Liz Knowles - See, Hear, Feel

speaker-0: Sometimes I think we think practice is all the technique and it's all the getting our bodies to do certain things, but it's the mind-body connection. And if you're not looking at every piece of that, ⁓ then you might be missing the kind of that that little door that just opens into the ease that you're looking for.
speaker-1: That's beautiful. Welcome to the podcast, Best Practice for Musicians, where we discuss how to practice more efficiently and play with more joy. Today I'm so happy to speak to violinist Liz Knowles. Liz's distinctive sound is both fiery and tonally rich, which comes from her shared foundation musically in both classical and Irish traditional music. At a young age, she toured as the violinist in River. Dance, which I will say is a very demanding role, having seen the show, and has done many notable performances and recordings, including touring with Open the Door for Three, The String Sisters, and the Martin Hayes Quartet. She's also another podcaster producing the Very Funny Lizes podcast with Liz Carroll. And there's lots more about Liz on Liz Knowles.com. That's Liz Knowles with a K. And I'll post all those links at the end of the show and in the podcast notes as well. So anyway, Liz, so great to talk to you today. Thanks for having me. Yeah. I have so much I want to ask you. I have found your newsletter to be so full of inspiring ideas for my own practice. And lately I see that a in a couple of them you've said you've been teaching workshops on the practice of practicing and I'm just kind of dying to know what you focus on there. Well
speaker-0: That that's been a relatively new thing in the last few years. I'm doing a lot of writing about practicing and presenting these ideas is a fabulous way for me to process them, but also kind of see what people are interested in and what what the need is. And what I have found is that yeah, there's some really specific ideas. People want to know how to speed up their tunes. They want to know how to fix little glitches and little things that happen in their playing. But then they also are looking for these larger ideas of how to design their practice, how to plan for their practice, how to how much should they practice? When should they practice? And if they don't have a teacher, and even when they do have a teacher, what can they do to kind of create structure around that?
speaker-1: I I was wondering like what kind of issues have come up that you didn't really expect? I mean we all know someone's gonna ask about speeding up, someone's gonna ask about, you know, I don't have time.
speaker-0: Right. I've been pleasantly surprised by how many people actually do attempt to pr design their practice and are kind of running. I mean, to me, practice is kind of like running a data set on yourself. It's like trying to plan something and then seeing if it works, getting some feedback and then changing the plan. You're a little researcher, you're a you're a chemist that's trying to come up with a really ⁓ good chemistry for yourself. And I'm really pleasantly surprised that there are a lot of people that are Really invested in every aspect of that.
speaker-1: Yeah. People take it seriously. They really want to do this and they want to get better.
speaker-0: Yeah, this last presentation I had a couple of kids and I thought, ⁓ god, I'm gonna lose them. They're here because their parents made them come and but this one kid, he's a banjo player, and he had a great question. He said at one point, you know, I've been thinking my third finger is not as strong as my second finger and first finger and you know I feel like I need to work on that. Do you think I should work on that? And how should I work on it? You know, at least there's evidence that it's there, the interest is there.
speaker-1: I wanna know also, give me an example of something that you that you needed a visual to explain.
speaker-0: Yeah, so what I've discovered over the years, and I found this a very handy visual to put up, is that kind of everything for me in practice falls under kind of three lenses. Three sensory data gathering, feedback, observing. I call it see, hear, and feel. But when you dig into these lenses of seeing, hearing, and then feeling, I think it's really helpful for people to kind of literally visualize them. ⁓ and and one of them is actually visualizing them. The seeing thing, you know, in practice, whether you're using a mirror, whether you are videoing yourself, whether you're going to a teacher that is looking at you, whether you are teaching somebody, whether you are playing with somebody else, you're playing music with somebody and you are watching them, whether you go to a session and you see a fiddle player do a bow triplet for the very first time. I know that was a huge That was a huge thing for me when I was learning Irish music. Beau triplets were completely elusive until I saw somebody do it. It wasn't hearing it, it was seeing them do it that really sent it home to me. So it's this idea of using these lenses as ways of not only gathering what we need to do or inspiration for what we'd like to do, but the how-to, you know, and then being able to look at ourselves and fix the problems that come up within that. I mean, how many times can you see stress in your hand or tension? How many times can you see buoyancy and flow and ease? A lot of people come to me saying, you know, I'd like to play faster, I'd like this to feel easier. Sometimes the key is to just see it in themselves. If they can see it in themselves, they fix the problems that actually make that come true for them. Feeling is very interesting as an observation lens. You know, feeling to me kind of has two pieces. One is the physical piece, and the other is the emotional piece. And the emotional, what I mean by emotional is everything. Are you are you worried about that shift you're about to make on the fiddle? Are you excited about playing a certain tune? Do you feel really relaxed because you have played this tune for twelve years? ⁓ are you nervous because you're about to go on stage? All of those things are feelings that affect I mean, th those are things that affect our playing. And sometimes adjusting just that is such ⁓ a a great way of fixing problems. Sometimes I think we think practice is all the technique and it's all the getting our bodies to do certain things, but it's the mind-body connection. And if you're not looking at every piece of that, then you might be missing the kind of that that little door that just opens into the ease that you're looking for.
