The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 141 Practice Room Superpower: Mind Over Finger

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

How complete alignment over unnecessary, mindless effort will transform your results in the practice room. Reflection: What happens and what am I thinking when I engage in mindless practicing? What does being fully present in the practice room look and feel like for me? What keeps me engaged while I practice?    >> DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT FROM THIS EPISODE HERE

Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, optimal performance, and building a purposeful life and fulfilling career. I'm your host, violinist, and certified performance and life coach for musicians, Dr. Renée-Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're doing amazing. Welcome to the first episode of season five of the Mind Over Finger podcast. It's been a phenomenal adventure these past four years with you, and I'm so excited to be back. I have lots of great things ahead for you this season, And I think we're going to have a lot of fun together. If you're new or relatively new to the Mind Over Finger universe, I invite you to visit

mindoverfinger.com. Everything about me and my work can be found there. You can look at the past 140 episodes of the podcast, read my bio, download the free resources I have for you there. I have a great guide on how to practice mindfully using the metronome that you can find there, and you can check out my online coaching programs and see how to work with me one-on-one. If you follow me for a while and you've been on the website before, but you haven't visited for a bit, go take a look and see the new content that's uploaded regularly. And this season,

I have something new and I think fun for you guys who are on my email list. I'll be sending transcripts of each new episodes directly to your inbox. So make sure to subscribe to the list to get those. All of that is at mindoverfinger.com. I also like to hang out on Facebook and Instagram. You can find me there under, you've guessed it, Mind Over Finger. So stop by, follow, give the posts a like, comment, share, and send me a DM. Finally, I invite you to join the Mind over finger Facebook community, where there's a huge library of live videos full of tips and tricks and insight in interviews with awesome guests. This is where I've hosted all my past workshops and challenges. And you can find all those videos there. It's a great place to post

questions and get answers from me and the other members of the group. All those links are going to be in the show notes for you. So let's talk about the podcast for a minute and what you can expect in 22-23. Oh my gosh, sounds crazy saying it out loud. 22-23. Can you believe how quickly time flies? Anyway, this season on the podcast, I'm going to do things a little bit differently. I'm going to, of course, bring you the interviews you love, and I have amazing artists lined up for you. I'm also going to have solo shows where I will offer you tools, tips, tricks, and principles that have helped me, my students, and my clients in the practice room and on stage. And later in the season, I'm going to share with you the life coaching principles that have changed my life

and are changing my client's life. I'm so excited for what's ahead. And here's my invitation for you this season. I invite you to move forward in the spirit of adventure and curiosity. I invite you to do things in a new way, to try new things, or to do old things in new ways, to look at your current systems with a fresh perspective, and to explore completely different approaches, to open your mind to big transformations and to small transformations, to see how small tweaks can impact your work in a major way. So let's have fun. Let's take your music making experience to the next level. Let's make it more fruitful, enjoyable, engaging, and fulfilling. So this month on the Mind Over Finger podcast, we're going to talk about practice room superpowers.

I'm going to share with you three mindsets that are superpowers in the practice room, and they're going to sound so simple to you, but I can guarantee that they're the ones that we tend to forget first. And for this first episode of season five and our first superpower, I thought it would be fun for us to go back to the source and talk about mind over finger. what does that even mean and how can we apply this idea that concept in our practice and in our life actually so let's back up even more for a second at the source what we're trying to do with music is express ourselves create art the artistic message that's the essence of what we do

But for that message to be communicated effectively, we want to be able to transmit it. We need some tools to be able to play and express what we're trying to say on our instrument or with our voice. I don't want to neglect you, my singers. I know you're listening. So we do need some technique. And that means that we do need to practice a little bit. Okay, so far, I'm still not telling you anything you don't know. Technique allows us to express the artistic message. In one of my blog posts, I say that technique allows musicians to experience freedom from the limitations imposed on them by the

markings on the page and let the vision of a work take place. But as I always say, practice is a lot more than simply walking in the room and moving our arms for a little bit. The doing does not necessarily lead to more skill and ability. To acquire this technique and to reach more mastery with our instruments, we need time, lots of time. We need a long-term vision that's going to guide us in all the decisions we have to make every day. We need dedication and patience. And here's a spoiler, I will be coming back to patience later this month. And finally, we need to know how to make our practice efficient. My old teacher at Eastman, Zvi Zeitlin, always used to say, technique is conception. He would talk about how everything about violin playing originates first

in the mind. And this is a concept that those of you familiar with the teachings of Ivan Galamian will recognize because Mr. Zeitlin studied with Mr. Galamian so that makes sense. So as a young student I sort of understood what he was talking about but it took me countless hours of mindless and useless practice to fully grasp the importance of this concept. I clearly saw the difference in results between mindless physical practice and intentional practice. From a young age we're taught to learn through repetitions, and that's what we need to do. But too often, we rely on mindless and repetitive motions when we're practicing. Mindless being the operative word here. When we don't have awareness, or when we don't put our mind ahead of our fingers,

