The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 056 Hans Jørgen Jensen: Musical Mind

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

I'm beyond excited to begin 2020 with a brilliant pedagogical mind and someone that I respect tremendously, cellist and pedagogue Hans Jørgen Jensen!  Professor Jensen shares incredible insight on how to approach practicing and performing!  Among several topics, he talks to us about: His journey from growing up in Denmark to today Why he quit his solo and chamber music career to dedicate himself to teaching How being a performer made him a better teacher and what being a teacher taught him about performing The habits that help his students be successful Why we must develop great discipline and practicing habits in order to maximize our progress How we can expand our musicianship His wonderful books: CelloMind and ViolinMind Focus in the practice room The new book he's working on, which is about practicing (I know I'll be buying that!) The importance of setting short goals and the mindset to adopt when practicing The power of focusing on the *result* of a movement (the sound/the music you hear in your mind) rather than the movement itself Why he likes "block practice"   Don't forget to visit the Mind Over Finger Resources' page to check out amazing books recommended by my podcast guests, as well as my favorite websites, cds, the podcasts I like to listen to, and the practice and podcasting tools I use everyday!  Find it here: www.mindoverfinger.com/resources!   And join the Mind Over Finger Book Club in the Tribe!  We meet HERE, and we'll begin 2020 with The Inner Game of Golf by Tim Gallwey!   Don't forget to 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 and it's filled with tips and tricks on how to use that wonderful tool to take your practicing and your playing to new heights! TURN THE METRONOME ON AND START PRACTICING BETTER AND LEARNING FASTER RIGHT NOW!  GET YOUR FREE METRONOME GUIDE TODAY AT www.mindoverfinger.com!!!!   MORE ABOUT PROFESSOR JENSEN: CelloMind: Have you ever doubted your intonation? Have you experienced the need to place pitches differently from one piece to another, or even from one measure to another? If so, you are not alone. Trying to decipher intonation is often frustrating and undermines the confidence of some of the most accomplished and talented musicians.   CelloMind is a two-part, pedagogical method book that has been written to help musicians understand HOW intonation works and, more importantly, WHY it works the way it does. Purchase of the book includes exclusive access to an online resource portal with supplemental videos and audio. ViolinMind: ViolinMind is a pedagogical method book that has been written to help musicians understand HOW intonation works and, more importantly, WHY it works the way it does. It is an adaptation of the acclaimed book CelloMind. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CelloMindBook Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cellomindbook/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cellomind   Hans Jørgen Jensen is professor of cello at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University. From 1979 to 1987 he was professor of cello at the Moore's School of Music at the University of Houston. During the summer, he is a faculty member at The Meadowmount School of Music and The Young Artist Program at the National Arts Center in Ottawa Canada under the direction of Pinchas Zukerman. He has been a guest professor at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, The Oberlin College Conservatory, The Eastman School of Music, The Academy of Music in Sydney, The Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen, the Tokyo College of Music and the Musashino Academy of Music in Japan, the Festival de Musica de Santa Catarina in Brazil, The Jerusalem Music Center, and the PyeongChang International festival and School in Korea.   Mr. Jensen has performed as a soloist in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan including solo appearances with the Danish Radio Orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Copenhagen Symphony, and the Irish Radio Orchestra under the baton of conductors such as: Simon Rattle, Mistislav Rostropovich and Carlo Zecchi. He has given numerous workshops and master classes across the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, Brazil, Korea, Australia, and Israel.   His former students have been and are members of major orchestras including The New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Portugal, the Graz Philharmonic in Austria and the Montreal Symphony. Mr. Jensen's former students are currently the principal cellists in the Toronto Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Symphony Nova Scotia. His former students hold teaching positions at Northwestern University, the University of California at Berkeley, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory, the Cincinnati College Conservatory, the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen, the Desautels Faculty of Music at the university of Manitoba and numerous other music schools.   Hans Jørgen Jensen's students have been first prize winners in competitions such as the 2017 Klein Competition, the 2017 Sphinx Competition, the Casado International Competition in Japan, the Johansen International Competition, the MTNA National Competition, the ASTA National Competition, the Stulberg International Competition, the Chicago Symphony Young Performers Competition, the WAMSO Young Artist Competition, and numerous other competitions. His students have also been prizewinners in the 2017 Queen Elisabeth Inaugural Cello Competition, the Naumburg International Competition, the Lutoslawski Cello Competition, and the Klein Competition.   Mr. Jensen was awarded the prestigious 2010 Artist Teacher Award from the American String Teachers Association (ASTA), as well as the Copenhagen Music Critics Prize, the Jacob Gades Prize, the Danish Ministry of Cultural Affairs Grant for Musicians, the Northwestern Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence award, and the U.S. Presidential Scholar Teacher Recognition Award by the U.S. Department of Education. He was named the outstanding studio teacher of the year by Illinois ASTA. He was also the winner of the Artist International Competition that resulted in three New York Recitals. E.C. Shirmer, Boston, published his transcription of the Galamian Scale System for Cello Volume I and II and Shar Products Company published his cello method book, Fun in Thumb Position. A new pedagogy book "CelloMind" was published in November 2017 by OvationPress.   Jensen studied at the royal Academy of Music in Denmark with Asger Lund Christiansen at the Juilliard School with Leonard Rose and Channing Robbins and pursued  private studies with Pierre Fournier, also appearing in his master classes.     If you enjoyed the show, please leave a review on iTunes!  I truly appreciate your support! Visit www.mindoverfinger.com for information about past and future podcasts, and for more resources on mindful practice. Join the Mind Over Finger Tribe here!  https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindoverfingertribe/     THANK YOU: Most sincere thank you to composer Jim Stephenson who graciously provided the show's musical theme!  Concerto #1 for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra – Movement 2: Allegro con Brio, performed by Jeffrey Work, trumpet, and the Lake Forest Symphony, conducted by Jim Stephenson. Also a HUGE thank you to my fantastic producer, Bella Kelly!   MIND OVER FINGER: www.mindoverfinger.com https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/

