Practice and Well-Being

People become musicians for different reasons. There are people who play an instrument as a way of impressing others, or simply as a hobby. However, there are others who use music as a way of expressing inner feelings or passions which they are not able to express in any other way. As Nachmanovitch says: “what we play is a reflection of who we are, and what we feel” (Nachmanovitch, 1990). This study will cover practice, performance and wellbeing, and how these related to my work as a practicing musician.

Music is a field that requires talent and dedication, and always being aware of the fact that our career as a learner will never end. Being a musician means to be different to many other people in daily activities. To be a professional musician, “practice” must play an important role in our lives.  It is a well-known fact that practice makes perfect. For some musicians practice is synonymous with punishment, with never-ending hours in a practice room, or as something which must be done because of our style of live. Nevertheless, for me, practising is a way to constantly better myself in each performance, analyzing them to know my behavior when performing, working on my weak points, in order to achieve the outcome of a fulfilling performance. So my practice could be pretty similar to what Madeline Bruser explains in The Art of Practicing: “Practising is a constant challenge to our physical, mental, and emotional capabilities” (Bruser, 1997).            

The performance is the result of many hours of work. Sometimes we get incredibly frustrated when our performance is not what we expected, due to insecurity about our abilities, nervousness, or many other factors. For this reason, our practice should be focused on controlling these feelings, as well as on technical and physical skills. According to Buswell “To be effective, practice needs to be as well considered as performance.” (Buswell, 2006)

From my experience as a performing musician, I can confirm O’Connor’s words: “To be a performing musician is physically and mentally exacting...Talent (or technical competence) and physical and mental health are the three pillars on which performing success rest.” (O’Connor, 2001). In our daily lives as musicians, we are constantly using our musculature, and consequently hours spent playing could potentially cause injury if bad habits are acquired.

The most important thing all musicians should acknowledge is how to practise properly. I have spent my whole live as a musician thinking that my way of practising was the right one, and when I had a ´bad performance´ I just thought that it was because of nerves. But then I realized that I was completely wrong, and that an unsatisfactory performance is as much the result of improperly focused practice as it is about nervousness and inner doubt.

The performance itself is just a small part of a very long process. Therefore our practice ought to start with planning what we want to accomplish in our final performance and having clearly identified goals; and managing the time, about the frequency and duration of practice before the first note is played. This principle is reflected in Williamon´s book “Musical Excellence: Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Performance” (Willamon, 2004). The importance of having clearly defined our goals before the practice process starts is mentioned by Barry Green: “Designing a plan of action which includes goals creates a powerful impetus which can accelerate your growth as a musician and as a human being” (Green, 1987).

The goals we desire can be so different from one another. They can be from teaching children in a school of music to being an international soloist or working in an orchestra. But as we change and grow up, our goals change with time. As musicians we have chosen an area of study that requires a great deal of perseverance, and having daily routines in our practice will help us to overcome challenges.This routine must depend on what works best for the individual. In my case, I always start with a warm-up. This will help to avoid muscle or articulation injures. As Klickstein establishes in his book The musician’s way, a good warm-up should not last more than 30 minutes, in order to not cause fatigue and loss of concentration on what our practice should be. My warm-up includes a few exercises in which involve the whole body before I take my cello from the case; such us breathing, bending, stretching and rotating exercises. Then with my instrument, I always start with some scales and doubles stops usually in the key of the piece I will practise afterwards. However, Klickstein recommends that we avoid starting our warm-ups with the same material everyday, so they don’t become boring, and that will help us to have a wide-ranging control over our instrument. “Like sensuous opening ceremonies, warm-ups prepare the body, mind, and spirit for making music.”  (Klickstein, 2009)

After warming-up comes the next stage of practice. O’Connor describes what is all about practice. He considers that all the performers must have the following equation in mind as system to refer to when practising: 

            “Technical skill + Physical Fitness x mental skill = Performance Success”

We can see clearly in this equation that O’Connor attaches more importance to mental skill. To know how we should start practising, we must analyse our own experience, as Green says: “Learn from your own experience.”(Green, 1987). That will give us the necessary insight into what has to be worked on. One thing I always try to do is recording my performances, because it give me a real “image” of what really happened during the performance, because sometimes my perception is not the same as what really occurred, or my own views on how the performance went don’t correspond with feedback from the audience.

Once we understand our behaviour in performance, we must base our practice on working on it, developing both mental and technical skills. The three most outstanding mental skills that O’Connor considers that all the musician should develop are emotional balance, as well as trust in our ability and capacity to perform (O’Connor, 2006); Willwhich means having clear our goals or objectives, and according to what Assagioli says in The act of will: Will would be the energy which will help us to get the best possible result in our performances; as well as concentration and awarenessto avoid interferences which directly affect our performance. (Assagioli, 1973).

One of my usual interferences when performing is insecurity about my own abilities, fear of failing in my challenges, and that make me lose concentration when performing. Keeping this in mind, I know I must focus principally on mental skills, such as trust and concentration techniques, apart from developing and maintaining my technical and physical skills. As Buswell says: “Practising must be about developing strategies to avoid negative thinking and feelings, such as, breathing, relaxation and visualisation and mental rehearsal, apart from technical and musical skill” (Buswell, 2006).

Once we have clearly identified the weak points in our mental skills and have been working on these in order to perform, it is time to focus on our technical and physical skills. Both can be managed with different approaches: playing through the score to identify the challenging parts to work on; or working on whatever the problem is and then playing the whole piece. We have to choose which one works better for us, and knowing ourselves when performing, focus principally on what we are more likely to slip up on. As William Duckworth establishes in his book: “We learn by doing. An important step to achieve a successful practice involves frequency of repetition”. (Duckworth, 2007).We need to repeat over and over again the same bar, shift position or whatever the problem is, as many times as our brain needs to associate our physical movement with the music.

 As mentioned above, according to O’Connor, physical fitness plays a huge role in our performance success. As Green says: “Musicians are athletes,” (Green, 1987) so they must follow a life of well-being. Having a well-balanced diet, taking regular breaks during our practice sessions, doing exercises and avoiding drugs and alcohol are essential principles that we must accomplish as a musician.

As I said before, music is a degree which requires more “sacrifices” than others. Nevertheless, spend a great amount of my time practicing, spending time away from home or long journeys to and from engagements, are not really a “sacrifice” for me, because it’s what I love to do, and making a live out of music carrying out the goals what I have encouraged myself, would be my dream come true.

To summarise, there are a number of key objectives that inform and shape my practice technique: having clearly defined goals, having a well structured plan of practice, working principally on mental skills (not entirely on technical skills) and commitment to my wellbeing. By becoming aware of these goals and how they relate to my work, I’ve been able to tackle negative habits and have become more apt at pursuing my aims as a musician. By taking a more objective approach to my practicing and performing, I have been able to be more constructive in evaluation and this helped me overcome obstacles and give a more positive shape to my work.