The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 075 Practicing from the Beginning: Dr. Renée-Paule Gauthier & David Cartolano

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

Today is a special episode:  I'm bringing you a conversation I had on another podcast, the awesome Conditioned Musician Podcast hosted by the equally awesome David Cartolano!   David is an ACSM certified Exercise Physiologist and has a bachelor's degree in exercise science, and he's on a mission to build stronger, more resilient, and more creative musicians. Among many things, David and I talk about my own injury experience, how having a sense of introspection can prolong and save your career, how to stay motivated in your work, and we discuss how starting with your fundamentals and with a beginner's mind can be crucial to getting past a rut.     MORE ABOUT THE CONDITIONED MUSICIAN: The podcast: https://anchor.fm/david-cartolano Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theconditionedmusician/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/464238111031975 The Conditioned Musician on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-conditioned-musician/id1474021826   And for  THE BEST PRACTICING AND PERFORMING SEASON OF YOUR LIFE Dr. Gauthier invites you to join:   THE MUSIC MASTERY EXPERIENCE A TRANSFORMATIONAL JOURNEY TO LOVING THE PRACTICE ROOM, ROCKING THE STAGE, WINNING THE JOB, AND TAKING YOUR CAREER TO NEW HEIGHTS A 3-month experience for all musicians, starting September 21, 2020 BOOK A CALL AND LET'S SEE HOW WE CAN GET YOU RESULTS!     And don't forget to join the Mind Over Finger Tribe for additional resources on practice and performing!     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 75. 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 great. Today is a special episode. I'm bringing you a conversation I had on another podcast, the Awesome Conditioned Musician podcast with the equally awesome David Cartellano. David is an ACSM certified exercise physiologist and has a bachelor in exercise science, and he's on a mission to build stronger, more resilient, and more creative

musicians. Our conversation is episode 57 of the Conditioned Musician Podcast, and it came out back in June. It was so much fun talking with David, and I'm really grateful he's letting me share a conversation here with you today. I hope that you'll check out the podcast and subscribe because David brings you amazing guests and incredible content. So if you're a musician that wants to feel better, so you can perform better, the Conditioned Musician Podcast is for you. And before we dive into today's episode, I want to remind you that the doors for the next round of the Music Mastery Experience are closing in two days. So it's not too late to book your call with me and sign up. We start on Monday, September 21st. And I'm so excited because the Music Mastery

experience is the place to be to take everything about your playing to the next level. These challenging times can actually be an incredible opportunity for you to kick things into gear and be ready to face the music, win that dream job, and perform like never before when our industry gets back in full action. You're going to completely make over how you practice, how you prepare for performances you're going to transform your mindsets how you approach music making and you're going to experience amazing results the participants have called this program life changing and they've seen incredible wins and transformation in their practice and performance and as i said time is running out so if this is something that you'd like to experience and you

want to get those incredible results, go to mindoverfinger.com slash MME and book a call today so you and I can chat about making it happen for you. I'll have more details for you at the end of the show and in the show notes, of course, but don't delay. Once again, it's mindoverfinger.com slash MME to start an incredible journey to amazing practice and optimal performance. So today is really fun as the tables are turned and you'll hear a bit more from me as I'm the one being interviewed. Among many things, David and I talk about my own injury experience, how having a sense of introspection can prolong and save your career, how to stay motivated in your work. And we discuss how starting with your fundamentals and with the beginner's mind can be crucial to getting past a rut. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with David Cartolano from the Conditioned Musician podcast. Let's go to the show.

Hello and welcome to the Conditioned Musician. My name is David and today we have the host of the Mind Over Finger podcast, a.k.a. the podcast I wish I knew about in undergrad. She is a world-class violinist that has performed across the United States and Canada. She is a coach, a writer, a music clinician, a yogi, a wife, a mom, a sushi lover. Ladies and gentlemen, can I please introduce to you the mind behind Mind Over Finger, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Thank you so much for having me, David, and thank you for this amazing introduction. You are so welcome. You are so well-deserving of it. Guys, if you can't tell, I'm geeking out because whenever I see people who actually focus on the art of practicing, first of all, it reminds me so much of the art of getting over injury, which, by the way, is an art. And it's so awesome to see that there are people out there who are teaching how to practice instead of just mindlessly going to the practice room with no windows and just sitting down and playing the same piece over and over without actually learning anything.

