Ever notice how mean the voice in your head can become on stage? Where it generates YouTube comment section-like levels of criticism and abuse?

Or maybe you haven’t even gotten on stage yet. But as you’re waiting your turn, you overhear the person playing right before you, who sounds amazing? And then the voice suddenly makes you question and doubt everything?

Yeah, the voice that lives in our head is not always such a good friend. But what can we do about it? How can we turn that off when it’s not helping us?

In this month’s episode, flutist Carolyn Christie explains how she overcame her own experience with “terrifying” nerves when she was a member of the Montreal Symphony, and shares other insights on practice planning, how to avoid overthinking, and staying in a more positive headspace with “clinical” self-evaluation.

Get all the nerdy details and learn how to cultivate these essential mental skills for performance:
Carolyn Christie: On Overcoming Nerves With Healthier Internal Dialogue - and Phrasing!

More from The Bulletproof Musician

• Get the free weekly newsletter, for more nerdy details and bonus subscriber-only content.
• Pressure Proof: A free 7-day performance practice crash course that will help you shrink the gap between the practice room and the stage.
• Learning Lab: A continuing education community where musicians and learners are putting research into practice.
• Live and self-paced courses

I came across a study years ago which found that fear of negative evaluation was one of the key drivers of performance anxiety in musicians. Which of course makes perfect sense, as we're being evaluated all the time. Often, with meaningful consequences attached.

But that doesn't mean it's helpful - or very pleasant to experience either! So is there anything we can do to be less sensitive to what others around us might be thinking about us? At least in rehearsals, auditions, performances, or even dates for that matter, when it's way more useful for us to focus on the things that we can actually control?

A 2007 study provides some clues on how we could potentially reduce our stress levels, increase self-esteem, exude more confidence in public, and even perform more effectively, by working on a particular kind of focus in our daily lives.

Get all the nerdy details and learn how to start working on this particular kind of selective attention right here:
Can We Train Ourselves to Worry Less About Others’ Opinions?

More from The Bulletproof Musician

• Get the free weekly newsletter, for more nerdy details and bonus subscriber-only content.
• Pressure Proof: A free 7-day performance practice crash course that will help you shrink the gap between the practice room and the stage.
• Learning Lab: A continuing education community where musicians and learners are putting research into practice.
• Live and self-paced courses

Have you ever had one of those days on stage where you suddenly can't seem to do a thing that normally is never an issue?

Or maybe it's one of those days where everything just spontaneously falls apart? And for seemingly no reason at all, even though you were as prepared as you've ever been?

Athletes call this "choking." Or the "yips" (which I think is funner to say). There's actually been quite a bit of interesting research on why this happens. And the answer is way more interesting than "nerves" or "pressure."

Get all the nerdy details on why this happens and what you can do about it here:
What Causes "Choking" Under Pressure? And What Can We Do About It?

More from The Bulletproof Musician

• Get the free weekly newsletter, for more nerdy details and bonus subscriber-only content.
• Pressure Proof: A free 7-day performance practice crash course that will help you shrink the gap between the practice room and the stage.
• Learning Lab: A continuing education community where musicians and learners are putting research into practice.
• Live and self-paced courses

Taking breaks in the middle of practice or study sessions can be a pain. Often, it's a lot easier and more convenient to just power through and get it over with.

But what price do we pay by not spacing out our learning, over multiple days, or with practice or study breaks? Does this really make that much of a difference?

Two studies from the literature suggest that spaced learning can make quite a significant difference, actually. And one study explains why, highlighting the very different things that happen in the brain when we take breaks vs when we don't.

Get all the nerdy details and references here:
The Truth About Cramming: Why Your Brain Needs Breaks

More from The Bulletproof Musician

• Get the free weekly newsletter, for more nerdy details and bonus subscriber-only content.
• Pressure Proof: A free 7-day performance practice crash course that will help you shrink the gap between the practice room and the stage.
• Learning Lab: A continuing education community where musicians and learners are putting research into practice.
• Live and self-paced courses

Ever had one of those “I’m a total failure, and I’m never going to be invited to play with these folks again” moments?

In this month’s chat, pianist Orli Shaham shares a deeply personal story about a performance at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, where rehearsals went so badly, that the piece she prepared was pulled from the program. It felt like a “complete failure” at the time, but the experience prompted her to evaluate her preparation process. Which eventually led to one of her career highlights - a performance of John Adams’s first piano concerto, in Carnegie Hall, where Adams came onstage during the applause and gave her the greatest compliment she could have asked for, as he said “You got it. You really got it.”

If you’ve ever struggled with feeling out of your depth, this episode is for you.

