This chapter will address the primary research question of “How can the ideas of OPTIMAL theory of motor learning inform my own practice?” through the breakdown of the OPTIMAL theory into the three tenets and individually detailing how it has shaped and changed the way I practice, but more importantly - how it has allowed me to develop and grow as a musician and as a person. This was done through a lengthy personal intervention, in which some aspects are still in the process at the time of writing this. This chapter will also address the aspect of performance due to the close ties it had with my practising. The debilitating effects of my performance was the main motivator of changing my practice methods, and if I wanted to improve my performance experience, the change had to start from the practice room, be it through thoughts or physical practice (including methods, strategies and approach).
It is also worth mentioning that the motivational factors contributed more to the cognitive side of practising, while external focus mostly contributed more to the physical process of practising.
While being mostly autonomous in the process, there were courses, workshops and interventions related to practice and mindfulness that I took since my preparatory year, which largely shaped my experiences and therefore this chapter as well. It is worth mentioning the chronological order of these programmes, together with the names of the teachers and coaches, some of which will be mentioned in this chapter:
Preparatory Year
Alexander Technique - Fiona Tree
Yoga for Musicians - Phyllis Ferwada
Mindful Practicing Intervention - Magdalena Morales Hidalgo
First Year Masters
Quality Practice - Susan Williams
Audition Training Workshop - Roger Regter and Tim Dowling
Mental Training Workshop - Martine van der Loo
Applied Performance Science - Susan Williams and Wieke Karsten
Mental Resilience Workshop - Martine van der Loo
Performance Preparation Pod - Susan Williams (coach) and 4 other students
4.1 Autonomy
As mentioned in the introduction, anxiety was the biggest hurdle in my improvement as a musician. While searching for the cure, I took a “Mental Training” workshop with Martine van der Loo, a health psychologist specialising in mental coaching for musicians, as well as being the solo flautist in the Residentie Orkest. After the workshop had ended, I went up to her and spoke to her about my issues with anxiety and I asked her if there was a cure. She replied with, “There is no cure, but we can try to reduce it”. She then briefly talked about the Yerkes–Dodson law and suggested that anxiety is actually necessary (in small amounts) for an optimal performance.
Following this exchange, it refocused me and I was no longer searching for the “cure”. More importantly, it shifted my mindset from an emotional to an objective approach in dealing with anxiety. I also realised that there was no quick and easy way to fix it and realised that I had to be responsible in the long process of learning how to cope with it. This perceived freedom in self-improvement led me to take on a more self-regulatory process.
Over the following months, I started to take ownership of my “rehabilitation” program, starting with a thorough self-analysis of my anxiety. I realised that during performances, my focus was on the audience and what they could be thinking. This led to increased anxiety, and it usually manifested as uncontrollable shaking of my body, leading to embarrassment and even more anxiety. I realised that this was leading to a downward spiral, and I had to do something about it. It was at this point where I also tried to identify the root of my anxiety, which were mostly issues that dealt with self-concept (e.g., lack of trust in myself, negative self-talk, fear of judgement, seeking approval from others, etc.). I started to put new ideas into practice, in which I will address more in the next two sections of “Enhanced Expectancies” and “External Focus”.
Through the discovery of a new approach in overcoming my anxieties, it encouraged me to sit down and acknowledge my deepest darkest fears. Through awareness and the processing of my emotions by myself while tapping on information available, I slowly learnt how to cope with my anxiety. The progress that I saw that I was making gave me immense happiness and motivation to continuously seek for improvement.
In the OPTIMAL theory, Wulf et al. (2016) noted that:
“[A] more active involvement of the learner in the learning process promotes deeper processing of relevant information; encourages error estimation; fosters the use of self-regulation strategies; or that giving the learner control over the practice conditions might be, in a general sense, more motivating. Increased task interest and motivation to learn when learners are given a choice has indeed been found.”
Looking back at the process of dealing with anxiety, which is still an ongoing process, I do recognise these qualities, which affirms that there was definitely an underlying autonomy. More importantly, the benefits of autonomy presented in the OPTIMAL theory acts as a testament to the continuous autonomous approach of learning in order for me to enhance my musical learning and performances.