So I'm super stoked because I'm going to get a lot of takeaways from this. And yeah, let's jump right in. So Renee, do you mind if I call you Renee? Yes, please. That's perfect. Awesome. Awesome. How did your musical journey begin?

My parents are musicians, so that's where it started. Strangely enough, my dad is the violinist, but my mom, who was the pianist, is the one who always made me practice. And she was never a performer herself, but she started a school of music in my hometown, which became really big and it was non-profit for her it really was a mission to get music to as many people as possible because she herself felt like she had missed a an opportunity to become a performer so she wanted to make sure that as many people as possible could access high quality affordable music lessons so the the people at that school could get with your lessons came theory

solfege dictation there was a bunch of ensembles orchestras recorder ensemble everything you need was there so I pretty much grew up under her desk and she made me practice and in ways related to what I'm doing right now is in practicing with her every day it really was mindful practice not a minute was wasted. Someone was guiding my attention and directing my, you know, my movements, making me think, not allowing me to settle for mediocrity. There was no mindless playing. You know, it was like a three-hour lesson every day for many years. And I also had a violin teacher starting at the age of nine, who was a really wonderful violinist. I interviewed him in the episode, I believe it was episode 25, if I remember correctly. His name is Jean-Francois

Rivet. So if you want to understand a little bit more about me, you can listen to that episode. And he always pushed me to explore and really see music as part of my life, not just something you do in the practice room but that the person that you are contributes so much to the musician that you are every book you read every meal you savor you know all of these things contribute to make you a better musician and I later in life after graduating and you know taking auditions and I did a lot of competitions and learned a lot through that and when I started teaching this is when I start to really realize what a gift it was to have had these notions on how to practice efficiently and that not everyone had that so now when you're facing maybe a little bit older person like a you

know high school college how do you start to teach them to implement those things in the practice room so that became my mission in life to figure out a way and all of my doctoral studies the research was uh on that and um you know trial and errors in the hopefully not too many errors in the in the studio with my my students um you know just thinking in any way that i i could increase the mindfulness in practice you know you want more bang for your buck so um yeah so this is kind of how it happened for me through a lot of experience as a performer as well uh and doing some research and I just love it so much. I mean, I have right here, I can see it, the quote from Itzhak Perlman, like when you teach, you learn. And I just love keeping on learning

from my students every minute. I learn all the time so much from them. So I'm very grateful that I have this chance to exchange with them and we learn from each other. That is such an amazing perspective first of all love the violinist he's he's my favorite i've been listening to um his uh his recordings for paganini and the 24 caprices and i just i've been listening to them with my jaw open the whole time and i'm like yeah someday i'm gonna sound that good maybe possibly but at the end of the day it's like you said it's about not not trying to sound like somebody else but being the artist you are and having that influence your music as deep as as much as I want to sound like Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page yeah at the end of the day I'm only going to sound like a cheap

imitation of them even if I get to their level I'm only imitating them where does David Cardellano step into that so um that's really cool and I also love how you grew up and your both of your parents were musicians that's usually I think how a lot of us start um and my parents were musicians So I do understand. But unlike you, my parents are very much, they were the folk choir musicians. They would lead the choir on Sunday. And as far as practice, the practice was show up to the gig, get the music in front of you, go. And for me, that's something I always struggled with, simply because I was so used to having in a gig, just having the music in front of me. And it's like, all right, we got 30 minutes until mass starts. Let's go through the parts. Let's hit

of songs, go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, get it done, make it sound good, have a whole lot of fun and do the whole thing next week. So struggling, I think something that contributed to me getting injured in undergrad was struggling because I never knew how to practice. And I'm sure that's something you see with a lot of your students. Yes. I mean, I even saw it with myself. As a freshman, I got a really bad tendonitis. So we can talk about injuries here. And this came from me i mean it's a freshman year all of a sudden you're playing music all the time i had entered some competitions and i just i was a little bit stupid i would walk in and say i'll just play through my concerto before my first class i would walk in the practice room no warm-up