You're listening to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 56. 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 happy new year i send you my best wishes for fantastic and rocking 2020 i hope you had a great holiday and break and that you're gearing up for more mindful and awesome music making. I personally had some time to rest, but I also took time to work on some super exciting projects with you guys in mind that I'll share in the coming weeks. So

stay tuned. It's so great to be back with you. And I'm beyond excited to bring you a brilliant pedagogical mind and someone I respect so much to begin the year. I'm talking here about the incredible Hans-Jorgen Jensen. Professor Jensen is a world-renowned pedagogue, and all you have to do is talk to some of his students about him and about the profound positive impact he has on their lives to truly see what an amazing person and teacher he is. He's currently the cello professor at Northwestern University and at the Meadowmount School of Music. He also teaches and gives master classes and clinics at countless other institutions and festivals around the U.S. Canada, Europe, and Asia. He's the recipient of numerous honors and awards both as a performer

and a teacher and he's been named Outstanding Studio Teacher of the Year by the American String Teacher Association and was granted a U.S. Presidential Scholar Teacher Recognition Award by the U.S. Department of Education. Professor Jensen has performed as a soloist and recitalist all over the world before dedicating his life to education. His students have won prizes in numerous national and international competitions, and they perform and teach in top orchestras and schools. In our conversation, Professor Jensen shares so much great insight on approaching music making and how to practice. I think you'll find yourself having a really hard time picking up your favorite takeaway like I do. And I'm sure that's one that you'll want to listen to again and again. We also

