The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 203 Molly Gebrian: Learn Faster, Perform Better

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

In this episode, I'm joined by the brilliant Molly Gebrian, who has just released her new book, Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician's Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing. We discuss: The science of learning and memory in music practice and performance The role of errors in learning Internal vs. external focus in performance The power of mental practice and personalized routines The benefits of using a timer and recording device in practice The importance of taking breaks Tune in for insights that can transform your practice and performance!   Are you ready to take your playing and career to the next level and create a purposeful and joyful life? Let's connect and explore how personalized coaching can support your journey. Click here to schedule your free consultation, and let's start turning your goals into reality.   Book your free consultation with Renée HERE Download the transcript from this episode HERE     MORE ABOUT MOLLY GEBRIAN Website:  https://www.mollygebrian.com/ YouTube channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DrMollyGebrian Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mollygebrian/ Buy her book, Learn Faster, Perform Better here: https://amzn.to/4dTqSLK   Mind Over Finger Click www.mindoverfinger.com/coaching to book your free consultation with me. Visit MindOverFinger.com for my online courses as well as free resources on peak performance. Grab my free workshops and PDF downloads by going to www.mindoverfinger.com/resources. Connect: https://www.youtube.com/@MindOverFinger 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.

You're listening to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 203. Welcome to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, where we dive into the world of mindful music making, peak performance, and crafting a purpose-driven life and career. I'm your host, violinist, certified performance and life coach for musicians, and your guide to unlocking your full potential, Dr. René-Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're doing well as you're tuning in. Welcome to Season 7 of the Mind Over Finger podcast. This season, I'm thrilled to bring you some truly amazing, inspiring guests who are going to share their insights and experiences with us. I've also heard from

so many of you about the challenges you're facing. Uncertainty, frustration, doubt. And I want you to know that I'm here for you. This season, we're going to be diving into topics that resonate with what you're experiencing with a big emphasis on joy. Because joy can be such a powerful catalyst to create incredible things in our lives. So get ready for great things ahead. And to kick off this season in style, I'm incredibly excited to bring you an interview with the brilliant Molly Gebrian. I've loved her work for a long time, and she's just released a new book that I think is so relevant for all of us. Learn Faster, Perform Better, A Musician's Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing. So today, we talk about her book and the concepts that

can be game changers for us. We talk about so many things. We explore the science of learning and memory as it applies to music practice and performance. Molly shares her personal journey and the principles she's incorporated into her teaching and practice methods. We dive into the role of errors in learning, the difference between internal and external focus in performance, and the importance of mental practice we also talk about the benefits of using a timer and recording device in practice the importance of taking breaks and so much more i'm really excited to share all of this with you and i hope this season brings you the inspiration you need to find more joy in your music making in the tools to create the results you're striving for in your

life. In no need to take notes, click the link in the show notes to grab the summary and transcript of this episode. Let's go to the show. Molly Gebrey, it's so great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Molly, I've been a big fan of yours for a long time. I've, you know, consumed your content. I've listened to podcasts you've been a guest on and watched your YouTube videos. And I was so excited when you came as a guest speaker

inside of the Music Mastery. That was amazing. And now I get to have you home with me all the time because you just published an amazing book. So as soon as someone sent me the link to show me that you had released the book, I bought it that instant. And I think I emailed you right after it.

And I said, let's talk about this. so thank you so much for being here I'm excited about this conversation and I'm going to tell everyone to buy the book inside of the book you talk about your journey but to give them a quick preview while they wait for their copy to get in the mail could you tell us a little bit about that journey and how it unfolded for you yeah absolutely and thank you so much for for buying my book I'm so excited that it exists in the world. So I am a violist for people that don't know me. And this whole journey with applying the science of learning and memory to practicing and performing started when I was an undergrad. I went to Oberlin College and Conservatory, and I'd always really

enjoyed school and academics. And I planned to double major in something, but I didn't have a specific plan. And then my freshman year, I took a freshman-only neuroscience seminar because it looked interesting in the course catalog. And I was instantly hooked. I was like, okay, this is the most fascinating thing I've ever learned about. I need to learn more about this. And so I became a double major in viola performance and neuroscience, truly just for fun. I just thought it was interesting and I wanted to learn about it. And then after Oberlin, I went to New England Conservatory with no plans to continue with neuroscience. But I really missed it when I got to NEC. And obviously at NEC, I couldn't like take neuroscience classes, but I was feeling

