The Art of Music
Using Mindfulness to Hack Learning and Performance: a method for students, teachers, and performers
A new way of using old wisdom
How to approach this method:
These are not rules. These are not requirements. There has been no moment in time when I have perfectly practiced all of these at the same time. I am always successfully practicing most of these most of the time. It is a flow, ever-changing. I aim to hold these with an open hand.
I recommend you read gently. If something doesn’t make sense, just let it pass by like a cloud. You may not need that bit, or you may not need it right now. It’s all good.
You could see this method as The Good, The True, and The Beautiful:
Use Wisdom Instead of Effort (Utilize the Good approaches)
Be Honest With Yourself (Seek your Truth)
Do Only What You Love (Follow what you find Beautiful)
How This Method Came to Be:
My education and experience is pretty standard for a professional musician: a Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance from Carnegie Mellon, 7 years as a Music Director, and a Master’s degree (also in Music Performance). After undergrad (2004) I also started teaching private music lessons. That part was not my idea; someone asked, I said yes, then I really enjoyed it. The two main instruments I teach are voice and piano, though I have also taught guitar, ukulele, and drums (#oxfordcomma4eva).
After relocating to Austin I started pursuing other interests in my free time, studying Nonviolent Communication, which led me to mindfulness and meditation, which led me to Authentic Relating, which led me to Circling (an interpersonal meditation practice). As I developed each of these skills, and became a facilitator of the last two, they also slowly integrated into my teaching style during lessons.
Be honest with yourself
oversimplified: Be honest with yourself (True)
compromised to maximize understandability: Always check in with yourself before you start practicing
allow full complexity to maximize deepest comprehension: Interact with music from a perspective of mindfulness and presence
Students:
Figure out what you want before starting lessons. If you have no aim, you can’t possibly arrive at a destination (and it feels terrible trying to teach purposelessly). Your aim doesn’t have to be exact. You definitely don’t know how you’ll reach your goals, that’s what you pay the teacher for.
Teachers:
Be willing to fire a student who has no aim and does not participate in finding their aim. Imposing goals on another person is a practice in misery and disappointment.
Meet music from presence:
Before doing anything, take time to notice precisely where you are right now. This requires a level of honesty most people are habituated to avoid. We’ve been trained to set goals, determine the steps to accomplish those goals, and force ourselves to follow the plan. In this way we practice ignoring what is true in the moment- enslaved by past choices in pursuit of future circumstances.
Mindfulness is not abandoning progress. Mindfulness is becoming so good at knowing what is true inside me that I know without doubt that I will continue to have desire that, if wisely and intentionally fulfilled, will result in a future far better than I could ever imagine (therefore could never have made into a goal).
When asked “How are you?” Or “What’s up?” Take time to actually find out inside yourself and then share as much of the honest answer as you are willing to say out loud (Discernment here)
Video or audio: guided meditation into mindful awareness of self and wants
Wants game: “Right now, I want…” or “With music, I want…” or “With this practice session, I want…” (also don’t want)
The deepest challenges of this concept:
What if I look inside, and my being doesn’t want to practice today? Doesn’t want to go to my lesson today? Doesn’t want to go to my gig today?
Be willing to totally abandon music the moment you don’t want to do it. Don’t practice, then be totally honest with your teacher that you didn’t practice because you didn’t want to. Don’t attend your lesson, and be totally honest that you don’t want to. Quit your music gig and get a job you do want to do. And if you don’t want to do any job, don’t do any job and fully welcome the results of not having a job.
At some point you may notice the desire to make music has returned. If you want to return, just return. Start making music again.
Teachers:
Let what’s true for you and what you want matter equally. If you’re suddenly bored or hating the song, chances are the student feels the same way.
One day a 15-year-old longtime student showed up for her lesson and I said, “I don’t know why, but I totally don’t feel like doing music right now. All I want to do is take my shoes off and sit on the floor.” She said, “Oh my god, me too!” and had her shoes off instantly. I trusted what was happening even though a voice in my mind was saying “This isn’t professional. You’re wasting her parent’s money.”
After a few minutes, she started telling me a story of something she’d been struggling with for months. As it unfolded, it was a pretty serious situation at school. She was wracked with worry about it and hadn’t talked to anyone about it yet. At the end of her lesson time I supported her while she shared it with her parent. When she showed up the next week she was bouncy- school counselors had helped her and everything had worked out way better than she ever expected.
I still don’t know if it was an unethical way to spend time in which I’m paid to teach music. But it was definitely an ethical way to spend time as a human.
