The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 169 Susanna Klein – Empowered Music Making

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 169. 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 Gauthier. Hello, everyone. As always, I hope this episode finds you doing well. I have a fantastic guest for you this week on the show. I'm very excited about today's episode because I get to bring you an absolutely brilliant mind in our industry, the wonderful, insightful, and innovative Susanna

Starting point is 00:00:51 Klein. But before I bring her, I have a few questions for you. Do you ever feel like you're just going through the motions, but you're not making real progress. Like no matter how much you practice, you're not seeing the results you want. Maybe you feel like you've hit a wall in your career and you don't know how to take the next step to land that dream job. And what about those auditions? Have you ever walked into an audition feeling like you've done everything you can to prepare, but things just fell apart once you started playing? Or you thought you did great maybe, but you didn't advance to the next round and you cannot figure out what to do differently next time. Maybe you get tight and tense when you're performing, even though you've worked

Starting point is 00:01:36 really hard to prepare. Or maybe you get overwhelmed with negative thoughts and self-doubt that hold you back from giving your best performance. Sometimes it feels like we're our own worst enemy, right? I hear you. I've been there. It's a tough mental game. And it can be incredibly frustrating to put in so much effort and not see the results you want. And then what do we do? It's easy to get lost in the weeds of practicing, working on the same things over and over without a clear direction. I call that the downward spiral of desperation practicing. And that can lead to feeling like you're not making any real progress. And then there's performance preparation. What most people don't realize is that preparing for performances is not the same

Starting point is 00:02:31 as practicing. It's a completely different approach. We need performance training, conditioning methods, and the right kind of mind management so we're fully prepared, ready to go, and in the right headspace to perform. There's a lot to think about. So tell me, are you currently on the audition path? Are you aiming for that elusive first position? Or maybe you're striving to level up your musical career. What do you think it would take you to deliver a winning audition,

Starting point is 00:03:05 to get that dream position, to create your ideal life? Well, if you're looking for real solutions And for the guidance that I will lift you up there, I invite you to join the Music Mastery Experience, my life-changing group coaching program. The Music Mastery Experience is the most comprehensive, life-changing, highly personalized group coaching program for musicians in existence. Together, we're going to dive in deep and understand the stumbling blocks that are getting in your way. We're going to figure out how they were created. We're going to untangle all of it and create a powerful strategy that is tailored to your needs so you can deliver your best audition yet and perform with confidence time and time again.

Starting point is 00:03:59 The Music Master Experience is going to provide you with a comprehensive approach to peak performance. We're going to cover everything you need from effective practicing techniques to performance preparation and conditioning methods that will transform how you perform. Plus, you're going to get powerful life coaching that will support you in making big strides in your musical journey and achieve your goals in life. No more wasting time or feeling frustrated. The tools and guidance you're going to receive in the Music Mastery Experience are going to save you from unnecessary agony.

Starting point is 00:04:37 it's going to save you time it's going to save you money energy and effort and it's going to help you achieve the results you want so don't miss out visit the music mastery experience now to get all the details about the program and book your free conversation with me so we can plan how to make all of this your new reality now you're going to get to rock your auditions and you will grow your career. So book your free call now at mindoverfinger.com slash M-M-E and let's take your music making to the next level. I cannot wait to speak with you. And I just have to share with you the DM one of my Music Mastery Experience participants sent me a few days ago. She said, I'm living my dream because of all of the work I did in your program. I really appreciate you

Starting point is 00:05:31 and your guidance. I have continued to use the tools you introduced me to in all aspects of my life. I use the foundation you gave me every day and I tell many people about your course and how you helped me to completely change my life. Wow, no need to tell you that this made my day and this type of transformation is possible for you now. So let's you and I talk and strategize to make all of this happen for you. Again, all of the info and link to book your free conversation with me is at mindoverfinger.com slash M-M-E. And of course, I have all of this in the show notes for you. Okay, let's dive into this week's conversation. Susanna Klein is Associate Professor of Violin at Virginia Commonwealth University. She's also a tech entrepreneur, a practice researcher,

Starting point is 00:06:27 and the author of the acclaimed Practisma practice journal. She presents workshops nationally on empowered practice psychology and transformative habit building, and she writes fantastic articles for many publications, including Violinist.com, Strings Magazine, and The Strat Online. Her mission is to make practice insightful and delightful for all. And as you know, I really resonate with this. I'm so happy that Susanna and I finally put down some time in the calendar to meet and chat. And I wish we had had three more hours because we could have kept going. Believe me, had such a great time. And we covered many topics, including performance training, empowerment, a mindful approach to practicing and making music, as well as her work and research in the field.

Starting point is 00:07:20 I feel like Susana and I really speak the same language, and I think you're going to walk away from this episode motivated and inspired and with much food for thoughts and experimentation in the practice room in the days to come. All right. I hope you enjoy. Let's go to the show. Wonderful. So Susanna Klein, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today.