and just play through my concerto and um you know it's like the the freshman tendonitis i don't know if everyone gets it but i really learned from that first of all i learned that you need to seek therapy you need physical therapy you need to talk to a doctor you need to take it seriously it's it will go away if you really nurture it i mean not nurture the injury but if you really nurture yourself absolutely I found a therapist that I had absolute trust trust in sorry you just got a little bit of the French Canadian here when I start thinking in French and I can't speak English I found a therapist that I trusted and I just did everything she said and yeah I mean I have a history of finding therapists that I trust and I think it's if I may just say I think it's

really important because when we're injured we're extremely vulnerable mentally as well so if the person who's taking care of your body is someone that you also feel you can entrust your um you can entrust your heart to them then i feel like it speeds up their recovery so um so i did everything i stopped playing for a while i did some acupuncture and that really helped but then i learned that you need to warm up you need to be very meticulous about taking care of your body i started exercising i started eating better and i you know there's i'm a little bit less in shape now i have two kids i have a little bit less time but the years where i was an avid runner and lifting weights and doing lots of yoga were years where i was 100 injury free so it's uh really important to really

important to put a lot of thought into um how well yes how you warm up how you practice taking breaks just being very mindful about those things is important yeah and thank you for sharing that it's such it's such a relief when i see people are willing to talk about their injuries because there's some sort of silence when you're injured you don't want anybody to know about it you might lose your job you might lose you know that audition because they'll say oh well she's wearing a wrist race. So not so sure. And there's so much silence around it. So thank you for opening up about that. And I absolutely believe you. As far as selecting your doctor, if you wouldn't have your doctor watch your kids, you probably shouldn't be seeing that doctor. Really. That's a good point.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. They must listen to you. And it's difficult if the therapist can only see you for five minutes and say, okay, you're a musician. Well, just stop playing and do these exercises, you should be fine. No, you really got to have that connection. And it's really important. And at the same time, I think, like you said, you know, warming up, staying in shape, as begrudgingly as some people want to say, it does matter. It does make a difference. Because at the end of the day, yes, you can go to the doctor and they can help you fix yourself. But like I said, at the end of the day, if there's a rock underneath your pillow, and you sleep on it every night you could go to, you could go to the doctor. Yes. But I think first you got to remove

the rock and that would be the poor practice habits, the poor exercise habits. So I know you coach a lot of students. What habits do you usually see that they have that you think is like, okay, that's the number one thing they got to work on. They don't think they just, I love it. I mean, i see a lot of uh i'll gesture here you know like the arms move and then there's a lot of wishful thinking i'll just keep moving and i'll get it but that's not how it works like i said you want more bang for your buck and the more thought you'll put into solving problems figuring out the most efficient way to work i mean you you play guitar you know what i'm talking when i say hand frame if you spend time meticulously working on your hand frame you're going to save so much

energy you'll get more accurate um you have frets that's not fair we we have to think about information um but we spend less time tuning than you guys so it's kind of a trade-off um but the more thought and planning you put into how you want to think about your movements how you go about solving problems you will get more results on your instrument and you will um work a lot less it's good to want to be lazy you know i love it i love it but put a lot of effort so you can be lazy no I mean you know what I mean I'm just kidding but no that's that's great I love that because I think it there's almost again and it's a in this music culture whether it's in you know fusion jazz or in R&B or in classical the more hours you put in the better of an artist

you are oh well I practiced for 24 hours yesterday well that's literally impossible first of all and second of all, why would you want to practice for longer if you can get more done in a shorter amount of time? Because not only do you get to do other things like eat sushi and watch Netflix and walk your dog, you're also bulletproofing yourself against injury. And that tendonitis, if you do have tendonitis or a problem like that, if you can reduce your practice time, again, that's removing the rock beneath your pillow before you talk to the doctor. so what do you think is a really great way and I know you said think which I totally agree with which I love how should young musicians be thinking when they approach an empty practice room

