadow, but it's easy for them to follow you when you're leading them. And I also like to compare this to a marching band walking in a line for those or walking in unison with anybody. in a marching band you only need to know two things where are you and where's the line and you're either ahead or behind but you get that by paying attention to what's going on around you and that informs what you are doing so if you're listening to the rhythm and you notice this that you're ahead or behind the beat then it's as simple to adjust it if you're playing something and you notice the pitch is not where it is, well, what tells you that it's accurate is comparing what's coming out to what's inside you that says this is sharp or this is flat.

Starting point is 00:29:44 So it's a listening process. And so the reason this is so important is that if you want to spend 100% of your time listening as you're playing, which is frankly what you should be doing, Not just listening to yourself, but sometimes listening to who you're playing with, sometimes listening to how, if you're in a rhythmic group, who else is sharing that rhythmic function? If you're in a rhythmic group, perhaps listening to the melody while you're rhythm so that you stay, so that they stay with them or listening to the harmony. When you're doing that, you are in a constant listening mode. if you stop and say, I got to remember change to the fourth finger, or this is up bow, or this is down bow, or I have to get louder here, or this is where the articulation comes, or this is where I might forget something. Whenever that voice comes in, even though it's a good idea,

Starting point is 00:30:43 and those are important things, you are no longer in a place where you could be hearing what's going on and responding to what's going on. It's as if like you're driving. I mean, if you're going to to be talking to somebody or listening to the radio and there is a black ice or there's a thunderstorm and you're in danger or you can't even see where the road is or what's coming and you don't have traction, I mean, you need 100% of your concentration to keep you from dying in a car crash. You can't be talking to the person next to you or on your cell phone or even listening to the radio. You just go into hyper gear of pure attention so that you could respond to whatever is going on. And, you know, I love this analogy and I feel like it transitions really well into

Starting point is 00:31:38 another of my favorite topics in the book. And it's that experience led learning. When you talk about how teachers should guide students through a process of discovery and not simply give out directions. And I feel like this is something we should also apply in the practice room. And as you mentioned, in a context where we're playing with other people and we're paying attention, we're noticing. And as you talk about in the book, we often learn best when we explore and discover what works best through figuring out what feels good. And if we can start to adopt this mindset as well when we practice and we set out to discover rather than simply follow directions and internalize what those directions that maybe we get from a music director or from a teacher,

Starting point is 00:32:31 what they mean for us and how they feel. But can you please elaborate a little bit on that when you're talking about this way of guiding students and hopefully eventually students guide themselves in this process of experience-led learning. And you talk a lot about transforming do this instructions into awareness instruction. I'd love to dive into this topic with you a little bit. Right. Well, you've hit on probably the single most important page of the entire book, which is that one page which compares the two, do instructions versus awareness instructions. and it's that's that's the difference between an external approach versus an internal approach and the fact of the matter is you can't learn anything until it goes through your nervous

Starting point is 00:33:25 system and um so we do learn through our eyes through our body through sounds um and a teacher if they just, if a teacher can amplify and get behind and direct a student so that they observe for themselves, so they point their eyes where they need to see, they point their hands where they need to feel, they use a metaphor that is familiar so that the student or the colleague can understand, have a similar understanding or can create an understanding, a concept of a particular energy that they're trying to express in music, then everything goes through the student or through the participant. And this process is identical when you're practicing because you're the teacher of yourself. And just like I mentioned with my brother,

Starting point is 00:34:30 He was his own teacher, and he said, this book is all about how I learn, meaning how he learns. So he found, and that's why I don't take ownership for it. It's observation. uh and when we are reminded of what we've done that something that has worked for us then we could identify it and you could embrace it as something as your own you know and uh so this is this is and that to me is a joy to make that process easier so that people can recognize some things. So, I mean, in my lessons and in my coaching and everything I'm doing, all I'm doing is illuminating, showing people what they need to see or feel or hear so that they could do what

Starting point is 00:35:28 they need to do. Not giving a complex instruction where they say, well, I can't do that, or my body doesn't go that way, or I don't agree with it. Just yesterday, I was working with a fifth grader who's just taking up the instrument. And it's just all over the place. And it's so much about getting position and holding the bow. And so, of course, the fifth grader doesn't care or know anything about me or my experience having played the instrument for 50, 60 years. And he says, why do I have to do this? Why can't I just hold it this way? And he grabs the bow with his whole fist. And why do I have to keep my arms straight? It doesn't feel right. And so it was a wonderful reminder and a challenge of what I need to do to convince that person to do what works.

