Before I was serious about the viola, I was serious about being a hockey goalie. While I quit hockey after high school to pursue music, what I learned about maintaining a strong mental game in net would later be transferred to the stage. Several of my coaches told me various versions of “being a goalie is ninety percent mental.” I’ve increasingly learned that being a musician is also “ninety percent mental.” When I was a goalie, I had a strong mental game for my age. I knew how to become alert, confident, and to achieve what my coaches called “relaxed focus.”
Compare this to my first year in my undergraduate degree in viola performance. When I went on stage for studio class performances, I would shrink. My hands would sweat. My legs felt weak. I would botch the prescribed simple etudes and scales. I loved music just as much as I loved hockey, but I hadn’t figured out my musical mental game. My musical mental game could be summarized as “Wince, get through it, go practice.” Being a violist was probably ninety-percent technical, and I had a lot of practicing to do before I could worry about having a mental game. In my second year, something clicked. I realized that performing was performing, and that I needed to tap into a similar “in the zone” head-space. I began working on my musical mental game. I tried to see difficult passages as exciting challenges. I focused on sharing the music instead of reciting the music. I tried to find my relaxed focus. This wasn’t an overnight fix. My hands still got sweaty, my legs still felt weak, but I was starting to find more confidence, control and enjoyment on stage. I wanted to develop this further, but didn’t know where to look. The next year, I received a book from a friend. It was “The Inner Game of Music” by Barry Green. I was thrilled I had found something to guide my mental game. I started incorporating some of Green’s suggestions into my practicing and focused on being the best violist I could. Scales and arpeggios, concerti, and confidence. I went on to pursue a Masters of Music in Viola Performance. During the last leg of this degree, I found myself increasingly reading material on sport or performance psychology. There was a whole body of research dedicated to the psychology of performance, and I wanted to delve deeper into this material. I decided I wanted to fully pursue the idea of performance psychology. For me, this pursuit was a way to combine my three strongest interests: music, hockey, and psychology. I have since completed my Masters of Music in Viola Performance and my Masters of Arts in Musicology. I’ve tried to use these degrees to further my knowledge of and experience with performance psychology. This included writing a thesis on leadership in chamber ensembles, getting in touch with some fascinating pioneers in the field, and implementing a lot of what I’ve learned into my own playing and in my own teaching. This blog is intended to be about sharing what I’m learning about performance psychology from what I’ve read and from my experiences as a violist and a teacher. I’m not pretending to be an expert, or a licensed psychologist. I just want to start pooling resources and experiences together and sharing them with others and see what comes from it. And so, with that, here’s the first post! Thanks for reading, and see you next time. -Mark
1 Comment
Mark, congratulations. we at your old "stomping grounds" are SO proud of you!
6/13/2016 06:41:14 pm
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