that's a good question because there are so many things to think about um I like to talk about beginner's mind so a beginner well there's two things I have a model that I use with the students that I call the deep practice model and it's really a combination of my experience and my research and trying to distill some big concepts and get them to be palatable enough for people to kind of understand it within a few months and start to apply it I mean even before a few months but I would start with bare awareness which is paying attention without judgment what are you hearing what are you experiencing how does it feel things like this and then beginner's mind i see it as the the way i explain it in the model is

two birds not two birds the two wings of one bird right so on one side you have this curiosity this thirst for knowledge um also not taking anything for granted so uh you're doing a shift i like to use that example for example as an example um yeah i need to like really work on my english right now all right that's okay so you're using let's say you're doing a shift oftentimes when you develop a certain you know amount of skill you feel like an expert so you just kind of shift and it's not working and you do it a million times And then I like to say, no, no, no. Go back to lesson number one. You know, what is proper shifting? And then a lot of times students and even myself occasionally will realize that I am neglecting a basic fundamental aspect of shifting. And then if I just go back to lesson number one, it fixes it. I was either just not using proper form. So that's the other thing. So you have this curiosity, this thirst, but also this beginner's mind of staying humble, of monitoring the fundamentals. So this really helps cultivating patience and really bring a lot of awareness in your work.

And of course, with that, you want to put some really good strategies to solve problems. I mean, one analogy I love, if you indulge me here for a second, I took that from one of my absolute favorite book, which is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. I love that book. And so you know which one I'll talk about. It's the launching a rocket. so when you're trying to either create a new skill or create a habit or even more difficult

change a habit change your hand frame your bow hold your embouchure i know that wind players talk a lot about embouchure um the amount of millions of liters of you know fuel it requires to launch the rocket it's massive and it's so much energy i mean you see it when they launch it goes fast but you look at it it looks like it's going slowly and then it's just burning fuel like crazy but once it's in orbit it requires very little energy it's you know it goes it just uses the momentum that it has and you know with all the formulas whatever to to with the gravitational pull but we neglect the amount of energy we just have to put in initially to create the good habits so i would say bear awareness really listening without judgment

so assessing objectively beginner's mind monitor your basics stay curious keep exploring keep internalizing everything and but then be patient and don't be afraid to just spend a lot of energy to establish some really really solid basis even though it feels like you're not going far for a while you're really implementing really solid um hygienic habits that that once you have them then you can just ride you know the momentum and and you're in orbit and things are easier that's so awesome. And I love how you talk about approaching practice with a beginner's mindset, with bare awareness, like not beating yourself up if you haven't gotten it. I've seen so many patients, the ones that get better are usually the ones that say, you know what, I'm going to try this

out. I'm going to take a positive attitude. I'm going to try it. Okay. This hurt a little. All right. I'm going to back off, but then I'm going to try something new and different. And they think about the exercises and they think about getting better compared to, unfortunately, the patients who would go to physical therapy and they just never leave. They're always there doing the same exercises and they're like, why is it not getting better? And I'm like, whoa, whoa, slow down, slow down, focus on the exercise, focus. Does this hurt? What's this doing for me? Oh, I don't want to do that. Well, tough, real tough. So when you practice, so like the whole idea of being mindful and aware, it doesn't just apply to practicing. It applies to everything. It applies to getting

over an injury. It applies to auditioning. It applies to going on a date. These are things and necessary life skills that we as musicians, we get to take advantage of because it's stuff we just do. And if we do it right, it really, really benefits us. And I love how you talk about launching that rocket and how much effort it takes. And one thing that I listened to in one of your recent podcasts was your commit to 10 rule, which is awesome. And I can't wait to use it because I really, really like that idea. It's the little consistent habits that get us off the ground. And if you can elaborate on it, I'd love it. I'm so glad you're asking about this because I actually was thinking about that in my walk this morning because I was thinking I should add

