Transcriber: Ola Królikowska Reviewer: Anna Sobota
(Music starts)
(Music ends)
(Applause)
Remember
when you had to play musical instruments in front of people
or you had a job interview or you had to talk to your boss?
Maybe you had a dry mouth, clammy hands,
nervous shakes, butterflies in your stomach,
a pounding heart or the sense of feeling trapped while on stage.
Or maybe you were worried about negative reactions from the audience.
Almost each and every one of us has experienced such thoughts or feelings,
once in our lives.
These kinds of thoughts or feelings are known as music performance anxiety
or, more commonly, stage fright.
Music performance anxiety is a widely defined term
and can also be felt before performances, whereas, strictly speaking,
stage fright on your cousin stage.
It’s not only a common issue among amateurs,
but also among professional musicians.
For example, the legendary cellist Pablo Casals said that
he often had music performance anxiety,
even though he gave more than a thousand concerts in his lifetime.
So how can we overcome this?
In the field of sports,
athletes prepare for their tournaments not only physically but also mentally.
Mental training in sports has been researched
and used more systematically than music.
There are many sports psychologists
who help athletes to integrate mental training into their daily routine.
So what is mental training?
In sport psychology, there are roughly two definitions, narrow and broad.
Narrow mental training is defined
as regulating movements through imagining them.
This means that by imagining optimal movements with visualization
you can improve your real movements.
Broad mental training
entails regulation of movements and other psychological techniques,
as well as goal setting and managing negative emotions.
I believe that we can use these narrow and broad mental training definitions
also in music.
Moving forward, I will use the term mental training with a broader definition.
I am a pianist, a piano pedagogue,
and I have been teaching piano at the University of Erfurt.
I found this topic hasn’t been explored enough in the field of music,
and many music students struggle with this issue.
So I started to research mental training for musicians.
There are three goals for my research.
Firstly, to systematize techniques of mental training for musicians
which already exist in sport and music
so that musicians can use them more easily.
Secondly, to see if it’s possible
to integrate techniques of mental training into piano lessons.
Finally, I wanted to confirm through a small size experiment
if mental training helps musicians
to deal with music performance anxiety better than before.
I found many techniques of mental training,
which only exist in sports and in music.
I put them in four categories:
activation regulation,
motivation regulation,
regulation of emotions
and mental practicing.
Firstly, activation regulation means achieving an optimal activation level
through relaxation techniques such as breathing, autogenic training,
which is a kind of self-hypnosis,
you can increase your concentration and comprehension
and change subjective perspective to stress us and improve control.
Secondly, motivation regulation means
increasing the intrinsic motivation to prevent burnout.
This entails goal setting, visualization, affirmation
and attribution training.
Attribution training changes your perceptions of the past
to increase motivation and to create a more positive future
by understanding why we failed and also why we succeeded.
It helps us to attribute our failure to something that we can change.
For example, the lack of effort or poor practicing strategies
in order to make more effort or think about better strategies
instead of attributing it to the lack of ability.
We can use these strengths and weaknesses to help us succeed in the future
by using positive self-talk and visualization.
Thirdly,
regulation of emotions means increasing awareness and attention control
and changing negative thoughts to positive ones.
Awareness training is often combined with meditation.
Attention control means
developing the ability to comfortably switch your attention
between yourself and your environment.
Sports psychologist found that
good athletes are able to switch these most quickly and comfortably.
There are four different modes:
internal, external, narrow and broad.
Internal narrow
is a focus on a single point in your surroundings, mostly of your body.
For example, each individual finger while you're playing the piano.
Internal broad is being aware of your entire body.
External narrow is a focus on a single point in your surroundings,
like listening to melody.
External abroad is being aware of your general surroundings
and how this affects you.
Finally, mental practicing means
practicing without making any notes on the instrument.
This practice helps you to reflect and internalize
what actually happens in musical pieces.
There are three phases which use these techniques:
learning, practicing and use phases.
You can learn techniques
which help you to improve your performance and mental skills.
Then, practice and adjust normally two to four weeks before concerts.
Finally, use them before concerts.
I undertook a small experiment with nine participants
whom I gave piano lessons to.
We did two concerts six months apart.
The first concert was a control
so we could see the difference between before and after.
Before the first concert we didn’t do any mental training.
B
during our piano lessons for six weeks.
I gave them a questionnaire measuring competition anxiety levels
from sports psychology to compare their anxiety before the concerts,
pre and post mental training.
The results show that
somatic and cognitive anxieties decreased significantly.
Self-confidence also increased clearly,
so in this small experiment
the positive effect of mental training could be confirmed.
Before I used these techniques,
I often used to have stage fright during concerts,
especially at crucial moments.
Then I started to read a number of books, take part in courses and workshops,
and through engaging in these activities,
now, I know how to use my stage fright as an advantage and positive energy
and not see it as a drawback.
In that process, I started to think it's important to ask the following questions.
Why do we actually play music?
Why do we perform in front of an audience?
Sometimes we tend to think that people judge us as a person
when we play an instrument
but we actually want to share music, right?
Because it's just beautiful and powerful, you know?
And in order to do it, we have to get out of our own way and not obstruct ourselves.
By the way, I guess we are not all musicians here, right?
But in our lives,
we have many opportunities to give important presentations.
For example, at school, at university,
to introduce new projects or products,
in a team meeting or presentation like TED Talk.
Anyone can face performance anxiety in a variety of situations.
Now I’m going to tell you
what I have done in the last couple of days
to prepare for this talk and for my earlier piano performance.
I went through many techniques of mental training.
But in the last few days, especially, I used a visualization technique.
So let's do it together.
Please sit nice and comfortably.
Let your hands sit gently on your lap.
Close your eyes if you want.
Relax your face.
Let go of any tension in your neck and shoulders.
Take a nice, deep, slow breath.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Imagine your breath going out, coming in,
just like waves.
When you are relaxed,
imagine one situation you are having one of the best performances of your life.
It could be a music performance, a dance performance, a presentation
or a team meeting.
How are you feeling in that situation?
Are you calm, confident, charismatic?
What do you see and hear?
What kind of aura were you giving off?
Picture every detail of this positive feeling.
Imagine that this positive feeling gets even stronger
and you feel even better.
You’ve had this feeling before
and still have this feeling inside of you.
Now imagine the future.
Think about a situation
where you want to give a good performance.
Now you can feel a strong, positive feeling within you,
which you've experienced in the past.
You can sense the positivity around you in that situation too.
Enjoy this moment.
Just feel the flow of energy inside of you.
When you’re ready, open your eyes.
If you can practice this kind of visualization
just five minutes a day,
it would definitely help you to give a much better performance.
Techniques of mental training will allow you
to give the performance that you deserve to have
and you can enjoy your performances even more.
Thank you.