really unbalanced. And so I was very lucky that NEC let me do a number of independent studies, looking into aspects of music in the brain that I had started getting interested in at Oberlin. I had started seeing how, what I was learning about in my neuroscience classes applied to practicing what I was learning from my teacher, Peter Slowik, about practicing how that kind of interfaced with what I was learning about learning in my neuroscience classes. And so when I was a grad student at NEC, that's when I really started what I do now. And again, it was for my own interests, but I was like, oh, maybe other musicians would want to know this too. So when I was at Rice, which is where I did my doctorate, that's when I really started sharing it with other

people, doing presentations, doing sort of more work in the area of cognitive neuroscience and applying it to music. So that's sort of my background in a nutshell. I love it. It's such a great, beautiful book and it's content that I think all musicians need so much. So I want us to just dive in and talk about this. I love that you talk about at the beginning, you explain how the brain operates. And I mean, throughout the book, you cover a variety of topics and some people will have heard of some of these approaches and some approaches will be completely new, but what's wonderful is that now we really get to see what happens behind the scene, what is happening in the brain and why something works and why something doesn't work. And one of the first

things that you cover after the way that the brain operates are some of the misconceptions about practicing. Can you tell us a little bit about that, please? Sure, absolutely. I think most of us grow up not being taught how to practice, right? We're just told, oh, you need to practice more. And I think there's just a lot of sort of bad habits we fall into in practice because we don't know any better. It's not like we're trying to practice badly, right? And so one of the most common misperceptions around practicing or learning in general is that you should practice as much as possible and not take breaks. When people ask me like, What's one thing you want me to take away from your book?

If I had to pick one thing, it's the importance of taking breaks, that the brain, we actually learn the most. The brain makes the changes it needs to support learning when we are taking a break, not when we're actually practicing, which is really counterintuitive. And so especially for classical musicians, our culture of practicing is like all the time, all the time, all the time, right? As much as possible. And we think that that's how we're going to make the most progress.

if we practice six to eight hours a day in these big blocks and never, ever, ever take time off. But that's simply not what the science shows about what's the most effective way to learn. The most effective way is to take lots of breaks. So that's one common misconception. Another, I don't know that this is a misconception, but it's a common bad habit, which is students doing a lot of run-throughs at the beginning of every practice session or at the beginning of learning something new, either because they play it through a whole bunch to kind of get to know how the piece goes and then they start to work on it, or they start every practice session with a run through to see what needs to be done. But all that does is ingrain

bad habits because you're, you know, if it's early in the learning process, you can't play it very well yet. And if you're playing it over and over your body and your brain is getting used to doing it in, in kind of a sloppy way. And that gets ingrained. The brain doesn't know what's right or wrong. It just knows what we repeat. And so if you repeat it wrong a bunch of times, even if you know it's wrong, you're like, oh yeah, I'll go back and clean that up later. Well, no, your brain is thinking that that's how it's supposed to go. And it's sort of ingraining that run-throughs are necessary when you get closer to performance, right? Because you have to practice performing. But I think a lot of times people think that, you know, well, I can't know what

I need to do if I don't do a run-through first. Well, yes, you can, you know, if you're recording yourself, if you're paying attention, if, I mean, we could go on all day about that, but there's lots of ways to know what you need to work on that don't involve running through. So yeah, those are some common misconceptions and sort of misapplications of practicing, I think. Yeah. And I agree with you that so many of us are not taught how to, how to operate in the practice room on our own. And that's why works like this, especially this one is, in my opinion, should be a prerequisite to everyone. Thank you. How do you think your practicing has changed since you've worked on all of these concepts and principles?

Yeah, I look back at how I used to practice and I'm like, man, I wish I knew this stuff earlier. Like I would have practiced so much better. So I definitely used to fall into that trap of doing run-throughs. That's how I practiced as a kid. I would just do a bunch of run-throughs. But I would say the two ways that my practicing

has changed the most since learning about all the science that I talk about in my book is one, I take far more breaks than I used to. I used to be an every single day person with practicing. Like I wouldn't even take a day off on like Christmas or New Year's or like, you know, typical holidays when someone would take a day off. I just never, ever, ever, ever took a day off. Now I don't practice on Sundays and I haven't practiced on Sundays in like four years.

I take an entire day off from practicing. Me neither. Yeah, great. I don't think about viola. I don't think about music, you know, because I understand now that the brain needs to rest. And so I don't practice on Sundays. And then on my practice days, Monday through Saturday, I take far more breaks than I used to. So that's one big thing that's changed.

