Episode Sponsor

Subscribe to the Podcast

Tamir Akta is a trumpet soloist and teacher in Ranaana Israel. He’s the head of the brass department of the Ranaana Conservatory, the largest music conservatory in Israel.

Worst performance moment: Was the organizer of a brass festival and played a solo at the end. Did not play well due to all his activity prior to playing.

The "I've Got This" moment: Performed a piece he had written with an orchestra in Israel. Everything felt perfect.

How Tamir stays "in the zone": You must create a program to guide your activities. Practice, travel planning, etc. A daily routine. Write what you’ve improved and what you want to improve more. If you go on stage and feel you’ve done the best of your ability, you feel nothing can go wrong. Prepare for the moment.

The Hot Seat

JN: It’s 5 minutes before you go on stage for an important performance… What are you doing?TA: A friend of mine who is a trumpet player and psychologist taught me an exercise. You focus on both sides of the brain by tapping on my right and left legs, very softly. First tap your left, then tap your right. It improves the focus of both sides of the brain. Also, I focus on the piece I’m playing, visualizing. I try to keep myself in a happy mood. I’m telling jokes with people around me. I’m not dreading about what might go wrong. I want to have fun.JN: What’s the best performance-related advice you've ever received?

TA: Play like you sing. The moment you’re on stage, just enjoy the moment. It sounds simple, but it’s the best advice I’ve received.

JN: Can you share one tip for our listeners to help deal with stage fright? (Physical, mental, etc.)

TA: What you need is to keep yourself smiling. Make someone smile a little before going on stage. Be it a friend, spouse, etc. Making your environment one of positive vibes, it can make all the fear and false thoughts go away.

JN: What’s a non-musical activity that contributes to your success as a musician?

Wind surfing. It clears my mind.

JN: Imagine you’re on stage. It’s the end of the performance and the audience is on its feet, applauding. They don’t want any more and they don’t want any less. Everything is perfect. What have you just done? Give details: Venue, repertoire, band mates, etc. Get Creative!!!

TA: The pianist and I are having a great flow. We feel very much in place. When it happens, it feels like a rehearsal. I don’t feel like there’s an audience. It’s a wonderful moment and you can be more musical than you think is possible. There’s no judgment.

Episode Sponsor

Subscribe to the Podcast

Bio: Nathaniel Mayfield is an international baroque trumpet soloist located in Austin, TX. He recently finished his MBA at UT - Austin and splits his professional duties between baroque trumpet performance, managing his own oil company and managing several Dairy Queen restaurants in the Austin area.

Worst performance moment: Didn't play well at the Maurice Andre competition early in his career. Ended well in spite of it, and received a nice compliment from one of the judges.

The "I've Got This" moment: That experience taught Nate he just needs to be himself and not worry about being "the best".

How Nate stays "in the zone": Experience. Every time he picks up his trumpet, he's in another world, reverting to habits accrued over years of playing.

The Hot Seat

JN: It’s 5 minutes before you go on stage for an important performance… What are you doing?NM: The first thing that came to my mind was making inappropriate jokes :) But basically being humorous, making jokes, anything to deflect from stress or doubt creeping in. I’m looking at my instrument, making sure everything is prepared, seeing if I need water on stage, making sure I have eveyrtyhing laid out. The other thing is I become this person I’ve invented called natemayfield.com. How would he react? He’d be overly confident. He’s going to go out there and it’s going to be incredible. You visualize and you believe it.JN: What’s the best performance-related advice you've ever received?

NM: When I was at Interlochen, I heard an orchestral player who got the call to audition for his job and he hadn’t played in 2 weeks. He ended up winning the audition. The advice he was giving was to play long tones, and he visualized the audition. Visualize with no mistakes. He said it sounds easy but if you can really visualize perofrming with no mistakes, you can’t tell the difference in your mind. So you gain a level of experience of playing something perfect in your mind. So when you do perform, you’re not surprised when it starts to sound perfect. So that made a huge difference for me.

Another thing I heard was from Sam Pilafian. He had performed at a huge auditorium and it seems like there’s about 70,000 people there. I asked him how he could perform in such a setting. He said, “You just don’t think about it.” It sounds simple, but the older I get, the more it makes sense.

JN: What advice can you give someone who deals with dry mouth?