Do Only What You Love
These three guidelines build on each other. You can’t “do only what you love” until you’ve been honest enough with yourself to find out what you love and what you don’t. Also, what you love will likely change over time, flowing toward something a bit different. Or totally different. If you’re willing to follow that flow, you’ll find that you start experiencing a lot more joy than you used to, and a lot less anxiety. Your stress level may stay the same, but being under pressure doing something I’m passionate feels pretty great while pressure doing something I hate feels horrible.
I used to think "discipline” meant consistently doing thing you didn’t want to do because you should do them. Predictable misery, basically. But then I came across something that totally changed the way I think about it. I’ll show you- I googled the word “discipline” and here’s the verb part of the definition it gave me:
Did you see it? It’s so subtle, but totally mind-blowing…
There are some pretty harsh and intimidating words in the definition, but down under “Origin” it says, “from discipulus (see disciple).” Woah. Discipline shares a Latin root with disciple. Ok, what happens when we see disciple?
Learner. Admirer. Devotee. This is what discipline should feel like. You’ve realized you’re in love with music, that you’re a devotee whether you like it or not. Being with music, immersing yourself in it, is what your heart longs for. This is the best motivational energy behind practicing. This is my new definition of discipline.
compromised to maximize understandability: Discipline is not forcing yourself to do the work.
allow full complexity to maximize deepest comprehension: Cultivate your truest expression.
Level One:
Discipline is not forcing yourself to do the work
I used to think “discipline” meant consistently doing things you didn’t want to do because you should do them. Predictable misery, basically. But I’ve found a truer definition
I used to think discipline meant consistently doing things you didn't want to do because you should do them. Predictable misery, basically. I've adopted a new definition in my mind: discipline happens naturally when you choose to be a disciple of your passion. If music is your passion and you choose to pursue that love for music, you will follow where it leads you. You will practice as naturally as you smile at a friend. You will put the work in because it won't feel like work. It will feel like an adventure.
Discipline: Be a disciple to what you are in love with
Make music because not to would be suppressing what wants to flow
(Under-assign. Practice first, then play)
The deepest challenges of this concept:
To choose to commit to what I love is to invite it to interact freely with my heart. Through my heart it has access to my soul, to all of me. Artists are often very good at this skill, but then don’t have wise boundaries with it. We are willing to sacrifice all for our passion, and we fall into the starving artist cliché.
Can you give your heart fully -and- with boundaries? This means finding the line between riding the whole wave when you get in the zone and escapism. The line between focusing my attention on a project and avoiding responsibilities. It’s paying for this program on a credit card instead of budgeting your finances with full awareness of your future financial health.
Questions/ journal entries (review when passion sags?):
If you never had to do anything (you had all the money you ever needed/ you didn’t have to go to school) what would you want to spend your time doing? For kids, this is the ultimate life hack- if this can become what you get paid to do, then you’ll almost never feel like you have a job
How do I feel about music?
Why do I want to do (learn/teach/perform) music?
Let interest lead- what do you want to do today? Adapt to meet the interest that is already present and alive right now. Give options.
Feed the Engaged Child. The one who doesn’t care that her favorite cookies just came out of the oven because she’s so engrossed in a good book. The one who is so excited telling his story that the grownups are loving it even though they have not been able to follow the storyline in the slightest.
This energy is pure fuel at little-to-no cost. This energy is exceedingly enjoyable to interact with, so a person living from this energy will encounter a world that enjoys him and loves helping him because it feels so good to join in with that energy. Jordan is the best I know at this. My mom has it often. I have it sometimes.
Teacher:
approach with the attitude/mindset of the student (new eyes). Continue to bring the knowledge, but with open-handed presentation. Assume that at any student at any moment can and will give you an opportunity to learn something you don’t know. The gold: when a student starts treating lessons like collaboration sessions and you become teammates working toward a shared goal. When a student realizes that no matter how smart/educated/experienced the teacher is, they are human and incapable of being 100% correct or noticing all things- the student can be right sometimes where the teacher was wrong, and this can be a time of huge celebration. This helps the student start to see the world more accurately: hierarchies of competency are highly functional, and I can consume information with discernment, being an active participant instead of an obedient minion
Admit fully and readily to yourself and your students where the limits of your knowledge are. Name your expertise and use the limits of your knowledge as a chance to learn together with your student how to get those answers.
Meet your students where they’re at, don’t make them come to you. At the same time, know when it’s not the right fit and recommend them to someone else.
Use Wisdom Instead of Effort
oversimplified: Don’t try so hard (Good)
compromised to maximize understandability: Use wisdom instead of effort.
Convinced? Great. Here’s the pitfall: it’s super tricky on the front end. You need to:
Know what you want to accomplish right now
Find the wisest approach for that particular skill
Do the approach as intended
This is insanely difficult at first, but makes everything easier and faster in the long run. Not just a little, but by orders of magnitude.
