The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 106 Brandon Acker: Q&A Session

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 106. This is a live Q&A session from the Mind Over Finger Facebook community. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice and 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 amazingly well as you tune into this episode. This summer on the Mind Over Finger podcast, I had a fantastic time with wonderful guests. Every month, I had a live Q&A session with terrific musicians in my Facebook group,

Starting point is 00:00:54 the Mind Over Finger community, and as to be expected, much wisdom has been shared. We started in April with pianist Konstantin Sukovitsky. May brought violinist Callum Smart. In June, you heard from trumpet player Christopher Still. July brought violinist Esther Abrami. And for August, we spent time with guitarist Brandon Aker. And before we dive into this conversation, I want to take a minute and say a few words about my brand new workshop, Practicing for Peak

Starting point is 00:01:27 Performance, coming up August 13, 14, and 15. This is the workshop where I'm going to share all of the tools and strategies that will help you reach new peaks of performance. Together, we're going to cover the mindsets and practice systems that will have you feel confident and ready for optimal performance. You're going to know what and how to practice and how to prepare physically and mentally for any performance. I'm so excited. I can't wait. I'm packing in all the information and strategies you're going to need to feel really excited about performing. We're taught from the start to simply put in more hours in the practice room if we want to see success. But you guys know and you've experienced how frustrating disheartening and unproductive this is with the

Starting point is 00:02:22 right strategies and mindsets we can change all of this for you i'm going to share with you all the details of my signature deep practice model this is the process that so far i've only shared with my private clients students and the participants in the music mastery experience it's a clear process on how to go from reading a piece to performing it with confidence and it's going to be available for you now can't wait to see you august 13 14 and 15 all of the information is at mindoverfinger.com practicing for peak performance it's live on zoom but of course all the replays are going to be available to you indefinitely and now more about brandon acre Brandon is a classical guitarist and specialist on early plucked instruments such as the lute,

Starting point is 00:03:17 burro guitar, and theorbo. His latest passion has been to run his successful YouTube channel, which now has over 300,000 subscribers and 14 million views. His channel provides educational content about early plucked instruments, as well as guitar tips and artistic performance videos. His interest in education has led him to found a new online music school with his wife called Arpeggiato, which offers lessons in all things that go pluck. In the few months since its open in 2020, the school has already taught over 500 lessons to students around the world and in countries like Saudi Arabia, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Australia, and more. Brendan's performance career has varied from starting out playing electric guitar in metal

Starting point is 00:04:09 bands to his current main focus, researching and performing on early plucked instruments from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. He's toured extensively through England, Canada, Scotland, and Wales, and performed with notable groups such as the Leipzig Baroque Orchestra, the Joffrey Ballet, the Chicago Philharmonic, the Newberry Consort, Haymarket Opera Company, Music of the Baroque, Third post-baroque opera Lafayette and Bella Voce. He can be heard on his CDs, Wanderer's Guitars, Favorites, and Strung Up. He's going to tell us more about himself in our chat, and you can also visit his website at brandonacreguitar.com for more details

Starting point is 00:04:51 about his journey and his career. And without further ado, let's go to the show. so we are live hi everyone i hope you're doing great i'm really really excited today i have a wonderful guest for you guys brandon acre guitarist do you say theorbo player lutist yeah Yes. Okay. Fantastic. Jack of all trade. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to have you, Brandon. I want you to tell us more about yourself. Of course, you're a classical guitarist and you call yourself a specialist of early plucked instruments, which I love. So we're talking about the lute, baroque guitar and the orbo. And for those of you who don't know him i gotta tell you his latest passion has been to run a youtube channel and you have like how

Starting point is 00:06:02 many now over like what 300 subscribers like millions of views 320 something thousand yeah it's it's blown up in the last couple of years it's really uh really exciting it really amazing content great videos on how to practice on how to practice um the guitar and all of these early plugged instruments and you also have an online school but tell us all about you I'm also going to change my headset because it keeps popping out because my I think my ear canals are too small I got new headphones so um tell us about you about your your path to where you are today how this artistic journey has unfolded for you sure well it's really a pleasure to be on and uh congratulations on the great the great podcast renee um yeah well so i i've ended up as a an

Starting point is 00:06:57 early plucked instrument guy uh playing music a lot of a lot of baroque music uh especially um in the last few years which i know is a pretty esoteric field with lutes and things uh but this never was my you know intention i kind of like uh fell into one thing after the other and that became interesting and that led me somewhere else and uh but i i think i never would have expected uh to end up uh there sorry there's a bit of noise outside um so uh but basically uh um i began uh when i was around 11 uh playing electric guitars and electric guitar and in a rock band and things and taking lessons from a guy in a in a trailer by a lake and uh my brother and i were i have a twin brother and him and i were taking lessons at the same time

Starting point is 00:07:44 and uh i think i only started because he started uh my mom asked if he wanted to play guitar and i was gonna say no and he said yes so i said yes and uh so i just copied him and uh so i played electric guitar for some years uh and then i joined a high school i was in a uh a really fun rock band called fragile utopia and rock metal band and had long hair and uh we were it was a really fun time we we wrote uh songs we did uh two cds did a lot of concerts and uh the the intensity of the shows the the mosh pits the the headbanging it was a great great time and i actually missed i missed like the intensity of doing that i would love to do it again um but so then i was doing that and i thought oh i'll just do this forever right this is like my

