084 The Musician's Toolbox with Dr. Renée-Paule Gauthier
00:00You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 84.Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practiceand building a purposeful career.And now your host, violinist, teacher and high performance coach, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier.Hi, everyone. I hope you're doing incredible today. In this episode, I share with you theconversation I had with Angela Ezeunieka and Andrew Coleman on their show, The Musician'sToolbox Podcast. With The Musician's Toolbox, Andrew and Angela aim to equip musicians withthe information, inspiration, and imagination to pursue and achieve a career in music. And
00:57they do this by interviewing professionals in the industry and exposing listeners to all facets ofa musician's life. We cover a lot of ground in our chat, including mindful and effective practicing,anxiety management, and audition preparation. I had a great time speaking with Angela and Andrew,and I hope you find tons of value in our discussion. And when you're done with theepisode, don't forget to head to themusicianstoolboxpodcast.com or search for the showon your favorite podcast player and make sure to check out their wonderful content let's go to theshow welcome to the musician's toolbox i'm andrew and i'm angela and on this podcast we interviewpeople in the music industry to see what they have learned so we can be successful too every
01:54Friday, we release a new episode. And I'm always inspired to practice more, be a better musicianand entrepreneur. We create content for all musicians, young or old, hobbyist or pro,classical or jazz or songwriter or music producer. Lastly, before we get on to the interview,we see you guys watching and we want to see where you're watching from.And if you have any suggestions or requests for people to be on the podcast, our email is in thedescription below. And so today we've got a very special episode. Angela, tell us about today'sinterview. Today we have Dr. Renee Paul Gauthier. I should have asked how to pronounce your namebefore I did that. I hope I didn't butcher it. She is a violinist and a teacher. She is
02:39professionally performing in many ensembles or orchestras in the Chicago metropolitan area,including um the chicago symphony she's a sub with them and she also does um opera playingwith the chicago opera um she's won many competitions as a virtuoso violinist and hasthree degrees in violin performance um one of her passion projects is her podcast the mind overfinger and she speaks all over the country about having mindful practice audition preparation andanxiety management. So we're so grateful to have you here with us today, Dr. Gauthier, and thankyou for being here. Yes, thanks. So happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Thank you. So we liketo learn a little bit more about the people we're interviewing. So can you just tell us about how
03:31you got into music and your musical journey? Yes, absolutely. I'm from a very small townin Quebec and both my parents were musicians they were school teachers and also started anon-profit music school and that's important in the story that's why I'm saying it because whenI first started lessons as the child of two musicians that's you know usually what we doI had a lot of support and guidance in practicing at home at the age of nine I started studyingwith a teacher who's been really, really influential in my life, influential, and hisname is Jean-Francois Rivet. I do have a podcast episode with him. I forget the number, but anyway,I think 15 or 25. And the way he taught me really raised my awareness. So there was this combination
04:27of him really in lessons, paying me, you know, guiding me to pay attention, to listen to thesound i was producing to experience the movements i was doing uh learn you know the sense of touchum and really he was just so enthusiastic about music making and loving music that it was reallysomething that stayed with me until today and kind of is at the basis of everything that i doright now. So I would have these lessons with him, which were both lessons in how to play the violinand also how to pay attention to music and guide my focus. And then I would go home and my motherwould practice with me. And it was practically like having lessons, you know, every day. And asI got older, I would start to practicing more and more to three hours a day. And it was kind of
05:27similar where she would guide my attention continually in the practice room so of coursethat way you progress fast and you develop really good habits and that's what music making is isdeveloping these habits and these skills and that's really what I was trying to untangle inthe past few years but you know I'm skipping some steps after I finished my undergrad I went toEastman and the New World Symphony and subsequently did a doctorate and when I started and you knowperformed for many years with several ensembles both in Canada and here in the States and as Istarted teaching at the college level I was really struck by the fact that so many of my studentsdid not have that same level of awareness I remember being in college with no longer my
