The Confident Musicianing Podcast
Want to get better at your music auditions? You CAN transform the way you audition and The Confident Musicianing Podcast guides you through it.
I’m Eleanor, and together we dive into concrete strategies for the before, during, and after of your audition process so that you can be better prepared and crush that performance! If you’re a music student ready to revolutionize your auditioning, let’s jump in. Tune in every Tuesday for another insight-filled episode; see you there!
The Confident Musicianing Podcast
My One Trick To Transform Performance Prep
What is that one thing that I do to transform my prep? Visualisation. Here is how I do it.
This episode is also available as a blog post. Click here to read!
Use code ELEANOR15 for 15% off your Notabl_ practice journal, and level up your focus in your sessions! Click here for your journal.
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Hello and welcome to the Confident Musicianing Podcast. My name is Eleanor and I am a British American oboist studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland literally my dream school and it took me a long way to get there. I applied and auditioned for 12 schools in three different countries. It was a lot of hard work but, oh my gosh, so worth it. I want you to have the confidence to work hard in achieving your goals, so come with me as we go on this journey together. So sit down, pull up a chair, take a seat or, if you're on the go, welcome to the Confident Musicianing Podcast.
Speaker 1:What if I told you that there is a way to see how you are going to perform in a performance before you are actually performing in that performance? You'd probably say, eleanor, that's a bit weird and strange, and how do I do it? Well, there is actually a way Now. It's not necessarily a way to know how you are going to do for sure, but there is a way to make it easier for your brain to see that you are able to do well in your performance or your audition. And I mean, that's something that I have been doing for a while, even when I didn't realize I was doing it and it has really, really helped me. So today we are going to dive right into what exactly that is and how I do it. Now, the reason why we are diving into this and we're bringing this up is that I recently did my final recital at my conservatoire for my first year of my undergraduate degree in oboe performance, and this strategy, this tactic, really, really helped me in being confident and working through performance anxiety in my recital, and I put a poll on my Instagram before my recital showing kind of me doing this technique, and I asked you guys if you also do it, and there was a definitely a varied response, but there were a lot of you that said no, I don't, I don't do this. Tell me more about it. And that is my answer to you we are going to talk more about it. So, basically, what is it? You might be asking what? What are you talking about? Tell me how I can, um, make it easier for my brain to see that I can actually do well in whatever I am doing. That is called visualization. So the technique is called visualization, um, and it's something that I use all the time. I think, not like literally, not just in my practice or my performing, not just in my music and oboe life, but also just like generally, and it can be really, really, really helpful. So today we're going to dive into what does it mean to do visualization, what is visualization and also, how do I do visualization when it comes to my performances and my auditions, and hopefully this can be helpful to you in your performances and your auditions. So let's dive right into it.
Speaker 1:What does it mean? What is visualization? Visualization is a kind of meditation where you basically imagine a situation and imagine it going however you want it to go and imagine how you are going to feel in the situation. Now, just a disclaimer I'm not a therapist, I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm just a musician who uses this and that's kind of yeah, that's like what I understand it to be. So this is kind of my understanding of it, how I use it.
Speaker 1:It is not a like therapist's perspective or a neuroscientist's perspective, but the thing is, our brains can have the capacity to believe something has happened, even if we are just imagining it. So if we are just imagining something, our brains can see that thing and understand that it is something that is happening to us, which is why it is so easy to kind of spiral into a negative loop if we are very stressed about a performance or an audition, because our brain, you know, I mean, if we are thinking about doing something badly, our brain can see that, if we are imagining it, and then you have all of these feelings of oh my gosh, what happens if I do something badly? Because your brain is kind of already seeing it? But what if we just turn the tables on that one and do the exact opposite? That is visualization. So if we want something to go well, that feels miles away. I mean, we all know the feeling of like thinking, oh my gosh, I have to do something well, but it feels like so far away to actually do that thing. Well, then we can sit down and imagine it going well and that shows our brains that it can go well. Okay, and this is this is a this definitely a a very mentally interesting episode and thing. This has nothing to do with us actually playing our instrument. It has everything to do with us kind of picturing doing well in whatever we need to do. Well, to show our brains that we can do well, and then it doesn't feel as hard to actually do well. So that's what it is.