Starting point is 00:36:33 and so i had to find a way i says okay let's let's do it this way and put your thumb in this position and tell me what it feels like does it hurt no uh look at your arm is it straight or is it crooked oh it's straight oh so that's a good reason to keep your arm straight and um and now you just made a beautiful sound how did that feel um and look what you did in order to get that sound okay and now go ahead and do the other way hold your hand the other way can you make that sound with that grip no uh can you do it the other way well that seems like a good idea why don't we do that um i mean it was just going through the process of i had to get into this you know I failed in that I told him this is the way we need to hold the bow and he was having difficulty

Starting point is 00:37:36 with it but I had to find simple ways so that he could experience it for himself and then tell me did that work okay do you want to do that yeah that was that's cool okay I'll do that and so victory you know and uh unfortunately human nature doesn't work this way human nature wants to tell you what to do wants to be successful um um and wants to give instructions and wants to sometimes sometimes has less patience uh but uh and human nature that voice is going to always be there. It's always going to tell you what to do. What if you should do this, you should do that. It's not good enough. The question is, how do we manage those things when we recognize them? And we get trapped very easily by the human nature side of

Starting point is 00:38:37 it, which isn't always in our best interest. And we have to keep reminding ourselves, wait a minute, that this isn't working. Why didn't it work? How can we do it differently? And I feel that for me, having this kind of approach transforms the way I practice into becoming something that is a lot more engaging, a lot more fun, which is another thing that you talk about in the process of developing an inner game. And the older I get, the more I think it's so important for me to have more fun when I practice. And I constantly challenge myself in finding more creative ways of practicing. And I just feel like that's something that we don't put enough emphasis on, or at least for me growing up, there was definitely not a whole lot of

Starting point is 00:39:30 emphasis put on having fun while practicing. And I know you're a big fan of that. So do you want to talk to us a little bit more about that? Certainly. Well, first of all, the whole concept of practicing needs to have a, you could call it a goal, but we shouldn't practice necessarily mindlessly. I mean, there is body training. There's no question. There is physical training that can only be reinforced through repetition and practice. That's necessary when we recognize that when we do something and we have to work at it really hard, and then when we can, through repetition and through physical memory,

Starting point is 00:40:20 go back to something like that and realize now we don't have to think about that anymore and it's done and we recognize that we've accomplished something, that is really meaningful. But for the most part, when we get beyond these initial years, when we're practicing, I just think it's so important that you need to know why you're practicing. And you have a goal saying, I'm going to do this, not just to play it, but I've got this, this, and this to work on. And I want to leave having accomplished what I set out to do. Or you may have to do an assessment. You play something and you say, what needs attention?

Starting point is 00:41:06 And then you go to work based on what you just heard. Perhaps you don't know. Every day, you're a different person. You feel different about what you're doing. I have a a um a very important few lines that i love to share um about learning and practicing and that is that we learn what we want to practice and then we practice what we've learned and then finally we don't practice mistakes and this is a whole huge concept is that And traditionally, I don't know that this is even in the inner game book, maybe in other things or not. Frankly, well, let's not even get there. But learning what you practice has to do with the human being, having that in your head.

Starting point is 00:42:05 um you traditionally say if you take a new piece and you got a performance 10 weeks later uh i'd call it old school or non-conscious learning is that you keep practicing it uh to get it right and you could spend seven eight nine weeks until you finally get it to sound good right before before you perform. And then you get to the performance and you get nervous and who knows what happens. The reality is that you've spent 90% of your time, maybe up to 90% of your time, that's an arbitrary figure, practicing what you don't want to play. You're practicing mistakes because you're trying to get it right and you've never succeeded as it's gradually getting better. and then say the last 10% of your time before the performance, you finally get to the place

Starting point is 00:43:02 where that's what you want to do, but you've never had a chance to practice it. And then you go to your performance and you put on the red light or you put yourself under pressure and what you have already learned, you still can't even get that out because you'll get maybe 50% of it. So maybe 5% of the time, an arbitrary number, you'll get what you want. As opposed to always reinforcing and practicing something that you know. Like in a sense, you're a professional musician. So you don't go into an opera or into a symphony gig without looking at your music. and professionals they've got three or four rehearsals sometimes one it goes without saying you need to have your music in advance prepared so that you could rehearse what you want to rehearse

Starting point is 00:43:57 which is dealing with listening to how this fits with the rest of the group so that you could play and so the same thing can be applied to practicing but you're your own orchestra meaning that you do not want to rehearse your body and start comparing uh your music to a perfect vision until you know what it is that you're programming and and so that's why you have to learn the music in advance and then do the rehearsing as you're practicing which is the reinforcement and the and the physical memory part of it um the way you can do it is that you just do uh it in chunks you don't you don't i mean traditionally if you're playing a whole piece you try to get through the whole piece every single time you play it you know and then gradually