speaker-1: That's beautiful. Yeah. I've heard those three kind of described as visual, oral and kinesthetic. yeah. But that doesn't include the emotional part, which I I really like.
speaker-0: I mean I I think we can't ignore it 'cause it's such a huge piece. In fact, I from all the years of teaching, and I know from myself, just watching myself, that part is almost larger than anything else. We can almost overcome literally everything else except that piece.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean you can be perfect and have something really down and then if your mind gets in the way it's over. It's over.
speaker-0: Game over. I know. It's very it it's one of the great frustrations about what it is that we do, you know? It's a pa powerful muscle this.
speaker-1: Yeah. One feeling I get strongly from hearing you and h s reading your writings is that you take every opportunity that you can to learn, whether that's from, you know, your own playing and your own intuition or from other players or from teachers or even from your students.
speaker-0: One hundred percent. I I feel very grateful at this stage of my life to feel as hungry about knowledge as I do. You know, it's interesting with practicing in my younger life. I really, really desperately hated and avoided practicing at all costs. I mean, really, it was it's almost embarrassing to think back to my childhood. The screaming and the crying that used to happen over practicing is just utterly embarrassing. I was very delayed in kind of getting to a place where where I could actually think about my progress and think about my life as a musician and the practice that I was doing as a kind of just an observant experiment rather than being a a measure of my whole being, you know, and I I I I I think I'm the hunger for knowledge these days is kind of making up for that lost time. I and and becoming a teacher I think really has Has made me even more hungry for it. It's something I attempt to give to all my students. I hope that I give that to my students, is that sense of just playful curiosity about the things that we do well and the things that we don't do well and the things that we're interested in. And that idea that if you're interested in something, that is enough, that is enough of an impetus to just get in there and dig in there and what Better life is spent by eating up something so fully and so wonderfully. ⁓ there was a great quote that ⁓ Wendell Berry, ⁓ the writer, Kentucky writer actually, said about a friend, I believe it was a potter, ⁓ and he said, You're gonna be used up by something in your life. Why not make it music? Why not make it this this arena of something that's so full of depth and interest and people and history and I mean I just can't get enough of it. So and I intend to do it until my last breath. And I feel like we can learn from everybody. If there is anything that traditional music has taught me, it is that that every single person you run across, there is something there in their experience, their life, their their expression of what it is that they're doing that we can learn from. I mean that there's nothing more human than that. recognizing that.
speaker-1: Isn't it true? Yeah. Getting back to your issues with practice as a as a child, do you have a problem with the word practice? Do you call it something else or No.
speaker-0: So I mean I definitely at some point had to kind of reframe what that word meant to me. There's no question. but you know, the more I look at it now from the vantage point that I stand at this age is that I needed to find a relationship to practice that was about me and the instrument. I had the most wonderful violin teacher to start with. He couldn't have been more generous and more giving. It was a Suzuki teacher, I was learning classical music as a child. You could tell he was in love with music. He loved playing the violin. He loved teaching. Like everything was just warmth and generosity. That didn't change the fact that I hated practicing. The poor guy, he desperately, desperately tried over and over with every kind of method under the sun to get me to practice. ⁓ but he did an incredibly wonderful thing. If he hears this, I want to say again how grateful I am ⁓ to him for this. I think at a certain point he realized that all of the little charts and the little games and the little can you know whatever he could try to do to force me to practice hours a day was not gonna work. And he started just basically sitting for the whole lesson and reading through duets with me, which of course I loved. Reading came very easy to me. I loved that idea if it was like opening a book and you get to see what the story is about. I didn't want to work on it, but I definitely was happy to play through it. ⁓ and as my site reading got better and better, the idea of playing with somebody and having that interaction it as the duet, he did that for me. And I I am absolutely sure that that that kind of vehicle that got me through the difficulties of not wanting to look at my playing, not playing those scales, not doing those attudes, not putting the microscope on the things that I needed to put the microscope on. That got me, that was a bridge that got me into the next phase. And the next phase was college. When I arrived in college, it was a school of music and I was in no way high on the totem pole. And around me were people of extremely high caliber and they were practicing and they were practicing long and they were practicing hard. And I thought, okay, here we are. And there, you know, that adult moment, I think that moment we all have with various things in our lives, which is it's only you. It's only you in that room. It's only you on that instrument. It's you that is going to pull you through to the next thing. A teacher can help you, sure. But the reality is it's on you. And I really started taking that on at that at that stage. I think also finding Irish music was another bridge into another piece of practicing. I really had to figure out how to learn Irish music largely on my own. We didn't have all the workshops we have now, we didn't have all the materials we have now, certainly didn't have all the archives that we have now. So for me, this was dragging a Marantz, you know, recorder to sessions and going, what am I supposed to learn? What tune? How do I, how do I play like that? How do I sound like that? So that again put it right back on me. It was like, okay, what are you hearing? Why are you hearing that? What are you not hearing? How do I get from what I'm hearing to what I'm playing? You know, all of those things were incredible teachers. For building that relationship between myself, my practice, and my instrument. ⁓ and just absolutely vital. I mean, totally frustrating at times, but absolutely vital. I don't know if I answered your question there.