4.2 Enhanced Expectancies
The root of my anxiety was low self-worth and it resulted in low levels of expectancies and self-efficacy. In this section, I will be discussing the different ways and approaches I took to address the issue of self-worth as well as to slowly build up my confidence in myself again.
Fighting Avoidance
When self-examining my thoughts, I realised that I was always searching for the “cure” because I wanted to get rid of anxiety while avoiding having to deal with the many underlying issues that led to the anxiety. McCormick et al. (2003) also mentions that there is evidence that individuals avoid circumstances where they feel helpless and would rather focus their energy on other circumstances which they are more capable of. Additionally, less efficacious music students pursue other activities instead of pursuing music. The fact that my anxiety was affecting my relationship with making music on the horn also contributed to the motivation for my personal intervention.
I realised that the habit of avoidance was also happening in the practice room, where unresolved challenges were ignored, and I reasoned with myself that I wasn’t good enough. Through being honest with myself about what I needed to improve on, acknowledging I needed more time, and more importantly, using better practice methods, I saw myself being more willing to tackle the challenges I faced, instead of brushing them aside.
Self-concept
As identified earlier, I had a very self-conscious approach to music making and performance, being worried about what the audience might think of my performance, while I was performing. Looking at the broader picture, I realised the problem lied in my self-concept. Self-concept is the overarching term that is used to include the various self-definitions of an individual. It is used to illustrate the thoughts of a person thinking about oneself, or how other people think of them, and what they believe to be true about themselves (Wehrle & Fasbender, 2018).
My thoughts about myself before I started this research were mostly not kind. I did not have a healthy self-image and it was due to many and various experiences from the past, leading to a low self-confidence. I started to exercise (mostly cardio exercises and yoga) and eat healthier, to make me feel healthier and better about myself. A big part of the personal intervention was also to reflect - on past events and process them, as well as to re-evaluate the way I perceived myself. More relevant to my practice was to start being kinder to myself in the practice room. This was made apparent to me through the “Mental Training” workshop with Martine van der Loo as well. This was the exchange as far as I could remember:
(After performing once for the group, Martine asked me what thoughts went through my mind)
Me: “I don’t think I can say them out loud, there were a lot of vulgarities.”
Martine: “Do you teach music to children?”
Me: “Yes”
Martine: “So if the child makes the same mistake as you, would you have said the same
to them?”
Me:“No, of course not!”
It was very shocking to me to hear that from her - it was so apparent that it was not healthy, but I have been unconsciously practising like this for so long. What struck me the most was that I wasn’t as kind to myself as I would have to anyone else. Since that day, I started to be very conscious of the language I used with myself.
The low sense of self-worth from criticising myself was linked to the fact that I was very concerned and had a negative outlook on how others perceived me. In her book, “The Psychology of Music Performance Anxiety”, Dianna T. Kenny (2011) suggested that “[i]f the musician is highly self-critical and unsure of his/her ability, they will perceive the listener to be the same - highly critical of their performance.” She goes on to add that “[r]uminating about what the adjudicators might be thinking tolls the death knell for a performance.” This was exactly what was happening during my performances. The way I tried to deal with it was through a logical explanation to myself - I realised that I could never change the way others perceived me, but I can always change the way I perceive myself and that was all that mattered. This was extremely self-empowering as I slowly gained back the control of my performance, which was once given to others, without them even knowing so. Hence, by reducing self-criticism, having a healthier self-perception, and having self-empowerment, I was able to reduce the negative impact of self-consciousness. Furthermore, Roy Baumeister (1984) showed that a heightened sense of self-consciousness would negatively affect motor control.
However, there were benefits to my levels of self-consciousness. It made me aware of my thought processes and what I needed to change, which brings us to the last factor of self-concept, what individuals believe to be true about themselves. I knew that the qualities that I saw in myself back then (low self-worth, unhealthy self-image, highly self-critical, low self-confidence, etc.) were not what I wanted to see in myself. Through the lessons, workshops, and discussions with friends, I realised that I had the resources and willpower to enact change.