Starting point is 00:08:33 this is what i love uh but we started messing around with recording because we wanted to you know record our own stuff and so we got some microphones um and started trying to build a studio did our own cds and through that process i kind of figured out audio uh here and there and uh so i started doing audio production and next thing you know it's time for college and i don't know what i'm gonna do and i end up uh in chicago for a sound recording degree at depaul university and um and uh i needed an instrument i didn't i wasn't planning on majoring in an instrument or anything and so you need to play an instrument you need to take lessons so pick jazz or classical and i said i play rock guitar and uh they said well pick one and i i said i know nothing about

Starting point is 00:09:17 jazz i can fake some some spanish guitar it really fake fake it like i'm just like some strumming stuff and uh so i learned i learned some music i auditioned i got in and then the classical guitar teacher mark maxwell was really fantastic he's just super amazing teacher at depaul still teaches at depaul and uh he really swayed me he convinced me of the beauty of the music and the power of you know the classical guitar and um musicality and i fell in love with the repertoire and then i flip-flopped so i became a classical guitar major i dropped a sound recording i finished that degree did another degree in classical guitar master's degree with his wife at northwestern ann waller um they're kind of a classical guitar power couple in chicago

Starting point is 00:10:02 and uh did that and uh while i was doing those degrees there was a couple opportunities to um learn a bit about early instruments that i had uh they there was an they did norfeo a monteverdi monteverdi torfeo one of the first you know ever big operas and uh i volunteered to play guitar in it because a bunch of my friends were singing and i i knew that some vague idea that there was some type of guitars or lutes or something so i'm like well can i figure it out how to play and so that was kind of an experiment that i did a couple times um by the time i got to northwestern i i had started even trying it on a baroque guitar that i was borrowing from my teacher and uh steven alltop at northwestern was very accommodating and getting me to play in ensembles and things

Starting point is 00:10:46 we did a couple more uh operas and uh by the time i graduated i started going to early music festivals and meeting people who actually specialized in early music and that's when i learned like the the amazing field that is historical performance you know in terms of the research the musicology the the improvisation that goes into it the beautiful instruments themselves the beautiful notation for the music and uh in the last i don't know seven years or so i think i've switched gears again after being going from you know rock to switching gears to classical and now switching gears again to the early music early music thing uh this is current my current wave of uh just interest and passion and i've been learning as much as i can studying

Starting point is 00:11:33 these instruments they're you know how they were played and playing with as many groups as possible and uh well that takes us to now that's so amazing and that's where you and i met right in one of those classes of early music that's it so interesting what i love about this so much is how you have a plan and then you just kind of follow the breadcrumbs and it leads you somewhere else that's amazing and keep following and then takes you somewhere else and I feel like it's so inspiring for anyone listening to this to see that you know things don't always end up the way we expected them to but it's just wonderful we're one breadcrumb at a time where it takes you and that's the hard i think that's why it's really hard to talk to other people about um you know

Starting point is 00:12:23 people who are studying and things and just to try to get they you know when someone is asked when they're 16 17 to you know hey decide what you want to do forever and go and do it it's like it's a pretty hard thing and i think um based on my own path it seems more about getting into some place that you can you know meet good people work with great teachers and but you don't have to know what you're going to do when you sign up for it because i think it's just great to just be spontaneous and follow you know your passion wherever that goes uh yeah so i'm kind of okay with the idea of change and uh maybe i'll change again and at some point i don't know but i think it's important to stay open and follow your you know wherever your passion sort of leads you

Starting point is 00:13:06 yeah and you go from like headbanging in the rock group to playing lute on the best stages in chicago with some of the best ensembles which is so incredible and wonderful there's it's it's great that there is an opportunity to play you know i mean that's the other thing i wouldn't have known 10 years ago that you can do concerts you know playing uh fiorbo and lute i didn't even know it was happening in chicago and so uh yeah i think i was lucky as well that i was in a good place that could then there were ensembles you know you could actually play with really fantastic uh players like yourself yes let's switch gear a little bit and for all of those of you watching know that you can post some questions if you have questions for brendan i'm looking at the chat right

Starting point is 00:13:54 here keeping an eye on it so um anything on your mind let us know and brendan now we want to this is the mind over finger podcast let's talk about practicing a little bit performing i was watching one of your really great video actually and I think that I could even you know I'll do that later I'll put the link in the Facebook group and of course when this is a podcast episode I'll put in the show notes but there's so much amazing content on your YouTube channel so I was watching about a video in March about practicing and I was like yes like I agree with all of this this is right up my alley I love this so and another amazing thing about what you do you've talked about how you're so versatile. So you could do rock, jazz, classical, Baroque, all of this stuff.