Another big thing that's changed is I talk in the book about interleaved practice, which in a nutshell, basically, if you practice one thing, let's say, for a big block of time, that's called blocked practice. And if you're constantly switching between different things, that's called interleaved practice. and I am someone I think a lot of people prefer blocked practice because you're just picking one thing and you're focusing on that thing to me it feels much calmer to do it that way but that is not at all what the science shows the science is very very clear that you learn faster you perform a lot better if you are constantly switching between things because it makes your brain have to be more flexible and you know be able to switch rather than you know just doing the same thing over and over. So my practicing, I think to an outsider who didn't know about this science, I think my

practicing would probably look more chaotic because I'm constantly switching between things because I'm interleaving my practice. Whereas before my practice was just like, I picked one thing and I focused on just that thing until I was done with it, which seems like a good idea, but it's really not according to the science. Right. I feel like that's often forced on us once we're professionals, because there's no way I could operate with blog practice now. There's just too much stuff to cover. And so for me, I know that the type of person that I am shorter spurs over many days is so much better. So I know that I see what needs to be covered. I prioritize quickly what needs to be worked on more. And then I know that where I can do this

for 10 minutes and this for 15 and then move on and I'll come back tomorrow, but I can't get it perfect today. So that interleaved aspect, I think, is something that if you don't know specifically what it is with the terms and how it works with the brain, you definitely need to start operating that way when you turn pro, because there's just no way to stay on top of repertoire if you do block practice all the time. Right, exactly. The same thing, too, with taking breaks. I mean, when I started teaching at the collegiate level 10 years ago, I was also teaching theory and ear training. And I had all this like class planning and grading to do, like I hardly had any time to practice. And so I was forced to take breaks because I had all this stuff to do

and I couldn't practice. And, you know, that's when I really started to see, oh, maybe I should change my approach to this, you know, because I was just forced to not do things the way I had for years, which was, you know, four hours a day, every single day, no exceptions. I just literally couldn't because I didn't have the time. Yes. Yes. One of the many things you talk about in the book that I thought was really interesting is the role of errors in practice, because we have a tendency to just hate ourselves when we make mistakes and we see mistakes and errors as this huge negative thing when in fact it's quite the opposite. Can you touch up on this a little bit, please? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, nobody likes making a mistake, right? We all feel like, oh man,

why did I do that? But mistakes are necessary to learn. If you're not making mistakes, it's not possible to learn because when you make a mistake, it signals to your brain that there's a mismatch between what you intended and what you actually got. And that mismatch signal tells your brain, oh wait, pay attention. Something's not right here. Whereas if it's always right, your brain's like, yeah, we got this. And it's not going to pay as much attention. And so, yeah, mistakes are necessary to learn. You can't learn without mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, right?

If you think about like little kids learning to walk for the first time, they don't just get up and walk perfectly, right? They fall down a bunch and they figure out how to walk. And that's the same for anything that we try to learn. And that feeling that comes with making a mistake, that feeling of frustration that doesn't feel good. I try to encourage my students to reframe that as the feeling of what learning is. When you feel that frustration feeling, try to say to yourself, oh, wait, I'm learning

right now. This is what learning feels like. And for me personally, that reframe has been really helpful. I used to, I remember, especially as an undergrad, I would get really frustrated and want to just break my viola. I was just like, I cannot play this. Like, this sounds terrible. What's wrong with me?

And I was just so frustrated. Now, when I feel that feeling, I'm like, oh, wait, I'm really learning something right now because I'm stuck and I can't get this. And this is what learning feels like. I need to keep working through this and I'll come out the other side and then I'll be able to do it. And it really helps me get through those moments of, man, why can't I do this the way I want to?

That's one of the things I love about the book is that reframing that you just talked about. because with my clients, we talk so much about the impact of our thoughts on how we're feeling and the things that we're doing. You and I were just talking about this before I hit record. And this type of paradigm shift of seeing mistakes as something that is helpful rather than something that signifies that you're doing something wrong completely transforms the learning experience. And that's one of my favorite things about the book is that it provides us with the opportunity to start understanding the mechanisms and then change

the way we see various aspects of the practice. Yeah, I love that. Thank you. I'm glad that really resonated with you because I think it's so easy for sort of negativity and self-blame and self-judgment to come into the practice room, right? And when we can't do things the way we want, it's so easy for us to attack ourselves and be like, well, what's wrong with me? I must be a terrible musician. I must be a terrible blah, blah, blah. And if you can see mistakes as just information and it's not anything about you, right? Everybody makes mistakes. It's just information about what you haven't solved yet. And we get frustrated because we love the music we're playing, right? We want to be able to play well. We wouldn't be here if we didn't love the

