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The following Japanese terms are all about warding off laziness and boosting motivation plus tips for embracing the concept of doing your best. They are useful as general rules for life; here I have interpreted them for the benefit of musicians:

Ikigai

Have a purpose in life

Ikigai comes from two words – Iki meaning life, and Gai which describes your value or worth. It’s the reason you wake up each morning, what drives you, and what gives you fulfilment and purpose in life.

For the musician, this probably seems obvious – music is your purpose. Whether you’re a professional or an amateur musician, if you genuinely love and care about music, pursue it with passion.

Kaizen

Making small improvements, every day

This is particularly helpful for musicians in their daily practising/training and is a useful reminder that achievable goals and slow gains are, ultimately, more motivating, meaningful and personally fulfilling than striving for perfection from the outset. We tend to define achievement through one significant moment – learning a whole page or movement of a piece of music, for example – and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis which accumulate to create a significant whole. Recognizing and celebrating small milestones and achievements is an important aspect of Kaizen. Musicians should acknowledge their progress, which can be a motivating factor to continue improving.

Shoshin

Beginner’s mindset

“I am a beginner. I am always learning” – Fou Ts’ong, pianist (1934-2020)

Shoshin encourages approaching tasks with an open, eager, and non-judgmental mindset. In the context of the musician, this may include: openness to learning; abandoning preconceptions and biases; embracing and learning from mistakes; curiosity and creativity; humility.

By applying shoshin, musicians can maintain a sense of wonder and enthusiasm in their musical journey, leading to ongoing growth and a deeper connection with their art.

Fou Ts’ong

Ganbaru

Doing your best / persevering

Ganbaru conveys the idea of doing one’s best, putting in maximum effort, and persevering through challenges. It’s about pushing yourself to your limits and never giving up, even when the going gets tough. For musicians, applying ganbaru may involve: diligent, deliberate practice; resilience; commitment to excellence; consistency; maintaining a positive attitude.

Ganbaru encourages musicians to work tirelessly to achieve their musical aspirations and reach their highest potential.

Nintai

Patience and perseverence

Patience is a virtue in Japanese culture. It’s also a very useful attribute for musicians to cultivate! When applied to musicians, nintai may include:

  1. Having a long-term Perspective: Musicians should appreciate that mastering their art is a gradual process and be patient in their development.
  2. Endurance: They must persevere through challenges, setbacks, and plateaus in their musical journey.
  3. Staying Committed: Nintai encourages musicians to stay dedicated to their practice and goals, even when progress seems slow.
  4. Respect for the Process: Appreciating the value of each step and the learning process itself is essential.

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Guest post by Jill Timmons, DMA

A number of years ago, my editor at the Oregon Musician* asked me to write on the topic of invisible work as it relates to performance and teaching. The dog days of summer were winding down and concert season was about to unfold. Students and teachers were returning to their academic schedules, and as my editor suggested, it might be a timely topic to explore how invisible work undergirds our careers as artists and educators.

I found myself pondering for days this notion of invisible work as it relates to the creative process. What is central to the lives of artists and teachers can be elusive in terms of a precise definition. Here in the distant outpost of the music industry, artists and educators devote vast amounts of time to their craft, a large portion of which often goes unrecognized. It’s a little like an iceberg. The visible part might be our public performances, reviews, recordings, publications, workshops, residencies, and the list goes on. As an educator, one’s professional persona can include students in recitals, auditions, competitions, master classes, service to the profession, and so forth. These are the public events, the actions we take that others see, and those tangible results that are evident. But this all hints at something deeper. Like all icebergs, the bulk of the structure lies hidden beneath the surface. For musicians, this is at the heart of our invisible but essential work. It contains our long-term commitment to study, to practice, and to the formal education that often begins in childhood. It requires a sustained and passionate devotion to the art. There are countless hours of practice, lessons, master classes, years of higher education, mentors, finding the right teacher, and a search for that cadre of like-minded folks pursuing their own pilgrimage into music. It’s all invisible work.

