4. Heart

So far we’ve discussed quite concrete, tangible aspects of Performance through the lenses of Head, Hands and Hearing. But when we created our dedicated course for Performance, on which this chapter is based, we named it Supernatural Performance * In the logo for the course, we colour “Super” differently to “natural”, as a gentle acknowledgement that really we’re not talking about something mystical and inexplicable—but rather something which at its best is truly and deeply natural. —to capture the seemingly-mystical, almost-magical nature of the very best musical performances.

Whether as the musician or part of the audience, I think we can all relate to the transcendental experience of a musical performance which has that special something, taking us beyond the mundane day-to-day physical world.

If you followed all the advice and carried out all the practices suggested in this chapter so far, your musical performances would certainly reach new heights. But until we address the Heart, those most profound experiences will happen only occasionally, seemingly at random, and feel more like luck than anything you can intentionally produce on demand.

We use “Heart” in the H4 Model to encompass everything that’s going on emotionally and psychologically in the process of learning and playing music. When it comes to Performance, there’s one particular concept which encapsulates what happens when our Heart is opened, aligned, and integrated into our musical whole: Flow.

Flow

Earlier we introduced the idea of Flow, or “being in the zone”, and highlighted how music itself is a flowing thing. Our inner experience is too, with one moment flowing into the next and one emotion into another.

Just as blood flows steadily through our physical heart, we can feel the flow of energy within us and how it’s affected moment-to-moment as we listen to and play music. Even without going as far as Eastern spiritual ideas around chakras and energy, * If you are intrigued in this direction, I can’t recommend the work of Michael Singer highly enough. His book The Untethered Soul is a great place to start. we can all relate to the idea of our heart being our emotional centre, and what it feels like when your heart is open and the energy is flowing—versus having your heart tense and closed-off, and the energy blocked.

If we imagine our ideal musical performance, it is surely one in which we are experiencing that open-hearted flow of energy, without a clutter of negative emotions, disruptive thoughts or inner tension holding us back.

Flow is a fascinating topic because these loose, instinctive ideas about a “flowing” musical performance experience are complemented by some very down-to-earth scientific research into what’s going on when an athlete, musician or other performance-based expert finds themselves “in the zone”. We’re able to join the dots between that magical, mystical, memorable performance we all aspire to, and the specific, practical things we can do to attain the state which makes it possible.

Perhaps the most important thing to know is that achieving Flow state does not involve shutting off the mind entirely and getting “lost in the music”. It’s true that it can feel like a loosening of your conscious, thinking mind, and your sense of time can shift in a way that could be described as getting lost for minutes or hours at a time. What produces and maintains Flow though is actually a beautiful balance between immersing in the Flow, and staying entirely mindful and present.

Andrew once described it with this lovely metaphor:

“Imagine standing on the banks of a river, experiencing the musical waters flowing by. Look upstream and see where the water comes from. Look downstream and see where the water is going.

Step into the water and your perspective changes. You feel the current more strongly, and as you lift your feet, you float down the river, carried by the current. The scenery flashes by, without knowing what will happen around the next bend.

As thinkers and observers, we may relate more to standing in a state of stillness on the banks of the river. From this perspective, we have more clarity on where we came from, where we are, and where we are going to. Yet as music lovers, we long to be immersed in the flow and carried along on the currents.

When we achieve flow state — “flow” being “a smooth uninterrupted movement or progress” and “state” from the Latin “to stand” — we can be present in both the motion of the music and the perspective of the observer at the same time.”

In his book on Flow, pioneering researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describes it like this:

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. “

And in his popular TED Talk said:

“There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback.”

So how do we achieve this balance between being immersed in the flow of the music and still being present?

As you read Csikszentmihalyi’s comments above about “effort”, “focus” and “feedback” you might have started to suspect that in fact, we’ve already encountered all of the ingredients we need to draw on.