Comparison and the Need to Be Perfect
In the same line of the self-concept, I was projecting my lack of self-worth onto others through constant comparison with others in my head. What was happening was probably that I was trying to use positive normative feedback or vicarious experiences to enhance my self-efficacy levels. However, as Zenelak’s (2019) study had shown, the combination of vicarious experiences and affective states led musicians to cast self-doubt when faced with competition. Kenny (2011) also proposed that evaluation was the crux of music performance anxiety, and with constant self-evaluation and self-comparison with my peers, it negatively affected my mental well-being. Furthermore, earlier in Chapter 3, we saw the detrimental effects negative normative feedback had on learning and performance mentioned by Wulf et al. (2016). Csikszentmihalyi (1990) also gave his thoughts on competition which were extremely relevant to me:
“The roots of the word “compete” are the Latin con petire, which meant “to seek together.” What each person seeks is to actualize her potential, and this task is made easier when others force us to do our best. Of course, competition improves experience only as long as attention is focused primarily on the activity itself. If extrinsic goals—such as beating the opponent, wanting to impress an audience, or obtaining a big professional contract—are what one is concerned about, then competition is likely to become a distraction, rather than an incentive to focus consciousness on what is happening”
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p.72-73)
With perpetual comparison with my peers, a perfectionist mindset took root in the way I practised. One might question, how was it that I was perfectionistic, but at the same time avoiding problems? The way I practised was in a perfectionistic way, obsessing over the same passage repeatedly in the practice room. However, the underlying issues were mostly fundamental, and I was avoiding dealing with them. This created a very unhealthy cycle of learning new pieces, getting stuck at technically demanding spots, practising (with bad practice methods) repeatedly and obsessively with no results, thinking I was not good enough and then finally giving up and hoping I would not face the same problem again (Spoilers: they did). This perfectionist mentality was also a result of always trying to prove myself to others. Undoubtedly, this did not work out too well.
It might be worthwhile at this juncture, to look at some theoretical information on the topic of perfectionism, and anxiety. In her book, Kenny (2011) had a chapter on perfectionism and she detailed all the debilitating effects on performance, such as being easily depressed by bad performances, reduced concentration, and impaired performance satisfaction. In the practice room, this would result in an over expenditure of focus in assessment. In general, she argued that perfectionism would lead to having a fixed perception of success and failure, view success without any nuances, and based their self-worth on the result of performances. With the odds stacked against perfectionists, they are bound to fail more often, and this would lead to anxiety, depression, humiliation and shame. Furthermore, she also noted that in her 2009 study, it was found that the self-given pressure accounted for the cause of music performance anxiety in 66% of tertiary-level performing arts students and 88% in orchestral musicians.
During my personal intervention, I found a healthier approach, which was to compare my progress with myself, but of course in a healthy manner. Bandura (1997) affirms this by stating that a trait of highly efficacious individuals was through measuring their success by evaluating self-improvement instead of comparison with others. I started to take stock of my progress more often than before, but I was also mindful of the fact that change needed to take time and I had to give myself the space and time for the changes I was making. During times where I did not feel like I was improving, I always fell back on my knowledge of the learning curve, which I learnt during my “Quality Practice” class with Susan Williams. She mentioned that unlike a straight diagonal line which was the preconceived notion, the actual learning curve consisted of a learning spurt, followed by a plateau. Before the next impending learning spurt, there needs to be a dip after the plateau. Therefore, this concept allowed me to trust the process and to have faith in my practice.