speaker-1: I think so. I think so. I mean what ⁓ interesting for me as I was listening to this is thinking, ⁓ I know other people who've been through a similar journey and ended up at killing the joy of their playing. So what do you think kept you ha being, you know, having that love?
speaker-0: Well, I think the music, I mean, for for sure, you know, I loved playing classical music. I still do. And when I heard traditional music for the first time, it is literally like I felt a light bulb went on. There was something about the melodies, the ⁓ melodic content, but it was also it was the it was the feeling that players were themselves. And I I think that it arrived that music arrived at a time When I desperately was trying to find myself in some kind of music. And this, though, you know, this is a tricky question because what do you do when you learn a traditional music? You spend a tremendous amount of time emulating other people playing this music. So it it's kind of ironic that in recognizing that I was gonna find myself in this music, I 100% did nothing to find myself. I did everything I could to find everybody else. You know what I mean? And so this is always a tricky thing to explain to students. It's like, yes, this is going to feel like a very personal journey for you. But guess what? Part of the journey is actually becoming and assuming that you are other people for a good long time. Like today you're gonna be Martin Hayes, tomorrow you're gonna be Frankie Gavin, and by the way, you should become Liz Carroll a bit too. You know, it and this is part of your education as a traditional musician to do this. You want to become yourself, you want to become your own player, you want to find yourself in music. What better way to do that than to walk in other people's shoes for a little while? And yeah, that's what kept me in it. And it keeps me in it to this day. I just went to a weekend in Boston here. The ITMA put on ⁓ two concerts and there were a couple of f there was a fiddle recital, and I just got It is the most wonderful feeling to w yeah, to walk away from something like that
speaker-1: There's a whole bunch more stuff I didn't even think about. Yes.
speaker-0: To be inspired, you know, to me there is no end to inspiration in players that exist today. And then you look at the archive of players that existed before us. I mean, who could get bored? Who could get bored?
speaker-1: Yeah, it's interesting what you say about though that you walked in and people were being themselves because I had the same experience in in traditional music where like these are just people playing music, period. It wasn't of something they were trying to recreate from a time before.
speaker-0: Myself and my husband say this all the time, that when we hear great players, we hear a data stream. And what we mean by that is when we hear the inputs into a player and we say, ⁓ yeah, I can tell they listened to Michael Coleman. I can tell that they listened to Joe Bann. You're just seeing little bits of evidence that there are little corners of that tune or a version of that tune. You know, i if you listen to a lot of Tommy Peoples, you don't have to pick up his bow triplet. But if you did, that's piece of that's a piece of the the data stream. I know I want for for my playing to be a bit of evidence that this tributary, it's almost like little branches of a river are kind of feeding the same big river. And as long as there's that foot in the big river, you can kind of go off and do your thing and explore. I mean that that's what the music is there for. That to me is what embodies a traditional music. Is that it is for ourselves. You can just sit and play for yourself, but I'm very conscious of having a foot in the past, having a foot in the present, and having a foot in the in the future, if you could have three VT. ⁓ but it's it's it's being simultaneously in all of those places at the same time. You know, if you looked at your practice through those three lenses of like, how can I have a foot in the past? In the present and in the future. That's a great way to kind of structure some kind of practice. So that's some listening, some observing, some maybe picking out some pieces from somebody that doesn't live today. And then sitting with it right now, yourself in your own playing. You know, go to your practice room and okay, what are you going to do with those pieces that you pulled from Michael Coleman's playing? And then what can I plan to do? I think I you know, now that I've learned this this ⁓ track of ⁓ you know, Michael Coleman, what else could I point myself in the direction of and what else could I decide to kind of eat up in the future? So I think those are great ways of looking at traditional music and designing your practice around traditional music. Yeah.
speaker-1: So people sort of generally without thinking about it when they say why am I practicing, like they say, so I can get better, right? It's kind of like the hook. That's the hook I use, you know, get better. Here's some great ideas. But the y you point to other reasons for practice in and of itself.
speaker-0: ⁓ yeah. I mean, for me, sure, I want to get better. I always want to feel like I'm improving. But these days, practice is I really these days describe it as my meditation. It's it's the time in nearly every day of my life that is 100% for me. It's quiet. It's I mean, unless I'm throwing lots of recordings at it, but it's basically just me. It's not the the distractions of the world outside. It's not the news, it's not television, it's not friends, it's not social, it's not any of those things. And I love it for all of those reasons. I have come to really need that, ⁓ just on a personal level. You know, much like going for a walk ⁓ or doing anything that we do to just kind of be and be in ourselves, be in our body, be in our mind without. the distractions of the world. I I need that. and of course the practice is about improving, it's about reviewing, it's about exploring, it's about curiosity, it's about all those things. It's the most wonderful thing you can do for yourself to really see who you are right now and accept that this is where you are right now. And regardless of what anybody else is practicing, You find the formula that works for you, that keeps you interested, keeps you engaged, keeps you positive about the things that are great in your playing, but also alerts you to those little, I love that Bruce Molski calls them pinch points in his playing. It's like I'm always looking for the pinch points. You know, ⁓ look, ⁓ wow, there's a little pinch point there today. Okay, I'm gonna have to focus on that. That's entirely personal to me. And I love getting people to really take ownership of their own practice in an extremely personal way. Just because, you know, Joe Smith down the road is practicing, you know, 20 minutes of scales does not mean that you need to do 20 minutes of scales. Find the thing that works for you and fits your ability, your hopes, your dreams for your own playing, but also your skill level and what you're ready for. To me, finding a good practice, it has been the best place of finding an acceptance for oneself. My life is richer for that, just as a human being. It doesn't have to be music, but some kind of practice gets you to accept yourself for where you're at, but also look at all of the opportunities for growth ⁓ and then that excitement about curiosity and inspiration. ⁓ So what better way to do that than with a violin in your hand?