Starting point is 00:14:46 And I'm sure that there's so much we can learn from you in terms of versatility, in terms of like the cross pollination on how the skill transfer works, how these skills reinforce one another and, you know, how that works in the practice room. Can you talk to us a little bit about that yeah well you know it's something that's hard to to talk about i think um so i'll i'll try to think out loud about it a little bit because uh you know uh sometimes people ask like they say like how do you how do you play different instruments and how do you find how do you balance your time do you do 20 minutes on this instrument and 20 minutes on the on the next or something um i think it's important to spend a good chunk of time on each one for a while uh i'm talking

Starting point is 00:15:34 about like a you know a couple years where you're really invested in an instrument and then you kind of move on and after a while you have these different gears that allow you to switch um between them i think um but you know um in terms of being versatile and uh allowing that sort of thing to to happen i think it's i think a lot of it has to do with just it comes down to interest you know where do your interests pull you and are you willing to adopt to go down a new path i mean when i was an electric guitar player i was pretty set on this is what i was going to do forever like this was this was it i found my my thing uh i felt like i could play like it felt good to play and uh i was like oh this is my thing i found it um but then

Starting point is 00:16:21 you learn you know i i my ear was exposed to classical guitar and i heard something that i i couldn't reproduce on my instrument and i heard these techniques and these this music that was so profound and it was hitting me emotionally in a place uh where that rock music never touched and i didn't i just it was just pure you know i just ignorance of knowing about these emotions that i these other possible emotions that kind of you know especially in high school you get into your click and your your bubble your little paradigm and you think anything that's not there is not good you know and i think a very important lesson is learning that how like the bubble you're always in a bubble and there's something just outside the bubble that you would love if only

Starting point is 00:17:02 you knew about it and so that thing i discovered one of them was classical guitar and i thought oh my god then the emotions the techniques uh that this music is so unreal and i just was obsessed with it and of course i thought this is what i'm going to do forever this is my my my new instrument and uh but of course when you learn classical guitar it only makes you a better electric guitar player and i think i wouldn't i couldn't have learned classical guitar if i didn't already spend so many years working so hard to play electric guitar well and but it was with classical guitar that i learned really how to practice i had no aim and direction i was just going off of intuition with with electric guitar um so i definitely think that having one instrument and

Starting point is 00:17:39 stepping to another is always easier um especially any understanding of music itself you know music transcends any of the tools we use to make music um and so any musician who's experienced in one instrument can it will have an easier time picking up another so and also you know it's the same notes classical guitar and electric guitar the same notes same strings uh you know in terms of the the nominal tuning the proportions of the instrument and then of course i did it again going to the baroque guitar and then segueing to fiorbo and all the different types of lutes and early instruments. It's just, you just, Oh, it's like my previous instrument, except that strings tuned to a fourth, not a major third. Oh, these strings are doubled, but more otherwise it's the

Starting point is 00:18:21 same. The physics of the strings are the same. The music is the same. The details change. And so I think that how could, how can one play the lute? Well, if you play the guitar, you're going to have a much easier time. If you start from the lute from scratch, I don't know anybody who just picked up the lute and started from scratch. I'm sure it was common, you know, 400 years ago, but today that's kind of how one discovers the the lute is through the through the guitar and so um i guess to to just put a end to that thought it's just uh i think versatility comes from spending a lot of time passionately studying something and then hopping to something that's adjacent that's and that's not completely new because you can kind of comprehend it and instantly play the thing or

Starting point is 00:19:06 whatever the maybe you know analogy could be uh and then you keep doing that and before you know if you keep hopping to enough adjacent things uh then you you are quite versatile without really ever that being the aim you know it's very eloquent elegantly put and it's so true what you're saying because in order to have skill transfer you need to have a certain level of skill acquired first it makes so much sense and i mean even for a musician to jump from piano to violin there's already the skill of reading the notes understanding rhythm hearing the notes like we already have acquired and assimilated a certain level of skills so what you're saying makes so much sense in terms of this curiosity that you're talking about acquiring

Starting point is 00:19:56 those skills and then being able to transfer them I love what you said about curiosity because this is what's at the root i think of all efficient practice is how curious invested interested we are totally it's i think it's the it's the you need to have this inquisitive mind to always be so curious well why why does that string tune that way and what does that mean you know for my fingering or or we hold the bow like this well what does that mean for if i held it like that or you know i mean i shouldn't use a bow analogy since i know nothing about but uh but you know i mean it just is asking the questions and i think a lot of um topics i don't know about your experience but even outside of music a lot of topics that are seemingly

Starting point is 00:20:39 uninteresting just start asking questions about them and suddenly they become interesting i mean i couldn't have cared less about how a kitchen is put together or what type of countertops you can choose until right now i'm renovating my my kitchen and now i'm my brain is completely into countertops and backsplashes and these things that are now suddenly totally fascinating because i know more about it so you know i know you know you know enough to tickle your interest and i think that's one of the things about learning an instrument and music especially if you're studying a repertoire that is profound uh like so much of the classical repertoire is it's if you just start asking the right questions about the music about the instruments like