Anxiety/Stress vs Excitement
In our private exchange after the “Mental Training” workshop, besides showing me the diagram of the Yerkes–Dodson law, Martine also mentioned that anxiety or stress and excitement produced the same kind of adrenaline in our body. I realised that this perception of the same cognitive effects of an adrenaline rush, from a negative to a positive one, allowed me to be more self-efficacious in how I could manage it. As mentioned under “Physiological and Affective States”, Bandura (1997) noted how the different intense emotions resulting in an increased heart rate would lead to different perception in individuals based on their preconceived notions. Through mindful perception of anxiety or stress as excitement from that day on, I started to build a better relationship with performances and slowly taught my body that the adrenaline was not something to fear. Bandura (1997) also demonstrated the benefits of coping efficacy on anxiety through quoting a study:
“That perceived control can cognitively transform threatening situations into safe one and thereby obviate anxiety is graphically illustrated in a laboratory study of agoraphobics by Sanderson, Rapee, and Barlow (1989). Inhaling air enriched in carbon dioxide typically provokes panic attacks in agoraphobics. Comparable groups of agoraphobics received the same amount of carbon dioxide but under different beliefs of control. One group could do nothing to control the amount of carbon dioxide they received. A second group was led to believe they could regulate the amount of carbon dioxide they received by closing a valve. In fact, the valve had no effect on the flow of carbon dioxide, so the control was illusory. Agoraphobics who believed they were exercising control remained calm and rarely experienced panic attacks or catastrophic thoughts. But those who knew they could not exercise any control experienced mounting anxiety and had a high rate of panic attacks and catastrophic thoughts about dying, losing control, and going crazy.”
(Bandura, 1997, p.141)
Fortunately, my experience with anxiety was not as severe and extreme as the agoraphobics. However, it was clear that there was value in the way I perceived the adrenaline rush on my performance anxiety and that this shift in mindset would enhance my self-efficacy in managing the effects of the adrenaline.
Growth Mindset - Use of Mantra & Setting Myself Up For Success
Underlying my personal intervention was a big shift of my perception of abilities. Referring back to the terms used under “Conceptions of ability” in Chapter 3.1.2 by Wulf et al. (2016), I changed my entity views on music abilities to an incremental one. As mentioned earlier, I had wiped the mindset that I was never going to be good enough when I could not overcome the challenges in the practice room and instead, started giving myself the time and space to solve the challenges instead, having faith in my practice, and trust that the results will come eventually.
Another contribution to this new shift of mindset was the use of a mantra. I first came across the use of affirmations through Susan’s “Quality Practice”, where affirmation setting was addressed in our first lesson. We had to think of what we wanted to improve in ourselves or in our practice and formulate through a sentence that is as if it was already happening. Susan guided the class in reformulating our mantras to make them more succinct and we were given a piece of paper to write it down. Our homework was to bring the paper with us to every practice session, place it on the stand and read it out before practising. A more detailed description can be found in Susan’s book, “Quality Practice”, Worksheet 7. A few weeks after I first started out using affirmations, I realised that I was doing my affirmations more internally but repeatedly, and I felt that my affirmations were beginning to resemble that of a mantra, in the sense that I was repeating it to myself many times over the course of the day. My mantras usually changed on a weekly basis, based on what I felt I needed to improve on or change in. Some examples were “I am confident”, “I trust my practice”, “The results will come”, “I love myself” and “Challenges excite me”.
As I was not just experiencing anxiety when performing on stage, but also during ensemble situations alongside my classmates, I knew I had to tackle my anxiety in both circumstances. Kenny (2011) also mentioned the use of systematic desensitisation to deal with music performance anxiety, through replacing the conditioned response (i.e. anxiety) with an opposite response (e.g. calmness and relaxation). This had to be done through either imagination, real-life settings or virtual reality. More importantly, Kenny (2011) also mentioned that it was necessary to “understand and change faulty cognitions, reassess practice and pre-performance routines, and/or bring unconscious fears into awareness so they can be processed and understood” for systematic desensitisation to be effective.
With a healthier mindset and better practice methods (which will be discussed in the next section), I knew that the next step was to create new successful experiences on stage to be able to overpower the memory of past experiences. Bandura (1997) theorised, and Zelenak (2019) had confirmed that enactive mastery experience was the strongest determinant of self-efficacy. Furthermore, Kenny (2011) revealed that her past study had shown that lack of preparation was the leading cause of music performance anxiety in music students.