06:22mother the practice with me and realizing i had two different types of practice there'd be thetype of practice where i go in the room clock in time and whatever happens happens you knowsometimes you learn some notes and you know that's good but then there'd be time where i'd bemaybe it's the day before the lesson and i didn't quite get everything done or it's the week beforejury or it's the week before a competition and my practice was completely different it was veryfocused very organized goal-oriented and I would get massive results and I started to really realizethat and get really curious about wait what happens when I'm this productiveso fast forward to when I started teaching and realizing that the students oftentimes did not
07:10have not just practicing techniques how to practice but not even the knowledge on how to pay attentionhow to listen how to experience making music and i just became completely obsessed with figuring outhow to develop a system who would make it possible for them to start having this awareness developthis focus in the practice room and this is what i centered all of my research around during mymy doctoral studies and developed what i call the deep practice model which is what i teach now toall of my private students my private coaching clients and participants I have online coachingprograms the music mastery experience and we develop all we discuss all of these methodsof practicing so it's practice tools but also mindsets how to pay attention how to nurture
08:08focus how to prepare for performances all of these things so in a nutshell that's my journeyuntil today. And I really feel like it has almost come full circle from that time at nine years oldwhen I started studying with my teacher. That's awesome. Yeah. So I don't know if this is toomuch to ask you to divulge on our podcast, but it seems like you focus, like we said, onperformance anxiety and audition preparation and mindful practice. Is that a fair synopsis?Yes. Can you give us kind of like a crash course in these three different topics of how you approach performance anxiety and what is mindful practice versus not mindful practice and how your journey with that has changed?And then the audition preparation or that. Do you mind telling us more more detail on those topics?yes not at all um i feel like
09:15one thing i say is you can walk in the practice room and go like this for those who can't see mei'm moving my arms as if i'm playing the violin for four hours and get nothing done that's possibleor one thing you could get done actually is build on bad habits this mindlessness that we're justrepeating things over and over it's like wishful thinking if i play it 40 times poorly maybe itwill improve when what you're doing is actually reinforcing all of the bad habits so it's likeironing you know like not a lot of people iron clothes nowadays but i remember you know if youiron the wrong i don't know in english the word but in french we say four p it's the the you knowyou iron it in it's you almost have to wash the garment again to get to get it out so it's kind
10:05of the same with practicing when you develop these bad habits it's so difficult to go back and fixso at the heart of mindful practice the way that i teach it is paying attention learning how to payattention of course there is a million practicing techniques there is a process that i teachwhere you start with breaking things into chunks mapping it so identifying elements in the workand then you start all sorts of different drills practicing slowly but that's a whole other topicwhat is slow practice you can play things slowly and poorly it i see it all the time believe meyeah so practicing something slowly does not guarantee that you'll play it well there's away to practice slowly there's tempo drills there's um you know practicing with rhythms
11:03there's a something called desirable difficulty where you things you make things more difficultin order to be able to play it better once you you know or you can simplify things anywaymillion practice techniques but there's also some very very important mindsets andhow to pay attention the kind of attitude to have as i mentioned already one of the bigmindset of the deep practice model is beginner's mind that curiosity um also that humility in frontof maintaining the fundamentals uh um one of my favorite thing to say is go back to lesson numberone if you're struggling with something what was lesson number one well probably if you play theviolin they taught you how to stand how are you standing um how are you well balanced on your legs
11:56that's lesson number one and oftentimes we're struggling with something and we want to beexperts and we go super complex and we're like oh this is a hard shift and i'm going to think aboutmy finger angles and all these things when at times actually we don't even know what note we'retrying to play or what position we're trying to hit or you know where you're trying to land onthe keyboard start there what note are you trying to play but also lesson number one posture howare you standing are you breathing that's an important one um even if you play a non-wininstrument you know being aware of your breath is something that can completely transformyour experience in the practice room i have to tell you on your on your breathing i just have