had a little comical moment that I kept in there because it made me laugh so much. And I thought you guys might get a kick out of it also. So sit back, relax, and enjoy Professor Janssen's wisdom, and I'll catch up with you at the end. Let's go to the show. professor jensen thank you so much for first of all allowing me to tag along all day and watch you teach so many wonderful students and for taking the time to sit with me after what's been a really long day of teaching already yeah you're welcome yeah great to have you here for all the string players out there you probably don't need introduction but i also have some listeners who play wind instruments a vocalist so can you tell us a little bit about you how you got started and

where you got to where you are today sure i grew up in denmark i'm from denmark both my parents are violinists my father was concert master in the northern danish symphony my mother was also first violinist there so of course when i was young i had to play the violin but since i had to rebel of course i decided to switch to the cello i was 15 years old when i switched to the cello and it was much more fun than the violin for me anyway probably physically it was much more comfortable then i started in denmark and when i came to the states was in 1974 to study with leonard rose at the juilliard school and then my first job was after at that time i played a lot of solos in denmark with different orchestras and recitals and things but then my first permanent

job was at university of houston where i was professor of cello and then in the chamber music a string quartet and after that in 87 i came to chicago we have been professor here at northwestern university since then so that's a long time it's amazing how fast time go by so i used to play a lot of concerts but then after some years here i decided i want to focus really on teaching so i can totally dedicate my brain and my time to teach because but i always tell the students it's important that they play a lot because you have to do both but for me if i have to play concerts

i spend so much energy and energy and that that is it distracts from my teaching but i do not recommend the students as they have to find a balance if you play a lot don't teach too much because you see too many problems i don't think it's good for a performer's mind to see too many problems sometimes on the other hand a lot of people say when they start teaching then they now understand how they can practice better themselves so that's also true so both thing is equally true i think that's true i've experienced that myself with teaching taught me so much about practicing better yeah yeah absolutely sure but i guess performing you need to have that experience of performing before you start teaching you can't do something really that

you haven't done yourself i believe in that you have to try everything the more different things you have experienced as a performer the more things you can teach because if you don't really know but it feels like being on a concert stage being nervous feeling the stress how you practice in the end the last day before the concert all of these things if you haven't lived that yourself i think it's very hard to teach other people to do that and how to go about that professor anton it was so great for me to observe you teaching today and there's many things you said that are leading to the question I'm about to ask you right now. What are some, in your opinion,

what are some of the practicing habits of your successful students? Oh, I think I actually have a number of students and I always thought, what is it that they do that's better than others? I think they know how to use time in the most efficient and effective way. And they actually know how to use the little times between things. sometimes you have maybe 30 minutes or you have 15 minutes and one of the students

many years ago i said how come you're much better than all the other kids each week he said you know what it is sometimes before orchestra i have 10 minutes and i go practice i say how do you spend the 10 minutes is i take one passage and just work on one little thing or if i have an audition i might spend the 10 minutes playing through five excerpts but i know exactly how to spend the time i have and he said every day i find maybe three or four 10 minutes or 15 minutes period that i use and i accomplish something each time he said the other kids they're always hanging out in the cafeteria for those minutes so this way i get an hour and a half every day where i'm very efficient more than the other students it's not that i practice

more but he said i think i use the time better i mean that's kind of me paraphrasing because he didn't speak about himself like he was better so but what he did was what i said but he didn't say i'm better and i'm better because he's very unselfish but the same was here student at school here they've reminded me they were very very effective about you and efficient about using time and so they of course that also means when they have longer practice period

up to 50 minutes or an hour they also know how to use time effective there so they're really good at practicing using time

knowing what the right thing to do so of course it's it's self-efficacy understanding but I do it with younger kids

I will tell them and now I don't have so many younger students but I used to have really young I have a few very young ones but tell them to bring their toy

and then actually have the toy tell them if it's like a little rabbit or if I had, the student I told last week in New York, she's like 11 or 12 and that was for the Disney channel and then I thought, okay, we have to come up with something fresh.