Get all the nerdy details right here:
Orli Shaham: On Overcoming Setbacks and Learning to Trust the Process

More from The Bulletproof Musician

• Get the free weekly newsletter, for more nerdy details and bonus subscriber-only content.
• Pressure Proof: A free 7-day performance practice crash course that will help you shrink the gap between the practice room and the stage.
• Learning Lab: A continuing education community where musicians and learners are putting research into practice.
• Live and self-paced courses

Maybe you've set some goals for the coming year, but you're not quite sure where to start, and feeling a little overwhelmed? Or maybe you have a history of setting goals but not following through?

A 2017 study looked at a "backwards" strategy for goal-setting and found that this increased motivation, follow-through, and actual performance as well!

Get all the nerdy details here:
A Backward Strategy for Enhanced Goal-Setting Success

More from The Bulletproof Musician

• Get the free weekly newsletter, for more nerdy details and bonus subscriber-only content.
• Pressure Proof: A free 7-day performance practice crash course that will help you shrink the gap between the practice room and the stage.
• Learning Lab: A continuing education community where musicians and learners are putting research into practice.
• Live and self-paced courses

Are you a little overwhelmed by all of the different year-in-review and goal-setting methods you're getting in your inbox?

If you're confused by the variety and range of approaches out there and just want a bare-bones minimalist option to ensure that you actually do it, a 2006 study of four different goal-setting strategies provides some simple, clear guidelines.

Get all the nerdy details here:
4 Approaches to Goal Setting (And Which Works Best)

More from The Bulletproof Musician

• Get the free weekly newsletter, for more nerdy details and bonus subscriber-only content.
• Pressure Proof: A free 7-day performance practice crash course that will help you shrink the gap between the practice room and the stage.
• Learning Lab: A continuing education community where musicians and learners are putting research into practice.
• Live and self-paced courses

Have you ever wondered if there's an advantage to being an extrovert or introvert when it comes to performing?

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to keep wondering, because I couldn't find a definitive answer one way or the other from the existing research.

But I did find an interesting study of figure skaters, which looked at the impact of *shyness* on performance. It's important to note that being introverted and being shy are NOT the same thing. But could being shy have some effect on how well we're able to perform?

Get all the nerdy details here:
Do Extroverts Make Better Performers Than Introverts?

More from The Bulletproof Musician

• Get the free weekly newsletter, for more nerdy details and bonus subscriber-only content.
• Pressure Proof: A free 7-day performance practice crash course that will help you shrink the gap between the practice room and the stage.
• Learning Lab: A continuing education community where musicians and learners are putting research into practice.
• Live and self-paced courses

“See one, do one, teach one” is a model for learning that’s been utilized in medicine for many generations.

It’s quite a helpful model, but if you’ve ever tried your hand at teaching, you know how incredibly challenging that can be. Often, teaching a skill can be even more difficult that doing the skill itself!

Like, how can we teach a student to be more expressive? How can we ensure each student has a positive emotional connection with the music at each lesson - even if just for a moment? How can we turn students into active/inquisitive learners rather than passive/compliant learners?

Laurie Scott (University of Texas at Austin) and Cornelia Watkins (Northwestern University) co-authored From the Stage to the Studio: How Fine Musicians Become Great Teachers, which is written for university studio faculty, music pedagogy teachers, college music majors, and performing musicians, who are looking to be more effective in their teaching.

In this month’s chat, we’ll learn more about the synergistic relationship between playing and teaching, the problems of dividing music students into “pedagogy” and “performance” majors, how we can teach musical expression very early on in a student’s development, how we can all become better teachers using a technique that won’t come as a surprise but most of us will probably try to avoid, how to help your students become better noticers, and much more.

Get all the nerdy details here:
Laurie Scott & Cornelia Watkins: On Going From the Stage to the Studio

More from The Bulletproof Musician

• Get the free weekly newsletter, for more nerdy details and bonus subscriber-only content.
• Pressure Proof: A free 7-day performance practice crash course that will help you shrink the gap between the practice room and the stage.
• Learning Lab: A continuing education community where musicians and learners are putting research into practice.
• Live and self-paced courses

Have you ever wondered how much the visual aspect of a performance matters to the listener?

Like, if you were going to enter two competitions, where one required submitting an audio recording and the other required a video recording, which one would you have a better chance of being accepted to? Or would it make any difference at all?

A 2013 study of international competition finalists went viral, when it seemed like the results suggested that how a musician looks on stage matters more than how they sound. But is that really what the study found?

Get all the nerdy details here:
Does How We Look On Stage Matter More Than How We Sound...?

More from The Bulletproof Musician

• Get the free weekly newsletter, for more nerdy details and bonus subscriber-only content.
• Pressure Proof: A free 7-day performance practice crash course that will help you shrink the gap between the practice room and the stage.
• Learning Lab: A continuing education community where musicians and learners are putting research into practice.
• Live and self-paced courses