12:43to interject here i have a cousin who learned all of suzuki book one and when she got to suzuki booktwo and she was performing it from memory she started passing out and they realized that shehadn't learned how to play and breathe at the same time wow so she had to go back and start over onbook one and make sure that she was breathing and exhaling and inhaling so yes breath even at a verybeginner stage can be forgotten and you don't notice it until you get to book two because thepieces get longer right so yes yes this poor little five-year-old is just yeah anyway i lovei love this story and it really shows how the second we we feel like we're expert at somethingwe get very negligent of the fundamentals and they're called fundamental yes complacent is a
13:37fantastic word and they're called fundamentals for a reason you know i think thati mean i cut my finger really badly the other day and that's because i just was not holdingmy finger the way you should when you cut stuff so when you play the violin you're not gonna cuta piece of your skin off if you're negligent or complacent yeah so it's not quite as terrifyingbut in the long run it is because you're developing all of these bad habits so you're not bleedingbut you know almost um so the these mindsets are really important a big big part of what i teach toreally is self-compassion as well how do you talk to yourself when you practiceas in music as in sports as in business all aspects i mean we see it in the society everywhere
14:35it's not just musicians we are taught to think that things need to be worked at hard that weneed to be demanding we need to be harsh you know it's like those montage and movies wherethe athlete is pushing himself you know i'm thinking of like rocky moments herebecause i'm a child of the 80s um you know there must be sweat and agony and you know you gottadrink your raw eggs and things like this this is not how practice has to feel to be productiveactually the opposite where you really learn to step outside of anger step outside of perfectionismself-degradation and you become an empowering coach to yourself, you can completely transformyour practicing experience. That's a big part of what I teach as well. And I see it across the
15:30board, all of my clients from amateurs to professionals playing in the world's bestorchestras. Self-compassion is a game changer because everyone is suffering with thisinner bully in the practice room. It is not the most efficient way to work. So that'sreally something to start paying attention to. So I think that when you cangive yourself a lot of license to be creative in the way you approach practice,monitor these fundamentals and use a lot of self-compassion, the practicing can reallytransform and tying that to performance preparation to go back to the the first question that you askedme when you practice that way you also have less performance anxiety so there's tons of performance
16:25anxiety management tools out there i was really lucky when i was at new world that i got to workwith don green and i've been you know working on these all of my life i've myself did like you saida lot of competitions and auditions where i got to test a lot of techniques and found many that ireally like visualization is always a great tool mock performances are always so helpfulbut the way you learn something will really change your performance so if you canalways practice in the way that you are learning deeply efficiently with a lot of self-compassionthen you need to mitigate performance anxiety less because you're experiencing it lessso it seems like you i mean you're just like asking yourself questions like does this sound
17:20good what do i want it to sound like how can i do it like am i breathing am i so in your practicesessions you're just always asking questions and and also like preparing for performances likewhat do i need to be doing so i'm prepared absolutely yes yes that's that's one thing ofthe like beginner's mind is always asking a question yeah one of my favorite question iswhat else okay what else can i see what else can i try this pass is not working how else can iwork on it let's find something fun let's find a fun way to work on yeah because the reality iswhen we begin going to school, we play games and we learn through, you know, play basically. Andas we get older, we learn what the questions on the test are going to be and how to memorize the
18:12answer to them. And that doesn't necessarily equate to understanding. And if you approachmusic the same way, well, I can play all the notes. I can play all the dynamics. I've got theboeing's right then you've lost that beginner mindset and it keeps you from getting to thelower deeper levels and so yeah i like the reminder to continue to ask questions all thetime um i know that i another one of my cousins i remember i hated going on car rides with herwhen she was at a certain age because she'd say you know the the normal questions that a four-year-oldasks mom why is the grass green well because of you know we'd answer it well why you'd answerthat question well why and I'm like there was just never an answer that was enough
18:59I was like google it go look it up I don't know yeah I can illustrate what I was just talkingabout with a concrete example sure that's okay yeah so this was years ago I was taking an auditionand i was what i would call auditioned out i just did not want to do it but i felt like i reallyshould take this audition first of all i want to play with this orchestra but as anyone who's takenan audition before prepared for competition it is daunting because every day you walk in thepractice room and you have to open your case and you have to face all of your fears and all of yourfeeling of inadequacies and feeling less than and all that so it's not easy and it's never as goodas you want it to be and there's never enough time so you know it's it can be a daunting process