So I said, why don't you tell me your favorite toys and then she would play a passage and I said, now the rabbit is going to watch your bow angle and the turtle is going to watch for the tilting degree because how much hair you put on the string and it was amazing

how that made her focus thinking about two things at once because she knew afterwards we're going to ask the rabbits and the turtle what the answer was so with young kids but of course with an older person it's also important you can imagine somebody watching you

when you practice and then ask questions so if you imagine another person it's a way to look at yourself from the outside because we all do that but doing it where you actually imagine a person there, that is very helpful sometimes. Because then it's not like yourself, it's somebody else.

You know what to answer usually. Yeah. But they need someone to teach them how to do that. Absolutely. That's so important. And it was so great to see you today. I feel like this is what you were doing. I was witnessing you redirect their attention to the,

if not the proper thing, at least a different thing. It was kind of directing their attention and their mindfulness and analyzing issues at hand and try to solve it by themselves. So I can see how they can take that home and apply that at home. Hopefully they do it. That's also different that some of the students today are very knowledgeable and know so much. And I've encouraged them to really have strong opinions about everything they do. and then in that case you direct it more to them

as a student is younger like with the younger student I was teaching, he's a new student so then I'm more holding his hand but still trying to make him understand in the end he has to become a great practicer because you have one hour

of a lesson and you might have 10 hours or 15 hours or 20 hours of practice so those hours are really important so I feel as a teacher it's really the first thing I teach is how to practice because then I can become an effective teacher because they spend the time the right way. And how can they establish those strong fundamentals at home?

I mean, actually, when I started teaching at Northwestern, many years ago, the cello students were not so good. And I started out some young kids, and after one or two years, they were already really good. So I used to take them to class and play for the college student. I said, see, they've only played like three years, but they're already at a very high level. In that case, the difference between you and them is actually

they had a parent involved. And I said, you as a college student, you have to be your own parent. But the difference is with a parent, they record the lesson and they make the students do it. Sometimes you have exceptionally gifted young kids that can do it on their own. But mostly for younger students, it takes the involvement of somebody at least listening to them at home. And that's what the college students have to learn to do on their own. But then, of course, as my career grew, I could get more and more advanced students.

And when you have really advanced students, they're usually much more sophisticated about practicing. Otherwise, it wouldn't be so good. That makes sense. So that's kind of a privilege of teaching. but i mean i love to teaching student at any level if they really want to learn but if you have kids or younger people that are not eager to learn then it's not so much fun then it's then we have to spend all the time teaching them how to love to learn and how to that's a whole nother process that's much more difficult that's difficult sometimes how could a student go

about expending their musicianship? Yeah, I used to think it's amazing that you can teach anything technically, but I had a number of students that was not so musical in the beginning, and then one day suddenly became really musical. That was like, for me, eye-opening. And some became fantastic, very, very musical,

but they were not like that in the beginning. I mean as you teach I teach usually in the beginning the physical how the bow works how the left hand works

posture so all the physical so until that really works I don't spend so much time on music because I think if you teach music but there's like

physical hindrances you're not really free to express but I'm not a teacher that believe in okay I give you the tools and then you know

what to do with it because most people don't know what to do with it because style even style between different periods or there's so many in the end most we teach is really music because that's endless but physically i mean you have how to use the bow how to play in tune if you have a good vibrato that's something if a person doesn't have a good vibrato if they don't have a good vibrato that's really a big restriction that my dad used to always say that if you have

problems with vibrato your left hand is not free you can't really move so the vibrato has to be an integral part of the left hand technique so if those things are solved then you can start teaching music and that's endless but by encouraging expressivity and really feeling the emotion inside the body and really going for it i think you can develop musicality at the highest level Mm-hmm. And speaking of this freedom, this musical freedom that you get from really acquiring those physical skills, you've written a couple of books already. And I'm a violinist, so I have violin in mind. It's fantastic. Can you tell us a little bit about these books? Because they cover so many wonderful exercises and also some exercises that we don't see anywhere else. Yeah, I mean, it actually came out of, in the beginning, of a necessity because I felt the first part of Cello Mind, it's about intonation. The second part is about technique, all the different kinds of strength techniques we use.