Starting point is 00:07:54 It's great to meet you. Thanks so much for having me on. Susanna, you're a multifaceted artist and educator, to say the least. And I've mentioned several of your accomplishments and activities in the introduction, but I think that my listeners would love to hear your story from your perspective. So can you please share with us your musical journey and how your artistic path has unfolded? sure uh how far do you want me to go back like teenager as far as you would like um okay let's see um i'll start with my teenage years because they do have to do with uh sort of where i end up where i ended up now um in uh in high school i was much more into athletics than i was into music

Starting point is 00:08:40 um and i practiced you know some not a lot and i wasn't going to be a musician i really wanted to study medicine or something to do with movement. And, um, then, um, I went to all state. I can't remember my sophomore or junior year, all state orchestra and a camp in North Carolina, I guess had gotten the all state list. And so I got this letter in the mail that said, because you've been to Maryland, all state, um, you know, we want to give you a half scholarship to this camp, you know, this summer, you don't need to audition. And I was like, great, I'll be right there. So just kind of you know fell into my lap and so this was then the summer before my senior year and I went and this was in Boone North Carolina there was a side by side with the North Carolina

Starting point is 00:09:30 Symphony and in an instant you know in that first rehearsal in this side by side hearing this incredible sound around me I was like ding oops I have to become a musician and I think a lot of have this kind of story where it's like there's a kind of trigger and for me it was very sudden but it was all also very late because I hadn't been serious you know and so then I started practicing like crazy and but I think I carried forward a considerable amount of I don't know what I like to call a little you know ugly duckling syndrome of I'm not good enough I'm not worthy you know I I think everybody has this to a degree,

Starting point is 00:10:14 but I think because of the way that my life sort of unfolded, you know, I really felt that. And then I did, you know, I went to music school. I went to VCU, actually, where I teach now. I like to say I've gone nowhere, you know, in something, but really I've returned home. You know, practiced like a fiend, really self-abusive practicer, I think.

Starting point is 00:10:36 Many, many hours, never taking a day off. um, had a difficult journey, actually had a difficult journey with my teacher there because we were butting heads often, um, went to summer camp every summer, uh, then went to BU for my, um, graduate, uh, degree for my master's and studied with Roman Totenberg who was, um, you know, I like to call him my personal savior, um, who just really did so much, not just for my playing, but really for my head, which at that point was really kind of messed up and underconfident. And like I said, I don't know if self-abuse is too strong, but I was not a positive musician. I was very addicted to music and I practiced a lot. I was

Starting point is 00:11:18 very disciplined, but I was not very optimistic or confident or joyous, which are all things that, you know, help the journey if you want to stay in it and help you perform. And then because I was still underconfident, I thought I'll never get a job playing. I was doing some gigs obviously in Boston but I still thought you know I'm just not good enough um I and I was really interested in music history like that was a passion of mine so I thought I should go to graduate school and get a PhD in music history and become a musicologist and I took two and a half years for my master's instead of two and so I had the kind of a semester you know of nothing and so in that fall um I just sort of for kicks took an audition with the New Jersey Symphony

Starting point is 00:12:03 and I to my great surprise made it to semi-finals um which I think is a little bit of beginner's luck you know you're just like okay well it's okay whatever happens here and um then I you know was thinking wait a minute like if I'm if I'm really that bad why would I advance you know in a national audition so then I took a uh a audition for a temporary position with the Memphis Symphony that started in January and I got that job. Again, I was just thinking this is a fill-in, I'll really go to musicology school. I applied at all those PhD programs.

Starting point is 00:12:43 But once again, just like when I was in high school, once I was surrounded by the professional sound every day, I was like, I can't not do this. I have to do this. I was in Memphis for a year and then I went back and started my DMA again with Roman Totenberg. because I just wanted, I knew I wasn't done developing. I mean, now I know we're never done,

Starting point is 00:13:07 but at the time I thought there was this magic little level that I had to get to. Started my DMA. Then I veered off. I started playing viola a lot, joined a string quartet, lots of things happen. But the short version of that story is that I, I quit graduate school. I quit my DMA about halfway through cause I got a job with the Richmond Symphony. And I knew Richmond and Virginia very well because that's where I had gone to school as an undergrad. Played there for about three and a half years. Then I got a job with the Colorado Symphony, moved out there, realized I didn't like being in the middle of the country. We're far away

Starting point is 00:13:45 from family. My family is like East Coast or Germany is the other half of my family. And then re-auditioned for principal second in richmond and you know through magic and lots of other things whatever got that came back to richmond that was the third time then that i was living in this town um fast forward blah blah blah injury lots of shoulder problems started really having a lot of problems with my with my body on the job um and started looking then for other opportunities like you know if I'm not going to be playing six hours a day you know what what could I be doing and a couple years later this job came open at VCU for full-time violin professor and string coordinator and uh a little bit again of kind of sheer willpower I have this sort of habit

Starting point is 00:14:36 of doubling down when it's most necessary even when some other times I can't do it um and so I started that job at VCU in 2008 and that's where I've been like for 15 years basically as a violin professor and you know doing lots of other things in terms of the context that you kind of know me in which is sort of the cycle the psychology of practice space how that started was it really started with um the 2011 cinderella run of the vcu basketball team they were not expected this is not what i was expecting yeah do you know that story you know they were like not on the radar at all and i think they were like a you know what is that like a lottery pick or i can't remember what it's called but you know there's a certain number of teams that get in at the end just by their record

Starting point is 00:15:29 like even though they're so they were completely unseated and made it to the final four and because I'm a big sports fan. You know, I was following them and Shaka smart, their coach, um, really delves into psychology with his players. He has a minor in psychology. And so I started reading up on, you know, him and all this stuff. And it brought back all this sports stuff that I was doing in high school, what my coaches were doing, what we were reading, the fact that we were journaling, all this stuff sort of started coming back to me. And I, uh, wrote a grant at the university. It was a teaching grant, actually like what music can learn from sports. And through that started doing all this work. In the beginning, for me, it was a quest for like, how can we be