This process of creating successful experiences was done through several ways. Firstly, I made sure every time I was going to be in a situation that might have triggered anxiety, I prepared well. This was through sufficient preparation of the musical material as well as being mentally prepared (e.g. viewing anxiety as excitement, focusing on the music and intention). Next, I realised that sometimes my anxiety arose when I took more than I could handle. Juggling school work, school projects and other performance was sometimes a tricky task and I realised I had to say no when I needed to, and wherever I could. Along the lines of rewording the experience of the adrenaline rush, I also brought the same mindset into the practice room and I was more mindful about the words I used in the practice room. I started using rewording and rephrasing my self-talk language, from “problems” to “challenges”, “I can’t do it” to “I can’t do it yet”, and “impossible” to “tricky”, just to name a few. Finally, I sought to create safe spaces for myself to practice and condition myself to the excitement I faced when performing. This was first suggested by Mees Vos, one of my horn teachers in the school. I started to ask closer friends who I felt safe in performing for. Another big factor in this was also my participation in the “Learning Pods” project, in which we were coached by Susan under the “Performance Preparation Pod”. Over four weeks, we performed for each other, gave and received comments that were shaped by rules given to us from Susan, all under an informal peer-learning setting. This was particularly useful as it boosted my self-efficacy in handling the excitement of a performance situation. As mentioned in “Perceived task difficulty” under Chapter 3.1.2, Wulf et al. (2016) stated that the positive perception of successful performance under pressure would enhance self-efficacy and performance.
Under the same section, Wulf et al. (2016) proposed that a more liberal definition of success would also enhance self-efficacy. The french horn is such a tricky instrument and even on professionals, note slips happen from time to time. I used to focus on note accuracy, and it definitely contributed to the anxiety. However, through the “Performance Preparation Pod” process, I realised that expressing the music as close to my intentions was a more realistic and healthy approach to performance. Kenny (2011) suggests that music performance anxiety could be managed by setting more pragmatic self-appraisal and the example she gave was “I’m bound to make a few mistakes, but so does everyone” Bandura (1997) also made two relevant points:
“Those who suffer from self-disparagement because they judge themselves harshly against excessively high standards become more self-accepting and self-rewarding after they are helped to adopt more realistic standards of achievement.”
(Bandura, 1997, p.13)
“Thus beliefs of personal efficacy may be lower for the same quantitative skills when used in technical pursuits than when used in nontechnical ones (Matsui & Tsukamoto, 1991)”
(Bandura, 1997, p.38)
During subsequent performances, I realised that using my musical intentions (external focus, to be elaborated in the next section) and a point of focus and gauge to my success made music making much more enjoyable than before. My performance was no longer a demonstration of accuracy but more of my musical identity and values. Furthermore, in the book “The Inner Game of Music”, Barry Green and Timothy Gallwey succinctly summarise this process, that “the quality of experience comes up to be as important as your actual success”.
4.3 External Focus and Holistic Focus
I first came across the ideas of external focus through my first “Quality Practice” lesson with Susan. After setting our affirmations, each of us took turns playing in front of the class to explore the use of external focus and more specifically, audiation. Since then, I took on a more exploratory approach in external focus, with the intention of using a more objective, rather than an emotional one to find out what methods would work best for me. I realised that through my approach and using external focus as the basis of my practice, I was no longer practising mindlessly over the same passage to achieve improvement. Instead, each new attempt was thought out and small changes were being made every time I played it again. My practice sessions began to be more effective, and the experience of practising became less of a chore and more of an enjoyable and explorative one. Through the lesson “Applied Performance Science” led by Susan Williams and Wieke Karsten I also learnt about the benefits of implicit learning. Hence, my attempts at external focus were usually through a feeling-based approach and the characteristics were more similar to holistic focus, as described in Chapter 3.2. The sections in this chapter serve to organise the several methods I used into two categories: proximal holistic focus and distal holistic focus.
Proximal External Focus
Although the study by Duke et al. (2011) showed that musicians benefited from the more distal focus length, Williams (2019) had also pointed out several flaws in the experiment that did not address the usual circumstances of music performance. Furthermore, there has been evidence as shown by Singh et al. (2020) of the benefits of proximal external focus when motor skill learning is still on a relatively low level.
