In a recent Facebook exchange I posted a serious (but on the surface, slightly flippant) answer to a post in which a musician friend commented on their picture of a recording session in progress” “Must try harder!” My reply was “Believe it or not, ‘trying harder’ is the worst thing you can do. Paradoxically the more relaxed the musicians, the more powerful the music.” A mutual friend upbraided me (albeit mildly) saying that the OP was joking. Be that as it may, my reply was actually deadly serious but deserves a more detailed explanation.
This is an important part of my ongoing interest in the mental aspects of playing music, which most educators ignore completely. Most popular music ( I prefer the term ‘vernacular music’) educators rely on approaching instrumental skills as a branch of competitive sport, using notions such as “striving” or “maximising your potential” without acknowledging that playing in a musical ensemble requires humility and co-operation, the very opposites of “striving”. I’ve shared the stage on a few occasions with musicians who “strive”, and their mental noise pollutes the atmosphere making it impossible to play properly with them.
Every musician with whom I’ve discussed the subject of delivering your best performance has shared the experience of doing a show when you’re so tired (maybe at the end of a long run of back-to-backs, or after a long travel day) that you think it’s going to be a bad gig, but turns out to be one of the best on the tour. My belief is that this is because you ‘get out of the way of it’ and simply let the music flow through you without effort or desire perverting your art. Playing vernacular music requires that you listen and react to what is going on around you rather than following an exact score as you would in an orchestra. This is only possible with a quiet mind, indeed: an empty mind!
The time to try hard is when you’re first learning your instrument. Once you’ve acquired a skill level sufficient to achieve your ambitions it’s time to transcend the technique aspects of playing and find out what to do with all that technique: simply put, the purpose of technique is to transmit emotions through your instrument. Technique for its own sake is a blind alley. OK; we all go on learning and improving throughout our careers but it has to be driven by that purpose of communicating. If the performer is anxious and striving, the audience will also be nervous and anxious. Conversely, the audience of a relaxed and confident performer will also be relaxed and confident.