Starting point is 00:16:10 more efficient? How can my students be excellent quicker, right? Because I thought that's what we all want. And so we started journaling. We did a lot of performance training with like heart rate monitors and really explaining to people the science. Did a lot of technology experiments. We got in the motion lab. VCU has a motion capture lab, you know, that they use for like animated movies so that violinists could see themselves essentially just as a stick figure or an avatar rather than themselves um eventually you know i created an app for research where we did a big human study at other universities about um practice habits and what makes people feel uh empowered and efficient um a lot of writing a lot of workshops and my quest in the

Starting point is 00:17:00 beginning was always excellence and what i came away with over and over and over again was that people were really really unhappy like just whenever i would do something it was like wow the takeaway here is that people are actually not happy and i don't mean just oh they're having a bad day but really feeling lots of shame lots of discouragement um lots of inner battles not feeling worthy and you know I know all those things really well from my own life but I think I always thought it was just me and it wasn't until I was sort of in the research field watching others and getting them to report back that I could see this is really systemic so you know from there I mean I still am doing lots of research but I've I really wanted to start

Starting point is 00:17:52 doing something and giving people tools for, um, feeling more empowered on their journey and feeling more joy in the process and being more forgiving, having more positive self-talk. Um, like I wanted it to be applicable, you know, all the work, especially that I, that I did with my students. Um, so when, when the Practisma journal came out, which you were, you know, mentioning earlier, um, that was really the culmination of like eight years of journaling with my students and learning a lot of times by, by failure or, you know, luck by success, what leads to feelings of empowerment or what leads to breakthroughs or what doesn't, right? So in the beginning, like we did a lot of recording prompts, record yourself, record your

Starting point is 00:18:44 lesson, listen back, you know, lots of things. And even though things were highly efficient, And a lot of times I was making people less happy, right? They were feeling worse about themselves because of the way that I was writing the prompts. And then other times I would then revise and I would write prompts like, today, record three spots, each of the spots three times. Record, listen back, record again, listen back, record again, like a recording sandwich. And then they loved recording. Because they could see, since I was telling them, you must record, you know, each spot three times, they could see their progress.

Starting point is 00:19:27 Yeah, yeah. Whereas before, when I said, you know, record yourself, they only listened to that first draft. They got discouraged. They practiced. They certainly were more targeted in their work, but they were also in draining, they were also draining their empowerment. um so now kind of you know my i don't know raison d'etre if you will is like really talking to musicians and institutions about balancing and cultivating efficiency empowerment and joy in practice um yes you can have certainly sometimes you have to be more efficient and less joyful

Starting point is 00:20:11 sometimes you should be more joyful and perhaps less efficient right just blow through some old music have some fun um empowerment I think always has to be in there in the mix but there are ways to cultivate those it's it's been scientifically researched like there's a lot of information on there about how to create habits that are more empowered because when we get on stage or when we have a difficult day, we have to draw on that. So, you know, that for me now is sort of the three-legged stool of what I try to preach about and what all my research is about. It's essentially kind of all psychology oriented. Yeah. What a beautiful journey. And thank you so much for sharing. I was taking some notes as you were talking. I find it so fascinating how

Starting point is 00:21:01 that idea of joy comes back again and again. And I think that as they listen to your journey, the listeners can relate to so many things. I think a lot of people have a similar experience in terms of, you know, that ugly duckling syndrome that you talk about and maybe a difficult relationship with a teacher, that self-abusing side. I think we all have it to a certain degree And for some of us, it becomes absolutely debilitating. Absolutely. And that idea that how joy is the essence of everything. I love when you were talking about quest. And you know that principle of the simultaneous discoveries when you have people who have never met and have completely different paths, but somehow get to same conclusions. As you were talking, I feel that you and I have this. And as we were saying right before I started recording this, I wish we met in person very soon. We're going to have hours to discuss because for me, it also started as a quest to this thirst. I had to really help my students progress better and did my research and doctoral dissertation on this deep practice model that I developed.

Starting point is 00:22:25 And the more I did the research, the more I realized they were not happy. And the big mindset that was emerging as a result of all of this was that mindset of self-respect, of self-compassion and that importance. And as my work continued to evolve and I started coaching for performance, I realized the humans I'm coaching are hurting. And that's when I really got into the life coaching certification and really seeing how I think your work, my work and the work of many of our colleagues, if we can really push in that direction, it can really change the scene of the classical music world. If we can spread that word much more about how happy human beings make not only better musicians, but a much better musical world. I think that is very powerful. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, I guess I used to think that excellence would make me happy. Right.

Starting point is 00:23:37 So I thought for a long time, oh, I'm unhappy because I'm not sure I can have a job. And then I had a job. and then I thought I'm not happy because I don't have what I considered you know a good job I need a better job you know and then I got a better job and this feeling that you know my inner dialogue just accompanied me wherever I went because the fact is like you're never good enough right I mean I'm never gonna be I don't know Nicola Benedetti right like there's always something else to aspire too. That's, that's part of the musician's quest. But I, I think it's a, yeah, I think it's a fallacy that excellence will make you happy. Not to say that it's not a worthy goal and that it

Starting point is 00:24:23 doesn't play a big part in excellence. Um, and happy is maybe not the right word, you know, and joy. I use joy a lot, but it's also maybe not the right word, but it's, um, you know, being somewhat at peace you know um yeah being able to deal with you know the huge disappointments that come in music and the very exciting challenges and the celebrations and you know being accepting that whole roller coaster ride more yeah you know and being able to parse out oh So, you know, I did this very well in this performance. I was really proud of, I don't know, for me it would be like staying physically free

Starting point is 00:25:10 and being emotional, you know? I'm not so happy I missed these notes, but like, I'm very happy with this part of it. You know, just being able to get to that point, I think is important. And I do think it can be practiced like everything else. I think empowerment, the way that we work, influences the way that we feel 100 i believe that 100 yeah i really like the idea that byron