Speaker 1:How do I use it? So this is how I use visualization in my performance before my performance, a few days before I start doing the visualization this is after I have done all my practice for weeks or however long months, you know a few days before actually doing the performance, I start to visualize and this is what I do. So I sit down and I focus on my breath to really get into that calming meditative state. If you have never meditated before, like it is so helpful and so valuable. And you know I feel like a lot of people when they think of meditation, they think of like someone doing something perfectly. It's literally about making mistakes and and struggling with it. Honestly, meditation is not perfect, but I sit there and I focus on my breath to kind of calm down and then I imagine doing the thing.
Speaker 1:So I imagine walking into the room that I am performing in.
Speaker 1:How do I feel walking into that room? Kind of understanding, maybe, if I feel a bit stressed. Where in my body do I feel that stress? And just kind of sensing that and sitting with it and being like, okay, I feel a bit stressed, but my brain is imagining me walking into this room, and what the trick is kind of to do is imagine walking into the room and how am I going to walk into the room? Right, knowing how I'm going to walk into the room. So I'm going to walk into the room with a big smile on my face, I'm going to put my stuff down next to the stand and then I'm going to look at the audience with a big smile and start the performance.
Speaker 1:Now, if I hadn't imagined that, I might have gotten onto the stage and oh my gosh, like there are people there and where does my stuff go? And what do I do first? And oh my gosh, ah. And then, all of a sudden, it's like just frazzled, completely frazzled, but because I have imagined what I'm going to do and actually went through it in my head, I know exactly what I'm going to do before I actually do it, and that can be really helpful. It's kind of like learning, blocking almost, or learning how, how you are going to do these things, and showing your brain that this is how we're going to do it and it's going to be great.
Speaker 1:And then how does it feel to play, right? Then I start thinking about my playing. Maybe the room feels a tad hot, maybe it feels a tad cold. How does that make me feel? Also, showing that my brain like showing my brain that if the room is a bit hot, I will be okay, just kind of breathing through that, imagining okay, the room's feeling a bit toasty and that is okay and we're going to keep playing. And so when I get there, if the room is a bit toasty, my brain, instead of going, oh, my gosh, the room's toasty, oh, this is going to be really bad, it's like oh, the room's toasty, and I know that I can be okay with that. The same thing for cold. You know, think about who is there. You know, like what am I playing? Kind of all of these basic questions. And just sitting with it and showing your brain like, okay, this is what we're going to do and this is how we're going to feel. And I think that's the most important thing. How are we going to feel? So I take a deep breath and I focus on feeling excited and joyous about my playing. So really feeling like how does it feel to play when I am just loving playing, when I'm having so much fun?
Speaker 1:And then I go through my pieces. So for me, I like to put them on and listen to them. I literally like open my phone and, like you know, put on the pieces of music and listen to them. And I'm not mentally practicing. This is a big thing. I'm not sat there with a score, I'm not doing score study. I am just sitting there imagining myself playing them, imagining myself in a room and my breathing, sometimes like I do the breathing that I might be doing in the piece, sometimes I might be like moving with the piece. I mean that makes sense, but all in all, I am very calm. I am just imagining myself and I am imagining my playing and also how I'm going to feel. I am literally deciding how I am going to feel at that time and point, literally deciding how I am going to feel as I am playing the music. And because of this, it makes it so easy for my brain to, or easier for my brain to be like, oh, we're gonna play this thing and I know how we're gonna feel because we've done it before. We know how we're gonna feel.