Starting point is 00:21:16 get ready because you need multiple lifetimes to exhaust that you know in terms of how much you could learn there so the rabbit hole goes as deep as you want it to go and but it takes it takes a person to start asking questions I think to start down that path and I really love what you said about being in a bubble and then becoming aware of something outside of this bubble so remaining curious once again and open-minded to all of the amazing experiences that can reside outside of where we are right now and I remember reading at some point about how actually step zero is not knowing about something that if you know of something even if you know nothing about it knowing of it is already the first stage to increasing your knowledge and I feel that

Starting point is 00:22:08 it's such a hopeful perspective think about it in the practice room as your awareness increases at times you realize wait I don't know anything about vibrato but I'd like to vibrate and then you feel maybe overwhelmed by how much you don't know about vibrato but hey you've heard about vibrato now you know that it exists the journey is beginning this is very exciting yeah so i i really like what you're saying about this anna says i totally resonate with the idea to need several lifetimes to follow each curious thought yes absolutely i think i think it was also like um it was bertrand russell in his book on uh unhappiness uh speaks about speaks about that that one of the cures to one of the one of the

Starting point is 00:23:00 ways to uh ensure that one is lives a happy life is just to be interested in things you know you're waiting at the doctor's office and especially today you have no phone you know and maybe maybe your phone's dead you could easily go oh i can't check my facebook or whatever but like if you just look around and now like for example now my brain would go huh which what is that on them that these floors are made of huh i wonder how they how they did that why is there a pipe there like why i wonder if they planned on that if that was a discovery and a renovation and so if you just get interested in your surroundings you can never be bored you know and boredom is one of the problems with in life one of the things we you know encounter and so just being interested in

Starting point is 00:23:38 things it's actually one of richard russell's ways to live a happier life yeah yep just having this awareness this um i call it bare awareness what do you see and where can it take you this is this is so great absolutely like i remember even before i moved to chicago when i knew i was moving to chicago all of a sudden i was hearing about chicago from everywhere i had never heard so much about chicago in my whole life but you know it's that that um confirmation bias you know um i know that's the wrong it's the wrong analogy but you know once you are aware of something you start to really see it everywhere absolutely yeah and in one of the videos you were talking about i think it's the same one that i just mentioned the five obstacles in the practice and i resonate

Starting point is 00:24:34 with those so much i make notes of them so you have the um you know first exposing your great witnesses yes and i feel like that can be tough for some people at times um do you want to tell us a little bit about that i think it's so interesting well i think it's definitely one of the barriers to um uh the to a lot of people's progress on an instrument i mean i think in general we have a tendency to do things that make us feel good right and uh so we avoid the bad and we search for the good and so if you're learning an instrument and maybe you're not that experienced and you can play that one chord which is the opening chord of a song and the first time you mean when you're teaching you know you see this you see someone go from scratch and they play

Starting point is 00:25:20 that chord or that little lick from the song and they you see their eyes light up like i just i made the sound from that song and it's a fantastic moment and you can tell that they're so gratified suddenly but if you tell them to then okay now we're going to learn the next chord and then they struggle and they seem frustrated and now they're not having a good time i mean clearly the highlight of the lesson was when they when they got it right so they go home what do they do they do the part that they would that felt so good again and again and again because it's that you know dopamine button to go like yeah i want to feel good about what i'm doing but then maybe in a week they still don't have the next thing because they're only doing the thing that felt

Starting point is 00:25:55 good and so i think in general we have a tendency to to focus on to replay the things that we already can play well and then neglect the things that actually need the work and so instead what i try to do with my students and mostly myself is uh say sit down and say what am i the worst at uh and that's what i practice because i know i can do the other things and i can if i'm just going to have fun and play for fun i can know okay i'm going to have fun at this moment you speak about you know intention setting an intention and things i've read uh a bit about that and uh one of the intentions i like to set is yeah exactly what am i going to do today am i going to be having fun or rolling up my sleeves and really getting to work and if i'm actually going to be

Starting point is 00:26:35 practicing then i should say well what am i not good at and then you go to that because at the end of the day once you've lowered up the lowest you know link in the chain or that's a bad analogy but you know i mean that if if you have this a series of tasks you need to be able to or techniques you need to be able to play on an instrument if you make the worst one a bit better you're now an overall better musician because your weakest link isn't super super uh it isn't causing you to bomb in the middle of your piece you know you can at least make it through um so i think that's a powerful way to think i heard that years ago from a bass player in a rock band was said that i always try to practice what i'm the worst at and i realize that's a pretty hard thing to

Starting point is 00:27:15 actually do especially if you're looking for you know to be to be happy about the experience but But I think in the end, it produces the best results. Yeah. And I think if we reframe this as tackling those things as the road to freedom, it's the road to artistic freedom. If I reinforce this, I'm already amazing at that. You know, I can already do this really well. Now let's acquire more freedom in these other areas.