19:45and i thought okay what do you know what do what do i teach get clear on your goals well you knowi want to play with this orchestra i want to take this audition i want to be successfulin this audition um how i don't want to practice these excerpts again you know okay how can i makethose better well by being a better violinist how can i make this less daunting well by beingcreative and how i practice trying new things okay let's do that so i decided to apply thisprinciple of the the axe sharpening you know this quote from i think it's abraham lincoln thateveryone talks everyone repeats if you listen to any music podcast anywhere that if someone givesyou and i'm not i'm paraphrasing the quote but if someone gives you six hours to chop down a tree
20:47you spend four hours sharpening the axe so i thought you know what i do love practicing scalesI love technique and when I have uh you know when I give myself this time to really work on all ofmy technical things work on my vibrato sound then it's more fun to practice on my repertoire becauseI feel great and and everything is ready to go my engine is primed so I thought okay I'm going tospend the bulk of my practice time on technique what do I want to practice and I really gavemyself a lot of freedom like well i want to cover all aspects intonation vibrato double stopsand i just decided to practice on exercises that i was interested in and gave myself freedom to becreative with the ways i would practice these things and then when i started practicing the
21:44excerpts i have all sorts of processes and ways that i like to practice on things but i'll giveyou a specific example violinists will know what i'm saying when they say shumantu excerpts that'salmost on all the lists and it's um for those who don't know that excerpt is the scherzo from thesecond symphony and it's these repeated 16th notes with you know it's difficult for the articulationthere's lots of dynamic changes and the intonation and i thought okay i've practiced this excerpt somany times and i've done all the ways that i can think of practicing in and in so okay what elsewhat have i not tried you know how creative can i get and i decided to take this etudekurds are nine it's not even the same uh same number of beats per measure the only thing they
22:36have in common is repeated 16th notes it's not the same articulation it's not the same notesum and i decided i'm going to take the notes of kurtzer 9 and play them with the dynamicsarticulation in meter of shumontu wow and it was so confusing and i kept messing upand i was just laughing at myself but i really felt like you know it's like alet's say you're a figure skater and someone gives you racing skatesso different right and you're like kind of struggling um so it was so different and funand challenging and confusing and at the same time such a huge i really felt like my brain had towork so fast i really felt challenged and that was so fun and when i would go back and play
23:31the right notes it felt fresh I felt like I was rediscovering the excerpt and the extra effortthe extra mental effort required to execute these very delicate physical maneuvers really was helpingme like sharpening my skills to execute it and and that's how I approached the whole preparationfor this audition was to how can I make this how can I become a better musician through thisaudition so I also took a very person I turned the goal into a very personal thing so the thegoal was yes I want to be successful at this audition but at the same time I'll use this toreally make these practice sessions challenging enjoyable rewarding and I will walk awayregardless of the outcome of the audition with greater skills and more knowledge and growth as
24:27as an artist the outcome was positive thankfully I was really happy I won this audition so that'sthat's a good story to tell yeah I like how you decided after or before you did it that you weregoing to be have a positive experience even if you lost it or won it yes yeah that's great I thinkthat if i attach a personal meaningful goal to another task that i have to dothen the work feels different yeah yesterday we were speaking with uh that viola kid i don't knowif you've heard of him drew drew yeah and he said something about performances where um like asuccessful a successful performance one of the things about it is that you remove all expectationand absolutely it's kind of similar to what you're saying um like yeah yeah that's that's a really
25:24great way to have to have success there the other thing that's that's interesting is i've spoken tomany musicians you know career musicians orchestra musicians and um one of my friends that plays forthe la phil actually his best audition was not for the la phil it was for a job he didn't getthe best the best audition he's ever had in his life he didn't win the job and he had an okay daywhen he auditioned for la phil but that just happened to be the day that he landed the joband so it's it's really interesting um because you know our our judgment of how we're feelingwhen we're playing and how that equates to external uh judgments and factors of how thatanyway that's it that's the dichotomy of performing is that i didn't come up with