As artists and educators, we know experientially about this unseen and often solitary work. I am not writing about anything that is a mystery or an unknown. On the other hand, what is mysterious is how we convey this understanding and application of invisible work to our students and our audiences. Without the invisible work, there is no true encounter with music let alone a career. In an age when a student might win a contest with the same four pieces they have played for years, or when loud and fast is modelled by performances that feature theatrics and histrionics as new realms of performance practice, it is little wonder that our young people today may be short on time in the “invisible world.”

Invisible work has its own demands: blocks of uninterrupted time, a quiet space, self-reflection, study (not just drilling the notes!), scholarship, and countless hours alone with your instrument. You become the measure of your work and your mastery of the music, and it is you that know in that private way the struggles, the triumphs, and the arduous trek to fluency. This is why great teachers are the ones who offer a language and wisdom about the nature and necessity of invisible work. Without it, there is no artistry.

As teachers, we can validate and encourage the invisible work of our students. From our experience, we can offer a road map for this temporal and elusive terrain, confirming the power and necessity of this work. In our culture of instant gratification and unrelenting distraction, we can serve as a guide to our students into that private world of exploration, study, preparation, and mastery. If they are lucky, our students will encounter not only great musical works but also themselves. As teachers this is our invisible work.

From my vantage point, the biggest impediment facing artists, regardless of age, is the quantitative approach to life. It’s that insatiable appetite for more. For our young students it can take the form of more after-school activities, more extracurricular pursuits, more awards, ribbons, contests, trophies, you name it. Pile it up for that résumé. And I am not speaking of just young people. For professionals in the field, it can be an unquenchable thirst for more concerts, residencies, workshops, students, publications, degrees, accolades, piled higher and deeper. But more is not an indication of quality – it’s just an amount. Quality, conversely, is the result of invisible work, and invisible work requires time. Think of Einstein’s theory of relativity. As an unknown patent clerk, he laboured over that construct for years. There was nothing remarkable on the surface. But underneath was a reservoir of imagination, original thought, brilliance, courage, and invisible work. Einstein forever changed our notion of the universe.

Not all students, however, subscribe to Einstein’s model of how essential invisible work is to mastery and original thought. For those students who believe that volume is equated with excellence, a word of caution. The music profession has its own rules. The world of artistry and the gateway into the profession requires, first and foremost, quality. Only the depth of your artistry, and your integrity and wisdom in service to the music will sustain a career. It takes years to have entrance into this world and the price of admission is invisible work.

Years ago, I encountered a wildly talented student who could sightread just about anything in the advanced piano repertoire. And with a little practice, she could cobble together something approaching performance level. She had an extraordinary gift. For her, however, music was all about the tip of the iceberg – being on stage, tearing through “big pieces,” dazzling the audience, and so forth. It was a challenge to convey to her that without that invisible work of practice hours, lessons, going to a deeper level with her music, and cleaning up the technical fluffs, she would not reap that true reward – a deep and informed connection to composers and their music. It was many years into her professional training before she grasped in an experiential way the power of developing her invisible work.

Over the course of my life, I have been drawn to invisible work. It’s my joy and my passion. And while I relish the tip of the iceberg from time to time, it is the private labour that gives me the greatest reward and exhilaration. I continue to search for ways to convey this rich experience to my students. In addition to “iceberg,” there are a lot of “i” words connected with invisible work: intrinsic, illusive, interesting, illustrative, intuitive, integral, intriguing, illuminating, independent, to mention a few. These might be useful words to weave into our teaching as we enlighten our students and audiences about the power and impact of invisible work. Now that Fall is nearly upon us and as we return to our performance and teaching schedules, invisible work can continue to serve as the underpinning of our efforts. It’s a great time to reflect on what that means for each of us.

*Online scholarly journal for the Oregon Music Teachers Association—MTNA). Excerpts reprinted from Jill Timmons with permission from the Oregon Musician © 2016.