Starting point is 00:27:45 and I think it's you know it's just we're we're so um affected negatively by the things we can't do yeah and I think that we have to allow ourselves this room to grow and see that it's a such a long journey and as you know as Anna was saying we it's almost as if like we need several lifetimes to know everything there is to know so if we treat everything with i'll bring again curiosity and beginner's mind this desire to learn more then not being excellent at something becomes a game that is fun to play does that make sense absolutely uh i think i think that this is just a healthy way to think about uh again i think most most things in life actually i think i don't know about you and you've been thinking so much about and talking about so much about practicing

Starting point is 00:28:42 but one of the things i'm learning about this is so many of these these uh rules or or tips or however you want to describe them apply everywhere you know it's just i think it has to do a lot with human psychology and just how we work in general as people to you know make progress and learn um but so certainly i i would i would uh emphasize that to any any uh person who's you know trying to get better at an instrument uh just make a list what are you not good at that you could be and start there and in a few months i think if you keep doing that your playing will be unrecognizable yeah it's like what am i going to be amazing at next yeah what's another reason why that's so great is because then it's infinite you know i mean we talked about the limitless um the amount

Starting point is 00:29:31 of lifetimes you would need to actually explore the full domain of each of our instruments and it's because there are there's too much to accomplish in in one lifetime and that but if we only if we only stick with the things that we're good at then now it's very limited now we're going to get bored pretty quickly and burnt out with the thing because it's not going to be great forever you know a c major chord is is beautiful but not forever you know what if i'm not good at a c minor chord well once i'm good at it you can appreciate and value it musically and not just as a technique and so you get through the technique you have to i think that's a big topic as well getting through the technique transcending that to get to the music itself uh and that's where the

Starting point is 00:30:09 art begins yes i love that brandon i have a question for you a few weeks ago in one of the lives i did here in the community i shared some information about a new practicing technique from a new study that came out on june 8th about giving ourselves little rests when we practice and I feel like it's magical actually I borrowed the term from Anna herself who was talking about how magical it was and I agree with that and in that live another listener was Jonathan was asking me to share you know my findings about this so I shared this information with you and now I would like to know having read about this little 10 second of rest tip and for those of you who are just hearing about this the first time is a studies that came out june 8th as i said

Starting point is 00:31:05 that shows that when we do repetitive work if we interrupt the repetitions after you know 10 or 30 seconds or a few repetitions if we interrupt these repetitions with a 10 second mindful rest so we're not watching a phone we're not making lists we're not analyzing we're not problem solving that when we're just in this state of wakeful rest, the brain replays the passage that we've been working on at 20 times the speed. And I've started to try it in my practice and I thought it was just incredible. And I'd love to get your opinion on that now that I think you've tried it a few times. Yeah. I was kind of blown away by this actually. Um, I had never heard about it until you mentioned it. Uh, and so I started integrating into my practice over the

Starting point is 00:32:04 week and I think it's incredibly important. I think this is going to be something that I do from now on, uh, for several reasons. I, I mean, I actually, I tried it first and then I read the, I read the article and listened to the, the, the podcast you sent me about it. Um, uh, after I actually tried it, you just told me that just the basic idea, just 10 second breaks. Uh, and I, so I just started doing it and I thought it was fantastic because I myself have, uh, have, uh, struggled with, uh, like, uh, uh, what do you call it? Uh, stress issue, my hand repetitive strain injury there we go uh where i've i've used to have uh two years ago three years ago i i my hand was got so tight that i couldn't like i could barely even like wash my hair it hurts like it was

Starting point is 00:32:52 it was just like this rock of a hand and so i had to figure out how to solve that and i went to a lot of physical therapists and no one could really help me it was all about technique and so i said to re completely redo my technique and in the process i'm very much more body aware and aware of where tension exists and how to eliminate that tension. And adding this component of a 10-second break upon repetitions is great because for me, the biggest reason was because it's a moment to just stop and go, how do I feel? Not just how well is that, but how do I feel?

Starting point is 00:33:28 How's my posture? Where's my head? Am I breathing? Is my hand flexed? Or did I let the tension from the activity dissipate before doing it again? and instead of just diving in and giving myself one second to do that you just have to take 10 seconds and breathe and then start again and you're just a bit more fresh and you have a moment to reflect and so i think even if i didn't even know about the this amazing study and then there's this yeah that you're reviewing what happened 20 times the speed if i didn't even know that i would be doing this but then there's that and so i think i've i've yet to test in a performance setting you

Starting point is 00:34:01 know how that works if you practice that way but uh for me so far that's that's my first the first thing i noticed and i'll be really interested to see what the long-term effects of practicing like that will be yeah isn't it fun i just love discovering new techniques and i experience exactly what you just said so precisely i don't know what my brain is doing when i'm resting i am i don't have the awareness of what mechanisms are active in my brain as i rest but i do come back of that 10 seconds of rest recommitted reinterested rested and more present you know with my intentions renewed and i mean the times i sometimes i start laughing because i'll be practicing a run or whatever it just a few days ago I was practicing the opening of the the last movement of Schumann

Starting point is 00:34:58 which is a really quick um first violin lick it's just like four lines just four lines that are hard in the whole movement that was uh just fumbling a little bit and then I was like wait let's try this tip and it just works and I would laugh and be like oh my gosh this is just fabulous but i just i mean it's like you said even without knowing that the brain is replaying things at 20 times the speed the presence in the intentionality that it creates for me in that moment is just wonderful exactly uh i i kind of feel also when i when i did it i i mean maybe this is more of a uh maybe maybe maybe it was like uh i was thinking about the research and i was trying to perceive like you know like knowing that your brain is doing this uh 20 times um the speed

