FinishMySong Blog

I rushed to my clarinet lesson yesterday having set off slightly later than I meant to and then gotten stuck in what seemed like endless traffic jams across Bradford to where my teacher lives. After rushing out of the rain and into her house (not forgetting slipping and nearly falling on her pathway) I got my instrument out and dived straight into the Mozart piece I've been working on all week. And, not surprisingly, my playing was nothing like as polished as it had been just hours earlier in the comfort of my own home.

It seems that, just as with so many things in life, performing music is as much about overcoming mental obstacles as it is about the physical acts of moving and breathing in the correct manner to produce a series of musical phrases. Yesterday I was not in the right frame of mind at all : I had let the journey to my class frustrate and annoy me, fill me with anxiety about being late and ultimately put me in a state of mind that was not conducive to calm, controlled approaches to music. This is a lesson I keep having to relearn - that engaging with musical pursuits is infinitely easier and more enjoyable if you come to it in a positive, confident and open frame of mind. As Barry Green discusses in the Inner Game of Music (see blog on this subject here), internal anxieties manifest themselves in a multitude of physical reactions that hinder the process of making music so addressing these by being conscious of your state of mind is crucial to success as much in practise as it is in performance.

Tonight I am accompanying Joan Cottrill at the Bradford Music Club so I will be concentrating on following Barry Green's advice!