one word to this and it would be the word delight. It should be commit to delightful 10 minutes because what i find is and i was discussing this with some clients sometimes and i'm looking to my left because my violin case is open with the violin sitting there sometimes we don't want to start practicing because inside this case we associate emotionally frustrations the feeling that we're not good enough that it's like in the work we're you know i mean we were talking about how we bypass words we go straight into these emotions of feeling less than and frustration and we just need to reconnect with why why are we playing this this was fun at some point this this was something that brought us pleasure so if you don't feel like practicing um i think it was

the episode about motivation right where i was talking that motivation comes from action you don't just sit there and feel motivated it will come from moving and sometimes you just need to tell yourself I'm going to go and I'm going to commit to 10 minutes and after 10 minutes if I don't feel like practicing I'll just walk away but then this morning I was thinking actually we should commit to 10 minutes of delight first I'm just going to pick up my instrument and play anything I feel like but we've just talked about maybe not the run-through of a concerto when you haven't warmed up yet but take 10 minutes to yourself and play something anything that comes to mind that you feel like playing to just reconnect with this pure joy of playing your

instrument and then see where that takes you but just taking a little bit of time to dig in and you know let the joy come out then I think I would feel more prepared to practice for sure absolutely I couldn't agree more I absolutely love it because music is fun that's why we do it that's why we got into it because someone gave us an instrument or told us to open our mouths and make a note and we said oh oh I like that that makes me feel good that's why we're doing it y'all no matter if you are a classical musician who plays like god knows how many gigs a week or if you are just a regular musician or like not regular um if you're more of an amateur musician who plays church gigs or or plays in a bar you know you do music because you love it that's why

you got into it and I see so many musicians it's so sad they burn themselves out on the thing they love because their forearms hurt so badly from playing over and over again from taking in and we can definitely talk about this the judgment of other people on their journey of becoming an artist um and they're practicing and practicing and practicing and they just end up burning themselves out and then they take their instrument and they put it in a case and then they don't touch it for one year two years or maybe they stop um and it's sad I mean if you want to change your career you can change your career no one says you have have to be a musician but it's sad when I see musicians burn themselves out over music and they love music and I think that's

something we can definitely, definitely elaborate on. What's your experience with, you know, seeing musicians who might be on the edge of burnout, who might be on the edge of practicing too much or taking other people's opinions? Oh, that's hard. A big component of what I advocate is self-compassion and take it from someone who is much better about it now, but I was extremely harsh with myself. The negative self-talk was really, really severe. And I mean, I don't want to say debilitating because I was still functioning, but then you come to a point where it's no longer enjoyable, exactly what you just said. And I remember several years ago coming to a point where I was right before a performance

and just asking myself why am i here i'm so nervous i'm not looking forward to this performance at all and what's the point and then i realized that sure as a professional musician there's you know there's ramifications such as your income is attached to it so yes there are expectations but what's really interesting is this dichotomy between the expectations are there from the outside but also from the inside and the expectations that we put ourselves the unreasonable expectations that we put on on ourselves do not improve our playing you said it and so i remember being back there and i thought i don't know i you know sometimes you have these moments and it just hits you right there and i thought i need to play from

a place of joy and love and that's all I start thinking joy and love joy and love joy and love I need to play from a place of joy and love because I knew the piece we had rehearsed it and I was nervous because I wanted to do well and you want your colleagues to think highly of you and all of this stress has the opposite effect and at that point it was almost a moment where I just kind of wanted to quit the violin or wanted to quit the unreasonable expectations and in that moment it worked so the i i just ended up having such a great time in this performance because i really realized i'm going to play the way i'm going to play and the one way to play my best is just to let it happen and the way to ruin it all is to worry about it so uh in many ways

it's not an easy exploration but it's one that i think we need to do to really kind of prepare your best diligently every day it's exactly what you said earlier it's you know it's the a coin plus one coin plus one coin plus one coin every day then you have a fortune yeah but trust your work and really find out how you can reconnect to why you're playing music what it brings to you I mean it could be as simple as putting it on paper writing it on the sheet of paper with the list I became a musician because of this and that or a visualization exercise that I have some clients do is in students think back of that moment that you know that moment where you had like the hair on the back of your neck rising for me it was youth