I knew that there were some fundamental issues I had to tackle, with regards to tonguing and embouchure and that these movements had to be rewired in my mind, as if I was relearning the movements again. However, in the horn and even brass realm, there seems to be a huge focus on the technicalities of the “perfect” embouchure that approaches solving technical issues through an internal focused based approach. Issues such as “top versus bottom lip pressure”, “the movement of the jaw”, and “tongue position” are common focus points that are usually brought up. However, this can be also seen as “necessary” changes since I have argued that an efficient usage of our body should be the top priority when learning new motor skills in the section of “Focal length of external focus” under Chapter 3.2.
When I was trying to correct some fundamental issues, I realised the internal focus approach was not working very efficiently. I tried using a distal external focus approach of using audiation. Although it did work to a certain extent, the challenges did not feel fully resolved and I found my focus slowly gravitating towards my body to correct some movements on a more conscious level, although I was conscious that my instructions still had to lean towards drawing external focus as well as implicit learning.
What worked especially well for me was to use imagery to work on my embouchure. In trying to make my embouchure more efficient, I wanted to work on two specific points of muscle groups - the sides of my lips, as well as the movement of my jaw and chin. They are both very important in supporting the embouchure throughout the register.
For the sides of my lips, my issue was that I had a relaxation of the sides that did not ensure the structural integrity of my embouchure across the register. To counteract that, I imagined a rubber band that was squeezed at the ends, forming a shape similar to our lips. When I went down the register, the two ends of the rubber band would move closer together, while the sides were still maintaining the squeezing integrity to maintain the shape of our lips (the same as a double convex lens). On the other hand, when going up the register, the sides would still have to maintain the squeeze while drawing them apart, so that there is still structural integrity to the lips.
For my jaw and chin, the issue was that both of them were moving upwards instead of outwards when going across both ends of the register, which also produced unsound structural integrity for my embouchure. I used the imagery of an inclined elevator to illustrate the necessary movements for both my jaw and chin, and I realised that it helped me to process the change needed much better than my old methods of using internal focus instructions.
These two examples proved to me that I could draw my attention away from the technicalities while still solving technical issues through a different approach from the conventional internal focus instructions. While using the imagery, I also focused on taking a mental snapshot of the feeling when it worked. These two examples also made use of an implicit learning approach, which tried to use as little words as possible through the use of imagery.
Other methods that proved useful under proximal focus was to feel the vibrations of the lips to register the feeling in my head. This was done every time after I did any changes to my embouchure set up. Very much like the previous approach, it was a feeling-based approach that I wanted to capture during my practice so that the same feeling stays in my memory, instead of using words to remember how to produce what I practised. This method of feeling the vibrations seemed to be enhanced when I closed my eyes. This would possibly reduce the cognitive load of one of my senses to give a heightened sense of touch and hearing with the extra space.
Another challenge I faced as a horn player was my small stature, which resulted in a smaller lung capacity than my peers. Besides having embouchure efficiency, I had to ensure the efficiency of my air intake as well. I tried to tackle this with the imagery of my lungs as balloons and to fill them as full as possible before playing.
Therefore, through my experiences, I realised that there was value in proximal external focus, especially in specific movements that had to be scrutinised and corrected to make them more efficient, before letting the automaticity of the body take charge again. Blakeslee’s book “The Right Brain” also happens to provide an explanation in using imagery for movements:
“But logic and language are so rigidly structured that they are not suitable for the kind of flexible thinking that finds creative breakthroughs. When we think verbally, we are limited by the constraints of our verbal memory.”
(Blakeslee, 1980, p.37-38)
“We can form mental image of sounds, feelings, and tastes in much the same way as we form a visual image. It is even possible to “think” in these sensory images. For example, a perfume designer learns to think in olfactory (smell) images. Athletes and choreographers learn to think directly in “kinesthetic” (movement) images. They develop a “feel” for certain basic movements. The process of combining them and solving movement problems could be called “kinesthetic thinking”
(Blakeslee, 1980, p.52-53)
Distal External Focus
Susan Williams’ (2019) study presented the use and the effectiveness of using audiation as a form of external focus. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, during my first “Quality Practice” class with Susan, she guided the class individually through the use of audiation and external focus.