Starting point is 00:44:59 over time through repetition maybe it's getting a little better as opposed to learning something four measures at a time so that you can have it in your head you could play it you could play it consistently and then you go on to the next segment and you put these segments together it's a different kind of learning where you're protecting your body from pollution uh you know the old computer uh expression garbage in garbage out so if you if you practice with garbage all the time, what do you think you're going to get? It's kind of hard to clean that up as opposed to only inputting what is something you want to preserve and reinforce. It's a simple thing. And if you just examine how you're working on something, if you can't play something

Starting point is 00:46:01 without looking at the music uh and be able to only listen to what you're playing then you haven't learned it uh so if you have to follow instructions like fingerings as string players or string players following fingerings and bowings every single time you get to this particular passage or you've got all these numbers and signs on everything if you're having to look at that stuff you're not available to hear what you're doing and so what it is that you have to do to get to the place that you could say i really know this is when you don't need to be watching something which means that your eyes are no longer available your imagination your imagery um your ears are not available because you're reading something with your eyes and that's

Starting point is 00:46:49 and of course this gets back to that earlier concept that we're playing by listening you can't listen to what's going on if you if you don't know what you're playing and if you're playing isn't isn't there to compare it to um it's it's just a huge thing um uh this another really important aspect of this is that so much i just these are just technical points that are just, but I just believe so are so important. Um, how you play fast is how you play slow. Um, um, I, the second book that I did was the mastery of music where I interviewed over 120 world famous musicians on 10 topics of the human spirit. Um, um, there was one chapter, though, it's on discipline, which is what I'm referring to. In fact, all of these

Starting point is 00:47:53 little tidbits of knowledge I got from other individuals that came from Mastery of Music that were so transforming in the way I practice and very consistent with all of these things that we're talking about right now. Eddie Daniels is a great jazz classical clarinet player, world famous quite well known and his whole message was how he slows things down and how in one note he the way we play one note is the way we need to play every note and that a note has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And so often, our attention is just on moving from one note to the next note to play fast, as opposed to what actually you first mentioned to me in this interview, is valuing the experience and the feeling of what does it feel like to actually

Starting point is 00:48:59 play one note. That's not only an emotional feeling, but a tactile feeling in your fingers. if it's a wind instrument it's a resistance in your in your breath if it's a string instrument it could be the resistance of the bow against the string but there's a texture there and so often when you're trying to play fast all our concern is is moving from one note to the next and never being inside the actual note and when you could transform it's almost like the yin and yang it's almost like white and black go from positive image to a negative image so instead of thinking of moving now you're thinking of the physical tactile feeling of a note then the movement disappears it's totally gone you play one note then you play another note

Starting point is 00:50:02 because you're now on the content rather than on the motion that gets from one place to the next. And this was such a profound lesson. I mean, Eddie Daniels described this in such a beauty. And then people like Joshua Bell and Christopher Parkening and Frederic von Stad, they all come back and they say, wow, they were interviewed for different things. Eddie Daniels, changing the way I'm practicing, period. They just slowed things. He says, take a 16th note passage and play it like a slow movement of a Mozart sonata, you know, just like like whole notes.

Starting point is 00:50:44 Edgar Meyer, a great bass player, he played a Bach prelude for us of a Bach cello suite. And it was just such a blowout experience. It's just magical playing. And he asked for questions afterwards. And I thought I would be a wise guy. And so I said, yeah, I got a question. How'd you do it? And his response in an equally wise, sarcastic way was, slowly.

Starting point is 00:51:14 He says he could take a whole day to get through this prelude that he just took four minutes to play and explained that process. process. Because every note I say sounded like a pearl, like a beautiful, complete thing. And we think of a pearl. When I think of a pearl, I ask people, do you know how long it takes to make a pearl? And I think it's several years. And so if you're going to play a bunch of notes that sound so beautiful to sound like a pearl how much time have you spent on each one of those notes period to make it so beautiful and that includes the outer shell the inner shell the content the beginning the shape the whole thing and most people just shake their heads probably none you know and that's where the eddie daniels you know play each note like it's the symphony

Starting point is 00:52:19 comes into being. And another thing that has completely transformed my own approach to practicing and even playing is this great wind player, Paul McCandless. He lives in Northern California, played with the group Organ, and I used to play with Paul Winters, a soloist. He's known for jazz oboe, but plays every reed instrument that could fit in your mouth i'm a real fan of that style of music and of him and i asked him