we're way too often practicing mistakes instead of accurately learning the repertoire or whatever skill we're trying to acquire. Good practicing habits is the one thing that comes back again and again when I ask teachers what they wish their students would develop. And that's what I've been on a mission to help people with for all these years. Mind over finger. Mind over finger is all about the idea of alignment within before we take physical action. And for me, that also means emotional alignment, mental alignment. And we're going to cover these things this season as well. But for today, let's focus more on that purely intellectual alignment of knowing what we want to do and what result we're after before we just jump in mindless repetitions. The acquisition of

skills like the ones we need when we play happens through a neurological mechanism called myelination. and there's so much great literature on that topic and I'll put some links in the show notes but here's how it works in a nutshell. Every human skill is created by chains of nerve fibers that carry electrical impulses through a circuit a little bit like an optic cable. In response to the process of practicing the brain produces myelin m-y-e-l-i-n. Myelin wraps layers of insulation around the neural circuits, and that makes the signal stronger and faster by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out. And therefore, this improves our skills by increasing our timing and our speed and accuracy whenever it's needed. Every time we work on a skill or a

passage, this myelination process happens. It insulates those neural circuits more and more. Again, the same way that a well-insulated optic cable carries high-speed internet super efficiently. So whatever we repeat is what we reinforce. I'm sure you've heard this before. So when we understand that our brain is building skills this way, it's easy to see the importance of awareness and of minimizing these mindless repetitions that we all indulge in that reinforce tons of bad habits. So what that means is that we have to slow down and make sure we're engaged and aware when we practice. We learn at a much deeper level when we take the time to really know what we're trying to do. We want to first conceptualize the passage or the skill we

want to work on and put it through our mind. So for example, if you're trying to learn a passage, don't use what I call the wishful thinking method. That if you just repeat it over and over, it will magically get learned. For sure, something is going to get learned, but you might be dragging a bunch of bad habits in with the notes. So what you want to do is put it through your mind first. Mind over finger. Look at it. Analyze it. Identify the patterns. Notice stuff, basically. Then bring it up to tempo using all the beautiful, creative, and thoughtful practice methods you already know. So take in data with your eyes, with your ears, with your body, and do the most important thing you can do in the practice room. Ask yourself questions. Become a detective.

What's the information on the page? What skill is required? How does it work? What is working? What's not working? How can I make it work? What else can I try? What else do I see, right? mind over finger. I'm telling you, if you're someone who has a habit of engaging in very active physical practice, but maybe less intentional presence, you will transform everything about your results in the practice room with just that mind over finger. It's one of the secrets to more results in the practice room. It's a superpower. One thing I often tell my clients and students is that each repetition should bring either improvement or more insight. Two things, improvement or more insight with each repetition. So try that this week. Have a clear

intention of what you're trying to do and stay engaged and aware in your practice room. Anytime time you're trying to learn something or solve a problem or reinforce a skill. Pause. Sift everything through your mind before you engage in the physical practice of things. In between repetitions, assess and ask questions. Notice. Again, mind over finger. Here's an example. Let's say there's a difficult shift in the passage you're practicing. What I often see is people playing the shift over and over again, hoping it gets better. That's wishful thinking practice. When we put mind over finger, we pause. We use two mindsets that are at the core of the deep practice model. That's the practice system I created and teach in my online course, Practicing for Peak Performance, in my

group coaching program, the Music Mastery Experience, bear awareness and beginner's mind. We pay attention and we stay curious. So take a second to look at the shift. Look at the information on the page, the data. What are the notes? What positions are they in on the instrument? What's the fingering? How much am I paying attention to what I'm hearing? Do I have a clear idea in my mind's ear of the note I'm going for? What are the mechanisms involved in successfully achieving this shift? What's the best way to practice it right now? All right, this is not quite working yet.

What else can I try? So you see, this is what it looks like to practice with your mind ahead of your finger. It's to intellectually know the data, the information. It's to have a clear idea of what the physical intention is. It's to hear in your head. It's to have a strategy on how to work on it and get to your goal. But it's important not to rush the process. And that, my friends, is another superpower that I'll talk about in the next episode.

Now, this season on the podcast, I will offer you powerful questions to ponder on as you go about your week, and I'll have those written in the show notes. So here are a few things for you to consider this week. What happens and what am I thinking when I engage in mindless practicing? What does being fully present in the practice room look and feel like for me? What keeps me engaged while I practice? Think about it and let me know what insight it brings to you. So this is what I have for you today.

Remember to put mind over finger in the practice room this week. thank you guys so much for listening i hope you enjoyed this episode of the mind over finger podcast if this content was helpful for you please share with everyone you think could benefit from it take a screenshot share on social media and tag me i'm mind over finger everywhere so reach out send me a dm and let me know how this content helped you let's keep the conversation going as always i have all the information related to this episode in the show notes you can find them via your podcast app or by visiting mindoverfinger.com where you can also find more free resources on efficient practice and performance preparation links to sign up to my free workshops and

information on how to work with me. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to receive your free guide to a productive mindful practice, transcripts from the Mind Over Finger podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week, and more. Also, join the Mind Over Finger Facebook community, my private group, for access to my live videos and to exchange with a community of like-minded musicians. So make sure you're subscribed to the podcast. And if you have specific questions for me or my guests that you would like answered in an episode, share them with me using the link in the show notes or send me a DM on Instagram or Facebook. That's it for today. Again, thank you. Thank you.