The Inner Game

Perhaps the most influential factor on my performance as a bassoonist lately has been a very short book called 'The Inner Game of Tennis' by Timothy Gallwey. This book deals with one of the most important areas of life - the mind - and how to use it to make learning any performance-based activity more efficient, as well as much more fun.

The main premise of this text is to get the reader to relax and cope with the pressures exerted on budding young students by teachers and other students, something we as musicians will always have to deal with, and to make the body learn in a more natural and enjoyable way by rediscovering the super-effective way children learn by watching and imitating. This has helped me as a musician immeasurably to deal with the stresses of starting out in the music profession, studying and learning and has overall reaffirmed in me the joy of music, which is why we do it in the first place isn't it?

So for any musician who is interested in achieveing their full potential I would recomend switching their brain into tennis mode for a few minutes a day and to read The Inner Game of Tennis, or one of its companion books, and to see where this little book of nonfiction will lead them.