Starting point is 00:52:55 how when he plays all those instruments how does he keep in shape how can he keep his technique up to play all of those instruments and he told me he lives in uh lenis california right on a on the ocean uh on an ocean cliff with a beautiful three-story living room with glass out to the to the ocean it's just like a dream place you think wow what a great place to practice and he said when when he has to go to a gig he goes down into his basement where there's no windows and it's a dirt floor and he works as his teacher had told him on just uh on the oboe he says that's the hardest instrument if he can get the oboe to work well then he can get all the other instruments work well um so he says i just work on two notes and try to get the garbage out between the two

Starting point is 00:53:51 notes and then when he can do that when he can just connect those two notes seamlessly then he packs up his instruments and he goes to the gigs and i started to experiment with that concept too with bow changes to make a perfect bow change and then i recall hearing trumpet players drive me crazy they keep this is what they you know they're doing all the time they're working on that but it makes sense that the reality of perfection there's so much to do if you want to be complete then you have to be complete on a microscopic level eddie daniels talks about the pixels in a in a high definition tv get so that they're pixelated so you get into that kind of detail then you could move back and then you could have something that makes sense

Starting point is 00:54:53 Hmm. Barry, so many very important points that you're making here, and I wish we could keep talking all day, but how about a few rapid fire questions before I let you go? Sure, absolutely. What's your favorite tool in the practice room? My breath. I'm a string player. So when I could integrate my breathing with my bow changes, And it's my warm-up. It's my warm-up that I do that takes about five minutes, and it deals with these perfect bow changes in the frog middle and the tip of the bow for those non-string players. The three areas of the bow, being able to play notes on every part of my bass and the low, middle, high and super high area and all parts of the bow and getting it to work so that I'm going deep. I'm doing what these masters have told me to do.

Starting point is 00:56:04 When that's working and I can get that at 90%, 95%, where I start out at about 50%, and then I am focused. So I'm kind of like entering a chamber of concentration and I'm getting to a place where my inner physical being is connecting with the instrument and it's doing what I want it to do. That sounds like a perfect tool. Outside of what we've already discussed, what skill do you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learn to play their instrument? Well, the fact that it's not about the instrument, it's about them as human beings. And the instrument is just happens to be their external voice with the language of music, of rhythm and and notes and expression. and that it's them that are doing the talking, doing the expressing, doing the sharing. So often, you know, especially in the early stages, it's all about where to put your fingers,

Starting point is 00:57:27 right notes, right place, you know, and the first thing I like to say is it's not on the page, It's not in your fingers. It's not in your bones. It's not in your breath. It's not on your instrument. Where is it? What's left? And everybody says it's in them.

Starting point is 00:57:46 But do they believe it or do they really feel that? I mean, it's when you take ownership and you become a person who is channeling in some way or is sharing something from someone else and bringing it back to life so it could be experienced today, whether it's an improvisation or an old Renaissance piece of music, you are literally bringing something back to life through music. and so your role you have a role of understanding something and delivering a message becoming a messenger and so that's the message is that become a messenger oh not an instrumentalist that's really great how about a quick actionable tip that listeners could implement today in their musical lives or their practice room that's a tough one um i would say leave satisfied that's excellent i love it that means you might you might need to know what it is that's going to make you satisfied but obviously it implies have a goal and then reaching reaching the goal

Starting point is 00:59:00 but another thing that i didn't really get a chance to implore is that the whole concept of goals. The value of a goal is that it gives us direction. Can we agree on that? And yet a goal could be destructive. It could ruin your experience if it's not realistic. And so use your goals to give you direction that inspires you to work hard at what you're doing. But that's all. And if you don't reach your goal then the natural human response is you feel you failed or you didn't accomplish something or it's not good enough and it's just all negative things but if you leave saying i gave it all that i had and then i worked as well and i didn't get this today but but now i'm going to work on that tomorrow um then then the purpose of the goal has been

Starting point is 01:00:04 satisfied because all you can do is do what you do best. And that's kind of where we started is work at the best state of concentration. A goal technically comes from your mind or comes from your teacher or somebody else. It has nothing to do with its external, put it that way. What you have control over is working efficiently and effectively and not wasting your time. And that's the reason for the goal. And so be careful with goals that they're meaningful, but they have to be realistic and it shouldn't be connected with success or failure. It should be connected with the energy you put in and your sincerity to work with your concentration. So important.