speaker-1: Or any other instrument. ⁓ so your husband is an Illen Piper. My husband was a swimmer as a child, and both of us had this experience as kids where we worked really hard at something every day. And that at the end of it, over years, we became really good at it. And that wasn't the fiddle for or my ⁓ my case was the piano. But there's something about that too, that having ⁓ the experience of
speaker-0: Any other instrument.
speaker-1: I got somewhere and I can look back and I can say to myself, I did that
speaker-0: One hundred percent. I mean I I think I think every person would agree that that feeling of success that you put work and time into something ⁓ and achieved whatever that is, and again, accepting whatever that is and really feeling that sense of of growth and achievement. ⁓ we all need that. I I another interesting piece to my kind of classical background is I feel that through the classical training that I had I reached a certain level of technical ability. I was playing concertos, I was playing, you know, high-level music. It wasn't until I started playing Irish music, which required me to do a a heck of a lot less in terms of technical, you know, certainly not lots of positions and these kinds of things that you're being asked to do in classical music. It was reframing what I had learned on a technical ability. So I feel, yeah, I got really good at something y at a younger age. But it's almost like I had to learn it all over again to do traditional music. And I feel better as a musician. I feel more rounded. I feel more connected to my instrument, more connected to music because of that. And I mean, I think this is why it's an advantage for people to play multiple instruments or to do something like swimming or cooking. I'm an amateur painter. For me, it's another kind of arc of. Curiosity, knowledge, learning, failure, success, you know, that feeling of elation that that you've accomplished something, and then that feeling of, ⁓ boy, gotta go back to the drawing board, literally. We need those. And I think we need them in multiple ways. I remember being struck years ago, I I taught a five day workshop and there was a a student that had been struggling a bit in the class, at least i at the beginning, and we went to get a coffee after the working out in the gym. And outside is this incredible sports car. Like, I mean, I I've never seen anything like it. And I said, Who are you? It turned out she had some really high powered job. Like, you know, here's this woman that is as an adult taking on something that I'm sure she did not feel entirely successful doing all the time. And yet she was enjoying it. And she has this other life Where she's this superwoman, and I just remember thinking, There it is, there it is, you know. ⁓ that's the secret to life right there.
speaker-1: For sure. So switching subjects just a little bit. Sure. I've seen you say that it's a good idea to change your approach to practice every four to six weeks. Do you still do I don't
speaker-0: Did I say four to six weeks? I don't know. I probably do that for myself. If I said that about myself, I probably do, you know, and and this is just something I know about my own attention span. It also has to do with kind of, you know, my life, how much I travel, what projects I'm working on. Kind of four to six weeks really is a good, ⁓ I have found this in my exercise routine. Just for me, the four to six week window is kind of a good thing to churn it up. ⁓ and it's also something that I encourage people to kind of notice about themselves. You know, that see, hear, and feel lens through which you kind of look at your practice, it's another great way of just kind of observing yourself. It's like, do you get fatigued if you do the same practice in the same order for two weeks in a row? If you do, where is the line between boredom and knowing that the work is still productive? You know, ⁓ sometimes that line is very blurry and it's not always easy to see when boredom comes in and why boredom comes in. It's really important to notice when focus goes out the door. You know, some things can be mindless, but some things can't be mindless. So I think everybody's got a different window for that. Some people really need to churn it up a lot more. If you feel absolutely sure. That you need to change up your practice after two weeks, give yourself three weeks. You probably could benefit from pushing yourself to do a little bit more than you think. Another thing that I I think that I've learned from traditional music, and I know that I see it in my students, is unless you feel like you're reaching for something, unless you feel like there's a little bit of a struggle. Think it was a book called Flow, Chesmihali, is that his second name? And there was an interesting graph in there about people who learn if the material is too challenging, they give up quicker, but if it's also too easy, they give up quicker. And the idea of finding a a kind of middle ground where it's just challenging enough that it's keeping you you have to be invested in it, you have to kind of dig your teeth into it, you have to grab for something, you have to struggle. a little bit that that is the place where most people feel happiest and where they feel most productive. ⁓ when it's too easy and this is this has to do with this kind of time question. If you feel like practicing something for two weeks is like, okay, that's enough. I'm I'm done. If you haven't gotten to the point where it's like I've I've gone over the line of it being enough just to see what's on the other side of what is enough. I think that's important. I think it's important to feel a little bit of the struggle. Not a lot, but enough of the struggle that that you learn something from it.
speaker-1: But you're talking about a new Boeing technique or trying ⁓ trying to trying to emulate a certain player or some other bigger picture thing.