Starting point is 00:25:40 katie talks about of being at home with oneself i think that that's what i aspire to is really and it's a lifelong project you know it just like just like being an excellent musician it's never like oh great I have arrived you know yeah it's a it's a lifelong endeavor you know what I find in music that I that I that is so strange to me now that I am reading all these books and you know I've done all this research is that like compared to sports especially there's not a whole industry around it you know they're not tons of books you know I mean there's musicians way and don green's work is really important you know um but you know if you look at sports models i mean it's like sports coaches sports psychologists i mean you can actually get a degree in this right

Starting point is 00:26:34 there's a whole sort of acknowledgement of the difficulty the personal difficulties that people can feel um in these like elite endeavors and you know we're just at the very very beginning of it Yeah. And I agree with you. Yeah. And what that does is that people feel like, or at least I felt like there must be something wrong with me. You know, I'm feeling these things because I'm not dedicated enough or I don't practice enough or I don't, I don't get it. I'm not talented enough. I think that's a, that's a big one. You know? We think that we're sort of doomed by a condition when in fact, we are conditioned by our past experience, our surroundings. I just finished a workshop called the performance anxiety solution where I was discussing this, how the fact that the things we experienced today are results of the things that were in the past. And unless we're very intentional about the way we reprogram our mind, then we just repeat more of the same patterns. But we want to make sure we bring this self-respect and this self-love and compassion in the work with us. Then everything is. Yeah. And also the science. I don't know how you feel about this, but like when I've worked with people on performance anxiety and, you know, as you know, when we work with others, we're really working with ourselves as well. Right. But, you know, because I do a lot of research with the Department of Engineering at VCU and the medical school. And now when I talk about performance anxiety, I get very sciencey.

Starting point is 00:28:18 There's adrenaline. Here's what it does in your body, right? Here's what your brain does. You know, this is your left brain having chatter. This is your right brain, holistic, you know. showing people like hooking them up to heart monitors you know making them nervous and then letting the class kind of see the what happens to the heart rate like it's actually incredibly empowering to people because it's fact-based it's not you know voodoo I mean there is a lot of stuff

Starting point is 00:28:48 that we have to do in the empowerment space how do we chill that chatter how do we create arcs of positive memory you know that we can draw on when we perform but there's also a lot of stuff that's just reassuring to people like, you know, there's a thing called the, I think it's called the pre-arousal heart rate, but basically before something happens that we're afraid of, or that's important, the heart rate will really spike, right? It just goes sky high. And then as soon as we actually start doing the activity, the heart rate will come down. And that's, it's 98% of the time, right? So before you and I came on this Zoom interview, I was sitting here a little nervous you know working the technology that's probably when my heart rate was the highest

Starting point is 00:29:31 and then once we start talking it actually goes down a little bit once I knew that it made me feel a lot better about performing because I knew that backstage feeling is actually the worst in terms of the physiological effects right and then as soon as I start playing it's actually going to get better. And it took that fear away of what if I continue to get so nervous that I just completely come unglued and I have to walk off stage. Like, I think I, I think my nerves, you know, it's not just being nervous, but just knowing actually just physiologically speaking, your heart rate will start to come down a bit. Yeah. Oh, I totally agree with you. We, we talked about this in the workshop, how it's that physiological chain of

Starting point is 00:30:23 events that's triggered by this event and then for me i like to call this the activation because the body is doing its job there's something's about to happen so the body wants you to be alert and fast and optimized yes that's so there's so there's all of these hormones running through your body all these chemicals but anxiety starts when you make that mean that something's wrong yes exactly pathologizing when in fact everything is right everything is right it's just you're not used to that overwhelming effect you know yes and that's what conditioning does when you and you mentioned that as you do this work with your students of recording and performing and i'm sure you do um adversity training all of these things is when you learn how to perform

Starting point is 00:31:16 in that state of activation then that's when i mean my students at vcu i just tell them every recital because they're a lot of times there's a lot of nerves backstage and i'm like it's okay it's just a draft this is just our first draft we're not here to be perfect we're here to find out what happens to me with this piece under pressure yeah it's just all part of you know it's like your lab book rather than this performance is the culmination of months of work, you know? Um, and you know, if you, if you perform a piece 10 times in a row or 10 times, you know, spread out over two weeks, um, it's going to get better every time, you know? And then you will at some point feel empowered, like you're in the flow. Okay. I, I can handle this.

Starting point is 00:32:06 And I didn't know any of those things in school. I didn't really know any of those things until I was studying about kind of the effects of adrenaline and how we react to it, how we can get used to it, chatter. Or like one time I was in Iowa, I was kind of on a little performance tour for a chamber music group, and we played the same program like seven times.