But the first part, I felt sometimes with students that I would spend so much time teaching them how to play in tune. Sometimes I would see students go away and they come back, then they would play out of tune. and say, how could you start playing out of tune? So I felt people that have great ears instinctively and intuitively learn to play in tune. I know myself, my ears were good,

but my dad would many times say, no, the leading tune, make it sharper. No, play that note out of tune on purpose. When you play fast, you have to play the half step even closer. So some of those things was taught, but he actually taught just intonation and Pythagorean intonation, but he didn't really know the theories and he used to say

by the way people that really know the theories about intonation usually play really out of tune that means they can't hear so actually when I finished started Yellow Mind my dad was dying

and it was the end of his life and he had always said I have to be there with him so I told him you know I've been here now a week I've worked seven hours when you're sleeping

I'm working on this book then I explained it to him so he said okay I trust you because I know you're really into doing the right thing. He said, make sure that in the end, after people understand the theories, it becomes something that's instinctive and intuitive in their ears because it all has to be in the mind and in the ear.

But I felt by teaching people the theories that they actually can understand it, then they have a message that they can use to teach their own ears better. And they'll never stop. The ear, if people don't have really great intonation, I think it's something they have to work on always. And sometimes people get older and actually the ear starts not hearing or the precision goes. So even then it's good to have a book that you can go back to

and teach yourself things. So for me it was just finding a method. And also it was really the students together with me that evolved those theories over like maybe eight or nine years. I started finding all the overtones on the cello, all the sympathetic vibration. And by being able to, I think people with a great ear hear that instinctively. But then when you know what to listen to, you can really train your ear to a high level.

And with the theory that you're mentioning comes the exercise so that people can really develop the skill to listen better. Absolutely. That's an important part. So I would say, yeah, read it, understand it, but you have to practice it and turn it into an ear that is instinctive. And obviously, don't teach. if you have and understand the theory

and you play in a strength and the violinist first violinist is terrific and plays absolutely in tune don't start preaching

to them about theories because they don't need to know it it's something you use for your own knowledge if you are in a strength somebody told me

recently he actually just was in a strength that he goes to rise now and there I'd like

they got second prize in the Carl Nielsen competition and he wrote me he said actually I understand shadow mind now

and he actually used a lot of those uh concepts when we were practicing uh with the strength with it this is thanks don't start preaching to other people this is great and you have a lot of great videos out there too about the book oh yeah i thought that's important that you show how it goes and not so it's like people can hear and see it especially hear it that's really important and this violin mind similar to cello man is very much as the first part of cello mind but just adapted to the violin the problem is we don't

have all the videos yet so we have to develop those because it's still different but i was curious when you do like this i call it advanced overtones or sympathetic vibrations when you play but on the violin i borrowed a violin and then gregory kalinowski who we made it he said yeah you can find every note it's up really high and i i'm 100 sure people with great ears they hear this instinctively and they follow those rules intuitively my teacher when i was a kid he would i was maybe eight years old and he would sit next to me and make me listen to intervals until they vibrated oh yeah and yeah the tartini tones yeah and he was like do you hear how when the b flat is low it's it's in how it vibrates with the g oh yeah yeah and then that's that so for me i never

developed the theory yeah yeah but you had you have it in your ear me too i mean so that's why this is so great for me is that now i can put two and two together i didn't do it i could not sometimes somebody said i said it's the tone that pitch is flat he said no i like it higher i said but it's really flat he said how do you how can you prove that so that's what actually made me start reading books about intonation and then i felt there were several books but nobody you really explained it totally clearly how it is it took a while to figure that out because i think we everybody uses lots of different ways of listening yeah and i love that about the book that they have both the theories and the exercises because we just don't see both together very often

