Do you ever have those moments when you are playing in practices and performances where you make “stupid” mistakes? When I mean “stupid,” the mistake is unexpected or in a portion of the music where you really should have been able to do it correctly without difficulty?
When we make errors while producing music, the three main culprits involve the difficulty of music/lack of technical ability, time and preparation, or lack of focus. Oftentimes when I talk with my professional friends, if they have made a mistake or it has been a difficult night of performing, they usually reference their “lack of focus.” These mistakes usually occur in musical phrases where it doesn’t take much thought to accomplish the task at hand, but for some reason we do the wrong fingering, play the wrong note, miss an accidental, or play the wrong rhythm. For those of us who do not play our instruments for hours a day or are not used to understanding the role that focus plays at all times while making music. These mistakes are very frustrating and affect our confidence in our own technical ability or “talent.” We’re blaming the wrong cause, and yet it is something that can be worked on and improved. In this blog, I am going to address one type of focus: sustained attention and how to utilize meditation to increase attention to task. A different type of focus that I will address in a different blog that has to do with focused practice.
Focus-Based Meditation is a practice that many musicians are moving toward and seeing benefits from regular practice when it comes to lengthening attention span. Through searching the Internet, one finds that there are many health and wellness articles that explain the benefits of meditation, and how meditation can positively impact attention and other factors in under a week of use. One study cites that meditation helped participants remember details of the tasks they were assigned better than the control group who didn’t practice meditation. (1) Another study finds that participants found that their attention, wandering monkey mind, and worry were reduced. (2) Sounds like great side effects to me! Who wouldn’t want to have more attention to detail, better attention overall, and less worry? Other benefits of meditation that are useful for musicians and overall health is stress/anxiety reduction, self-awareness, emotional health and well-being, improved sleep quality, pain management, reduced memory loss due to aging, lower blood-pressure, and increased capacity to become a patient/kind person. (I always think that it would be a great benefit if we can be kinder and more patient with ourselves and others as musicians in such a high-pressure field).
At one point, I had the opportunity to solo with my community orchestra playing Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations. I had done very little solo work at that degree of ability and length of time for nearly 20 years. It was a piece I was just learning and if you’ve ever played it before, it has some technical challenges and I was determined to accomplish this goal of mine. I was having difficulty staying focused through the entire practice time and having anxiety issues well before the performance. Before each practice, I started to use guided meditation to try to release the events of the day thus far so that I could free my mind from repetitive thoughts, battle the anxiety that was preventing me from practicing, and increase my attention span so that I play longer and pay attention to the parts that needed work as opposed to other sections. I was first on the program for the performance and because I had practiced meditation for months, I was able to guide myself through meditation backstage while I waited.
So how do you go about practicing meditation? The general process of meditation is to find a comfortable body position, deep inhales and slow exhales to begin with to release tension, followed by normal breaths where the individual focuses on where they can feel the breath the most. Meditation takes many forms and for varying lengths of time. There are apps available on the web as well as YouTube videos, podcasts, Spotify, and even your local wellness business or yoga studio that can assist you to practice correctly. For beginners, I recommend “guided meditation” where someone verbalizes the instructions. I have also noticed guided meditation options for musicians through a simple web search.
As a performer, I truly attest to the benefits of meditation and I experienced those benefits that helped me tackle a difficult task and live to tell the tale. Since that time, I have also noticed that I make less mistakes during group and orchestral/symphony in both practices and performances overall as I increase my focus. If you are a musician of any ability or circumstances, meditation may be a tool available for you to use that may make a marked difference in your personal growth as a musician.