Starting point is 00:32:30 And I think I'd never done that before. I mean, orchestra, yes, like in the pit, but you know, when I could be heard, it was like, I got to this point where I could play the violin. Yeah. Not to say that it was perfect, but I wasn't outside of my body. I was in my body, you know? And, um, so there's, you know, just to talk about it, honestly, like this is, this is how it works. This is the scientific, this is how your body gets used to it. This is how you do intervention training. This is how you work on your chatter. This is, um, and no amount of practice in the practice room is the same as practicing performing. Yeah. Yeah. I like to

Starting point is 00:33:11 compare it between the, if you're going to compete in open water, but you'll only practice in the pool, then you're not training for the accurate context. Yeah, exactly. If people are listening to this on the podcast, they can't see what the people watching on YouTube would see, which is me grinning to ear to ear when you're talking, because there's so many things you say that are either things i say or things i do i think we have so much in common you were talking about that idea of a draft and that's something i say to students and clients all the time it's the first draft it's the ongoing draft you know another thing that you were talking about is that recording technique i just recorded a podcast episode about this couple months ago actually

Starting point is 00:33:56 the record reflect refine which is i like how you describe it the sandwich um recording technique which is very similar, if not exactly the same as what I was explaining in this. We really have to meet, you and me. We're going to have so much to talk about. Susanna, you were talking about that importance of joy in practice and that scientific approach. There's so much we can learn from you. What would you say would be one of your most, like something you would really recommend for the listeners as they approach practice to make it more mindful and more efficient um it's a big subject um i think purposely cultivating um efficiency empowerment and joy those three now they're very very broad right but i think that's important and recognizing

Starting point is 00:35:01 why you need those and you can be out of balance for a while but not for too long or it will hurt you in one of the other categories right so if you're super efficient and you never feel any joy eventually you will not want to practice anymore or you will really dread it right if you only stop for example if you're super efficient you never allow yourself to goof off in the practice room you only leave the practice room when you are completely worn out and maybe disgusted with yourself you just can't handle it anymore which is when I used to leave the practice room I just couldn't take it anymore that would be when I left your relationship with practice practice becomes toxic. Like we know from research that the way that you end an experience tends to be the way

Starting point is 00:35:48 that you remember that experience. So if you can stop practicing before you get to that super frustrated part, maybe have a little 10 minute goof off time at the end or play through things slowly where you feel accomplished and in control, then leave. You are more likely to want to come back willingly more likely to be open and relaxed and we know that being a relaxed player does like wonders for sound no matter what instrument you play yeah um so uh and the same with empowerment you know like it's it's good to record yourself it's highly efficient but tips for um cultivating empowerment for example in recording might be like for me it's i stop recording at least a week before I get on stage I just say done there been that I need to get in the zone because if I

Starting point is 00:36:46 continue to nitpick like that my inner dialogue is not great right the recording sandwiches um every once in a while getting a mic getting out a mic or bar borrowing a mic if you don't have one that's of a higher quality or listening back through speakers instead of just you know on your little phone because that is not your sound. And it's great for working on pitch and phrasing and all these things, but that is not how you sound. And if, I mean, and even a good mic, that's not how you sound. You sound more wonderful than that, but you need to every once in a while hear a little flavor of the true beauty of your sound so that the impression that you're forming of yourself as you're being highly efficient isn't one that will drain your sense of empowerment.

Starting point is 00:37:38 Empowerment is important, not just for the stage, but think about all the ways that we get stronger, asking somebody for advice, playing for somebody that you've never played for before, scoping out a new teacher, taking on something that could be risky, right? playing in public when really you don't need to it's truly optional you need to feel empowered in order to do those things right and so doing things and not keeping an eye on empowerment can be very dangerous because you're actually going to put the lid on certain types of learning that require you to have kind of daring behavior so even though these are kind of general buckets i i really think they're very important and one kind of has a relationship

Starting point is 00:38:27 with the other some players are naturally balanced more towards one than the other and i would just say you know to cultivate a little balance um the other big thing is that you know i think of us having uh four categories of practice uh training in sports they call it training we call it technique i like to call it training i don't know why just because i'm so in the sports world yeah um you know those are the just general conditioning of the body the finger patterns um anything that we want to go in the default so that we can access it more easily um repertoire of course mental practice which is really working on our imagination um and performance practice that we already talked about those are the four categories and

Starting point is 00:39:17 And I think a lot of people, how do I say this? And I used to do this too. I used to be all like rep and technique and no mental and no performance practice. And then I was surprised that I was not a great performer. Well, I hadn't been really practicing that category, right? Yeah. um if you think or or i wasn't actually also very musical um like if you strip musician if you strip the definition of musician down to um because i know you have you know all sorts of

Starting point is 00:39:55 instrumentalists and singers that listen to the podcast but i think of a musician as somebody who imagines sound and somebody who moves to create sound that's a beautiful definition It's like, just like, you know, as simple as it can be. So when we're practicing, we should either be moving, we should either be working on our imagination, singing, phrasing, listening, score study, marking in characters, I don't know, it's foggy outside here in this piece of music, right? Working on our imagination, what are we, how are we imagining this to sound? Or we are working on our movement. and just for people to be clear about that um i think sometimes helps because we're not i tell my students all the time we are not here to learn notes learning notes is a byproduct of we are here to either become better imaginers or better movers and by you know movement has weight it has speed right it has sequence does the finger go down first or does the bow draw first right or maybe it's happening at the same time um movement has ergonomics right am i moving in a circular

Starting point is 00:41:12 kind of way or am i stiff or am i working at angles um so if we're working on movement then there's a whole category of things that we can do that are very specific or we're working on our imagination but we're not learning notes even though sometimes of course we're learning notes as a way of getting there what a beautiful answer i feel like all i need to do now is put a bow on top of this and hit publish i don't know it's it's a lot of stuff it's a lot of like you know a lot of little categories but but i i find that words that words and expectations help they help me fine okay i don't really know what i want to say here i'm i'm going to work on my imagination i'm going to just work on the phrasing it's not a waste of time listening to music is not

Starting point is 00:42:06 is practice it's not you know oh i should be practicing you are practicing you're practicing your audiation you're practicing you know uh having getting ideas you know um and then and then the movement thing also like we can parse it down much much further but I find it helps students like if I ask them how have you practiced this and you know they say well I've done it slow and I'm like good excellent that's great how else have you practiced it and then that's where you know usually starts to trickle you know and I'm like well did you do some pattern training meaning did you take this pattern let's say this bowing or this rhythm and put it in a scale because you know you know a scale very well your brain already knows that scale so you're going to take that