yeah yeah that's right another question i had from watching someone today where you were talking about focus and focus in the practice how do you think students can ensure that they stay focused while they practice yeah i think it's important to do shorter uh says short goals but also important that they monitor their own state of mind because many times a lot of college students do they practice and you see it in the lessons after 15 minutes they start getting this blank look in the eyes and sometimes call it the smart

person syndrome I think it's people that are super insidious sometimes they are less patient because they are used to it they can just think it and they know it in school I think many times they are sitting in a classroom and they are kind of smarter than the other kids

so they just concentrate for a few minutes and then it takes a while for the other kids I couldn't quite hear you. Could you please repeat what you said? I said, you play out of tune. That's Siri. I didn't know. I never use Siri.

That's funny. That's funny. Oh, how to focus. Yeah, yeah. With the focus. Yeah. I think when people are super insensitive, I think they're not as patient

because I think sometimes in school, I'm talking about like college kids or young college kids, and they come out of high school, I think one thing is when you take SAT test, everything goes really, really, really fast. So I think they're trained to solve problems super fast, but they're not trained in the same way to go really,

like really, really into deep detail with something. I remember once I helped my daughter when she was in high school, or my son. I said, you're not detailed enough. So I made them write this really detailed paper. I think they got a C- or something. the teacher said there's way too many

details here but when you're practicing and you want to go into deep behind the scene or behind looking really

what is the problem with something there's no limit to how low you can go of course if you can do it fast and effective it's very good

but so I think so I pointed out I say you're losing concentration now because what happens is when they're really fresh you can solve things really fast

and maybe I keep going too long with the same thing so that could be a problem and you see they can't take it anymore i have a new student i teach him with skype and after 15 minutes said oh you're getting frustrated you're getting frustrated what are you because you're when i tell you to fix something it goes three times slower than just like five minutes ago so probably if it was a young kid i would change the topic because a young kid maybe you have to switch every five minutes depending how so they don't have to do the same thing so long because the younger person, really young,

have less concentration for a long period about the same thing. They need entertainment. So I try to teach the student how can you incent your own mind when you practice so it's fun, to make it a challenge because we know if something is too easy, you get bored. If something is too hard, but it has to be a way where you kind of make it a challenge. So then it's like you're trying hard,

but you're not so hard that you get frustrated. so how to keep right at the threshold of what is a challenge that's really important when you practice yeah it's tricky too because it takes a while to acquire skill so it's something to understand how to fix the problem but then you also have to acquire the skill that cements it and that's sometimes where i find that students or myself lack patience is to really take the time to cement it once you understand what the issue was yeah yeah so i say can you do it now Play it now. Can you learn it now?

Learn it now. Or no, if you want to. Can you not learn it now? How many steps do you need in order to learn it? Do you need three steps or four steps? And should those steps go over like, do you need a week to learn it? Or is that something you maybe need if you do this now, A, B, C, tomorrow, a few more, and then the third day you can do it.

that's like when you really master self-efficacy and you understand how you function and the better somebody are the better they know that but that takes a long time even daring to think what it will take because sometimes they can't do it right now and then they get frustrated

instead of can you do it now do it sometimes they can actually do it right now if they just take all the energy and focus it into one part just do it right now just take a break one minute now do it oh i can actually do it or you can learn it i need to do a b now you can do it so i think

just stepping back and looking at and think how much time it take what kind of strategy you have to have so it's really about yeah being smart about those things i'm trying to writing a book together with a doctor student yeah we are writing a book called practice mind so it's about practicing that sounds like a book i'll be buying no no it's a very interesting book but i try to do look at it each topic i try to find out what does science know about these things and then i put my knowledge try to put what i know inside something that also can be proven of course i can prove it by having done it but like to have that it relates to something that's more objective so goal setting i have like three different theories of goal setting i talk about

i still put it into kind of how i think it should be done but we get reference from like theories of goal setting or i have a chapter i wrote the science of practicing what do we know about these things and that's very interesting you know and when is this coming out so i can buy it No, it'll be finished in the end of next summer. Takes a while. Yeah, well, I'll be looking for it. Do you have a favorite tool in the practice room? Oh, there's so many tools depending on each person.

