Visualizing the Problem

So I had this concert coming up, and like most musicians, I did a house concert beforehand just to see how things were going.

It was about three weeks before the actual concert, so this gave me plenty of time to fix any problems that came up.

And sure enough, there was one.

It was from a passage in Mio's arrangement of Bressolatoire.

It always started fine, but then fell apart halfway through.

I had another house concert scheduled the following week, so I figured I had time to fix it.

I worked on it really, really hard, did everything I could imagine, but in that next performance, it fell apart again in the exact same spot.

At that point, I really started to worry about the upcoming concert because I had done all the practicing I knew how to do, but the problem was still there.

Then one morning around six o'clock, when I was half asleep and half waking up, I found myself thinking about that passage again.

I could see myself playing it. I could see exactly where it fell apart.

And it was then that it hit me.

Maybe the issue wasn't the notes. Maybe it was about pacing.

Maybe the passage was so physically intense that I was getting tired and losing focus.

That's when I got the idea to practice it backwards.

I figured if I started from the end and worked in reverse, it would force me to understand where things were breaking down. And you know what? It worked.

But what really surprised me was the visualization that helped me figure this out.

I mean, I just imagined myself playing the passage and all of these ideas came into my head.

So when I tell students this story, I hope they see how powerful visualizing can be, how imagining a performance the way you want it to go can help you create strategies, solve problems, and bring you closer to where you want to be.

Visualizing is powerful.

So maybe all of this highlights something simple, that we are what we see ourselves to be.

Wait, wait a minute.

Did I just make that up? Or did somebody else see it before me?

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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