26:14this someone else told me this story but i forget which artist said it that when you try to impressit's hard to express but when you focus on expressing then you might have a chanceat impressing and i feel like it's so true becauseno matter what you do how well you do how poorly you do anyone listening to yougrading you for a jury or giving you a job they're not listening objectively to what you'redoing this is not numbers on a piece of paper that can be analyzed it's not that kind of dataso they're listening through their own paradigm their own personal taste their own personalfrustrations and and desires and wishes and the result of anything is usually completely out of
27:00our hands actually and we hop on stage with all of these expectations like what you saidand that creates hesitation when we play because with each note we're asking for permission orvalidation there's a filter between what we're trying to express and how we render it andsometimes we're we get shy also that's a question i get sometimes from clients where they're a littleshy to express by fear of being judgedthe only thing that we can do is go out there release all expectations like drew was sayingand then let the work speak for itself and it's easy easier said than done unfortunatelyBut I remember a few years ago being backstage before a champion music performance and really able to go from a place of feeling very nervous and tense to a place of feeling completely free within five seconds from having this realization like,
28:16oh this i was not looking forward to the performance because i was nervous and then realizingthat's because i'm this fear of judgment and the fact that i'm afraid of it will not help me playbetter it's not helpful why and the absurdity shocked me so much that it's like all of mystress left me in that moment and i said to myself i need to play from a place of love and joy and ijust repeated that in my head over and over before i hopped on stage and that became mysole intention as i was playing the concert to play from a place of joint love and that's beenkind of my pre-performance mantra ever since i know technically it's not a mantra but i wasactually thinking mantra the whole time you were saying it so i think it's a mantra i mean yeah
29:05yeah um and you know playing from a place of love and joy because once you're backstage the work isover you you can't change what's happening it's it's in the box with the wrapping paper around ityou know it's ready to be open and um it's not always possible for me to let go of all stressbefore performances but when i can remember that i can definitely get to a place of morefreedom and lightness of being and therefore i'm actually expressing more because i justi don't have these hesitations anymore i'm not asking for permission i'm just letting the musicflow out so i have a a question that kind of goes back to a topic we were talking about a littlewhile ago but um i kind of want a little bit more clarity on it when because i'm i'm i'm guessing
29:59that if it was a problem for me at one point in my life it probably is for other musicians as welland when I was doing my graduate work one of the hardest things for me because I never hadsuper consistent teachers until I went to college just because of where we live in accessibilityso I never had weekly lessons but growing up in a musical home being relatively smart I usuallyexcelled just because you have that kind of support system at home. So I ended up having alot of like fundamental setup issues that inhibited me from getting better technically. So I finallyfound a teacher for my master's degree that wanted to basically take me back to square one, which iswhat I needed. And I was so hungry to change in the right ways that she said it this way. She'd
30:56like change something in my bow hold or change something in the way I was holding my instrumentand she's like the change I was asking you to make was like going from Santa Barbara to LAwhich is a 90 minute drive and you went from Santa Barbara to Australia so like because we weremaking such drastic changes with these fundamental things I wasn't a good judge of what felt rightbecause it didn't feel right anymore and so if you have students where you're making changes likethat that you do need to drill and you do need to um do it a lot so that it becomes natural to themum how how do you help your students so that they know where that right place feels like and they'renot practicing wrong but they're still able to progress does that make sense yes it's such a
31:51great question and such a difficult one to answer because it's so personal one thing I talk a lotabout on the podcast and with all my clients too is always like this taking ownership of yourlearning experience but an aspect of it is also the amount of introspection that is necessarywhen you take information from a teacher and then you go to the practice room and you're like okayand I'm not saying that that's what you did but what I see at times is well I see several thingsbut the two main ones that I would see is someone who tries to execute what I said withoutquestioning how does that apply to me to my hand so if i ask for someone to have i'll be i'll picksomething random for the violin a straight straighter wrist right we don't play with a