Besides trying to incorporate audiation into my practice, I also exercised my autonomy and started exploring how I could enhance the way I audiate, as well as other external focus techniques. My exploration into audiation was greatly influenced by Susan’s “Audiation Practice Tool”. Before playing, I started to imagine the music that I was going to play vividly in my mind, with all the nuances that I wanted to express. After that, I would sing using the same vivid musical quality that I had, with the focus on musical intentions and not singing quality. While singing, I tried gesturing with as much of my body as possible (e.g., hands, face, upper body, legs, etc). This produced an extremely convincing result, which also surprised me the first few times I tried it. I always had a disconnect with my musical intentions and what came out in the past and audiation proved to be the bridge between this gap.
During my masters studies, I dabbled a little bit in the natural horn, taking it as a minor subject alongside the modern horn. My teacher, Teunis van der Zwart also taught me through an implicit method of learning together with external focus instructions (be it proximal or distal), and typical instructions were “prepare your body for the stopped notes”, “make the stopped notes more interesting”, “watch where the phrase is going towards”, just to name a few. What was interesting was the way we approached stopped and non-fully stopped notes (which were even more tricky). I started off with an explicit approach of either fully opening my hand or fully closing the opening of the bell. Teunis redirected my approach by often reminding me to listen for the right sound and colours, and that I had to give more responsibility to my air and embouchure to make them work. In the practice room, I took a more explorative route and tried to strive for the right “feeling” of my body to make the notes speak decently. I also applied the vivid imagination and singing with the combination of dramatic gesturing, which made a lot of sense on the natural horn as I had to be mentally prepared for the different tone colours when stopped notes appeared, as well as if I wanted to make them stick out from the open notes or to make them more even in tone colour. My natural horn studies gave me a different outlet to explore audiation and in the process, I gained new insights and motivation that I redirected into the modern horn as well.
Imagery also proved its usefulness when I was exploring how to use distal external focus in my practice. Through imagining vividly the location, story, time, characters, personality of the musical material, it gave a more concrete context for my musicality to be based upon, making the music I produce to be much more convincing. Another way that imagery was useful was suggested by Martine during our “Mental Training” workshop as well. It was to remember the time where I felt the most comfortable on stage and to replicate the image of the hall as vividly as possible in my head before I played, and when I started to play, I had to direct my music to the furthest chair in that hall. I realised this imagery relaxed me immediately and I had since used it every time I performed as it was extremely useful as a point of external focus.
Concluding Remarks
While I have detailed ways that I have found to work for me, there were many methods that I tried that did not work and there were moments where it was getting frustrating. During times like this, an analogy that Jamie Hersch, my horn teacher during my bachelor studies, would give me the clarity and the right state of mind to carry on. He compared our practice to the way a scientist would conduct an experiment. The scientist would have to fail over and over again to make a single breakthrough in their experiment. Just like a scientist, if we were to adopt an objective mindset instead of an emotional one, “failures” would then be another method that you have found that did not work for you, and would still prove to be equally as valuable in the learning process. I was extremely thankful for this piece of advice and how it still managed to benefit my learning till this day.
My exploratory approach to finding new ways to practice meant that this would be a never-ending process. At the time of writing this, I am still constantly seeking out more ways to approach external focus in a holistic manner, while enhancing my self-efficacy and autonomy. I hope that this chapter serves as proof that the OPTIMAL theory and all the related literature does bring a lot to the table for musicians, and that this chapter could possibly be seen as a chapter of the implications of the theory on musicians. However, every musician is different and the way they explored this theory could play out much differently. Therefore, I sought to seek how an informed method that I created would impact my peers, through a relatively more structured intervention, compared to mine.
[Next: Chapter 5 - Research Intervention - HOPE (Holistic and OPTIMAL Practice Experience)]