But I think for students, it's really setting short goals. that is like really short goals and also really separating drilling and practicing from performing it's really important when we practice that we say now we are performing if you're practicing when when you perform the only thing you can do is play the best you can play at this moment i don't second guess it but if you do the best you can when you perform that's all you can do at that moment and there's no space and time to really second-guess yourself too much. That's the thing.

People don't do enough of practice performing where you just do the best you can. That's every concert. People play as good as you can. Next day, you can make it better. Next day, better. That's what at least what people hope for. But it's important to know

what's the best you can do right at this moment and then not second-guess yourself. And what's a skill outside of playing their instrument that you think musicians should expand on to become better artists? Yep, that's of course reading a lot of things about many other things. The more you know about other topics,

I think not just being like focused on your own instrument and I think it's important when people play like Beethoven sonatas, really know a lot of other works of Beethoven, really listening to all the other instruments and of course people always talk about it's important to go to to museum but it's really important sometimes to see music also within the culture of that of that period and also from that point of view of in that country because still today i think many times if you have people

we are very international but i think still russian musicians very often play russian music really really really fantastic same with french the sensitivity of the french language and the french culture of course also that gives you a special feeling so i think it's important that we really think about the cultures surrounding all the music and the period and then it makes you play the music better i think if you look at it from that point of view not just very very focused on just the music that's not enough it's important to have a big vision that's a good one professor jensen what is the best advice that was ever given to you that you would like to pass on to the listeners oh that's hard to say

i mean i always tell students just go for it now don't hold back don't second guess anything i think but my advice was i learned so much from my father about he was really great about the skills about practicing are you thinking about not practicing just anything with music

anything I remember when I was very young what really inspired me the most was when I heard first time I was

I think I was only six or seven I heard Tosca and experienced that and at that time they had like every other day

they played a different opera they had a opera company that came and my parents orchestra just put on the music

for all these operas of course they had a few weeks of rehearsal but then it was like two days for one opera two days for another just sitting there and watching that because there's nothing like when you see the drama in opera it's so everything is there the words the drama and i think having that feeling for music that you get from opera but having it in a concerto because it's it's there's as much emotions and there's as many feelings it's just not as obvious as when you see it related to a theater or play also

so i think that's important that we inside the music have a story that we can tell that's similar to going to opera and that's another person can't tell you what to think that's something you have to find inside yourself what the music means to me or to you but it's important to relate it back to of course what the composers felt but it's still up to the person performing to make that interpretation that's really great advice and finally do you have a quick actionable tip that the listeners could implement today in their practice room as i said before i'm writing a chapter now about creative practice ways inspired by science there's one called this constraint action hypothesis this hypothesis proposes that when performers utilize

an internal focus of attention focus on their movements, they may actually constrain or interfere with automatic control processes that would normally regulate the movement. Whereas an external focus of attention, focus on the movement effects, allows the motor system to more naturally self-organize. A great number of experiments have been done in a great variety of disciplines, from hitting a golf ball to a target, shooting a basketball, doing long jumps to playing

a musical instrument. There's overwhelming evidence that focusing on the effect that their movements produce rather than on the movements themselves make the performances much more accurate. So for musicians, if you think about, we teach, you know, when we teach

oh you should shift like that or do that. If you think about the muscles and the movements being used it's not as effective as when you think about the music what you feel in your mind the music you hear in your mind and the music that comes from the instrument so how you entrain the inner feeling of music with the outer feeling not the outer feeling but the outer sound that comes from the instrument so i think understanding that is really