Starting point is 00:35:56 of what you just you know played i kind of stopped and i kind of just imagined what i just played and i kind of realized and maybe i don't know how much this maps on to actually what's happening in the mind but i kind of realized it's very easy to take to take note of what just happened but in a very short span of time using okay all that was good except for that part and all that was good except for that part and that was a buzz and i rushed that note and you can really conceive of all of that in like a second um but it takes obviously you know maybe 20 seconds to play it um so just just sitting down and taking stock is i think is uh so important because i think i at least have the tendency just to dive in again yeah before maybe i allowed myself to even realize

Starting point is 00:36:36 do i need to practice that again was that section good am i now overdoing it which is another problem with you know if you have tension number one you're not allowing the tension to dissipate before you try it again but two maybe you kind of get lost in the in the goals you know like yes when i'm recording a lot i kind of lose objectivity and often i'll record something like for 20 how he keeps it now because i'm saying 20 a lot but you know 20 30 times the amount of times I actually needed to record it I would I record way more than I need to but I got it the first time yeah yeah kind of lose that objectivity I think those little rests and taking a break and listening back I think it's it there's something really important here that I'm going to certainly

Starting point is 00:37:17 explore more yeah I love that I was comparing it to the a bit like a stand a sandstorm of thoughts or like a snow globe. Sometimes when I do repetitive work, exactly as you said, I get caught in overthinking, overanalyzing. There's so many things we're controlling at the same time and trying to analyze and the bow stroke and the intonation and the vibrato and how we feel physically and sound quality. And then things just start to spiral. And in taking that just for me i think i close my eyes and it's no longer than maybe a deep breath i just close my eyes and i take a big inhale or big exhale big inhale and big exhale not one or the other both and when i come back all the clutter has cleared and now i'm more objective and just more clear-headed

Starting point is 00:38:17 um you know the snow globe analogy all the flakes are now down and the picture is clear and we try again and i feel like things align so well it's really incredible i mean uh i'm very i'm a big fan of how you tie in mindfulness uh into your the way you talk about practicing and with your podcast um i'm a huge fan of and proponent of mindfulness meditation myself and i don't do it nearly enough but i've done enough to know that the benefits are extreme uh and in terms of stress and playing and clarity and successful performance um just simply being present sounds like such a simple superficial thing but it's totally profound especially considering how much we are lost in thought about the past or the future and therefore anxious about it you know and i think that ties

Starting point is 00:39:13 into our to play an instrument so explicitly i mean you know performance anxiety is very much about being afraid of what's going to happen in the future and what's the cure to performance anxiety it's being present and practicing well it's all about being present and actually analyzing what's happening that's why you can't watch you know you can't watch tv while you practice or listen to the radio when you practice whatever you can't be distracted because if your mind isn't thinking about the sound you're making the intention of the practice session and what are you really doing you actually might be doing the opposite you might be ingraining something you don't want absolutely yeah and you know what's very interesting for me as i coach more and more

Starting point is 00:39:54 as i grow as a person and also as i deep more and more into life coaching is how the mindfulness this aspect it's not just a bonus on top of the practicing it's really must be there with us all the time because we are so action oriented as musicians that's the issue we often we just pick up the instrument and we just do and we get really caught in the action of doing things and it's understanding what is the thinking process between everything because the way we think is what creates the way we feel and that really affects how we take action the things we do and the things we don't do and ultimately comes with us on stage all of our thoughts are with us on stage as we're playing so getting this leverage over the way we're thinking the habitual thoughts

Starting point is 00:40:57 that we choose to believe every day and you know getting this awareness just really starts to change everything in how we practice and how we show up on stage so for me it's been just a wonderful journey only good things can come from being present yes brandon i'd like to keep you here all day and for those of you who've joined us since we started don't hesitate to put in your questions if you have anything to ask Brandon but I'd like to get to the rapid fire question part oh sure here we go this interview because it's never so rapid actually I could try to shorten the answers if it helps yeah um I'd like to know what's a habit that you think contributed to your success well you know a lot of times when I hear people talk about uh something that something they

Starting point is 00:41:54 do that that you know they that has become sort of their their thing or their their job or you know their passion uh i've heard people so elegantly describe and this is my process and when i was five i knew this and as you can tell from my story like i don't i've been living sort of spontaneously and just seeing what comes next and what's interesting and then you kind of go i just gotta go there so it's i i haven't really had a plan um that has led me anywhere that a grand plan that i pulled off uh to to do any of the things uh that i'm doing that i want to do um so i think if i think about the thing that if you took that away nothing else could work you know would be just uh allowing yourself to completely get lost in an activity you know

Starting point is 00:42:47 find to find in that state of flow where time ceases to exist and you forget to eat and you you know it's like what what time is it you know finding that thing that uh whatever it may be that that you could completely get lost in and then just allowing that to happen um i think is the thing that if i didn't have that i couldn't do any of the things i'm doing um so i didn't sit down and decide i'm going to practice x number of hours a day um i really am fascinated by these instruments and i just kind of pick them up and and start playing and most of my life playing instruments has been just about enjoying them and getting lost in them and asking those curious questions and finding people who know more than i do about it and picking their