Starting point is 01:00:52 And with that, your best work is going to happen. You're going to work better in a state of concentration than a state of terror or pressure. Absolutely. How about some fun projects you have coming up ahead? Well, my latest project is all about fun. I'm a senior citizen. I go to this Y for, they call silver sneakers. Some of your readers may know what that is, but it's when you get to a certain part in your life you get to go to the y or to any gym for free and they have things that are really fun exercise classes and um and so um they're kind of it's kind of a form of of like jazzercise used to be um uh which was doing exercise kind of through dance but so we're working with weights and we're working with the whole things and um i my wife and i

Starting point is 01:01:56 enjoy going to these classes um and they play music for the whole thing and the one one piece of music that i had heard that i just love was cc music factory i want to make you sweat uh the younger kids will know exactly what i'm talking about it's a really it's kind of got a rap medley and it's just one groove and it's just just the coolest thing um it's kind of like um uh the bruno mars hit from a few years ago but nevertheless that inspired me like i'm i'm i'm hearing this music and then we're doing these exercises and we're sweating and it's really cool and i was thinking wow wouldn't this be cool if we could practice shifting this way or we practice bowings this way or we practice uh articulations this way put it put on a groove

Starting point is 01:02:54 popular music and that inspired the work i've been doing the last nine months actually that that we're about to share with more people uh collaboration with bob gillespie the wonderful string educator at Ohio State University. And we've adapted string exercises to popular music beats, all styles, whether it's jazz, rock, funk, blues, classical, new age, Indian music, African music and, and videos. And I've been experimenting them with my middle school kids. We do a five minute nonstop string crossing exercise. And the teacher said they've never concentrated so much on one thing in their lives for, for five minutes straight, you know, and it's just because we put a beat to it. And so this is a project which is going to grow. And I've been working with

Starting point is 01:04:01 a composer in Belgrade, Bosnia, and writing original music, but more like covers, you know, in different styles for scales and shifting and bow changes. And then we're creating videos with pictures or images or animated cartoons and things that that help the person stay with the beat you know even like um where the notes you're playing are highlighted so it's like the bouncing ball so you can't get lost and um it's one of the most exciting things and the audience potential audience is essentially high school string programs and then maybe we will We will bring it down to the middle school level and maybe ultimately do this with other instruments, but the whole idea is to make it, bring it into the world of our youth, and ideally, they may be able to do this also on an iPhone with a headset so that they could take it home after it's been done in a school environment where they're learning the techniques and they could practice along with it. But use the whole principle, use our technology, use what motivates people, keep them, keep it fun, keep it light. And the more repetitive, you might say boring physical side of it, we could do a meaningful, I wouldn't call it a distraction, but something that works for you and keeps your concentration going and then you build the physical memory.

Starting point is 01:05:42 So that's called Stringercise. And anybody that's interested in my stuff, we're redoing my website, which is innergameofmusic.com. It'll all be accessible from that for the future. And I'll put the link in the show notes. Sure. Barry, like I mentioned earlier, I feel like, well, first of all, I encourage all the listeners to purchase your whole collection. But I feel like the inner game of music is a must read for all musicians. I think it's essential. And you've taught the technique all over the world. And you have countless workshops.

Starting point is 01:06:20 And you've written many articles and many books as well. mastery of music and bringing music to life again i think they should get the whole collection and you've given us your website innergameofmusic.com and i really think that you've given us so many i mean a short episode is it's too short to cover the depth of the inner game of music but i feel like with everything you've given us today you probably touch people's imagination and you've got to start to think about those principles and it can already have an impact today in our practice room. So I cannot thank you enough.

Starting point is 01:07:02 I hope people go check the website, buy the books and keep thinking and exploring on those principles that you've shared with us today. Thank you so much. Well, it's been a pleasure to talk with you and I'm honored to be included in your program. And it's been, if there's anything I could do to continue this journey with, you know, people can communicate with me by email. I love hearing from people and I will respond as quickly as possible.

Starting point is 01:07:37 But I am certainly available to continue the dialogue. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this discussion with bass player and Inner Game of Music author, Barry Green. Again, visit innergameofmusic.com for all the information related to Barry's books, presentations, and upcoming Stringer Size project. If you find value in what we talked about today, please share the episode with a friend and also share your favorite takeaways from the episode on social media and tag me, I'm Mind Over Finger on both Facebook and Instagram. As always, you can find the show

Starting point is 01:08:26 notes for this episode at mindoverfinger.com. And while there, sign up for my newsletter to get your free guide to a super productive practice using the metronome. This guide is the perfect entry point to help you bring more mindfulness and efficiency into your practice. Also, 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. There you'll find inspiration, motivation and support to take your practice to the next level and enjoy the process. Again, thank you and à bientôt. Thank you.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 050 Barry Green: The Inner Game of Music

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