record yourself

Not for "boosting your ego".

https://madmimi.com/p/d5f039




Winter recitals. Pre-screening tapes for conservatory auditions. Then competitions, juries, orchestral auditions, and more. Aaagh!

The holiday break gives us a moment to catch our breaths from school or work, but we also know that there is a lot of practicing to be done in the months ahead. And, that one of our crucial challenges will be finding ways to make the most of our limited time and energy, so we can polish our rep to a performance-ready state that we feel good about.

Yet why do we avoid the one strategy that could turn our practice efficiency, level of playing, and confidence up to 11?

Umm…what strategy might that be?

Recording!
Ugh…

We all know deep down that recording ourselves (and actually listening back) would be hugely beneficial to our growth and development. Especially in preparation for a big performance or audition.

But recording-avoidance seems to be more the rule than the exception. Even world-class performers like Richard Goode and Krystian Zimerman have expressed a similar aversion to listening to their playing.

It’s totally understandable, of course. Like taking a look at ourselves in the mirror when we wake up in the morning, recordings have a way of bursting our confidence bubble.

But I don’t think it has to be that way. So in the next couple days, I’d like to explore a couple mindset tweaks that will hopefully change how you feel about recording in 2017.
Mindset Tweak #1: Diagnose vs. Evaluate

There are many reasons why we may be recording-averse, but I think one of the main ones is our tendency to think of recording as an evaluative tool instead of a diagnostictool. Meaning, we listen to our recordings with a focus on whether we sound good or bad. And we come away from it with a pretty black and white assessment using a rating scale that basically ranges from “complete garbage” to “not horrible.”

Conversely, the diagnostic approach is to take judgment out of the equation (just for a moment), and instead, use the recording as a tool to help us compose a to-do list of things to work on, so we can ensure our next practice session is a productive one. To identify all of the elements that didn’t work out like we wanted, and decide which ones are most worth addressing. Avoiding the thorny question of whether this means we are good or bad.

Which takes us to mindset tweak #2.
Mindset Tweak #2: Real problems vs. imaginary problems

A student once remarked that once she began paying closer attention to her practice habits, she discovered that she had been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to solve “imaginary problems.” Wait…what?

You know how once in a while, you’ll get strangely obsessed with a particular note or phrase, to the point where you get sucked into this hyper-focused state, and the next thing you know, an hour has gone by, and you still haven’t gotten it just right?

In the meantime, you’ve neglected a slew of more glaring issues that could have been solved, and would probably raise the level of your playing more dramatically in the time that was devoted to that relatively minor issue. I’m all for extremely high standards of excellence, but those obsessive time-sucks are what my student meant by “imaginary problems.” Things that could certainly be better, but actually rate pretty low on our list of priorities.

Athletes can fall prey to the same tendency too - where even at elite levels, some spend too much time working on things they already do pretty well, at the expense of shoring up weaker areas that may knock their ego down a notch or two in the short term, but would have a more dramatic impact on their performance in the long term.

As writer Robert Heinlein once said “In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”

Here too, recording can help, by allowing us to listen for the most glaring issues. The targets that represent the best use of our time.

So while mindset tweak #1 is about putting our ego aside for a moment, and using recordings as a way to compose a to-do list for our practice, mindset tweak #2 is about ensuring we are prioritizing our to-do list, and working on the things that will give us the most bang for our buck.

Action steps for today

Pick something and record it!

And do this first. Not after you’ve spent an hour working things up to an artificially high level, when things feel good. You want to expose all of the biggest warts and problem areas that are likely to pop up in a real performance setting. So sure, warm up a bit, but record first. And use this recording to help create some meaningful goals for today's practice.

Remember; this isn’t about boosting your ego right now, at the expense of obscuring real problems that remain hidden until you get on stage. It’s about making sure you have a really productive practice session that will make your ego feel warmer and fuzzier tomorrow, next week, and at your next big performance.
Coming up…

Tomorrow, we’ll delve into what may be the most important benefit of recording - something that may be the difference between a performance where you’re in the “zone” and one where you’re worrying about the hairy shift coming up, freaking out about memory slips, and wondering what everyone is thinking.

And on Friday…
Hacking performance anxiety

As you probably already know, I spent most of my life looking for the ultimate hack for beating performance anxiety and optimizing performance.

But I discovered that simple hacks like bananas and increasing practice time, didn’t change things very much. And when I discovered the world of sport psychology, I began to understand why. I had been trying to hack something that wasn’t really hackable.

Performance anxiety isn’t as simple as it’s sometimes made out to be. So there’s no single quick fix that’s going to transform everything overnight. Deep, lasting change requires a more systematic and multi-dimensional approach which addresses the physical, mental, and emotional components of our on-stage experience.

A special time-limited offer

So if you’ve found the blog helpful, but would like to elevate your performing to yet another level with the same set of evidence-based mental skills, techniques, and strategies that I teach in my Juilliard classes, the online course Beyond Practicingwill be available at special 2-for-1 pricing for 3 days only beginning this FRIDAY (12/9) at 12:01am, running through SUNDAY (12/11) midnight Pacific. Meaning, when you sign up, I will create a second account that you can gift to a colleague, friend, relative, student, or teacher.

Like having a workout buddy to support your progress at the gym, this will give you a mental skills “training partner” with whom to work through the course, compare notes, and support in becoming more bulletproof.

Learn more about Beyond Practicing

If you have any questions about the course, or whether it’s right for you, just click “reply” and I’ll do my best to help!

Sincerely,

Noa
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p.s. The 2-for-1 special doesn’t start until FRIDAY, but you can check out the course and see what it’s all about by clicking the button below. Beyond Practicing is where I curate the most impactful techniques and strategies that I have to offer, and is not a collection of abstract theoretical concepts, but a highly action-oriented, guided, step-by-step approach to peak performance and playing your best under pressure.