Getting into a State of Flow With Your Music

Welcome to livingpianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin, your host. Today, getting into a state of flow with your music. You've heard this term before, and we've all experienced it. It doesn't matter what the activity, when you're completely absorbed in something, whether it's making pottery, a walk in the woods, practicing the piano, it can be almost anything.

What do I mean by a state of flow? When you stop thinking about what you're doing, and you just are. Your being is doing, and it's all one experience where you don't have that sense of looking at yourself and telling yourself instructions with words. "Now I'm going to do this. Now I'm going to do that." But it just flows naturally. Now in a musical performance, this can be one of the most magnificent experiences you can have. Yet, if you're playing music that is written music, you're playing from the score or memorized music, there is a certain amount that you do have to keep your cognition on so that you don't take a wrong turn, that you don't get carried away.

But at the same time, you can get to a point with a score if you really are intimately familiar with it, where you are just absorbed in it completely, and it comes out of you so naturally, that it isn't even work anymore and time seems to disappear. Have you ever had that experience? In practicing, if you can get into that state in your practice, you're really doing well.

Improvising is a fantastic opportunity to get into a state of flow where you're no longer thinking and analyzing, "What should I do next? Maybe I should play this chord, that." No, it just comes out of you, and you already feel the trajectory. And yes, the flow of music, and you are just part of it. That is the ultimate feeling in music and in life to be in the moment. And it's one of the most difficult things there is to do.

People use meditation and other things to try to get in to that state of flow. But, music is a fantastic vehicle for that. So let yourself go. Sometimes you just have to let yourself go and see where it takes you. You can do that in the privacy of your own home. Eventually, if you have the confidence and the security in you're playing, you can do it in performance as well. I hope this is enjoyable for you. Again, Robert Estrin at livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. You're welcome to subscribe here and on Patreon. lots more videos for you coming. We'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/getting-into-a-state-of-flow-with-your-music/

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