NM: I always have water on stage. It’s kind of an anchor, or a security blanket for me. I know it’s there, and sometimes I don’t need it. If you get nervous, it starts to creep in. A trick I’ve learned is to bite your tongue, which forces you to salivate. A quote from Ray Mase comes to mind. He said, “If you want to get better at baseball, you practice baseball.” The thought comes to mind if you want to get better at playing with dry mouth, then create situations where you play with dry mouth. You can learn to cope with it, so you have an experiential history you can draw on when it happens in a performance situation. It’s no different from an athlete doing certain things to train.

JN: Imagine you’re on stage. It’s the end of the performance and the audience is on its feet, applauding. They don’t want any more and they don’t want any less. Everything is perfect. What have you just done? Give details: Venue, repertoire, band mates, etc. Get Creative!!!

NM: One of the most rewarding concerts I’ve given is with two baroque trumpets in Germany. My friend and I play together every summer. The audiences in Germany are very receptive to the music. The two baroque trumpet music is amazing because you have these wonderful overtones. To me, that’s the perfect representation. You’re in a beautiful church in Europe,

Episode Sponsor

Subscribe to the Podcast

Gerard Schwarz is the former principal trumpet with the New York Philharmonic, former music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the current conductor of the All-Star Orchestra and the music director of the Eastern Music Festival.

WORST PERFORMANCE MOMENT:

Was careless by spending too much time in the sun before a performance with the NY Phil. Had to play through much pain and did not perform his best.

CONDUCTOR'S ADVICE:

Ignore mistakes if and when they happen. It's impossible to make music when a player is worried about getting stink eye from the conductor after missing a note.

HOW JERRY STAYS "IN THE ZONE":

"I just tell myself this is easy." Your entire career doesn't ultimately come down to four lousy notes, although it may feel that way in the moment.

THE HOT SEAT

It's 5 minutes before a performance. What are you doing? As a conductor, everyone is different. I go through my scores, even if I’ve done it a hundred times. But if you were backstage with me, you’d think I was the most relaxed person in the world. I’m joking with the stage crew, pacing a bit. I’d like to get the show on the road. I don’t like waiting through speeches on the stage. But as soon as I take that first step on the stage, I am in that piece, whatever it is. So much so that when I have to play something like the Star Spangled Banner, the librarian would have to put a note on the stand that says “Star Spangled Banner.” Because when I step onto the stage, I’m so focused on what I’m going to conduct, I forget. The SSB is kind of an interruption in my concentration.The 5 minutes before doesn’t affect me much, but the moment I step onto the stage, I’m in another world.

What’s the best performance-related advice you've ever received? I think the best advice was the one about convincing yourself you can do it and do it well. Another piece of advice I give is to put the music first. If you do that, life will be easier for you as a performer. If you focus on technical issues, or what people are thinking, it will be a deterrent. When my kids were growing up, I would tell them, “Think about the music.” It’s the key to success. The other key is preparation.

Can you share one tip for our listeners to help deal with stage fright? I’ve never had stage fright, so I’m not the best person to give advice. But the only times I’ve ever been nervous is when I wasn’t as prepared as I should be. It’s happened very rarely because I’m such a meticulous worker, but it has happened. And if you’re not as thoroughly prepared as you should be, you will have stage firght. No question. So the better prepared you are, the better you’ll do.When you watch my All-Star shows, I have an hour worth of information to talk about a piece for a 5-minute presentation. I’m over prepared. Then I can think about what’s the most important thing I want to say.I remember Phil Farkas would practice all the solos all the time. It would drive me crazy. But his attitude was the more times I get it perfectly, the more confident I will feel. And it worked for him. He was one of the most accurate horn players ever.

Imagine you’re on stage. It’s the end of the performance and the audience is on its feet, applauding. They don’t want any more and they don’t want any less. Everything is perfect. What have you just done? Give details: Venue, repertoire, band mates, etc. I used to have an expression in Seattle, when I would come off the stage after a concert I thought had gone extraordinarily well. I would say to the head stage manager, “And that’s how that goes.” For me, the times I feel best is not when the audience is most effusive, even though I do love that. But when I feel like we have made a great performance. But if the audience loves it, even if it hasn’t gone as well as I would have liked,

Manny Laureano is the principal trumpet with the Minnesota Orchestra, the conductor of the Bloomington, MN Orchestra and the director of the Minnesota Youth Symphonies.