Practice with your mind
During a Tony Robbins phase last year, in one of the countless podcasts or youtube videos I consumed he referenced a scientific study. In my attempts to find the actual study I found a lot of cool stuff, but not the actual study. I test-drove the theory on my students, though, and it was very successful. And now I will share it with you.
So, according to Tony Robbins, “they” did a study of athletes. The athletes were split into three groups. Group A was the control group and kept practicing the way they usually did. Each athlete in group B was assigned a skill to practice 10 times in a row every day. The athletes in group C were also each assigned a skill, but instead of actually practicing the skill they imagined themselves completing the skill absolutely perfectly with ease 10 times in a row every day. At the end of the study, group A had no noticeable change. Group B had an average of about 20% improvement, while the athletes in group C showed a whopping 80% improvement.
That got my attention. So I took it for a test spin on my students. 9-year-old “Allison” had a habit of approaching new songs with what I would call a “just guess and hope for the best” style, and the results sounded chaotic. I told her about this study and asked if she wanted to try the experiment too, and she was all in. I suggested she imagine playing the song perfectly three times in a row without even touching the piano (it seemed to help a ton if the piano lid was open and she could look at the keys too). The first time she actually played the song after imagining, she made almost no mistakes. I was stunned.
I tried it on an adult voice student who had spent 1.5 years with unpredictable technique and a very hard time matching pitch. During his warm ups I had him imagine singing it while I played the pitches on the piano three times, then singing out loud the fourth time. It was miraculous. His tone and pitch were suddenly beautiful and consistent.
Caveat:
While this technique has worked miracles for most of my students, it seems to make things worse for the people who are perfectionist or hyper-critical.
allow full complexity to maximize deepest comprehension: Doing a tiny amount of very wise practicing can accomplish everything you want. Any amount of misguided effort can rob all your progress. Know what’s adaptive and what’s maladaptive. Do what it takes to choose adaptive. Be patient- this is actually the quicker way. (Compare two students to the tortoise and the hare)
Don’t cling- poker story: We were plying Texas Hold ‘em. I hadn’t played poker in at least 15 years and needed to refer to my phone to know the hands. I was certain I would lose but was thrilled to be playing. We were betting with the change from my brother’s coin jar, and after about 5 hands I was tapping into my playful child. My sister-in-law played in fear of using her money. My brother underestimated how willing I was to lose my money, and lost his on a big bluff. I won the game and was bubbling with so much joy that they seemed to be enjoying the game too.
Plan before play
Think before do
Find the fulcrum- place of least effort that has greatest impact. Music examples: take as long as you need to get notes and fingers perfect the first time (create graph of amount of impact and which time- reverse order of magnitude, slightly less extreme)
Build wise habits:
Tend to start every lesson the same way so the student knows what to expect. Make success very obvious and very obtainable. Celebrate everything above and beyond.
Great, easy habits are developed by carrots, not sticks
Take opportunities to notice progress and re-assess goals. Any time I know a good deal more than I did, I’ll know more what kinds of goals are possible (watch out with goals pitfall in first guideline.
Wisdom:
(Pareto principle, the first three times playing something can set 80% of your progress, practice often instead of long (don’t turn the piano bench into the time out chair), utilize imagination practicing.
Wise:
Spend five minutes looking at a measure, figuring it out, planning, and imagining playing it perfectly. Then play it once, as slowly as you need to go in order to play it exactly correct.
Backtracking:
Start to play the song as soon as possible. Guess and do whatever it takes to get from the beginning to the end. Finish completely unaware of what you got correct and what needs to be fixed
Concept of exponential decay
Graph
Singing:
Experiment and gather data: The number one challenge of working on singing technique is that this is the only instrument we can’t see or touch. If a pitch is off on a guitar we just make sure the string is in tune and make sure they’re on the correct fret. If a pitch is off in a singer there are layers of listening that could be the issue (physical reception of sound, mental interpretation of sound, translation and planning to imitate (record self singing it well or others with very similar voices and use that to practice from), physical skills to imitate)record, with each sound take note of placement (forward to back), throat (loose to tight), breath, soft palate, tongue placement, how wise is mouth, posture, and anything else you notice. Look for patterns. Then see if you can do it backwards. (This is the assignment that my students most rarely follow. The two that have done this the most have had the fastest progress. Some reasons people don’t do it: can’t think of sound types (make an audio track), unwilling to sound “bad” (talk about negative and positive space), feel awkward (Elizabeth Gilbert concept of the muse, toddler falling down)