The Inner Critic Prevents Flow—The Inner Listener Enables It

When we reassigned our Inner Critic to a new role of Inner Listener, we gained the ability to get continual, immediate feedback on our performance. Through experience with the Plan-Play-Reflect cycle of Deliberate Practice, we’re able to do what needs to be done creatively in each moment, without needing to stop and start, or throw on the brakes when something doesn’t go to plan. As you combine your role as musician with the role of Inner Listener, the music itself becomes both the task and the reward.

Unlike the Critic, the Listener is not out to prove anything—merely to observe, enjoy, and offer guidance and direction. The Listener’s observations roll right along with the flow of the music, allowing us to immerse fully, without losing ourselves. The Listener’s observations tend to be less word-y and more instinctive, and with the noisy verbal thoughts of the Inner Critic quietened down, we can respond more freely to increase and maintain our Flow.

Many who experience the Flow state report that time seems to slow down. They feel like they have ample time to make what were previously split-second decisions about their musical expression. With the Inner Listener we can draw on the power and speed of our subconscious mind, and remove resistance that would otherwise prevent or limit our Flow.

Finding Your Flow

The “zone” appears to be a supernatural place, beyond what we’ve come to accept as our natural experience. So we assume that all of our “normal” practicing won’t quite get us there, and most of the time, we’re right.

But there are tangible, understandable, and accessible steps that we can take in our “normal” reality to change the way we practice and perform music. These are the steps that bring us into our Flow.

So far, we’ve looked at a variety of ways to enhance our musical performance through the 3 C’s of Performance Free-Flow:

• Creativity: bringing more of ourselves and our own personal creative choices into all of our music-making.
• Conversation: deeply engaging in the back-and-forth between ourselves and our listeners, ourselves and other musicians, the relationships between parts of ourselves, and the conversations throughout music itself.
• Connection: the feeling of all of our inner resources working together with the music, other musicians, and the audience, to create a powerful musical experience.

Through Head, Hands, Hearing, and now Heart, you’ve examined the dimensions of your musical experience in great detail—perhaps more than ever before.

All that effort may seem to be just the opposite of what you previously thought “flow” was. After all, when we are “in the zone”, it’s meant to feel effortless, right?

The surprising conclusion from the scientific research is that this deep attention to detail is exactly how we can access Flow. Which means it should come as no surprise that the three C’s provide us with a reliable path into Flow. The more we can channel our Creativity, engage in Conversation, and build Connection in our music-making, the more we are taken away from down-to-earth “get the notes right” mechanical playing, and able to access our highest levels of instinctive ability.

Although the scientific literature helps by defining characteristics of the Flow state and behaviours which tend to produce it, we’ve found the work of Diane Allen (author of Flow: Unlock Your Genius, Love What You Do) adds a very helpful clarification. In her masterclass at Musical U, Diane shared the idea of Flow being a highly personal thing. Becoming able to reliably find your Flow involves figuring out for yourself, through experimentation and reflection, what most produces that special state for you.

This is a great fit for the approach we’ve described above. Practicing the 3 C’s of Performance Free-Flow with Deliberate Performance Practice can let you understand more and more what your own route into Flow looks, sounds and feels like.

As we practice with the intention of finding Flow, it will become a more and more frequent occurrence. We are able to identify, in greater and greater detail, all the steps and practices that build our own clearest, most reliable path into “the zone”.

Staying In Flow

One of the myths about “being in the zone” is that it’s all or nothing. You’re either there or you’re not. But as you practice developing your own path into Flow, you’ll realise that (yet again!) what once seemed black-and-white actually exists on a spectrum.

This means we needn’t treat it as some mysterious state and fear falling out of it once we finally get there. Just as we can learn to cultivate the Flow state at will, we can practice recovering if something threatens our Flow in the midst of a performance.

Let’s look at the two biggest apparent threats to our Flow: mistakes, and nerves.

1. Flowing through mistakes

When you’re writing, typing or drawing, mistakes are easy to go back and correct. When you’re speaking, you can pause, and re-state what you meant, correctly this time.

Music is different. It flows in time like speech, but during a performance, the audience expects it to flow only forwards. If a mistake occurs, you don’t have a way to go back in time and fix it.