Starting point is 00:42:57 pattern with the scale and we know that if you attach something new to something you already know your body and your brain will learn faster we know that it's scientifically proven so like did you use pattern training or did you work on separation training meaning you know only the right hand, only the left hand, maybe only speaking the text, only tapping the rhythm, the separation train. Like there are all these categories of training that people can use and they should like, that's, that's how we learn the most efficiently is to kind of give the body one thing at a time, really exaggerated, you know, change how we move or how our brain perceives something, then move on. So breaking

Starting point is 00:43:43 down is not a failure it's it's the path to success but it's true that if you only break down stuff and you never get a complete inventory like that also doesn't work right that's what's so tricky about being a musician is like balancing all these be very nitpicky yeah be hard on yourself you know and then like be an optimist believe in yourself self-manifest you know it's like okay I like this word that you've mentioned several times balance and what you offered to us was so complete and holistic and approach I love that what you just said to at the end reminded me of one of my favorite quote from Gretchen Rubin and I will paraphrase it because I don't remember the exact word that she uses but I just I love

Starting point is 00:44:38 everything that she creates um but she says the opposite of an ultimate truth is also true yes and yes you need to break things down and you need to approach it as a whole you need to chunk it and play the whole thing and you need to practice really hard and then forget about all of it and let go 100 yes and they're all true that's a great way of putting it the the opposite truth and I think sometimes we cultivate one truth so much because we're afraid of a negative opposite you know if if I play the whole thing oh I'm one of those hacks you know who just runs through their stuff and never breaks it down there's something that we're afraid of being um but you know it's it's that juxtaposition of and and knowing as you move towards as you move

Starting point is 00:45:33 towards performance you'll be doing more of something and less of something else right you're going to be less navel gazey and nitpicky and more holistic and whole um whole training right i'm gonna or or for me i'm gonna stop recording myself right i know people who who record dress rehearsals of a recital and then go home and listen to it um do you know what i mean for the i and i admire it so much because i feel like to have that and to be that focused on hey what is that final thing that i'm gonna dedicate myself to that mantra that you need i just after doing it several times i i had to learn that for me i had to push that exercise a week uh before yeah so like i'll do a whole run through i'll record it all that stuff i'll

Starting point is 00:46:27 take notes i'll listen but i just couldn't do it right before um or sometimes i used to for auditions some of my more successful auditions i only practice scales backstage which is kind of weird and not what i would recommend to a lot of people like i would say go through some of your excerpts at least slowly but there was something about that space that allowed me to stay positive and um empowered and you know that's the other thing besides having all these things like you need to be critical you need to be confident you need to nitpick you need to do the whole thing you need to forgive and forget you need to listen acutely you know um there is also like everybody's different yeah and i think that's why you know what you do um you know your coaching i think

Starting point is 00:47:22 it brings a whole nother level of power to these things to these concepts because you get to know your clients and you can see everybody is a little different right and so it's like if Susanna is the type of person who just gets super critical by listening to a recording of herself the night before a concert and then holds back then maybe she's a person who you know has to stop doing that a certain time before because we all bring our own inborn personalities and you know biases and all that stuff yeah and that's what that idea that i think you touched on earlier of self-trust in that process is so important you talk about you know this is a draft we're experimenting and um i think we need to give ourself room to play and literally play the instrument play out our

Starting point is 00:48:19 imagination, as you said, but also have fun. So have this playful thing. But many of us look for all of the answers and the permissions outside of ourselves. And then I think at some point we can just take a deep breath and say, okay, I read this, I heard this from this teacher, or I heard this from this coach, saw this on this YouTube video. Now that we shut down everything, what am i going to explore today experiment with try in what works for me what you were just saying right because we're never done learning never never done learning and experimenting and being curious and um you know i've learned things again from sports where i'll see a coach do something or i'll see an exercise and i'm like i wonder how that would work like for violin like what is that

Starting point is 00:49:13 same concept and then i do it and i'm like oh my god so brilliant like yeah why didn't i ever think about that you know because i wasn't taught that and and that that sense of exploration and that everybody is different yeah i know a very vivid memory for me this was really early on my journey of mindful practice and everything that subsequently became mind over finger i was preparing for an audition and really in the thick of the practice and the thick of the agony, let's call it that way, and had a yoga class, went to this yoga class. And to this day, I still hear the voice of the teacher, his tone, all of it. We were in one of the warrior variations. I don't remember which one exactly. But he kept saying, let go, let go, feel where the stretch is or feel

Starting point is 00:50:06 where the tension is and let go, let go. And as I'm standing there in this posture and I'm hearing his voice, let go, let go. In that instant, I had exactly what you're just talking about. This idea of that was the problem in what I was practicing today. It's the letting go. So what would that look like if I go home and practice and apply this same principle? Now, technically, I don't know how it related precisely, but something in the brain, you can take that general feeling, you know? Yeah. And for me, that was a really profound experience because I did go home, probably showered and then practice and tried to experiment and see what does that look like for me in my practice today to this idea of letting go. And it was such a powerful

Starting point is 00:51:03 shift and how the process went after that. And I could say that it was probably a pivoting point in my musical journey where I realized. Yeah. Yoga was for me as well. Absolutely. I mean, when I first started yoga, I was in my twenties. I had had a surgery and, and I, after the surgery, I gained a lot of weight. So it was just like, Oh, I need to exercise. So, you know, I can be less fat, but, um, it was, it, it, it changed my playing completely because I'd never practiced any kind of self-love or awareness. And I used to cry at the end of sessions. I mean, we would go in Shavasana and I would just have tears just streaming down my face, you know, um, for weeks actually because I had so much I had held so much and was pushing so hard you know practice six