speaker-0: For sure. And you know, I would say that that four to six week thing that I'm talking about, it's not like I change everything about my practice every four to six weeks. There are all these kind of overlapping timelines. You know, where I might be working on A tune for a week and I'm done with that and I put that away. I don't want people to think that I have some elaborate graph of like I'm going to work on this for six weeks and this for eight weeks and this for ten. It's not like that. I think I I think in terms of short-term and long-term goals, medium-term goals, these kinds of things. You know, this this three-prong idea of like small, medium, and and large. ⁓ so there are things like improvisation. I am constantly working on improvisation in my playing, constantly. That is something that never goes away. Now it may look different in my practice ⁓ from week to week, month to month, year to year, but it is essentially the same practice. Whereas something else I'm getting ready to do a recording next week. I will have planned a kind of ⁓ you know, much more focused practice on those things. And I have a kind of method for getting really prepared for something like a recording that is a one-off, that is not about being able to do 30 gigs. It's about a recording. So that's a very different practice than getting ready for a tour or getting ready for a workshop or a festival or something. I think I think in terms of these arcs of time, and they overlap with each other all the time. So I'm very rarely changing the entire system ⁓ every four to four to six weeks, but I am reevaluating. ⁓ I would say there that it's a period of reevaluating at that four to six week period. It's kind of like, okay, how'd this last month go? what what did I feel? You know, I'm a big one for writing down at the beginning of the month or whatever. What would I like to do? I have a whiteboard in my room. I often am writing those things down. So I'm always kind of dipping into that list and saying, okay, what needs to happen? Once that thing gets erased, then it's on to the next thing.
speaker-1: I'm so glad to hear you have a whiteboard. I'm a whiteboard fan. I have one right here. Yeah. So you talked about improv. How do you currently ⁓ approach your improv practice?
speaker-0: It's a very good question. ⁓ and I'm not sure that I I necessarily do it well. ⁓ but I'll just tell you kind of how I approach it. The first thing that I do is a tremendous amount of listening. I still I mean, ⁓ it's just kind of an ongoing thing. I'm always listening for that ⁓ in the players that I enjoy listening to. I'm about to give a talk in June about intuition in in traditional playing. And I'm looking for those things that kind of indicate that it's Liz Carroll that's improv improvising as opposed to somebody else, you know? So it it's finding kind of what people's tendencies are. You know, not that there's a formula, but it's like how do they decide to kind of I mean that's what I love about this music is that subtle way that we can very with very small moves and very small things, we can completely transform a tune by a different Boeing or a different note or an an approach to a different ⁓ you know piece of the tune. and so I'm doing a lot of listening and a lot of emulating still of of the players that even if I've been doing this for years, you know, somebody I regularly go back to, Frankie Gavin, I am very fortunate to be able to play with Martin. I'm always listening to Martin and what he's doing. I it's just trying to get a sense of what others do. In terms of my own practice, then when I get the fiddle in my hand, I do a lot of different things. One might be actually, you know, really learning from a recording down to the n the last detail what somebody did in that moment. I might pick another tune. I found this very useful. I might pick another tune and try to do the same thing that I learned from that other recording. So this could be a radically different tune. It doesn't have to be the same key, it doesn't have to be the same type of tune. But if, for example, I I love Brian Rooney's playing. What I love is that his kind of subtlety about coming into a note, coming under the melody. And what I mean by that is rather than kind of landing on a note dead on, there's a lot of kind of half rolls that come into that note. ⁓ There's a note below it that comes into a half roll. He might come from another note into that, whether it's above or around. I always think of his playing as kind of doing this around the melody line. It's very subtle. But it's really, really effective and really, really special. Like I always, at every turn, I'm like, ⁓ that was cool, that was cool, that was cool. So I might take a tune, just pick a random tune that I've been playing for a while, and just sit there and say, Okay, I'm channeling Brian Rooney now. How could I instantly make this feel like I'm walking in his shoes? I think all of that work, much like what jazz players do when they're learning Miles Davis' solos and things, is We're building a palette for what to do in the moment. And though we're not planning what's gonna happen in the moment, you have access to all of these colors and textures and ways. If you've been dealing with that melody and eating up that melody in various ways, you're ready to do that in the moment. You won't be surprised, or you might be surprised, but you'll be pleasantly surprised because that palette is so well developed. that that you have the it's almost like pulling things out of the air. I find this very fruitful for me and it feels good. I feel in performance or when I'm playing that I have a lot more access to to that ability to do that than than I did before for doing that. That's really really
speaker-1: great. So you made a mention about being aware of when your focus goes out the door. We've all spent time doing a lot of mindless practicing. And now having having become a little bit more informed, we know that we should focus, but yet it's really hellishly hard to sometimes realize that you aren't focusing. Do you have any tricks? Can you can you enlighten me? I mean I'm getting better at it.