music, right? And so when something doesn't go well, trying to view it as just information like, oh, wow, that's really interesting. My bow is not doing what I want there and I don't like the sound I'm getting. Maybe I'll try something else. Let's try this and see if it gets me closer to the sound. Oh no, that got me further away. Okay, let's try this other thing, right? And so it's just information to help you get where you're going rather than, oh, I'm a terrible violist because I can't control my bow. Right. Yes. 100%. One of the concepts that you talk about in the book that I actually, it was the first time I hear about it. And I was really excited because I totally, I've experienced this. And now that I'm cognizant of it, and for me, it's very excited,

is that idea of focus, the internal versus external focus. I love it. Please, please a little bit. Sure, absolutely. So this research, when I first encountered it was kind of mind blowing to me, I was like, it totally turned things on my head. So just to summarize what this is um this area of research was discovered by a research psychologist named gabrielle wolf and i'll tell her story because i think it kind of illustrates what the research is so um she apparently back in the 1990s wanted to learn how to windsurf and so she and this was the 90s like you could go watch on youtube or whatever and so she bought like books and things to read and so she read about how to windsurf and then she got out on the water and she knew like she was supposed

to do this with her legs and this with her arms i know nothing about windsurfing so but you know You know, she knew what she was supposed to be doing with her body because she'd read about it and she was trying to do what she was supposed to do, but it was not working and she was getting really, really frustrated. And she just decided after a certain point, she's like, maybe I should just focus on what I want the board to be doing rather than, okay, do this with my legs, do this with my arms. And she reports that instantly she could do it.

And she was like, wow, that's really weird because I've been out here trying for however long she was out there, wasn't working. all I did was change my focus from what my body was supposed to do to what I wanted the board to do something outside her body. And so she wondered if it was just something unique to her or whether this was a more sort of general phenomenon. She's like, well, I'm a research psychologist. I have a lab. I can test this. And so since the 1990s, there have been, gosh, probably thousands of studies at this point, looking at this question of when people perform skills, do they do a better job if they're focusing on the particulars of what their bodies

have to do, or if they focus on something outside the body or the effect they want their action to have? So for us as musicians, an example of this might be like focusing very specifically on the exact way the arm is going to move, you know, for a string player with your bow arm or something like that, versus focusing on like the feeling of the hair on the string or the sound you want, or something like that, something that doesn't involve focusing on the specific movement of the body parts. And what the research shows over and over is that people are much more successful at performing things when they're thinking of something outside their body, rather than controlling specific body parts in terms of do this, do this, do this.

It was when I first started reading this research, I was like, what? That can't be right. But the more I read it, I was like, okay, well, this research all agrees, like everything they've studied, they've studied this in musicians, but also so many different sports and it all comes out exactly the same. So clearly there's, there's something there. Um, I found in my own playing and teaching that it's, it's definitely true. And it's, it's really, it's really powerful and it helps. I think a lot of times musicians talk about, Oh, I was too much in my head when I was playing. And I think a lot of times that can be kind of micromanaging the physical aspect of playing. And a way to get out of your head, like literally is to think of something outside your

body, the effect you want, or your, your musical instrument. And yeah, you'll, you'll play better. It was so great when I was reading this passage and it makes me think of, for example, sometimes when I talk to students about bow contact and, and myself too, if I focus on, I tell them to tickle the inner core of the string, like imagining that with the bow, they're tickling the inner core of the string. Yeah. And I know that if I think that also, it happens better. I don't know exactly what I am doing, but I know for a fact that I'm not overthinking

anymore about what I am doing. But I find that is such an interesting brain action sequence is, does the brain just go into problem solving super quickly and then, you know, figures out a way to balance things. I, you've got to explain that to me. Right, exactly. I mean, what they've found, so the hypothesis in the research on this external versus internal focus is that when someone's focusing on something outside the body, it allows the sort of muscle memory system that we call it as musicians to self-coordinate and our, the muscle memory system is largely outside of conscious control. Like when you walk, for instance, you're not thinking about every single

muscle movement or when you talk, you're not thinking about how your tongue and lips are moving. You're just talking. Right. And if you try to think about that, like if you try to think about how to walk suddenly, you're like, oh my gosh, I don't know how to walk. Right. And you feel like you're going to trip and fall over and you feel really uncoordinated. But if you don't think about it and you just walk around your body coordinates itself and you're fine. And so that's the same thing that happens in playing when we, I love your analogy of tickling the inner core of the string. When you think about that, you leave your body free to coordinate itself to make that happen. You can coordinate it consciously by thinking about the muscles. It's just never