Starting point is 00:51:54 hours a day and um you know I'd have a practice log and it was it was all about the amount of time that I that I put into it and I think I needed that I needed that ruthless inner dialogue because I was afraid that if I didn't have that I wouldn't do enough work right so the inner dialogue to me was the you know what I thought I needed to get the work done um and you know now I know like you can practice half an hour and have some transformative change and you can practice six hours and have absolutely no change you know yes I don't think all of my six hours were wasted when I was younger but um I think a lot of them I think a lot of them were and I know that I just you know i did a lot of damage to my body i have a lot of i've really messed up neck you know

Starting point is 00:52:44 bad shoulder blah blah um it's better now that i'm not playing full time that i'm kind of playing and teaching and doing other things but um that was not that was not necessary but i didn't i didn't know any other way right you know um yeah so Susanna I wish that we could keep going for hours and hours usually at this point I would take my my clients I would take my guests through the rapid fire questions but for you I had a different idea in mind there's one of these questions I want to ask you and then there's a couple that I want to ask, but in a modified way. So I am curious, you've shared just so many gems of wisdom today. I hope that the listeners listen to this episode many times. I also hope

Starting point is 00:53:40 they go on your website. You have fantastic resources there, many articles that you've linked in there on all of these wonderful topics. You have a wonderful YouTube channel and then, of course, some books. But what would be for you one quality, and you've shared many already, but maybe one quality that people could bring with them in the practice room, or, you know, maybe a habit that would be really helpful for them to develop? um one if i had to pick if i had to pick one i think it would be exaggeration um so you know if let's say um somebody is battling tension if if they get to that point where they're like this keeps coming up over and over again my teachers have said it other people have

Starting point is 00:54:43 said it I know you know what I mean to make everything about releasing tension to be willing to be bad at everything else that you practice to really go deep into this one concept and dedicate themselves to it completely. If it's confidence, maybe playing too loud, doing some power poses, what would that look like by any means necessary? Because I find, and this has been true for me too, is that we like to nibble on our problems and we like to not make a hierarchy but that's not how breakthroughs happen like you need to create a lot of space and the breakthroughs that I have had in my life in my playing in particular and also in my persona have really led me sort of to believe like exaggeration is is the way I'll give

Starting point is 00:55:50 an example when I was um uh when I was at Kneisel Hall um in the summer I don't know I think it was after my sophomore year or something I had chamber music coaching with Ko Iwasaki a cellist there who's awesome and you know we start and five minutes in he's like what what's uh Susanna what's happening with your vibrato and I had this at the time I had this like like kind of very large like you could drive a truck through it, like, you know, and I said, Oh, yeah, I'm working on it. You know, I changed from wrist to arm and blah, you know, I had all these words. He said, Oh, okay, well, by next week, can you be done? Stopping, you know, working on it? Can you just have worked on it? And like, you just have a great vibrato? I was like,

Starting point is 00:56:37 Okay, sure, I'll try. And he said, No, no, no, like Yoda. Try not like do or do right. Next week, we come so I worked on my vibrato a little bit, but I also learned chamber music and I was working on my solo stuff all this stuff we came back we started playing very quickly it was like stop everyone uh Susanna I thought we had a conversation about you know vibrato it's like yeah I worked on it and he said that's no okay let me just be totally honest with you he said you have very you have very nice things in your playing you know you have nice pitch you have a you know nice bow technique and sound and you know that vibrato is a deal breaker you will never get a job if you vibrate like that so why don't you just take a week out

Starting point is 00:57:22 of your life and just double down and deal with it so next week when i will see you you will have a very good vibrato maybe not your final vibrato but you know and of course i was sort of mortified and like, you know, inspired. But, you know, I asked every single person I knew what vibrato exercises they had, how they approach it, how do they feel? Is it more here? How is it a relaxation thing? I mean, we had 52 people at summer camp, and I'm pretty sure I talked to every single one of them. And I let my other stuff drop and I was all in, you know? Yeah. A lot of those vibrato exercises that I learned that summer are now on my YouTube channel. And like, you know, 12 ways to practice for vibrato it was from that experience right because I really had to hustle down or

Starting point is 00:58:10 a friend of mine after an audition I asked her um you know what's wrong with my playing it was a little bit you know unfair of me but she's she's a bestie so I was like tell me if you could change one thing in my playing she oh no your playing's fine and I was like no I need you to tell me like the one thing like if you were talking to somebody else she plays well but this one thing and um she's like okay well i just kind of feel like sometimes like i was like say it say it just say it and she said it sounds like you it sounds like like you're not like you don't have any balls when you play and i was like okay she said i'm not even talking about volume i'm just talking about like you know get to it and so i put earplugs in both ears for 10 days and only played with

Starting point is 00:59:02 earplugs in because i knew this was in this was psychological yeah and i needed to kind of you know and i extra articulated and i played too loud and i so so like those kinds of things i think exaggerating so if you're if you're a person who always blows through stuff spend 10 days breaking down way more than you ever want to if you're a person who only breaks things down and you know this like like me i tend to do that you need to do more holistic things play through stuff even if it's too slow even if you have to modify in some other way so that because everybody's different right everybody has different issues but i think the solution is yes patience but exaggeration can really really help i love that a little bit too long but