speaker-0: Well, it's interesting and I'll tell you this has worked with all levels of students that I've been working with. And it it came from another book on practice. Molly Gebrien wrote a great book about practice. One of the things that, you know, from a neuroscientist's point of view, ⁓ that she ⁓ had a lot of data on, and it's something that we know for Olympics you know, Olympic ⁓ athletes as well, is this idea that we need to give ourselves breaks. And so I started doing what she was kind of suggesting, which is to kind of Not to do more than 20 to 25 minutes at a time. Now, the way I practice, as I said before, I feel it's a meditation in my life. So it is not uncommon for me to pick up the fiddle if I'm gonna go practice, and I go practice in the bathroom. Love practicing in the bathroom. ⁓ I go in there, shut the door, and then two hours and 15 minutes later, I'm coming out and I'm nearly bending my arm out of position. You know, I can very easily meander for two hours straight. I mean that's not bad, ⁓ but it isn't always focused practice. And I have found, especially, you know, ⁓ in the last few years, that if I am trying to accomplish something that really requires, like getting ready for for this recording, that requires some focus, that I need to set a timer. And I and and even just setting a timer for a random amount of time, like eight minutes or 12 minutes or 20 minutes. Just this little beep that goes off that just says, ⁓ right, what are you doing right now? For me, the meandering is very comfortable. It's a very comfortable way of practicing. But as I said before, what I tell my students is if you're comfortable doing something and you think you know this about yourself, try to get yourself to do something different. So for me, it's about getting out of the meandering and going, ⁓ right, okay, what did I just do here for an hour and 45 minutes? So it gets me to kind of catalog in my head what I'm doing, but it also gets me to say, okay, what do I want to do for the next 12 minutes? If I know that I only have 12 minutes to do something, I tend to be more focused about whatever it is. ⁓ So the timer thing is huge. I think the other thing is that I kind of have a list of the things that I know I need to focus on for the day. It's something that I it's almost like walking up to come and get my fiddle. I'm already thinking in my head, okay. What's the best use of my time? What could I focus on for the first whatever that I can then have 45 minutes of meandering and really enjoy it and let it be my meditation, you know? ⁓ I think having that mental list of what it is that you want to focus on is is key. And if you've got that whiteboard, you it's your great suggestion, you know, to to have that whiteboard visually, it's great. I think the other thing is that I don't think that necessarily losing focus is is always a problem. Where it becomes a problem for me is if I needed to focus on something, I need to make sure that on some level I kind of advanced myself in whatever it was that I wanted to focus on. If I lose, if I get a little mindless about whatever it is that I'm working on, that isn't a problem unless what I started to focus on isn't kind of continuing in that arc of learning. Does that make sense? When we we talk about focus, we're we're so intent on being focused that we almost don't want to allow ourselves to kind of float into mindlessness and float back to focus and float back to mindlessness. And to me, part of really good practice is you can't be focused 100% of the time. Some things need that attention. Again using those kind of three lenses. Maybe you're looking at something, maybe you're listening for something, maybe you're feeling something in your body, maybe you're doing all three of those, maybe you're doing a pair of those. That's really intent work. and you can't do that for long periods of time. You have to give yourself, you have to give your mind and your body a chance to kind of let that stuff settle. And I think that's what Molly Gabrien is speaking to in terms of the neuroscience. aspect of things is when you're working on something to give yourself the break. It's really letting those things build in in in our brains. So I guess I would urge students not to get too hard on themselves if they feel like I wasn't focused enough for, you know, X amount of time. Give yourself a small chunk of time for focus. I think this is ⁓ another thing I see in r it particularly really driven students is that they try to focus for long periods of time. How about two minutes? What can you do in two minutes to really intently focus on something and then go do something else? You know, play a tune, ⁓ have s you know, do some improvising, play a scale, you know, do something that that doesn't feel like it has to be that. ⁓ It's amazing what you can do in two minutes. It's amazing how long two to three minutes can feel if you're focusing on something very intently. ⁓ So I I think make the time smaller, pick the topics, and then just give it a try and do do that thing we all do, which is like try it, see if it works. If it doesn't work, expand the time, contract the time, move it around. Another really effective thing that I know from my own practice and I feel is really helpful for students is sprinkle focus throughout your practice. Don't say, okay, I gotta do all the focus work up front because that's the hard stuff, that's the stuff I really need to do, I need to be productive, and then I'll have fun. Uh-uh. How about spreading it out? The other thing is spread out the focus practice if you've got this time. This is only if your life can handle this. But a little focus practice in the morning, a little focus practice in the afternoon, and maybe a little bit after dinner. This is really, really good, I find. Different times of the day, you're gonna be more attentive, you're gonna hear things differently, your body is in a different place. You know, maybe you're a morning person, maybe you're an evening person, whatever those things are, having that little sprinkling of this focused work throughout the day or throughout an hour of practice is a really, I think, a very useful tool. And it is not something that comes naturally to us because we do want to feel, okay, I I did this, this, this, this, this, and this. ⁓ whereas that is kind of like, okay, focus, let it go. Focus, let it go. It's to me, it's always this kind of back and forth and this ⁓ push tug and and pulling on on the focused and the not focused.
speaker-1: Would you equate what you're calling focus with what other people call being in the zone? Because I'm thinking not. And I think that for me, I actually need practice at the being in the zone part too. A part of my time needs to be spent really just listening and not thinking about what I should do and shouldn't do, just completely absorbing what's going on.
