It’s no coincidence that the word “Flow” is in the name of our framework for Performance, Performance Free-Flow.
If you take the purely-scientific view of Flow state, there’s a lot to be learned, and we’ve only scratched the surface in this chapter. But as we said at the start of the Heart section, the concept of Flow is useful to us also in the looser, broader sense, as a way to encapsulate what it feels like to play that “ideal” performance. The music just flows out of you, you’re immersed in the moment, your senses are heightened, it all feels easy and natural, and everything just “clicks”.
Flow can also be helpful to us as a way to think about and approach the bigger picture of our musical journey. All the same emotions—fear, excitement, wonder, anxiety, discouragement, confusion, joy—are present on a timescale of days, weeks, months and years as well as the second-by-second and minute-by-minute flow of a musical performance. We face many of the same challenges: things not going to plan, interactions with other people throwing us off (whether our fellow musicians or the audience), doubting ourselves or our potential, and wondering if it’s all going to work out in the end.
Everything we’ve been learning about Creativity, Conversation and Connection, all the ideas and techniques around mistakes, other musicians, comfort zones and inner experience—it can all help us not just in Performance Practice and during a performance, but as we navigate towards our Big Picture Vision.
Just as we seek to get “in the zone” and find Flow during a performance, we can aspire to experience that same smooth, easy, joyful forwards momentum in our musical lives.
Shifting into a Growth Mindset. The reflection and creative problem-solving of Deliberate Practice. The Authority and Agency of our Creativity. The Pillar Belief of Enjoying the Journey. The development and integration of our Head, Hands, Hearing and Heart. All these things work together to transform a frustrating journey of stumbling, stopping and starting, wandering lost, and struggling for every inch of progress—into something that can look and feel a lot like being “in the zone” throughout.
If that sounds far-fetched and fanciful to you, just know that we see it every day inside Musical U. It’s probably the most rewarding part of the work we do, supporting musicians in their musicality training: seeing how their musical journey takes on a whole new, far more rewarding, relaxed, and enjoyable nature.
If you’ve read through this chapter and not yet had a chance to put some of these new ideas to use, it may still be hard to imagine yourself putting on a “supernatural” performance, or even an “ideal” one. But going forwards, every moment you spend in Performance Practice, leveraging the 3 C’s of Creativity, Conversation and Connection, and increasing your ability to access and maintain Flow, will increase not only the impact and experience of your performances—but the overall enjoyment and progress of your musical journey as a whole.
One of the first things that comes to mind when musicians think about performance is a fourth “C” which we haven’t even mentioned so far: Confidence.
“If only I was confident enough to perform.”
“I’ve lost my confidence since I screwed up at that gig.”
“I just don’t have the confidence to ever get out there and play in front of people.”
The reality is that confidence isn’t something you need to have before you perform, or something you need to be “good enough” to have. It’s something that will develop automatically and continually as you take steps on your own Performance Pathway and prove to yourself that there is every reason to have confidence in your own musicality.
Everything else covered in the rest of this book—Improvisation and “Improvise to Learn”, the principles and techniques of Superlearning, the habit of recording yourself, learning to play with Expression, waking up your ears with Active Listening, and everything else—it all serves to increase your natural musicality and expand what you’re capable of as a musician.
Start including Performance Practice in your daily music activities, and draw on the ideas shared here for developing Creativity, Conversation and Connection with your Head, Hands, Hearing and Heart—and I can promise your confidence and your musicality will start to blossom like never before.