important and i think sometimes when i was younger i would have known that because i would just have trusted my own instinct much better so i think that's really a concept i think is really great it's kind of like associating a sound that we hear in our head with the motion that executes that sound yeah but we focus on the sound and the movements will take care of themselves for instance when we in weight lifting if we lift up it's always we always told do it slow and with even speed because if you do it fast you just hit it or you just push hard then you use a ballistic motion ballistic motion is where you initiate the movement and then inertia carries through so you're not using your muscle all the way and we many times when we shift we do that we just

shoot the arm but we don't we shouldn't worry about it just trust that you hit the note you're going to do and if you don't interfere you just hit that note because we're shifting we should always be able to shift really slow and control it also another thing with practicing that that What I like the science about is block practice versus random practice, whereas we know that when you repeat something many times in a row, 10 times in a row, the same thing, then right after you have more accuracy, but if you do random practice, let's say you used to learn five different things. If you then would do one thing one way and the other skill another way, and then mixing

them up then if you do that the same amount of time as as a block practice when you test right after you don't perform as well but when you test a week later you perform better so it's important that musicians learn to mix it up so right before a concert it's better to just like take a passage that's difficult maybe do it four or five times in a row just to make a little bit slow a little bit faster and tempo so i think understanding those things is really helpful professor jensen thank you so much again for this gift of your time it's great what you're doing it's fantastic keep it up thank you thank you guys so much for listening i hope you enjoyed this conversation with cellist and pedagogue hans jorgen jensen i have put links to his

incredible books and to the cello mind youtube videos in the show notes so i hope you'll take a second to check them out because there is a lot of valuable information there like i said earlier there were so many points he touched on that really resonated with me and it's very hard for me to pick one favorite takeaway but i think i'll go ahead and bring up what he says about how mindfully using time can have a dramatic impact on our playing and being absolutely mindful while practicing, finding pockets of time to practice and accomplishing something, making the most of the available time, thinking of solving issues instead of mindless repetition, being intentional about time management within a practice session, thinking about problems when we're not with our

instruments and just going on about our life. All of those things really add up and they compound like interest and they really bring faster progress and better results, both in the practice room and on stage. So it really is up to us to, like he said, find these moments when we can practice and think about our music making, like the student story that he mentioned. When can we take five minutes and ponder on a problem. Maybe we can take a few minutes at the beginning of a rehearsal to do some slow scales and practice on our vibrato. All of those things, like I said, really add up. I think we tend to forget the other definition of the word practice. Yes, there's the action of practicing, but there's also approaching our art as a practice, as something that lives

with us as something ongoing, a long-term process. We can have a brilliant idea on how to fix a passage while driving to work or how to shape a phrase while reading a great passage in a book or I don't know, you get the idea. We are musicians, we are artists and sometimes we pick up our instruments and we work on our craft, yes, but the practice of music making never leaves us and is always a part of us and everything that we experience feeds that. I hope that makes sense. I would love to know what your favorite takeaways from today's show was. So please get in touch with me. I'm mindoverfinger on both Instagram and Facebook. And of course, you can find me at mindoverfinger.com where you can read the show notes, find more information about mindful and

deliberate practice, and make sure to visit my resource page at mindoverfinger.com slash resources where I've put links to all my favorite tools and CDs and books, as well as the books recommended by my guests here on the podcast. And if you're looking for a community of mindful practice enthusiasts, consider joining the Mind Over Finger tribe. This is my private Facebook group where I'll be popping in once a week to talk about mindful practice and answer your questions. And we're also going to be starting the Mind Over Finger book club with the Inner Game of Golf by Tim Galway. You might remember that Nathan Cole talked about how it changed things for him in episode seven. So we're going to read it and study it and apply it in our practice and talk about it

together. So get the book and join the tribe at facebook.com slash groups slash mind over finger tribe. And let's get in the flow together. And because I like to make things as easy as possible for you guys. I will, of course, have all these links in the show notes. That's all I have for you guys today. Again, thank you and à bientôt.