Music Video Lesson: Is practicing thought control?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin and today we have such an interesting show that I think is going to be a game changer for you.

Control your thoughts so you can express your emotions in your music.

Now what is this all about? Well you know what? One of the main freedoms you have, maybe the most essential freedom we all have is the freedom of our own thoughts.

Now some people try to control their emotions and I don't recommend that at all. I think you should express your emotions and feel your emotions.

You shouldn't control them but your thoughts is a different subject altogether. Think about this.

Is practicing thought control? Absolutely. That's exactly what practicing is in a nutshell.

By the way if you enjoy this video and want to take your piano playing to the next level go to the description. There are resources there that could be a life changer for you.

Okay so thought control, the freedom of your thoughts. Practicing is a thought process after all. You might think no, practicing is a matter of developing the strength of your hands. Well there is physiology involved in practicing. But think about this. Do you ever see young children particularly on YouTube you see these little tiny kids they can't even reach the pedals. They have pedal extenders. They have little tiny little floppy little fingers and they're playing Chopin etudes and things you go how is this possible? Obviously their physiology can't be a match for most adults yet these little kids with the power of their thought, the practicing, being able to figure out how to amass repertoire and play on a high level is obviously a thought process because they don't have the hands. They're barely going to reach the keys on the bench right? So there's a whole lot to this about thought being the primary aspect of what practicing essentially is.

Think about this for a minute. You ever see those people who can remember vast numbers of numbers or things for example there are people who can recite pi to hundreds of decimal points and you wonder how can they remember these vast numbers? Well they do use some techniques like they'll imagine a large house with many rooms and in each of the rooms there are chests of drawers and in the drawers there are different items and all the items represent different numbers so they might go into a room at the end of the hall in the third drawer where there's a pair of green shoes and that's a certain number and the green shoes then there are socks that go with those shoes and those are in another place and the socks have another number and they kind of build a whole memory and everything connects to everything else so there's a sequence to the memories and that's how they're able to put together which seems mind boggling but it's exactly the same process in learning a piece of music. It's like a story for example.

If you've ever had an experience and then you tell a long story with lots of details and you think how many details you're remembering the reason why it's easy to remember is everything leads to everything else.

Well great musical compositions also have a logic of how the music unfolds so everything leads to everything else. That's why for example as a kid I learned how to memorize from my father Morton Estrin who's such a great teacher. He taught me my first lessons. He taught so many people how to learn music yet in school and things like social studies which was non -sequential you know dates, generals, battles and all that stuff I was lost because things were not sequential but piece of music I could just learn how to piece it together and one note led to another and no problem.

So this is how you thought control works in your practicing.

There's a whole other side to this so the other side is performing is also a version of thought control. I remember the Olympics Sasha Cohen after a brilliant performance said it went exactly as I thought it would.

What a statement to make.

You see that's a form of visualization so in performing you must also have a certain amount of control over your thoughts and the way to do this is not by trying to block out the audience. Imagine you're in your practice room or practicing at home and just imagine you're just doing it and trying to ignore the audience. No the opposite. Instead when you're at home when you have the piece in good shape you imagine the audience there. You imagine being in that place and that agitation that heightened sense you get take deep breaths and live it and imagine it in your practice, practicing performing and this is a version of thought control so when you get to the actual performance you start like whoa, whoa there's an audience here and you're shocked by it and it throws you off. Instead you're in a familiar spot because you thought it through in a relaxed state in your own home imagining it so when you're there you're comfortable you've been looking forward to it. This is another version of thought control. There are so many different versions. Think about this. There are people for example who do meditation which is a whole other type of thought control blocking out the internal dialogue to have pure thought and a relaxed state. It takes a lot to have that kind of thought control and it could be incredibly relaxing to just take everything out of your thoughts. That's a form of thought control in itself isn't it? I know that when I go to the dentist for example and I'm sitting in that chair I will not be thinking about the dentist. Instead I take myself back to California where we lived for so many years and we had good friends in Laguna Beach and we used to go there all the time and walk on the beach and I put myself and that's my thoughts.

I'm smelling the air, hearing the waves and walking on the beach and while they're drilling away my thoughts are somewhere else because once again your thoughts are the only true freedom you have in your life and if you can control your thoughts you can express your emotions in your music.

If you want to learn more about this and other aspects of developing your piano playing go to the description and there's great resources for you there. I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com your online piano resource. Thanks all you subscribers. We'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/control-your-thoughts-to-express-emotion-in-your-music/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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