going to work as well because it's too slow and too cumbersome a system. The body is meant to sort of self-control. Yeah. I was just, I was trying to teach my daughter how, how to put on contacts, but we were in a context where I didn't have my own and I couldn't do it. I couldn't explain to her how I do it. I was telling her, just wait till tonight. I'll show you at home when, and then, and then you don't think about it. Exactly. But, but the overthinking was so cumbersome. Right. It gets in the way. It's, you know, that's funny. Sometimes when I'm showing students like arpeggio fingerings that I've done a million gazillion times. If I think about, I don't know my fingering and I'm like, wait, hold on. I can't think about this. Let me just play it and see what

my fingering is because yeah, you get in your own way and it becomes very cumbersome. Like you just said, and suddenly you can't do something that you've done like a million times. Yeah. Yeah. So I love this concept. I'm, I'm going to be playing with it a little bit, literally later. Literally. Yeah, nice. I also love what you talk about in terms of the forgetting, the schedule of forgetting. See, I forgot what you called it. The schedule of forgetting, because I am a true believer. So please make all of us believers on this. Yes, absolutely. So this idea of forgetting comes up in the section where I talk about the importance of taking breaks. And I talk about the German scientist from the late 1800s, Ebinghaus, who's the one who first is credited with discovering the power of taking breaks and that you learn faster or durably.

But he also discovered what is called the forgetting curve, which basically shows that when something is brand new and you've just learned it, you forget it really quickly. So the example that I use in the book is being introduced to somebody new at a party and they say, oh, hi, my name is blah, blah, blah. And we've all had the experience like, oh, hi. And then they walk away like, oh, my God, I don't know that person's name. You've totally forgotten it. Right. So when something's brand new, it's really, really easy to forget the information as you get better at something or you've known something for longer.

It takes longer and longer and longer for you to forget it because it's more ingrained in your mind. And what Abinghouse discovered is that if we can take a break that's long enough to almost forget something, but not quite. And then we remind ourselves, then it really cements it in our memory better than if we're reminded too soon or too late, but especially too soon. And I think that all of us in our practicing, we err on the side of, well, either no breaks or breaks that are too short because we're afraid that, oh my gosh, if I take X amount of time off from this, I'm going to forget how to play it. And then I'm not going to be prepared and blah,

blah, blah. But actually what the research shows is if you allow yourself to forget, that is a good thing. And then if you remind yourself like right when you're about to forget, then you'll remember it better and you'll be able to play it better. Yeah. I think it's so true. It's that first step of learning is forgetting. Right. Right. So you can be reminded. Exactly. Molly, I love that in the book you have a complete list of practicing strategies i think it's so wonderful that you have this at the end i know that you have it in your website on your website as well um and one of the thing i was thinking when i was reading the book is the fact that when we understand the mechanisms then we can start to implement all of these you know these tips that you provide

then people from understanding it from beyond just following an instruction right and people can really personalize it a lot more to their own needs their own situation really start to tailor their own practice and become very intentional about it do you see that happening in the students that you work with yeah that's a great point sometimes people ask me they're like okay, give me the perfect schedule for practicing. Just tell me what to do and I'll follow it. And I'm like, that kind of misunderstands the point of practice. Practice is problem solving and you don't know what problems you're going to have to solve until you get to them. And you need to use the right tool for the job. And so what I try to do with the book is to give people these

principles. So then, like you said, people can customize it and apply it to their specific practice challenges. And to answer your question, what I see in my students, when I start working with someone, usually at the beginning of my work with them, I talk a lot about all this science stuff, but I tell them very specifically, this is how I want you to practice this because they're just oftentimes learning how to practice well for the first time. And then as my work with them continues, I will start to ask, well, how do you think you should practice this sort of based on what we've talked about in the past? And what I see in students is sometimes they'll be like, I don't know.

