FinishMySong Blog

To occupy myself on the journey to and from Ireland last week, as well as during the more painful of my hangovers during the holiday, I read The Inner Game of Music by Barry Green. This is a book based on the ‘Inner Game’ principles set out by W. Timothy Gallwey in his earlier publication The Inner Game of Tennis.

Because of the prose style, the book reads a little too much like a self-help rag from the popular sciences section of your local Waterstones for my liking, but Green does have some interesting ideas to share about how a state of mind affects the ability of musicians to perform when under pressure.

A brief synopsis: the opening of the book attempts to deal with the way we experience consciousness as a series of thoughts and feelings, some of which are invited and controlled, others that are seemingly beyond our power to initiate or terminate. Terminology is introduced (and then used throughout the book) to simplify these mechanisms – Green borrows Gallwey’s idea of there being two conscious ‘selfs’; Self 1 continually mentally verbalises the thoughts, feelings, joys and anxieties of a person whilst Self 2 listens, reflects upon and sometimes responds to these thoughts. The crooks of the theory then is that the instructions and remarks that Self 1 bombards us with when we’re in a difficult or stressful situation (such as during a musical performance), although often reasonable and accurate, often only serve to distract Self 2 from the business of carrying out the necessary calculations etc to get the job done well. So, it stands to reason that focusing your attention away from Self 1 and onto something more constructive and relevant will usually have the effect of increasing concentration and then the level of possible achievement.

Green uses many examples of musicians who find it almost impossible to keep their minds clear enough to play well in concerts because that ‘little voice inside their heads’ that he calls Self 1 is full of doubt and criticism, or at least full of warning of possible scenarios ahead, such as fluffing a particularly difficult passage. Certainly, I can empathise with this testimony because I’ve found it easy at crucial moments in past exams (both written and practical) to let my mind wonder to worries of what will happen if I fail, instead of being confident enough to expend my energy concentrating on making sure that I don’t – this, as Green says, is simply human nature. The Inner Game of Music, then, is about overcoming these natural psychological obstacles in order to bring musicians, music students and music teachers closer to their innate potential by eliminating some or all of the negative results of Self 1 interference. Techniques that the author discusses involve methods of silencing Self 1, for example by coming to accept and embrace inevitable errors as part of a learning model, and of diverting attention away from the niggling worries and toward very musical matters such as the physical and aural experience of playing an instrument, the technical and / or extra-musical properties of the piece and the emotions that it instils in you as a performer. I have tried some of these methods with varying degrees of success and it must be noted that the suggestions Green makes are not exclusive or exhaustive: different ways work for different people.

A noticeable flaw in the content of The Inner Game of Music is that the author pays most attention throughout to situations where a piece is already prepared for performance and the only remaining obstacle is a disorganised or inappropriate psychological state – this takes for granted that the musician is more than capable of getting through the piece under non-stressful situations. I felt it would help if the tone was generalised to deal more closely with everyday learning and practising conditions, where frustration and a lack of self-confidence can destroy a student’s ability even to get to the stage where they feel comfortable playing their scales / pieces to a friend or teacher, let alone consider going ahead with a concert or exam. Also, a discussion of how these methods could be applied to life in general would be interesting: a kind of musician’s guide to dealing with marriage, war and train stations!

All in all, an interesting read that perhaps could have done without the ‘Dummies Guide to Psychiatry’ undertones. In any case, there is a section in the book that deals with more affective teaching methods, some of which I’ll try to bring into my normal routine to see if Gallwey’s ideas about improving your backhand can help my students get their heads around the fingering of Bach fugues!