32:50straight wrist the wrist will move at times but the basic fundamental position would be start withthe straight wrist does that student then go home and if they stiff it up is not what i'm lookingfor I'm not wanting them to make things more difficult for them so for themselves so it'smaybe asking what does she mean or what does he mean how does that apply for me what does it looklike and always like you were saying earlier always asking yourself question does this feeleasier does it sound better does it make it easier for me to play whatever I'm trying to playand using a lot of patience just so much patience so one thing i see is that thistaking what i'm saying at 100 face value without the personalization aspect of it
33:50and the other thing that i see is the opposite where go home try what i say but it's unfamiliarthereforeso that's the thing with masteryis that to growat times you need to let goof this perceived expertisethat you haveso you have to undo
34:14the Lego building to rebuildsomething else with the same piecesI have childrencan you tellbutit's very difficult for peopleto to feel like the day before they could play something with what they thought was ease evenif it wasn't the right way and five years from now they they won't be able to play any faster
34:37because it's not the right technique but then to rebuild it they would have to let go of some ofthat ease for a few days a few weeks maybe in in the worst case i don't want to say the worst casebut you know the more um dramatic cases maybe even a few months it takes sometimes to reconstruct atechnique so letting go of this is really hard for some people so they'll try it and it's unfamiliarand it they feel like they can't play better within five seconds so they they give up yeahand then that's when you get a situation where week after week after week after week after weekafter week after years someone shows up and it just doesn't get fixed because they they don'ttake that time to do the experimentation to try it to let go of the perceived expertise
35:29and become a beginner again and rebuild from there so there is it's such a great area you knowbut i would say diligence is important patience is important understanding that yes you might notplay as well for a week or so when you're trying to understand a new concept but at the same timealways asking is that what she meant like straight wrist what is that for me is that supposed to feelthat stiff i really doubt she would want me to feel that stiff that's i'm probably let me trysomething else let me try move a finger or so there needs to be a really um big dedication toexperimentation and and putting things through our own filter i hope that's helpful yeah it kind ofgoes back to performing of like forgetting yourself and not kind of just like leaving
36:31that mindset and kind of worrying more about expressing and and uh just like sharing musicyeah i have another follow-up question as a mindful performer slash practicer is thereor are there times when it is appropriate to drill in the practice room or do you find thatit's not super helpful yes i think drilling is great when it's done right okay yes absolutelythere's oh yeah i mean now how many hours do we have for this podcastum no drilling is great mindless drilling is wrong yeah i think that it's like what i wastalking about this wishful thinking where you're just repeating it five times you can fix it or youcan you know anchor the bad habits ideally each repetition would bring a reinforcement of the good
37:26habits or a new realization no i i'm not i'm tensing up the note before the shift play it againoh i actually don't even know what note i'm shifting to and then when it starts to feel goodokay yeah i'm getting it let's re you know reinforce these good habits but if you're playingit you know let's say you're trying to drill a passage that's what you're talking about rightlike just like yeah repeating drilling things if you're playing it and it's wrong before you playit again think for a second just just one pause quick pause and ask yourself what happened it allcomes to asking question all the i you know if someone is a investigator in the practice roomso much can get accomplished the questioning like the get out your your that's another mindset of
38:22the deep practice model is the problem solving mindset to approach everything from a problemsolving perspective scientific method has its place in the practice room i have a system offive questions that the clients can use at home to solve problems which is super similar to thethe scientific method and it's just questions like what what is happening how can i fix itwhat's my plan how can i enjoy it you know how can i enjoy fixing this problem but so drills aregreat there's so many passages actually that i think we must drill so that we have until thethe body can play it without us thinking right so that we have the physical ability to play itand the freedom to play it having said that a super important thing i should mention though is