And I'll have to remind them, well, when we had a similar problem like this in the past, What did we do? And they're like, oh yeah, we did this, this, this, and this. And then as they get more advanced, both in terms of their playing, but more so in terms of their understanding of how to practice, it gets to the point where I can say to a student, okay, how are you going to practice this? And they'll give me sort of a rundown of I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do this. And if this doesn't work, I'll try this and then I'll try this. And I'll be like, yep, great. That's exactly what I would do. Go practice. And so it's really gratifying to see students go through that process of not really knowing where to start in terms of

not even having any practice tools to draw from, you know, and then having some tools and not really knowing quite how to apply them without some guidance. And then for them to just know exactly how they're going to solve this problem on their own without me having to tell them how to do it. Yeah, that's great. And then it becomes self-sufficient. Right, right. That's, that's always been my goal as a teacher is to make myself completely obsolete that you know I give you the information and I help you implement it and then at a certain point you don't need me anymore yeah precisely another question I had for you is and I'm sorry if I'm going a little bit all over that place is mental practice I feel like practice can be such a difficult topic because it's

something that you can't demonstrate to a student and sometimes it can be difficult to find the words to express what your own experience with mental practice is. Can you touch on that topic a little bit? Yes, absolutely. So I am such a huge fan of mental practice, like to the point that in grad school, I talked about it so much in studio class when we'd give each other like feedback that people would just like make fun of me, like, you know, affectionately, but make fun of me that I was always talking about mental practice. So yeah, mental practice for people that don't know what mental practices at all. Mental practice is imagining as vividly as you can inside your mind what it feels like, sounds like to play without actually doing it. So recreating what it's going

to be like, but inside your head without anything external. And with mental practice, any practice technique that you would use on your actual instrument, you can use mental practicing. um i often um most most of my practice sessions look like an alternation between physical practice and mental practice and so um often i will mental practice something first i will make sure i can do it the way i want in my head that i can hear it sounding how i want that i can feel myself playing it successfully if for instance i miss a shift in my head or something's a little fuzzy and I can't quite imagine it clearly, I focus on that spot and make sure that I can imagine it really clearly and correctly the way I want to do it. And then once I can, then I try it on my

instrument. And sometimes it's great. And I'm like, okay, good problem solved. Let's move on to the next thing. Other times I try out my instrument and there's some aspect of playing that I hadn't taken into consideration. Maybe I hadn't remembered to think about what my bow was going to feel like, let's say. And I play it and I'm kind of surprised that, oh, oh, right. I have to really think about my string crossing there or something like that. And so then I'll mental practice it again, taking that information into account, make sure I can really feel it, hear it the way I want it, and then I'll put it back on my instrument. So it's a really powerful way of practicing. The research is very clear that only doing physical practice is not nearly as effective

as doing physical and mental practice, doing a combination of the two. So I really try to incorporate it into my practice all the time. Yes. It's very mind over finger. Right. Yes, it is. And what I like about this too, and that's something I was just thinking about as I was hearing you talk is the fact that it's probably influenced too by the performance I had yesterday where if something is not clear in our mind even if the body can execute it let's say the eyes see notes on the page and the body can execute it but you're in the middle of a performance and something is distracting and somehow you start to think about something if the the sequence of movements to play a passage are not clear in your mind

and you get distracted physically then the process to think in the moment is too slow right so that really disturbs the flow of the performance but if you've already created the pathway where your brain understands it yeah you can of course maybe get to a point you practice something you play it without thinking which would be let's say finger over mind right But if you skip that part where you understand what's going on in the moment, if you start to think that's going to slow you down, does that? Right. Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, we need to understand what we're doing and we need to be able to imagine it clearly in the moment of performance. Like you were just saying, if you think consciously about it, it's probably going to be too slow.

Like we were talking about with the external versus internal focus a minute ago. And you do want things to be automatic at that point. You do want your muscle memory to be automatic because it's going to be much quicker than your conscious mind. But the conscious mind has to be part of the process at some point. If it's not there and there's portions of the music that are really fuzzy in your mind and you don't really understand how they should feel or how they should sound or how they're working musically, if you then get disrupted in a performance by a distraction, like you were just

saying, things are probably going to fall apart because it's not clear and it was really fragile. You were just able to get through it okay when there were no distractions going on. But if you have that really rich mental representation of what it is supposed to be, then if you get disrupted, it's fine because you have multiple sort of different layers of understanding, if that makes sense. Yes. Yeah. I call that having spare keys. Yeah. I love it. Spare keys. That's perfect. Around the house. Yeah. That's great. Yes. I think that one of the things I see most commonly regarding mental practice is people think it should feel a certain way. And when they start to experiment with it, they're not quite sure how it works. So they give up. And

I would really encourage people to understand that mental practice is like anything else that you at first are not familiar with. And by doing it, you slowly figure out how to do it. And there's so many ways to ease into mental practice. I teach some ways to do it. And I'm sure that you have some great tips as well. So what are some ways that people who are not familiar with mental practice, What are some ways that they could, you know, gently enter that pool? Yeah, absolutely.