speaker-0: See, if I were to say I was in the zone, and maybe this is just a difference in in in defining it, but it's important, I think. You know, when I said I like meandering in my practice, I'm in the zone when that happens. But to me, that's not focused practice at all. I mean that to me, being in the zone is like I just feel like I have access to everything that's in my playing. I'm I feel like I'm playing well, I'm warmed up, I don't have to think about technique, I'm not thinking about repertoire, I'm not thinking about speed, I'm not thinking about improvisation. In fact, I'm not thinking about anything. I'm just in the zone. So to me, that is in a sense non-focused practice. But yet it's extremely focused in a way because it's pulling from all of the places that I need it to pull from. And to me, that's the sign of successful practice. If if I can get there and I know that I have access, if I find in that meandering, for example, that You know, a lot of times I'm kind of floating through tunes, just anything that comes to mind. Sometimes I sit on one tune for a long period of time. Sometimes I'm floating through many tunes. If I hit a pinch point, a Bruce Mulski pinch point, or I or I hit a little speed bump in something, I might go, ⁓ yeah, okay, there was that. ⁓ if it becomes something that I feel is pulling from me being in the zone, then I stop that. And that's when it's kind of like, ⁓ I need to look at that. I had a Russian teacher in college, Lazar Gozman, another just absolutely wonderful teacher. He had these ice blue eyes and he was just he just lit up with music, you knew it. But he also came from the Moscow Conservatory, which was extremely rig rigorous. ⁓ and he described the way that he learned with his master teachers was it was a long row of practice rooms. ⁓ and each student was in a practice room and there was kind of a teacher's assistant that was walking up and down the hallway and you were practicing six to eight hours a day. If the TA heard you make a mistake, you were pulled out and you had a lesson with the master teacher. And this could happen multiple times, this could happen like twelve times in one day. And I just thought, you know, of course, as a college student, this was horrifying to me. Because I thought if somebody actually walked past my practice room, I would literally be having a lesson every 30 seconds. In a way, the way I think about my practice now is like I'm meandering, I'm literally meandering around my room or my bathroom and I'm playing. And if I hit something, I go, okay, there's that. Mm-hmm. Okay. And then I'm playing and I'm playing and it's like, ⁓ well, there, there it is again. Okay, it's time to it's time to kind of rein this in and have a look at what this is.
speaker-1: Have a lesson with the master instructor.
speaker-0: Totally. It's like it's like yeah, I'm having this discussion with myself. It's like, was that a fluke? No, that wasn't a fluke. Okay, let's look at this. Come on now. Yeah. So it it it is kind of funny that it maybe come full circle without the terror of the conservatory.
speaker-1: So what kind of ideas have been invigorating your practice lately?
speaker-0: You know where I look for ideas for practice these days? I look to other art forms. I I love reading about painters, dancers, sculptors. I love architecture and design. It's not like these things get directly translated because of course there's something very different in each of those art forms. But you know, somebody like Twilight Tharp, I love reading her books. I love hearing her talk about practice, about her practice. ⁓ You know, a lot of what I was talking about focus and not focus and even energy, you know, she has to think about physical energy as a dancer. And that gets me to think about the physical energy of playing the fiddle, ⁓ in ways. You know, it's not like I haven't learned a lot from plenty of really good practice books about music, about music practice. ⁓ there's a fantastic book by Galamian about violin playing. These are really specific things that are really geared toward a violinist. But the conceptual things, when I get a concept like thinking of energy from Twilith Arp and physical energy, it gets me to start being more aware of my own energy. You know, I have a student right now that is struggling with a kind of nerve thing that's happening in a finger. And so it's getting me to think about where is the energy coming from in her arm? That whole piece on a fiddle That has to do with our back muscles, our shoulders, our arms, all the way down to the wrist, to the hand, to the fingers, and then the action of the fingers. You can't play an instrument without at some point having to engage with the whole body and understanding how energy works, how muscles work, how ⁓ the physicality of this works. I mean, you can, you can certainly go a long way without ever thinking about this. But when you have to think about it, like with injury or with something coming up, the the more I have been able to kind of feed myself with these conceptual ideas from other places, it's made me far more aware of those things before injury happens. I love reading about people's practice, ⁓ yoga practice, cooking practice, writing practice. ⁓ who's the Japanese writer, I'm not gonna remember his name. He takes a long walk in the morning and then he does two hours of writing and then he takes a long walk in the afternoon and he does four hours of writing or some some formula of that. And I just thought, okay, here's here's this person that's figured out this balance of their day. Now this is his entire job and he has the what we would call the luxury of doing that. But what can I learn from that? Hearing him talk about how important it was for him to be out in nature, clear the mind, and come back to focused two hours of work. You know, and maybe that worked and maybe that didn't work for me, but it's kind of taking pieces of other people's experience with how they've designed practice and what works for them.
speaker-1: Interesting, yeah. So you have adult students, you have younger students. What do you like about younger students and their approach? And the same for adult. What do you think they could give each other or take from each other?
