Reset, Reset, Reset!
Three Ways to Make Changes Stick
I hope you have enjoyed positive changes in your music-making using the movements or ideas I have shared. Which brings up the most important question: how does one make changes stick?
The answer, ‘reset, reset, reset!”
The quality of your practice sets you up for performance. Practicing for long periods of time, 30+ minutes without a break, increases unproductive tension. This tension doesn’t just disappear in performance. You have trained the muscles responsible for music-making movement to organize in a particular way for expression.
The tension either shows up in the performance or throws off your physical organization entirely, making music-making feel unfamiliar in addition to the performance pressure.
What can a reset look like?
A Real Break where you step away from performing to release unproductive tension and reorganize the body. This optimizes muscles, their relationships, and the movements that create sound. You return to music-making, accessing high-quality movement that includes precision, efficiency, and ease. A 5-minute break is recommended after 20 minutes of practice.
A Microbreak. Take 10 seconds after practicing for 10 seconds to notice how you played/sang. Using the information you gather to make adjustments and repeat the section with changes to the ‘how’ underlying expression. This is the heart of interleaved practice: frequent small pauses to assess expression, technique, and movement quality. To read how I used this technique, check out Breaking Habits in Fast Playing.
Deliberate Assessment. Regularly assess the quality of expression and technique, along with ‘how’ performing feels. This is integral to incorporating changes. For instance, if one notices that they are running out of breath earlier than they want and experiencing shoulder tension, these two pieces of information are related. The solution to this breathing challenge will involve grounding the body more efficiently, releasing the shoulders, and increasing breath capacity.
As Molly Gebrian writes in Learn Faster, Perform Better, “The Fastest Way to Learn Music: Take More Breaks!”
Be curious & let me know what you find!