Worst performance moment: Performance of a Shostakovich symphony. Things just didn't go well at all. Arnold Jacobs told him, "Welcome to the club. We all have days like that. You must learn to lie to yourself when you're not physically 100%."

The "I've Got This" moment: Performance of the Hummel concerto at Orchestra Hall. Everything felt sublime and the audience reaction was wonderful.

How Manny stays "in the zone": Make the second time the first time. Imagine if baseball had only one strike before they're out. How would it change the game?

The Hot Seat

It's 5 minutes before a performance. What are you doing? I am on stage with my horn in my hand, looking at the music and in my head going through virtually each and every lick. Remembering the things that were told to me in rehearsal, the subtle nuances, singing things, making sure I have rhythms. One has to presuppose I’ve already done all of the groundwork. What is necessary us for me to get into the mindset of what it is I’m about to do.

What’s the best performance-related advice you've ever received? Sing while you play.

Can you share one tip for our listeners to help deal with stage fright? (Physical, mental, etc.)Lots of practice. It sounds but simple, but repetition is the most important part of what we do. In the course of a week, we’re not going to be able to repeat a bunch of licks a thousands times. One has to assume you’ve done the kind of work previously, so that the lick is a variation of what you’ve already done thousands of times. If you play Petrouchka, you’ve already done everything in that excerpt many times in your practice over the course of many years. You must immerse yourself in the fundamentals, so that when you go to play in the concert, it’s just another repetition.Now, having said that, there are some times where your heart [rate] just will go off on its own. This is where the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals is such a wonderful thing. The drug we know as Inderol is something that can be of tremendous aid for musicians. It certainly has for me. Inderol doesn’t suddenly make you into the next Maurice Andre. It does however let you be you. If the best you has practiced and done all the things necessary to prepare for the performance, then you’re going to play to the top of your level. If you assume you can take a pill and sound like a genius, you’re going to be sadly disappointed. There was a time when people were appalled at the thought of “taking drugs” before a performance. That’s silly. It doesn’t stay in the bloodstream for that long, and if it allows you to perform well, then you can just continue to perform well.For folks who have occasional problems where they feel very prepared, but their adrenaline rush is to the point where they feel they can’t control it, then this is why we have inderol. Just to keep the adrenaline from ruling you. Some people are very laid back, others are high strung. For some, if it’s not inderol, they cope with the stress with alcohol. I personally see nothing wrong with allowing it to aid you, so long as you’ve done the necessary preparation for your performance.

This is the last question of the interview, but it’s a doozy. So get creative with it. Imagine you’re on stage. It’s the end of the performance and the audience is on its feet, applauding. They don’t want any more and they don’t want any less. Everything is perfect. What have you just done? I will tell you what you have just describe, a very significant and wonderful event in my life. David Zinman was one of the conductors who took the Minnesota Orchestra to Puerto Rico for a festival. On tap was Also Sprach Zarathustra. We’re playing in the hall, and the place is packed. I’m playing one of those legendary pieces of music where a trum...

Welcome to the Secrets of the Musical Mind, brought to you by musicpreneur.com.

Today we feature, once again, Robert Alexander!

Hey all, I apologize for any confusion with the Secrets of the Musical Mind podcast which is now called MusicPreneur.Com.

To summarize, I'm in the process of integrating the Secrets of the Musical Mind concept and making it a regular feature of the musicpreneur.com podcast.

I meant to make an announcement on the Secrets of the Musical Mind podcast feed to explain what is going on, but the guys at Podcast Websites work so fast, they integrated the podcast feeds before I could get to it!

Here's what you really need to know:

Secrets of the Musical Mind is now a weekly feature on the musicpreneur.com podcast.

A new episode of Secrets of the Musical Mind will be published EVERY TUESDAY.

Everything about it will remain exactly the same: interview format, the "hot seat" questions, corny jokes, etc.

All of the previously published episodes from the Secrets of the Musical Mind podcast will be available at http://secretsofthemusicalmind.com. (I'll let you know when they're ready.)

The best way to stay up to date with what's going on with Secrets of the Musical Mind is to join the email list. You can sign up on the home page of http://musicalmindmastery.com or simply send me an email.

This change was necessary as I simply don't have the resources to produce two podcasts at the quality I want. I would rather have one that I can do extremely well than two that are "acceptable."

Of course, send me an email if you have any comments or need clarification :)