Starting point is 00:43:30 brains and then getting more inspired and then more inspired and uh just get and then of course that's that's nice but then when you find people and you read enough to find out that you can actually structure that session you can mold it into something even more productive like what we're talking about now with little tricks like this 10 second break um doing things like um you know setting intentions before you start if you can find that state of flow and be a be totally absorbed in that practice session um but also um do these like kind of structural things to make it even more productive the passion plus the structure equals you know limitless uh results oh i love that this this should be a sticker

Starting point is 00:44:13 the passion plus the structure equals what was it limitless limitless results yeah is that already a sticker because if it's not we're gonna we're gonna get it i think we're gonna make it let's do it we're gonna get matching tattoos and then we'll go you know listen to some rock bands and there we go yes there you go this is beautiful so do you have a favorite tool in the practice room yeah um i would say uh my metronome i've kind of been reacquainted with it in the last two years i got a or last year i got a new teacher um after i haven't had a steady teacher since i finished my master's degree in 2014 and uh so i i another thing i did during the pandemic um besides starting this uh online music school uh with my

Starting point is 00:45:08 wife um was sign up for lessons i started taking two hours a week with a theorbo player in spain who is one of my favorite players uh xavier javier diaz latore and um we call him xavi i'm not used to saying his full name um and uh i've been taking lessons and and uh it has completely reinvigorated my my mind for you know hearing how somebody else hears music and one of the things that i've had to relearn was the importance of rhythm and how easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking you're just being free and using a rubato when actually maybe you're not counting

Starting point is 00:45:42 that section correctly or you're losing the overall sense of the big beat, the tactus. And so it's been sort of revolutionary in my playing to kind of become reacquainted with the metronome as a core component of every practice session. So for me, when I tell my students,

Starting point is 00:45:57 because so often they don't do it when I tell them to use the metronome, I tell them like to practice means grab the, I'm going to practice now. Where's my metronome? That should be like your first thought. there we go mine's on my phone but uh it's helpful to have a real one i think also and so i think to pull that out and to turn it on and let's just say now i'm practicing for me it's the sound of

Starting point is 00:46:18 practice is to hear a metronome so i think uh make make good buddies with it because it yeah same as uh being present only good things can come from using a metronome yeah and i'm taking note as you're talking because it makes my brain fire so many ideas which is why these rapid fire questions are never so rapid because what's emerging for me in everything that you're saying is I think that you are a lifelong learner. And I see myself as that as well. I feel like I'm a lifelong learner. And I skipped one of the questions because I felt like asking you what skills you think musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning to play their instruments had been answered already. But I think that you would agree with me that if they develop

Starting point is 00:47:06 one skill it could be to remain committed to learning and remaining curious it's just i i love what you're sharing about taking this time to expand yourself as as a person and as a musician and i agree with you on the metronome yeah i forget uh who they asked it to there was some elderly musician uh who is you know had a by the time they were 30 they were world famous and now they're they're 80 or something and they were asked um so how do you spend your days and they said i think it was julian bream the guitarist um he's and uh he said how do you spend your days he's well i'm practicing and why you kind of played all the repertoire and you played everywhere and recorded all this repertoire uh you were so successful what are you practicing he's like

Starting point is 00:47:57 well i think i'm getting better so i'll keep doing it you know i mean exactly that that's the that's the whole point about the multiple lifetimes thing there is no one's ever achieved then they never reach the top and say i did it i accomplished my instrument as far as it could go and uh okay now what and i'm so happy that there is no summit to this mountain that we're climbing it's infinite and that if it was if there was a summit you could just get there and then there was objective end to it it wouldn't it wouldn't be an art and so that the fact that it's it's endless is what makes it such a great worthwhile endeavor yeah absolutely and i'm with you on the metronome i love the metronome this one episode on the podcast where violinist leila josephovich was sharing that

Starting point is 00:48:43 she sees the metronome as this wonderful kind of a straitjacket that once you take it off you experience such freedom you know yeah it develops such a really strong pulse and inner core and understanding of the the rhythm not not physical inner core but the rhythmical inner core and then um that once you turn it off it's like it's there it stays with you and it's assimilated yeah this is really great one just one more comment about the metronome for the i think what's one thing i wish i would have known before is that just because you're doing roboto doesn't mean you're there's it's time to turn the metronome off and just because you're playing with the metronome doesn't mean you're not you're not playing musically so you should be able to

Starting point is 00:49:33 play i think everything almost everything you can play rubato included even if you're playing chopin uh with a metronome on so one of my tasks with a metronome even if in a piece that's has rubato is just to go to the biggest beat i can possibly play so like 30 bpm you know it's the downbeat of each measure and then i i structure my roboto so that if i'm going to pull and push i do so but the big beat still exists and that's i think that's the end of roboto is still having that general tactus and then you purposely weave around it but it gives you the proportion because roboto without the bending the time around you know you're bending time around what the tactus the the original the big the big beat and if you're bending it and then there's no relation