39:19drill yes for technique but always always always at the root of it know the musical intentionbehind it that's one mistake I see students do a lot that I do also sometimes too is they separatethe interpretation from the technical work and my old teacher Zvi used to always say I wish Icould imitate him because the way he said it was all of it you know but he would say technique ismisconception and it's so true if you're practicing a shift and you use all of thebest technique to practice a shift but you're you're you're forgetting real life i always tellmy clients and my students keep real life in mind when you're practicing something where are yougoing to be in the bow is this crescendo is this the opening of the phrase where are you going with
40:14this what's the arc what's the stroke what's the you know and and so that you when you are notplaying it they're in the right place of the bow you know that you're not doing it for a veryspecific purpose mindfully because oftentimes i'll see people they do so right they'll do a slow workdrill and then they'll build it up but half the time they're playing with the wrong articulationabsolutely no vibrato no musicality um um i don't know it it doesn't work when you takeyour interpretation out of the technique work because then you try to put them back togetherand all of a sudden you have to go you know 20 steps back so i would say to always and i'm sayingi'm not saying that you have to always practice musically yeah musically but that okay so this
41:09passage of 16th notes i'm going to practice with different rhythms of course i know it's not theright rhythms or different bowings and to do that i might be in a different place of the bow but iknow that i'm doing it to fix a very specific issue and then i will also take time after thatto work on how to play this passage musically with the interpretation so that's a reallyimportant thing that those mindless drills i see where people just it's like i said i'll stopcircling back to this but it's this wishful thinking where if i just play it 40 times it'sgonna be great that's not how it works so to have each repetition bring either improvementor a new finding and then being conscious that if you're stepping away from the way you would
41:58perform it that you you know why you're doing that great yeah I mean it's like if you're notmoving forward you're gonna move backwards so well thank you would you just introduce ourlisteners to your podcast and what it's about yes absolutely so the mind over finger podcastwas really kind of a it's a passion project out of me wanting to have this content out for youknow my students and my clients but also anyone who's a music lover I think that one of the beautyof all of the technology that we have access to right now is that I really feel like it's bringingall genre of music together but also all musicians the amateurs the you know thethe highest class performers um and we're all coming together the enthusiasm the love for music
43:01is really just something we can all benefit from so i love that so the the mind over finger podcastis conversations about mindful practice and mindful music making uh with artists and teachersand also I'm having this season you know specialists in EFT tapping Alexander techniqueall of those things so it's uh I try to cover a lot of aspects of um what can make us betterartists and um yeah it's a it's a lot of fun that's great we'll definitely link it in thedescription so you guys can go listen to it absolutely um just in conclusion we have twomore quick questions and i mean it might they don't have to be new answers but um what is sometools you'd recommend our listeners to put in their toolbox record yourself and find an easy
44:01way to do it recording yourself can be so um helpful and i don't mean just like always do arun through i mean just take one passage and record it a few times and see how it can helpyou fix it so recording yourself and it doesn't have to be expensive equipment any smartphone willdo it's so beneficial absolutely okay i'm glad that you said make it the easiest way possiblewhen i was in school which wasn't that long ago like the best way to get a recording of yourselfyou had to go check out a zoom recorder from the school and now it's so much more accessible and istill beg my students to record themselves and it was hard to for my teacher to get me to do it tomyself and i i think part of it was wrapped up in ego i really didn't want to know what i sounded
44:53like um and the minute i started recording myself i had so my lessons i got so much more done inthem because she wasn't telling me things i already knew she was telling me things that icouldn't catch on my own but before i like wouldn't make myself like face those those demons until i'dget to the lesson and then i'd be forced to and so um yeah i i like that a lot make it as easyas possible and do it as much as you can you know i would say for apple users and this is not asponsorship i'm not getting money but use um try the modacity app if you haven't heard of iti haven't it's no modacity is was developed by a musician and it's kind of like a mindfulpractice app you can create there's a paid version there's a free version that offers just a lot of
45:47value there for free so i would say if you're an apple user it's not available on android yetBut if you have an iPhone or iPad, it works.And you can create some practice lists.There are some mindfulness prompts.But the recording function on this app is phenomenal.The reason is that once you hit record, you know, it records.Once you press stop, it will play back automatically right away.Oh, great.