orchestra and i was like this is amazing that's what i want to do for a living like think back at that moment and trying to recapture some of that it's not as simple as that because once it's your career like i said there's so many pieces in place to complete the puzzle but there are ways to really implement a little bit more of that i think yeah yeah and it's like you said it's it's not just loving yourself overnight because that doesn't happen and we'd like to think it happens like we'd like to be a character in a movie where they go to bed they have a dream they wake up they love themselves and are completely different no no that takes time that takes time and like practicing it takes conscious effort it takes effort saying oh this is why i love this and

especially in in the days where you don't want to pick up your instrument and you're like i just i'm just gonna play a sound and i hope it sounds good and whatever my colleagues say you know i'm just gonna take it home with me and i feel sad about it guys loving yourselves that that's that's when you need it most that's when you need to practice it it's a skill it doesn't just happen and yeah i just i really love how you talked about you know uh confronting that fear before your performance where you're like well it's either i give up the unrealistic expectations of others or I give up my instrument. And I see so many injured musicians. It's such a cycle where you are holding yourself to someone else's standard, which is why you are playing so much,

which is why your elbow is hurting. So I could treat the elbow. I can show you exercises for the elbow if you want, but unless you trace it back to the love of yourself, of yourself as an artist, as a musician, as a human being, if you don't address this part, it's going to be really tough working on your elbow. And that's one of the reasons I left the medical field because I'm like, we're not addressing the whole problem here. One thing that's interesting too with self-esteem is that we beat ourselves up or self-confidence or self-comfort, all of these things. We beat ourselves up if we don't have it. And I heard an analogy, I forget where I got this, but I thought it was really smart that it's a little bit like you can't change the thermostat too quickly.

So you can't go from, I hate myself to I love myself. Your brain would react against that thought. It's too sudden, but you can make conscious, um, you know, the conscious decision to go that from, I hate myself, which is not an objective assessment to, well, I am. And you, and you go from there. Um, it's, it's like a tree, you know, you can't be angry at the tree because it grows only so fast so it's it's like you say it's an exploration and you you just gotta you know we can't beat ourselves up for not changing overnight we just can yeah i mean now we're

circling back but yeah yeah it's every day it's one conscious decision after the next you can't get angry at a tree not growing fast enough i want to take you back in time to the old clinics i worked at and just explain that to my patients for me please exactly in the way that you did it because we all want the quick pill we all want to be the amazing musician we all want to walk in the practice in the practice room memorize our entire concerto walk out have the best performance of our lives and then look at our arms which feel completely fine doesn't work like that. It takes time. It takes effort and it's going to be okay. You're going to mess up along the way. What do you think students or your clients usually, like what's their first pitfall

when working with you? Two things. I mean, first of all, this could be many, but if I could say two things not giving themselves enough time okay and not trusting themselves enough like even more because it takes time i mean i just was talking about the rocket and how much fuel it takes so it takes time it takes a lot of a concept i talk a lot on the podcast is you have to take ownership of your learning experience. I can give you all of the notions, but the inner search is yours. It's all on you. And going with not trusting themselves enough, sometimes people look for a system step-by-step and it's just not how it works. You can have strategies yes there can be a system in place and i provide that but within that system

you have to figure out your place um and sometimes i find that for example you explain a concept to a student and then they come back the next week and it hasn't really changed and they only have questions and I don't I didn't know if I was doing this right am I doing this right am I doing this right and then if you take the time to just ask questions well how does it feel what does it feel like when you do that and then then you know yeah you have to start trusting yourself so taking the notions from your teacher your guide your coach and then ask yourself like okay what does that mean to me let's explore let me try that and i'll try i'm not gonna take it at 100 face value and try to do what i think she wants or what she's saying

but see beyond the words how that applies for me am i making any sense i hope i am making so much sense oh my goodness if i got a quarter for every time i heard am i doing this right in clinic, I would be able to pay off my student debt. Oh my goodness. And you're so right. It's about trusting yourself and saying, okay, am I doing this right? Wait, before I ask Renee, I'm going to ask myself, wait, does this feel right? And then it will lead you to maybe not the answer you're looking for, but a better question. And that's something that I just, I loved it when my patients would, they would do, you know, an exercise and they'd look at me And they would go, is this, and I go, what, what do you think? And they went,