**For more information and an in-depth narrative, see my recent publication, The Musician’s Journey, Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 2023). https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-musicians-journey-second-edition-9780197578520

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It can come as quite a shock to encounter a professional musician outside of their natural home of the concert hall. Generally, our only contact with them, as audience members, may be a brief conversation in the green room after a concert or at a post-concert CD signing. When on stage, musicians seem to exist in a strange ‘other’ world separate from ours; this ‘mystique’ is created partly by the musicians themselves who require a certain distance in order to work.

The virtuoso at home can be disappointingly ordinary, as I discovered when, some years before I started writing regularly about classical music, I interviewed a British concert pianist at his home in the leafy suburbs. I had expected something more refined, more esoteric. His piano room was not some Lisztian salon, as I had naively imagined it might be, all crimson swags and a bust of the composer for inspiration, or an ascetic monkish cell, but a tidy “office” equipped with the tools of his trade – a grand piano and a career’s worth of scores neatly lining one wall. What came as more of a shock was that he talked about the fine art of creating beautiful music for others to enjoy as if it were any other nine-to-five job. I later realised that this was his way of balancing his practice time and a busy diary of concerts with his obligations to his family, and the need for “down time”.

In fact, most musicians are normal people: they live in ordinary homes, have families, pets, cars to service, a mortgage or rent to pay. This “ordinariness” has been more than confirmed by the many videos musicians have released online of them playing in their own homes during the lockdowns imposed around the world in response to coronavirus. We got a glimpse into their living rooms and studios and discovered they are, generally, just like us! They “normalise” the incredibly artistic and highly intellectual thing that they do on stage in order to function day to day and get their work (practising) done. Because for them, music is their job.

But of course what marks them out is their ability to transform the normal into the beautiful, the pedestrian into the transcendent, and the everyday into the extraordinary.

Musicians are extraordinary. Their meticulous approach to physical and psychological conditioning is akin to that of an elite athlete and the parallels between sport and music are very close – from day-to-day training to peak performance. Musicians, like elite sportspeople, require discipline, dedication and commitment to do what they do and do it well, and many make huge sacrifices to achieve this.

In addition to finely-tuned motor function, musicians also possess superior cognitive skills as evidenced by their ability to process, finesse and memorise vast amounts of data in the form of notes and directions on the score, an activity in which they engage on a daily basis during the practice and study of the music.

Their working hours are long, arduous and often unsociable – the late nights, the travelling, the Sisyphean accumulation of airmiles, nights spent in faceless continental hotels in beautiful, historic cities they won’t ever have time to explore because of rehearsal commitments…. In addition, the profession is very precarious – and this has been amply and very sadly confirmed by the pandemic. It’s a lifestyle not many of us would choose.

And yet in spite of all of this, musicians have chosen this life. In interviews, many talk about how “the music chose them”, rather than the other way round, and speak of the incredible power music, and the desire to share it with others in performance, exerts over them. This need, this will to play is what drives them, and as audience members we can only marvel at this extraordinary cultural gift which musicians are prepared to give to us.

Image: Photo by Ivanna Blinova on Unsplash

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Part 2 – The problem with perfectionism, and releasing expectations

 

In my first article, I discussed how musicians can judge when it’s time to ‘let go’ of a piece of music and decide it is ready for performance or should be put aside for awhile.

In this second article on ‘letting go’ as a musician, I will explore how criticism and negative feelings can hold us back as musicians, and how ‘letting go’ allows us to cultivate a greater sense of acceptance, self-reliance and confidence.

Musicians are by nature highly self-critical, a habit which is often inculcated at a fairly early point in one’s musical study, by teachers, peers and one’s self.  Self-criticism is important: the ability to self-critique is a significant aspect of productive, intelligent practising. It also encourages musicians to become independent learners who are able to make informed judgements about their progress, technical facility, artistry in performance, and career development.

