The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 162 Your No-Excuse Recording Technique

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Always hated recording yourself?  There's no reason you should miss out on this EXTRAORDINARY way to increase your results in the practice room.  In this episode, I have removed all the excuses NOT to record yourself by offering you a simple and powerful approach to start enjoying the process.   DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT FROM THIS EPISODE HERE   Join my mailing list HERE and become a Mind Over Finger VIP member! As a VIP member, you will you receive my free guide to a highly productive practice, a transcript of each new podcast episode delivered to your inbox every week, and all the insider information about my coaching programs, including VIP prices on most of them.  March bonus: get 10$ off the Performance Anxiety Solution when you join the mailing list HERE!    Don't wait and sign up for my brand new workshop – THE PERFORMANCE ANXIETY SOLUTION! Find all the info at www.performanceanxietysolution.com     Do you have specific questions for me or my guests you would like answered on the podcast? Share them with me HERE!   Mind Over Finger Visit MindOverFinger.com for resources on mindful practice and information on how to work with me. Sign up for my newsletter to receive your free guide to a highly productive mindful practice and to get the transcripts of the Mind Over Finger Podcast episodes delivered to your inbox. Join the Join the Mind Over Finger Community  for access to my live videos and to exchange with a community of like-minded musicians. www.mindoverfinger.com https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindoverfinger https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/     THANK YOU: Most sincere thank you to composer Jim Stephenson who graciously provided the show's musical theme:  Concerto #1 for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra – Movement 2: Allegro con Brio, performed by Jeffrey Work, trumpet, and the Lake Forest Symphony, conducted by Jim Stephenson. A HUGE thank you to my fantastic producer, Bella Kelly, who makes this podcast as pleasant to listen to as possible for you!

You're listening to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 162. 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. René-Paul Gaultier. Hello there. I say it every time, but I mean it. I hope you're having an incredible day as you're tuning into this episode. And I hope that what I'm bringing to you today can contribute to making it even better. I'm bringing you another of my favorite tips

for performance preparation today. As you know, I have an amazing workshop coming up for you at the end of this month. That's right. On April 1st and 2nd, I will share with you the solution to performance anxiety. And I'm going to tell you more about this at the end of the episode, but you can go to mindoverfinger.com right now for all the details. So in preparation for this workshop, I'm sharing really powerful strategies to prepare for optimal performance on the podcast in March. I'm sure you've caught last week's episode where I talk about micro planning. And today we're going to talk about a technique that a lot of you guys hate, which is recording yourself. So many of you have shared with me how much you hate recording yourself, how it makes you

feel, how you feel like it actually creates more anxiety for you, how much you judge yourself, how discouraged you feel when you listen to yourself. And yes, that can happen when you record yourself. But today, I want to share with you an approach to recording yourself that's going to remove all of your excuses not to do it. Let's dive in. This is a technique that I use and I share with all of my clients and students. And I talk about it in several of the workshops I give for various institutions. And when you start implementing it, you're going to see, you will start raking in the positive results. I promise it. The same way that I did it in the previous episode. First, I'm going to explain how to go about it. And then I'll explain why it works.

I call this technique record, reflect, refine. And it's so easy. You have absolutely no excuse not to use it. Here's what record, reflect, refine is in a nutshell. It's one chunk performed three times. That's it. One chunk performed three times. I want you to put that on a post-it on your stand right now. One chunk performed three times. What I mean by chunk is simply a short passage, something that makes sense musically to you. It could be a measure, four measures, one phrase, maybe two phrases, but I want you to keep it very short, no more than 30 seconds, because simplicity is important here. So pick a short segment or chunk that makes sense to you musically and is no longer than 30 seconds. Once you've decided on what you're going to record,

press record and perform. Now when I say perform, I truly mean it. Play it with the same engagement and energy that if you were performing it on stage. Be in a state of performance. To borrow the term that violin pedagogue Simon Fisher shared with us in his episode on the Mind Over Finger podcast, which is episode 69, turn the spotlight on. So turn your imaginary spotlight on and perform as if you were on one of the world's greatest stages. So for that 10, 20, 30 seconds that you're playing your chunk, you are full on performing. So that's the recording part. Then comes the reflection part. Listen back to your performance with an open mind. That's the part everybody hates. But the goal of this is to listen objectively without being overly critical,

but also with an ability to grasp reality. Notice at least one thing you appreciate about the take and that intent to listen with positive ears will impact the rest of the experience positively. Then, in addition of the positive things, notice one or two things that you can try to implement right away. Maybe you'll notice it's a tempo that is rushing slightly, or a couple notes out of tune. Maybe you find that your dynamics are not as vivid as you would like them to be. Just make a mental note. And you can also mark a few key things in your score. But the thing we're going to focus on for this is progress. We're not looking for everything that needs to be fixed. We go for the one or two more obvious things, and then we refine.