yeah, you know, it feels good here. I have a little tightness here. I'm like, great. Now let's address that. So now we can go and address a deeper question because wondering if you're right all the time, most likely that there really is no, right. There's no, you can ask yourself, but if I knew the answer, what would it be? Yeah. And then sometimes you're like, oh, wait, there's a little voice inside that's trying to tell me something and i'm not listening because i'm waiting for the outside validation but we all have a really great amount of inner wisdom so i think we can all tap yes we need guidance and sometimes you someone needs to teach you how to shift for sure but i think that sometimes the thinking process for some students stops there

but they have to go home and think about it and try and explore and see for themselves and so sometimes that's I think that's what's missing and it's exactly what you say I mean another quote I love that I will butcher by Tony Robbins which is like questions are the answer and if you want a better quality life you have to start asking better quality and questions yes I think it's True. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, that's something I've gotten from mentors in physical therapy, mentors in business, mentors in personal development. It's not about the answers you're looking for. It's about choosing the questions you want and living by that principle. Cause music, music is so poorly defined. What sounds quote unquote good to some person might sound quote

unquote bad to another so how are you supposed to get an objective answer and the answer is that you don't you have to ask better questions and then make the decision as an artist as a performer to express that and um yeah it's something that i've had to figure out myself as someone who is not a classical musician by any standard who loves it but like is nowhere near someone who is just finally starting to after years of just playing gigs and playing gigs and learning by doing I'm starting to say to myself you know what I actually want to go back to the basics and I want to learn from the beginning learn how to practice learn how to actually hold my guitar you know um because it's just something that it's it's always been from the hip even on some of the coolest gigs

I've ever done where we redid albums by the Beatles note for note sound for sound they were great but again it was all from the hip I wasn't thinking about it and I want to start asking myself better questions as a musician so I can grow into a not a better artist but a more authentic version of myself so I'm able to express what I hear in my head and I think that's what I wish for all people to do and if you're injured like then that's sort of stopping it so in a way the condition musician is it's kind of my personal development program as well I don't think people realize that and you know one other way that we are conditioned if i am to get a little preachy here is with our careers yeah and so often i i see it as um in 2020 anything is possible i mean

2020 everything is a little crazy but things are changing rapidly and i feel like i mean the world changing and the newer generations really can ask themselves a question not oh I want to be a musician it could be like what kind of musician do I want to be where do I want to perform what do I want to do and then go after that because everything is possible you I know I think back back in my days you just you just you want to be a musician well you go get an undergrad degree and then you get a grad degree and then you play or you teach or you um i don't know record in studio actually it was never that way because there were lots of people doing so many cool things but you heard less about it because there was no social media and you know if you're not

subscribing to the right magazine or journal you don't see what those people are doing but nowadays we're really seeing that anything is possible anyone can create their own career and it comes with asking yourself the question what do I want so there's definitely I mean if you want to become an orchestra musician there's a path I could recommend for sure there are some things that are beneficial but you are not limited to being an orchestra musician if you want to be a musician and that does not interest you. So I think that it's important to ask ourselves those hard questions, especially when you're young, because everything is possible.

I love it. I love it. I just want to like wrap up the podcast with a bow with that. But because you have taught so many students and, you know, you clearly have thought, you have used your brain and asked yourself better questions. you are constantly like, I see all the books in your background. I know y'all on the podcast can't see this, but I see all the books in the background. You clearly like going on an upward slope. And I think my final question is, what haven't I asked you that you think is really

important for musicians to hear if they want to continue growing themselves as artists? That's a great question. what haven't you asked me okay i won't think i know you can edit but i won't i'll try not to think about it for too long um oh that's a great question i don't know what you have not asked me because we definitely covered a lot and and really anything you could have said could fit there i'm just curious if there's any other tips in there that you know our viewers can really munch on um because you were clearly full of a lot of incredible insight like i want to listen to my own podcast and review this uh so i can take notes on how to better further my musical