Alongside this, there is also the need to seek feedback and endorsement from others – teachers, mentors, peers and critics – which also help support one’s musical development.

Music is a world where there is much judgement and criticism (both positive and negative); it is also highly competitive, and such competitiveness can lead to questions such as “am I good enough?” and toxic feelings of inadequacy and failure, which can impede one’s musical progress and even seep into one’s daily life, affecting self-esteem and confidence.

Letting go of such feelings, the need to seek approval or endorsement from others, stepping away from competitiveness, is not always easy, but the ability to recognise, confront and manage them can make us better musicians – more confident, resilient, centred and motivated.

Letting go of perfectionism

The notion that one must play every single note perfectly is, in my opinion, one of the most significant contributors to feelings of failure and inadequacy as a musician. Unfortunately, the musician’s training still places an undue emphasis on perfectionism, which can lead to anxiety, stress and injury, and encourages unhealthy working habits. Perfectionism can destroy our love of music and rob us of joy, spontaneity, expression, communication and freedom in our music-making. In short, it can lead us to forget why we make music. Perfectionism filters into the subconscious and creates a pervasive, hard-to-break personality style, with an unhealthily negative outlook.

Instead, it is far more healthy and productive to let go out perfection and strive instead for excellence in everything one does. Excellence is realistic, quantifiable and attainable. Excellence develops confidence and responsiveness and offers continued inspiration. And by striving for excellence we can stay connected with our artistic muse, our desire to make music, and the overall meaning of that music.

Letting go of the fear of failure

Hand-in-hand with perfectionism goes the fear of failure – failure to play the music “correctly”, failure to achieve that grade, diploma, competition result, failure to secure that job. We fear that we will appear foolish, weak or inadequate, or that we will be embarrassed, or an embarrassment to others, if we fail.

Fear of failure may also lead one to take a “what if…?” attitude to one’s music-making. “What if I make a mistake in a performance?”. Will my teacher/peers/colleagues think I’m a lesser musician because of it?

Let go of the fear of failure by recognising that “to err is human”, and that mistakes and failure are a crucial aspect of learning. A mistake can and should lead us to evaluate what we are doing, and all errors and setbacks should be seen as opportunities for self-analysis and critique, resulting in self-correction, adjustment, improvement and, importantly, progress.

In a performance situation, letting go of the fear of failure allows us to play our music “in the moment”, creating a concert experience that is spontaneous, communicative and enjoyable – for performer and audience.

Fear of failure is also related to ego, and letting go of ego makes us better musicians, and human beings.

Letting go of external validation

Throughout one’s musical study, as a child, teenager and adult, one seeks and receives approval, endorsements and validation. While such feedback can be extremely helpful – and outward signifiers of achievement such as good exam results or positive critique from, for example, a respected musician, teacher or critic can encourage greater motivation – it can be all too easy to place too much emphasis on negative feedback or to “read between the lines” of critical commentary.

We may also measure our progress against that of others, but comparing oneself to others is negative and counter-productive. Just because so-and-so can play Gaspard de la Nuit, it does not necessarily make them a ‘better’ musician. Stop trying to compete or compare: accept that we are all different as musicians, and instead focus on our own strengths and talents. Alongside this, release the notion that there is certain repertoire that we should play (for too long I felt trapped by this pressure, but when I let go of it, I found far greater fulfilment and enjoyment in my music making).

We develop and flourish as musicians if, instead of looking for approval from teachers, colleagues, reviewers or the audience, we self-critique and recognise the value of what we have to say. We should measure our personal success against the challenges set by the music, not by extrinsic aspects – the endorsements of others (except perhaps a few respected or trusted mentors and colleagues). As Schumann said, “As you grow older, converse more with scores than with virtuosi.” 

Remember why we make music

Above all, it is important to remember why we make music – because we love it and want to share our passion with others. Music is also a shared cultural gift, and one which gives pleasure to many, many people. This knowledge should infuse our playing and sustain us over the long term.

Photo by Javardh on Unsplash