Speaker 1:The main goal of this whole thing is focusing on feeling contented and, okay, feeling calm. That is the goal. This is not. I am not practicing. This is not mental practice. I'm not going through the notes, I am imagining how I'm going to feel. I am deciding, before I even get there how I'm going to feel, and visualizing feeling calm in the situation, and that can make it so much easier for my brain to just be more calm.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, I get nervous, like of course there's nerves still involved, but seeing in my brain and my mind's eye, seeing like, okay, this is how I'm going to do it, I know that I can do it like this because I've just pictured myself doing it and I like that makes it feel like I can do it easier. That can be the difference between having a calm thing, a calm performance, and then one that I'm just completely frazzled by and stressed out about. So that's how I do visualization. That's kind of like a brief introduction into how I do my visualization, and I did it for my recital and I have an exam reset coming up and I am planning on doing it for that. It is so helpful because we can control our like our realities, we can control our emotions, we can control, kind of, how we decide to to approach situations and if we show our brain, I can do this in a calm state even if we're feeling nervous this is this, by the way does not negate nerves. You're not gonna just be like there's no nerves. You're still gonna have nerves, but your brain will be able to see easier. Hopefully it can see kind of like oh, you know, yes, I'm feeling nervous, but I know that I can do this because I've seen myself do it right. So, yeah, that's how we do visualization and I think you know it can be really, really, really helpful for me and I hope it's helpful for you.
Speaker 1:Before we do the recap, I have to tell you about something really exciting. If you practice which I'm guessing you probably do, because I'm guessing you're a musician obviously practicing is super, duper, duper important for any performance or any audition. But how do we know that we are practicing enough? How do we know that we are, you know, designing our practice in a positive and beneficial way? A great way to work on knowing how we are practicing is planning our practice, and for me, planning my practice is a big, big big thing that I do. It can really make the difference between a, you know, really focused practice session versus maybe a more distracted practice session, and a great journal that I used for planning my practice is a notable practice journal.
Speaker 1:I use this journal. I love this journal. It is seriously the best thing in planning my practice. I can write down all the things that I need to do for the day in my practice, I can check them off and there's even a reflection section so that I can look back and see what has worked for me and what hasn't. As soon as I found out that this journal was helping me, I knew that I had to tell you about it and I knew that I had to give you a code. So, for your own very own practice journal, use code Eleanor15 for 15% off. That is, e-l-e-a-n-o-r 15 for 15% off. There will be a link in the description, in the show notes, so that you can get your journal. And don't forget to use the code for 15% off your journal and get yourself a journal and start planning those practice sessions for more effective and focused sessions, because isn't that what we need when we are, when we are preparing for a performance or an audition or whatever it is that we are preparing for? You know me, I never recommend anything that I don't absolutely love. This code is an affiliate code, so I do receive a commission, with no extra cost to you.
Speaker 1:All right, let's do a quick recap. So the first thing, kind of what is visualization? Visualization is a kind of meditation where we literally imagine a situation and then imagine how we are going to feel in that situation. It can really really help just kind of stay calm and show our brains that we can actually do the thing that we need to do. How do I use it?
Speaker 1:A few days before the performance, I start doing this. I, you know, gather my thoughts and I kind of like do some breath work. So I like I mean it's not like breath work, it's not like old fancy schmancy, it's literally just me focusing on my breath and then imagining doing the audition and asking questions like how do I feel right now? And you know what? Like, let's imagine it. If the room's a bit hot, let's imagine it. If the room's a bit cold, let's imagine it. If you know, my read is a bit dry, you know, and imagine feeling okay and being like okay, we have a dry read, but it will be okay, and imagining it still being okay if my read is dry, or imagining it. You know there's lots of different ways. Now, of course, there's an infinite um, there are infinite things that you can imagine happening in your, in your performance.
Speaker 1:Don't go all out, just like, imagine it going well, and that can really help our brains, um feel, feel more calm and ready for this session or for the, for, yeah, I absolutely love visualization. It has really been a game changer for me and my performing, and I hope that it can help you as well. So, thank you so much for hanging out with me with this episode. If you did enjoy it, please do show the love, like, subscribe, comment, send it to a friend, send it to all your friends who have performances coming up. And, yeah, thank you so much for hanging out. Of course, as always, all the things to do with this episode will be in the description, in the show notes, from the blog post that has to do with this episode to the link for the practice journal and the code as well, and yeah. So thank you so much for listening in and I will see you in the next episode. All right, take care. Bye-bye.