journey because yes like i'm in a weird half clinician half musician role but um it's something that i i really really take seriously i think i was a musician before anything else and um i'm trying to figure out myself as an artist so I'm really also asking this question for myself as well I think that there could be many answers but we we really need to I'm going to use that again because I'm trying to not repeat myself but we need to take ownership of our learning experience go to concerts listen to recordings and sometimes I hear people and myself to have had those doubts like i don't want to listen too much because i don't want to start copying no i think we're we're listening and we're learning and we're getting inspiration

um but also taking the time and and being patient to really absorb all of these notions see how they come together and really reflect on how it translates for us because too often we're looking exactly for what you said we're looking for these magic pills outside of us and like i said we need processes some systems and some concepts explained to us but then once you take it inside and you really internalize it what does the little voice tell you and that works both for absorbing technique, musicality, and making life decisions also. That's great. That's awesome. I love it. I absolutely love it. Now, if anyone is listening to this podcast and you're thinking, yeah, I definitely need to work with Renee. She sounds

incredible. And I practice anytime the wind blows and I'm not really sure of what I'm doing. And she just sounds like a really great resource to have. Where can they find you? everything is at mindoverfinger.com so i and i also have of course the mind over finger podcast and i have the facebook the mind over finger tribe on facebook which is my my private group where i show up once a week and i answer questions and i do some live videos but yeah everything is at mindoverfinger.com and um currently i'm teaching two programs over the summer and there's the music mastery experience that i'm really excited about because it's really everything that i've learned every all of my i mean i don't know if i should call it wisdom but it's all my

it's good all my all my uh my teaching model and um a lot of the concepts that i've been working on for years put together in the program with a little bow on top that's going to come back in the in the winter probably but uh starting in the fall i'm also going to do some private coaching and uh you know if any audition preparation or transforming your practicing and all of these things and uh also um probably an online violin studio coming up soon so there's a lot of things in the work it's all it's all going to be at mindoverfinger.com awesome we'll link it all in the description thank you so much for your time i really appreciate it oh thank you so much for having me and and i'm excited to be here because i feel like your work is so important

and your enthusiasm is so great your creativity and you're shedding light on on something that is really needed for our community so I'm so happy to be here thank you so much thank you I appreciate it and any musician listening to this again just look at just type in mind over finger and you will find everything you want from Dr. Gauthier thank you so much for your time and musicians if you're listening to this actually start to think thank you guys so much for listening i hope you enjoyed this chat with david cartolano from the conditioned musician podcast you can find the show on your favorite podcasting app and i'll have some links for you in the show notes i would love to know what your favorite

takeaways from today's conversation were so please get in touch with me and with david i'm mind over finger on both instagram and facebook and he's the condition musician on instagram and why not share the podcast with your friends and tag us so we know you enjoyed the episode and i'm really excited to announce that david is going to be back here on the mind over finger podcast next month to talk about all things physical well-being for better performance So catch that episode on October 9. A last few words before I wrap this up. As I've mentioned at the beginning, the Music Mastery Experience is starting this Monday.

It's a transformational journey to loving the practice room, rocking the stage, winning the job, and taking your career to new heights. This is a three-month-long, highly personalized group coaching program where I'll show you how to implement mindful and effective practice techniques, make them habits, and get results. I've spent years developing my deep practice model and putting it to the test in my own career and with my students, and I'm so proud to share it with you through my music mastery experience. Over the course of 12 weeks, you will learn to direct your attention and your intention. We will explore efficient practicing systems, performance preparation methods that give you massive results, and we'll overhaul your mindsets so you can experience wonderful music making day after day. You will reach a superior level of productivity and performance. I have created for you an environment that's going to provide you with tons of inspiration and motivation so if

you're looking to elevate your practice and performance the music mastery experience is perfect for you it kicks off this monday so book a call today and let's talk about your goals your dreams and how the music mastery experience can help you get there you can find more information at mindoverfinger.com slash mme and of course I'll have that link for you in the show notes. So that's it for today. Again, thank you and à bientôt.