If you’re trying to make physical changes in your playing, I highly recommend the following, with the caveat that different brains find different scenarios pleasurable. If playing with your attention split causes calamity, it’s not a problem with you. This is not the right style for you, and that’s fine.

The overarching project of the last 20 years has been retrofitting the repertoire I learned using maladaptive technique and a lot of emotional baggage with the improvements I’ve made and continue to make. Some pieces are easier than others; Bach is particularly thorny. When I was at CSUN, much of the work I did with Andrew Cook centered on composure: not being rattled, distracted (I had a horrible case of intrusive thoughts—random math problems that would sometimes strike during less taxing passages; the human brain is wild) or otherwise unable to park my brain in a productive place when the pressure was on. So he had me practice holding a conversation with him while I played the first movement of Haydn D. Like, a real conversation. At home, I would practice while watching ESPN, again, favoring the television and leaning on rote knowledge for the musical component. It made me a much more robust player, and the added bonus of not being able to focus on the minutiae of the occasional artifact in my sound or slightly pitchy extension was freeing.

This practice is just about the facts of the piece: do I really know it, even when the cognitive lift is heavier? When I’d find a passage that couldn’t tolerate the tv practice, I’d know that it needed more woodshedding. So, it’s a solid practice as well as a diagnostic tool. What I discovered is that with my sound sort of swallowed up by whatever is happening on the tv, I was able to commit to physical changes in my hands with a lot less resistance. Usually, the resistance comes from sounding worse when you try the thing you know is right for your body, but not for the sound. This practice is what got me through the Prelude of the 4th Suite the other day, which would have been impossible when I was 22.

Ingredients for TV practice:

• a piece or excerpt you are working on that is at least sort of memorized. you can look at the page between reps, but you need to not be staring at music for this to be effective
• tv with something legitimately interesting to you on, with subtitles
• giant honking rubber covered metal practice mute (the tv needs to be roughly equal volume, and the quality of sound is not the primary goal here.

Then, with the ideal feeling you and your teacher are working on securely set as your intention, lightly practice your passage. Mindlessly repeat it while mindfully remaining supple and in compliance with the physical change you’re implementing. Repeat. Repeat again. Lull yourself with the diffuse attention, which is not completely on one thing or the other, and no giant sound to assault your ears. You’re just watching tv and feeling nice in your body while playing.

The next time you do your typical (non distracted, non muted) practice, try to bring that blasé softness of body and mind into that space, too.

We just finished the last episode of Pluribus, season 1. Who wants to talk about it???