That doesn’t, however, mean that a musical mistake needs to end a performance—or even interrupt our Flow.

In other parts of this book we’ve discussed re-imagining what a “mistake” is, and questioned whether “getting it wrong” is a meaningful concept in music. If you’ve developed your Authority and Agency (as per Chapter 15: Improvisation) and nurtured your Creativity (as per Chapter 15: Improvisation and Chapter 16: Songwriting, as well as earlier in this current chapter), then you will recognise how playing a “wrong” note, or having something else unintended or unexpected occur genuinely doesn’t need to detract from the beauty of the musical performance or the experience of the audience.

Every apparent “mistake” is simply a new, possibly even exciting, opportunity. Mistakes tend to instantly increase our focus, and if we’ve prepared ourselves with ways to handle it happening, that surge of emotion which feels like fear or panic can actually be channeled into something constructive and creative.

2. Learn to enjoy the rollercoaster

Did you know that the human body’s physiology of fear and excitement are almost identical?

Imagine two young children in the front seat of a rollercoaster car, as it climbs slowly up the first peak. They are both gripping the safety bar white-knuckle tight, their eyes are wide, their hearts are racing.

One child is muttering “oh no, oh no, oh no…”

The other exclaims “here we go, here we go, here we go!”

The physical experience of the two children is the same. What differs is their subconscious choice of whether to interpret all the heightened awareness and adrenaline as fear, or as excitement.

This choice doesn’t have to be subconscious and automatic.

What if the next time you fumbled a note during a performance, and the world suddenly snapped into sharper focus, and that burst of energy coursed through your body… you found it thrilling? What if rather than breaking you out of your Flow state, it immersed you more deeply into it?

This same principle can be an enormous help with nerves, jitters, stage fright, performance anxiety. Whatever you choose to call it, and however you experience it physically, through Performance Practice you can develop the ability to re-interpret the symptoms in a positive way, and channel that “extra” energy constructively.

Resilient Flow

As we aim for our “ideal” performance, arguably the best way to make it happen is to learn to stay “in the zone” when we perform.

You can appease your Inner Critic in advance, with the reminder that the audience didn’t come to hear a robot perform, and that the unexpected can make for a more engaging and memorable experience for them. Often what seems like a disaster in the moment becomes something you look back on and laugh—or even hear a recording of after and realise was barely noticeable to anybody but yourself.

You can allow your Inner Listener to be effective by preparing yourself with ways to react to unexpected moments. Will you simply play on? Will you draw on Improvisation skills to bridge back into the intended music? If a band-mate doesn’t show up, or an audience member heckles, what techniques or strategies can you have in mind, ready to deploy?

Through Performance Practice and Deliberate Performance Practice, we can gain great resilience to any kind of “mistake”, and use Contextual Interference to prepare ourselves for handling whatever situations may arise.

If you continually design your own Performance Pathway, to gradually raise the stakes rather than attempting great leaps, you can give yourself the opportunity to build your experience, your confidence, and your ability to “expect the unexpected”—and handle it with grace.

All these ideas and techniques can help you stay in Flow, but remember that ultimately it’s Creativity, Conversation, and Connection which fuel the Flow to begin with. The more you can focus on those, the more easily you’ll be able to recover your Flow any time it wavers.

Flow With The Audience

As audience members, we love being swept up in the moment with our favourite musicians. We gleefully follow them on a fantastic voyage through sounds and emotions. Our only responsibility is to show up and enjoy the show.

As performers, we ourselves take responsibility for leading the experience. Our goal is not only to achieve Flow state ourselves, but to bring the audience along for the ride.

The 3 C’s hold the key to creating a performance the audience will love, as well as the key to finding our Flow. So as long as we are engaging with the audience through Creativity, Conversation and Connection, we will find that the abundance of energy and well-being which comes from being in Flow ourselves becomes magnified by the Flow of the audience. This energy of “being in the zone” together is what makes for the most unforgettable musical experiences, for the musicians and audience alike.