Starting point is 00:50:16 to the tempo, then now we're just playing without rhythm, which I think we shouldn't do except for some rare music. But so metronome all the way. Another matching two. I'll even do a shameless plug here because if you go to my website, mindoverfinger.com, you can download my guide to practicing with the metronome where I talk precisely about this, expanding the beat. It's a great technique. How about a book that you'd like to recommend to the listeners and it doesn't have to be a music book because we know that fiction self-help gore or contributes to make us you know better human beings and overall contributes to the artistic uh creativity that we have in us so what is a book that you would recommend

Starting point is 00:51:02 oh there are so many i would i could say um right now because it's what i'm interested in um early music is my my favorite subject so at the moment i have here a book that i've now reread maybe oops maybe a few times or so uh the end of early music by bruce haynes uh this is one that i just keep reading and uh learn something each time um he's a hilarious writer uh and but also you know a fantastic musicologist and he really puts into perspective the last uh 40 years or so 50 years or so of the historical performance historically informed performance movement the hip movement and how we progressed and what did what is this thing this early music thing that we're doing and why are we doing it and how should we do it and with mixed with a lot of wit he kind

Starting point is 00:51:57 of sums that up well while teaching you a lot about how one should play and interpret um renaissance baroque music that sounds really good finally how about a quick actionable tip that the listeners could implement today in their musical life uh get a and i'm proving it because i have one here get a practice log um for me a good practice session is all about uh you know really uh as you say setting intentions and then taking a log of those of how it went you know i practice x y and z on this day and then most importantly you make discoveries uh in those practice sessions so i write big you know big asterisks on the on the page and i as in as many words as i possibly can articulate i try to write out what is the thing that i discovered you know maybe it was

Starting point is 00:52:49 something about you know the slant in the hand by rotating my my hand two degrees more on the fretboard this way i was actually found that shifting to the to the right was much easier as opposed to being totally perpendicular this was more forced and so i try to then say oh that's that's amazing and so i try to articulate as many words as i can so that my future self will come back sometime and i reread my discoveries and sometimes i forget about it and i go oh yeah i haven't been doing that and so i have years of practice logs that i've made that i still learn from and so my pastel self is teaching my my future self and at the same time just the act of having to articulate what it is you learned it makes you absorb it embody that thing more than if

Starting point is 00:53:35 you just had a moment of going oh that's cool and then forgot about it yeah maybe you won't maybe it won't become a part of your playing so practice log that that was a game changer when i got to college i started doing that and suddenly i found structure and intent in my my practice sessions i think the progress got twice as you know as fast so you and i could start a practice school together because we agree on everything i agree with you with the practice like i keep saying that it just putting it in writing takes it from the realm of the abstract to the realm of the concrete and then you can observe get leverage over it analyze it learn from it perfectly said can't lose with the log you can't lose with the log another sticker right there

Starting point is 00:54:23 we need to we need to shop yes brandon thank you so much for taking time to sit down with me and chat and just give us this awesome wisdom tell us where we can find you everything brandon acre well first off my pleasure this is great to see you renee i hope to see you again soon um yeah well you know currently i've been um putting most of my time into two things um my youtube channel uh you can just search my name brandon acre right i do all sorts of performance videos educational videos um and as well uh my new music school uh arpeggiato it's a school for we call it a school for all things that go pluck so guitars lutes ouds mandolins etc we have fantastic teachers around the world all the lessons take place online uh so you can check

Starting point is 00:55:15 check out arpeggiato.com arpeggio like in music plus a t and an o that's a school that i started with my wife at the beginning of covid and uh so uh yeah arpajato.com and my youtube channel the two places i would say yes i'm gonna have all of these links both here in the community and in the podcast when it comes out and i'm telling you if you haven't checked out his youtube channel yet millions of views don't lie it's really great great content tips on of course all things plucked but practicing and mindset and um i saw that you had an episode on warming up and i do too oh great i'm telling you we're i'd love to see yours we could uh merge our our work um and yeah this is so great thanks for being with us and uh my pleasure i can't wait and by

Starting point is 00:56:06 the way brandon comes across as like so nice on youtube and here and he's even nicer in person i thought you're gonna say it but in person no no no so i can't actually can't wait for us to have a chance to perform again together soon i hope so yes thanks brendan and thanks everyone have a great day thank you guys so much for listening I hope you enjoyed this Q&A session with Brandon Aker Brandon and I would love to know what your favorite takeaways from today's conversation were so get in touch with us and share your thoughts on those topics as always I'll have all the information related to this episode in the show notes including everything about brandon you can

Starting point is 00:56:59 find them via your podcast app or by visiting mindoverfinger.com where you can also find more information and all sorts of free resources about mindful and efficient practice performance preparation how to work with me and of course sign up for my practicing for peak performance workshop if you enjoyed this episode share it with a friend that you think could benefit from brendan's wisdom and also why not share on social media don't forget to tag us so we can keep the conversation going brendan is brendan acre guitar and i'm mind over finger on all platforms so that's it for today again thank you and i'll be in tow ¶¶

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 106 Brandon Acker: Q&A Session

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