And you're right. Mental practice takes practice. I say that all the time. If you just start to do it from never having done it before, it's probably going to feel like, what the heck is this? I can't do this. That's certainly how I felt at the beginning. So what I suggest to people is there's so many different aspects of playing you can

imagine, right? There's so many different layers of playing. And so I always recommend to students to start with one thing that they're pretty sure they can imagine clearly. So for some people, that's what does this music sound like? And maybe you're just going to do one measure, right? Don't try to do a whole piece. Just try to do a little bit.

And, you know, for some people, it's imagining what it sounds like. For other people, it's imagining what it feels like. Like maybe they can feel their fingers moving in the right order on the right string with the right placement and spacing. whatever aspect of playing seems the easiest for you to imagine start with that and just a little bit of music and make sure that you can imagine it clearly and then once that's fine add something else so maybe you started with what it sounds like and now you're going to add in maybe you could add another sound thing if you imagine the pitch maybe you're going to add in the quality of

sound or maybe you're going to imagine what it sounds like and you're going to add in something physical. So you're going to add in what your fingers are doing. Or if you started with your fingers, maybe like as a string player, you add in your bow and you can feel what your bow is doing and it's coordinating with your fingers. But I always suggest to people to start with one thing at a time and then build the layers on top of that. Another thing that I find is really helpful for people. Some people have a hard time imagining like anything at all, and that's fine. That's totally, that's totally normal. In this case, I suggest to people that they go back and forth with their instrument and imagining.

So maybe you're having a hard time imagining what it sounds like. So play just a single note on your instrument, like out loud, and then see if you can imagine that note. Then play it, then imagine it, and go back and forth in that way. And you can do the same thing physically.

Maybe play the first three notes of a scale and then see, can you feel yourself play those first three notes? And by going back and forth in that way, it can sometimes help clarify the imagination. that's awesome thank you for sharing this so i feel like if people can experiment with it and trust that they will figure it out right following following your awesome tips i feel like already it's going to facilitate this entry into mental practice absolutely yeah i have one more question

before i launch into the the rapid never so rapid questions and that's about exact repetitions because this is something that we do so much in the practice room and you mentioned it in the book and it's such an important aspect of practicing. Please tell us more about that. Yeah, let's talk about repetitions. So it's important to do repetitions to reinforce what you want to do. But I think a lot of times musicians think that we should only always do exact repetitions. And if we do it exactly how we want that's going to mean we can do it exactly how we want on stage and that's not actually what the research shows um particularly as we get more advanced at things either advanced on our instrument or advanced at a particular piece and we can play it well

we need to do varied repetitions we need to make it different in some way because if you only can do it one way that's a very narrow rigid version of the skill and it's much more likely to break down under pressure because you only have one way that you can do it. But if you do things in a variety of ways, it's a much broader version of the skill. It's a much more flexible version of the skill. And we all know as musicians in live performance, like stuff happens, right? Like you can never predict what's going to happen in a live performance. And you may be forced to do it some way you don't want to because of who knows what, right? But if you've practiced in lots of different ways, then it's much easier to adapt in a performance situation. So examples of

this, um, sometimes it's confusing to know, well, how, how do I, what does this actually look like in the, in the practice room? Um, so, and in the book, I have a whole bunch of, um, examples of different ways that you can do, um, what's called variable practice. Um, one of my hands down favorite ways is to, and I do this even with like solidifying shifts, not just like, you know, musical things, but, um, is to play whatever it is I'm working on with a variety of different emotional intentions. And so for instance, if a given passage is supposed to be happy, to use a very simple example, I will, even if I'm solidifying a shift, I'll play, you know, a little bit with the shift I'm trying to solidify, trying to make it sound like as happy

as I can. And then on my next repetition, maybe I'll try to make it sound sad or something like completely different from happy. And if I'm working on a shift, yes, I have to get the shift in tune, but it's embedded in a larger context of a different emotional intention. And so it is going to be a little different every time, right? I'm going to change my vibrato. I'm going to change how I'm using my bow or my articulation. And that changes how the shift feels, even though I'm going to the same place every time. And therefore the skill becomes more flexible. Yes. So the encoding is more complex. Exactly. Yeah. The coding is more complex and it's the way I like to think about it is