speaker-0: So I would just say I take each student as they are. I've taught a lot of adults over the years, and I think, you know, there's still the stigma that if you're an adult learner, you're you're, you know, you're just not as facile, you're not as the you're not gonna learn as fast. That has not been my experience. My experience is that what what we get as adults that some kids could learn. is a sense of patience with themselves, an acceptance of exactly where they're at. and maybe more of a desire to be a little more ⁓ attentive to a regular schedule, these kinds of things. That's not always the case, but I those are kind of the general things I would say from an adult are really useful from the kids. We get the idea that kind of anything goes, they're willing to try anything, that kind of fearlessness, although I will say I've met plenty of kids that are just as worried about how they look and what they're doing and failure, and they're very concerned about that. But I think there is this sense of like, ⁓ let's just go for it. They don't want to think about the details of it. And sometimes not thinking about the details of it is exactly what you should do in your practice. ⁓ so, you know, at the moment I have an extremely attentive college student who I've been teaching since she was 16. ⁓ and she comes with 10 questions to every lesson. And so for her, I'm always trying to, you know, like let's just loosen up a little bit and not worry about all the serious questions. and and I've got adult students that do the opposite, you know, which is it's like, okay, you're playing around. I get you're playing around. Let's focus. Let's focus. So it is interesting how it just depends on the individual. The thing I would probably tell anyone is just be open to all of the pieces of who you were when you were a child. Were you fearless as a child? You know, I wouldn't say that I was a fearless child. I was extremely affected by all failure. I've become a lot less so in my adulthood. So for me it's trying to balance those two things. And again It comes back to the kind of acceptance piece of who are you? How did you learn then? How do you learn now? What's exciting you now? What really makes you curious now? And how can you best access that? You know, if you're a kind of person that likes to have ⁓ a lot of fun and ⁓ it needs to be light and airy, then make it light and airy and also balance it with some focused work. ⁓ if you're a person that tends to focus, Definitely do that, but also balance it out with some fun. Great.
speaker-1: Well, this has been great. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you really were hoping I would ask?
speaker-0: This is a topic that I could honestly talk about until I'm blue in the face. To me, the music a music practice, any practice of any kind, is a lifelong endeavor. And I'm okay with the idea that I'm never gonna be done with this and I'm never, I'm never gonna have all of the answers, and I'm always going to learn something new about it. And that's what makes it wonderful. ⁓ I I I think I've finally gotten to a point where everything doesn't have to have a point A and a point B. and that feels really good. I I would offer people if if they're interested, I do a free online teachers gathering. I try to do it once or twice a month and you have attended, it's been wonderful ⁓ to have you there. You can sign up at my website for that. It's just basically a discussion about teaching, but we often end up talking about practice and what we do. ⁓ in terms of our own practice and what we're building in students. And I this to me is a it's a never-ending discussion as well. You know, we started out this conversation today saying that some of the things that students look for are like how to speed up their tunes. It's amazing how many times we can come around to that question and how many answers we can we can have. And and that every time it comes up, it looks different, it is different, it is a different situation. ⁓ and that to me is kind of indicative of this topic of practice. It's something you're gonna engage with over and over and over again. It and it's just this wonderfully personal to you thing. And what you know, how awesome is that?
speaker-1: Yeah, well you've really validated the thing that I love to do, which is talk about practice. Before we sign off, can you tell me and everybody else who's listening, ⁓ what you're working on lately that's exciting, what's coming up for you?
speaker-0: Yeah, dang A number of things. My trio is doing a bunch of gigs this summer, and we're developing new material for potentially a new album, whatever that means in today's world. One of the exciting things that I'm really working on, I mentioned the teachers gathering. I am attempting ⁓ getting the pieces together to t to put together a kind of tour to visit a good few of the people that have been coming to this discussion ⁓ to kind of see their teaching in real time and in situ, kind of in their in their environment. ⁓ I don't know what the purpose of this is except for my absolute desire to want to be in the room with some of these great teachers of traditional music here in the United States. In terms of Irish music, we we don't have any kind of lens focusing on some of the great teaching that is happening here. There's some people that only teach online, some people run a school. So these different models of teaching traditional music, it's more of an in information gathering opportunity and I don't know what it'll turn into, but I feel very, very excited about that. Next year I have more concerts with ⁓ the Martin Hayes Quartet, which I'm very, very much excited about. It has been one of the most wonderful, musically rewarding things I've ever done. So I I really look forward to that. And then this summer, ⁓ what a another thing I'm working toward is developing some orchestral arrangements of music that I recorded with a trio ⁓ a guitarist named Neil Tsoombu, ⁓ who lives in Cork ⁓ in Ireland, and Nile Valley, the concertina player, for a festival in Kilkenny. And I don't know where, you know, what's gonna happen with that, but it's one of those projects that I I'm just ⁓ giddy about at the moment. So we'll see.
speaker-1: That's great. That's really great. Well Liz, this has been just so much fun. I I really could talk to you forever. So many wonderful little gems have come out of this conversation and I hope people are gonna love hearing them as much as I did. And thank you so much.
speaker-0: Well, thanks for having the conversation. I think it's so great what you're doing and I love any time this conversation can happen between musicians about practices that it's exciting. And yes, I too could go on for hours. So let's sign off and leave these people alone. ⁓
speaker-1: Okay. Thanks for listening to Best Practice for Musicians, where we hope to provide inspiration for musicians who want to practice more effectively and play with more joy. I'm Judy Minat, author of the book Best Practice: Inspiration and Ideas for Traditional Musicians. For links to anything that was discussed in the podcast, to sign up for the newsletter, or to find my blog, you can find all of that in the podcast notes. And if you have friends who are musicians, why not let them know about this podcast? A special thanks to all my Patreon supporters. You helped make this possible. ⁓