Starting point is 00:59:53 no but what a powerful answer it's absolutely um i think very impactful for me as i listen to it right now and i'm sure for the listeners as well i mean i try to live by it you know i i try to and for some reason 10 is always my magic number i think because it's easy it's like when i was playing the chaconne i was having all sorts of memory problems and confidence problems and so i was literally like i will play for 10 people yeah my memory and i was like you get to number 10 and you're like okay it's gonna be okay it's not gonna be perfect but i can get myself out of a jam um the analogy that comes to mind is a you know it's like have your movie montage moment where you just go all in you piece that together like a movie with some

Starting point is 01:00:46 great rock music in the background and you come out at the end having conquered it because those habits those habits are they're pretty deep right i mean something like tension or let's say your arms aren't coordinated i mean that's that's been in the bank and the deep vault for a long time so to try and change that takes very purposeful exaggerated work like if your left hand and right hand aren't um synced you know often you know an exercise might be like left hand plays right hand plays left hand sets right hand plays because you you have to teach the brain hey left hand actually has to be first you cannot beat the bow and so in order to train the brain to understand that difference you might have to practice those two things very far apart for the brain to understand

Starting point is 01:01:39 that this movement sequence is this way not this way um that's just an example yeah A couple other questions I ask in the rapid fire question are usually what's your favorite tool in the practice room or a book you would recommend. But for you, what I would love to hear is tell us more about these fabulous tools that you've created, the book that you have out there, the practice journal, and also this app that you have. I'm sure the listeners would love to hear about that yeah sure um so the journal is um practisma practice journal for those that are watching on youtube i'm showing it 16 weeks of efficiency empowerment and joy um it's for all musicians and it's basically it's a it's a journal tracking space where you can keep track of your

Starting point is 01:02:30 practice but more than anything it is designed to lead to some new habits and discoveries so every week has a reflection prompt and every week has a, uh, like an activity, kind of a daring prompt this week, play for somebody, you know, uh, this week record yourself, right. Make recording sandwiches. Some of the stuff I've already talked about, um, or this week spend the first 10 minutes of every practice session, um, doing mental study, either score study, singing, or listening to something. Um, because I found that, you know, just giving people information is nice, but if you can kind of lead them through a journey where they don't have to make a lot of decisions and they just follow the prompts, but by, by doing so they, uh, discover a lot, um, that takes away

Starting point is 01:03:24 some of that decision fatigue and people have found it really, um, I don't know, good companionship and good good reason to spur um you know this we haven't talked about like i kind of have this like teaching mantra about what am i trying to teach my students it's like croto for short creativity um resilience optimism discipline and organization um but most of us are naturally good at one it may be very weak at another and so the journal in a way is supposed to help people by it has very different prompts you know all throughout to so that like one week you're gonna have to be more creative one week you're gonna have to be more disciplined right to kind of hone those dispositions in everybody to kind of round people out and then you know it's kind of

Starting point is 01:04:22 dedicated to empowerment you know write a heart every time you have a breakthrough write down what you accomplished so that people can see their wins it's sort of a culmination of a lot of that work that i was doing um with my students um and that's available it's available on my website practisma.com shameless plug but it's also available through um only independent retailers no no amazon that's that's a whole nother story that we can get into some other time but um flute center of new york string shops um performers music in chicago has a like there are various places you can find it um and then the app that's a little thing that that was a pandemic project with a friend of mine it came out of the research app that i had done at the university but

Starting point is 01:05:08 there was one portion in the research app that students totally loved in the human trials which was um they could have the camera open and anytime they wanted to play something back they would just have to swipe the screen and it would instantly play back like the last 30 seconds and that little portion of the app they totally loved so we made kind of a standalone it's called clipsa with a z um it's a camera you know with sound and if it's open if you want to save something you just did you tap the screen or if you want an instant replay you swipe the screen with the idea that we're taking away the psychological hurdle of actually turning the recording device on and it actually the the swipe thing came from podcasts you know when you listen to a podcast

Starting point is 01:05:57 you need to hear something again you hit that little backwards button it's kind of inspired by that um that's a great so it's ios only but that's been a fun little toy and i think people either use it it's interesting people use it for practice some people practice with it like obsessively they just have it open and then just you know swipe to see what they did and then other people use it for a social media posting instead of having to take so many takes do you know what i mean they just like let it run and if they captured something that's decent they just tap the screen so they have it um but whatever whatever floats your boat you know that's wonderful suzanna i'm gonna put all of these links in the show notes with your website and the Practisma website, all of this

Starting point is 01:06:40 YouTube channel. So if the listeners want to go and explore more of your wonderful content, they can find you there. And I hope they do. I hope they listen to everything you shared today, at least twice and take some notes because this was absolutely so powerful. Everything that you shared with us. Don't get too serious, y'all. Have some fun out there. And I'm just so grateful that you shared your journey with us today and you know your contribution to the classical music world and the music world at large is just wonderful and such a pleasure to speak with you thank you it's so nice to speak to you too I look forward to our in-person meeting so I can hear more about you know what you're doing and how you're because you're also like me like a

Starting point is 01:07:25 researcher and then putting things into practice you know I mean helping people feel I don't know more empowered more normal more you know I mean making the journey better yeah because we're worth it we're worth it like it's we want people to feel good yeah I think like happy fulfilled at home musicians is my goal yeah I like that term yeah at home it's great it's great thank you so much for having me on. Thank you, Susanna. 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 mindoverfinger everywhere. So reach out, send me a DM and let me know how

Starting point is 01:08:26 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.

Starting point is 01:09:17 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! Thank you.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 169 Susanna Klein – Empowered Music Making

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