46:12And then once you're done listening to your little passage, you want to record again, press the button, it starts recording again.There's no having to press stop.and then you can save recordings if you want but the recording function on modacity they have areally good metronome function as well um for metronome i really love um what's my metronomei forget um i want to remember because i would really recommend this as wellis modesty mod or m8 okay mod ac so for metronome i love tuneable or tuneable i don't know how yousay it oh got it um offers so many amazing functions at home i just use a good old likedial metronome that's for me that's the simplest i like simple tools like make it to to quote
47:05Gretchen Rubin she's an author make it easy to go right and hard to go wrong like use sample toolsif it's too complex you're not going to use it so if it's a good old dial metronome tunable ison the go but I haven't been on the go in like eight months but but modacity is another thingI would say to check out the recording function is really great just a little fun tip that youcan try practice play it and record it at slow tempo and then play it back twice as fast and seeif what you're doing slowly looks like what it should sound like in tempo i've never tried thati've done the opposite because i like to do folk music and so i'll use youtube and play it at halfspeed to learn so it slows it down um but i've never tried it the other way yeah yeah yes that's
48:00You really get to see that even at slow tempo, let's say, your intonation is not coming out well or your rhythm is not accurate or, I don't know, you're sliding too slowly or something like this.It's really interesting.For me, those things make it fun.And anything that makes practicing fun is, I think, makes me mindful because it makes me engaged and interested.That's great.That's awesome.Okay, our last question for you is, what do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?Oh, wow.
48:35What is it?I don't know.I think that whenever I get a testimonial from a student or a client telling me that I've had some sort of positive impact in their life, I think that would be it.Definitely.Yes.it makes such a big differencewhen someone let you know thatyou've had a positive impact in their life for sure
49:01so that would be in my musicallifein my personal lifeprobably my kidsyeahthat's greatwell thank you so muchwe greatly appreciate your time and all the things
49:15that we've learnedthank you for spending the morning with usthank you so much for having me I really appreciate itthanks for listening guys we hope you enjoyed that episode uh we're fairly new so we'd appreciate itif you shared it with all of your friends and you can find us on all the podcasting platformsyou listen to and we're also on youtube so thanks for watching is there an episode that you wouldlike us to cover or a topic that we haven't yet if you have one feel free to contact us throughour website which is the musicians toolbox podcast.com or you can email us at the musicians
50:00podcast the musicians toolbox podcast at gmail.com yeah and we also for those of you who are watchingour youtube channel know but we've got some amazing merch that we're not wearing right nowbut it looks really sick so we appreciate you checking that out on our website um and alsoanywhere elseyou find linksyou could probablyfind a pictureor two of it
50:23also on oursocial media accountsoh yeahand you can alsofind informationabout the next personthat we're goingto be
50:29presenting to youso we are onInstagram andFacebookand you can find usatmusicians toolboxperfect
50:38thanks for listeningsee you laterbyeThank you guys so much for listening.I hope you enjoyed this chat with Angela Ezeunika and Andrew Coleman of the Musician's Toolbox podcast.If you relate to this conversation, get in touch with us and let's keep this discussion going.I'm Mind Over Finger on both Instagram and Facebook, and you can find them at The Musician's Toolbox.As always, I have all the information related to this episode in the show notes.
51:29You can find them via your podcast player app or by visiting mindoverfinger.com, where you can also find more information about mindful, efficient practice and performance preparation.while you're there sign up for my newsletter and receive your free guide to an exceptionallyproductive mindful practice also i hope to see you in the mind over finger tribe that's my privatefacebook group where i pop in once a week to talk about mindful practice and answer your questionsit's a great community and you can find it at facebook.com slash groups slash mind over fingertribe. So that's it for today. Again, thank you, and à bientôt.
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