like if you only do something one way, it's like standing in a little tiny circle. And if you take even one step to the side, you've stepped outside the circle and that's like unknown danger zone. But if you practice in a variety of ways, you have this huge circle around you and you can take lots of steps before you get into the danger zone of it not working well for you. And that's what we want when we perform, right? We don't want to feel like we're on a tightrope. And if you take one step to the side, oh my gosh, disaster. You want to feel like you have a large space in which you can work and feel comfortable. I love this analogy. I think that really paints a vivid picture of that. Yeah. Thank you so much. So Molly, I could keep you here all day, but I want to be

respectful of your time. So how about a round of rapid fire questions? Sounds good. I'll try to be as succinct as I can. Molly, I would like to know if there's a thought or a belief that has either changed your life or a thought or belief that support you. Yeah, absolutely. I was thinking about this before the podcast. I would say the biggest one for me is that there is nothing more important than your health and wellbeing. That taking care of your health and wellbeing is more important than literally anything else because it supports absolutely everything we do. And that guides my practicing, that guides my whole life. And so if I had to pick one thing, it would be that my health and wellbeing must come first at all times. That's very important. We talked about

all sorts of tips to make practicing efficient. Now, do you have one to make practicing more fun and more enjoyable for yourself. Yes. Well, okay. So I would say- I mean, beside the fact that practicing well is so fun in itself. Right, exactly.

Yes, yes, yes. Granted. I'll say two things. One, I find variable practice really, really fun. All the suggestions I have in my book, those just feel like so much fun to me. The second thing I would say is that viewing practicing as a problem-solving game

is to me very enjoyable. rather than being a slog of, oh, I can't do this. This sounds terrible. That it's a game to solve these problems. Then you approach it with curiosity and openness rather than frustration. So once again, it's about the perspective, the paradigm through which we see. Yes. I love that. What is the skill do you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning to play their instrument. And in addition to learning how to practice. Yeah. I think that every, I mean, I think that every human should be taught how their brain works and how we learn. I just, we spend our lives learning things, right? And if we all

understood how our brains actually take in and process information, there would be a lot less. Yeah. I don't know if there'd be a lot less frustration and there would be a lot less people feeling like, Oh, I can't do this. I'm not cut out for this. No, it has nothing to do with that. Yeah. 100% agree. Do you have a favorite tool in the practice room? Um, I would, two things, one, a timer. I'm such a big fan of timers and two, my recording device. Cause I am always recording myself, listening back, assessing what I hear and going back and forth. So yeah, timer recording device. Here's my timer right there. Nice. Always close by.

Yep. And then finally, how about a quick actionable tip that the listeners could implement today in their musical lives or their life in general? Take a break. When you don't want to, when you feel like, oh, I need to get this done, stop. Take a break for five minutes. Go get a sip of water, walk around and come back. I love that.

I even started scheduling, you know, a rest time in my calendar to make sure that every day there is at least some space to catch my breath and close my eyes. Yeah, this is a great tip. Molly, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show, sharing all of this awesome information. And anyone who's listening, I'm telling you, you need to buy this book. You need to buy a copy for all of your students, all your friends. It's such a beautiful, in French, we say the word ouvrage. I love this term for a book. It's such a beautiful work, very comprehensive, exhaustive,

and all of the graphs are so clear. I feel like I shared with you that once people understand these principles, then they're going to be so much better equipped to practice in the way that's been prescribed by whichever teacher they're working with, but then run with it and expand on all of these principles and make their practice so much more personal, efficient, and extremely targeted for precisely what they're working on. So I cannot recommend it enough. Thank you so much. That's my hope, that the book will help people in their work to sort of know exactly how to apply practice strategies to their particular problems.

awesome thanks so much again molly thank you thanks for having me and there you have it thank you so much for joining me today if you enjoyed this episode please share it with friends and fellow musicians grab a screenshot share it on social media and tag me. I'm Mind Over Finger on all platforms, and I would love to hear what your favorite takeaways were. Don't forget to follow the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And if you're enjoying and learning from the show, leaving a five-star review is a wonderful way to support us. You can also watch the Mind Over Finger podcast on YouTube. And if you have questions, comments about the podcast or ideas for guests and topics, drop them in the comment

section there on YouTube, I do read all of them. For more tools, tips, and inspiration, click the link in the show notes to subscribe to my newsletter and get everything delivered straight to your inbox. Finally, if you're looking for more resources or personal support to enhance your playing, advance your career, or create a more fulfilling and purposeful life, head over to mindoverfinger.com. You're going to find a substantial library of free downloads, links to my online courses, and information on how to work with me, whether in a group setting inside my amazing Music Mastery Experience program, or through private one-on-one coaching. I'm here for you. Until next time, much love going your way, and à bientôt!

© transcript Emily Beynon