And the way that we do that, the way that we refine is by performing again and trying to implement right away those small details that we noticed. So don't practice between the takes. Once you've settled on what you're going to try to implement, think about how you're going to do that, mind over finger, right? And incorporate it to the best of your ability in the next take. So we performed, we listened back and reflected, we refined with immediate implementation, and then we just repeat. We listen back and reflect, and then we refine by implementing right away in a performance one more time. And you know when your teacher or your mom says one more time, but they truly mean one more time until it's perfect. This is not one of those

times. Remember what I said at the beginning, one chunk performed three times, and I mean it, only three times. And there are many reasons for it. The first one being that this prevents us to fall into the perfectionism trap. The purpose is progress. We elevate the passage a little bit. A lot of people don't want to record themselves because they don't know when to stop. They think they have to keep going until it's perfect. Well, there you go. I've just removed that barrier. you're welcome. One chunk performed three times. Now, I do allow quote unquote students and clients and myself, of course, to exceed three times under one condition. So you repeat three times only unless it feels amazing or you feel like you're on the verge of a breakthrough and

you're excited. So excited, feeling amazing, having fun? Yes, you can repeat the cycle a few more times. But I'm telling you, the second you hear a nagging voice in your head, the second you feel a tightening of your muscles, the second you feel a hint of frustration, shut the whole experiment down and move on to something else. You did the work, you got what you needed out of it for now, and you're ready to move on. Please follow this rule. Okay, so why does record, reflect, refine work so well? Here we go. One thing it does is that it promotes spaced repetition. You work on a passage, you improve it a little bit, then you move on to something else. You either record another passage, or you switch gears completely and go on to practicing in an entirely different

way, or change piece altogether, it doesn't matter. When you step away from something, you forget a little bit about it. And that's a beautiful thing because it's in the reviewing and the relearning that all the progress is made. Believe me on that. I should do a whole episode on this alone. Another big benefit of Record, Reflect, Refine is how it's going to transform your accurate perception of your playing. Record, Reflect, Refine creates an incredible mind-body connection and a wonderful ability to assess and adjust in real time. This rapid succession of performing, assessing, and adjusting transforms your perception of your own playing. It takes it from something that is often warped by the experience of playing itself to something

that is a lot more accurate. And even if you practice only a few passages this way, you're soon going to notice that it impacts everything else in a positive way because of how powerfully it connects how things feel for you to how they objectively sound. Finally, this is a wonderful way to practice performing. When you turn on your spotlight and you bring your onstage expectations in the practice room time after time, you condition yourself to perform at your best. It helps crafting a very polished performance. So I recommend incorporating this technique in your practice all the time early in the process. Maybe from the very first day you practice a passage.

As soon as you can somehow play it through, get curious about how it would sound if you had to perform it as is in that moment and record, reflect, and refine. you're going to gain invaluable insight and your attention is going to be quickly guided to what needs to be attended and how to fix it that is going to save you so much time so the main benefits of record reflect refine gain awareness on what is establish a powerful mind-body connection between how things feel and how they sound. Focus on improvement and increased awareness, not perfection. I'll say it again. Aiming for perfection is counterproductive because you weave in a lot of tension and frustration into your performance preparation. So improvement, increased awareness, not perfection. And finally, performance practice. But I think you're also

going to notice a lot of wonderful bride products. So try this at home this week. Record. You take a short segment, something short, only a phrase or two. You turn the spotlight on and you perform it while recording. Then reflect. Listen back, assess, and reflect. Notice at least one thing you appreciate about the take and identify one or two simple things you could implement right away. Then refine. So you repeat that process two more times. You perform the segment, you reflect, and you implement. That is so easy. You have no excuse not to implement this in your practice all the time. So write, record, reflect, refine on a post-it, put it on your stand. You can even set a timer that goes off every 15 minutes. And when it does, just grab whatever phrase you're

working on and record, reflect, refine. I swear it takes less than two minutes and it's absolutely magical in terms of how much progress you make in that two minutes. And I'm going to give you the same challenge I give all of my clients. I challenge you to never walk away from one practice session without having recorded at least one phrase. Try it for 21 days in a row and watch the progress unfold. And if you want accountability on this, share and tag me on Instagram using the hashtag 21daysofrrr and I'm going to hold you accountable. I think recording yourself will become one of your favorite techniques. Trust me on this. And if you enjoy this tip and you're wanting to dive in deeper into the strategies and mindset that will help you overcome your

performance anxiety and start experiencing your dream performance state, join me for the Performance Anxiety Solution Workshop today. If you feel like you've tried everything, you've practice more. You've watched all of the tutorials on YouTube. You read all the articles. You've been racking your brain and trying all the hacks and tricks you could think of, but there's still something missing. Well, I have the solution for you. The Performance Anxiety Solution is for classical musicians who want to play their best, feel free on stage, and maybe win an audition without working harder, practicing more, or getting caught in the never-ending information hoarding cycle. You're going to walk away from this training with so much clarity and knowing

exactly what steps you need to take to understand and master your performance anxiety so you can start performing exactly the way you want. I'm telling you, freedom on stage and flow state are accessible to you right now. You have it in you and I'm going to show you how. So visit mindoverfinger.com slash P-A-S for all of the details and join us for the Performance Anxiety Solution Workshop. The work starts inside the course platform on Monday, March 27, and we come together for two live sessions on April 1st and 2nd. Again, catch all the details at mindoverfinger.com slash PAS and click the button to join. And of course, that link is in the show notes for you. Have an amazing week, my friends. Let me know how Record, Reflect,

Refine works for you. And until next time, much love going your way. A bientot. 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 and à bientôt.