A student of mine was working on making her chromatic scale faster. She knew the scale quite well, but she was struggling with the trickier high note fingerings. After a few attempts, she said the dreaded sentence, "I can't do it."
And as soon as she said that, she started making mistakes that I'd never seen her make before. You know why? Because she said she couldn't do it and now her subconscious was trying to prove that statement to be true.
In our most recent lesson, this student played the chromatic scale, 3 octaves up and down, in one breath. What got her there wasn't more exercises - it was changing the narrative she created in her head. When we finally got her desire to be right to work for her rather than against her, things clicked.
Your inner monologue can either encourage you to find solutions or sink you deeper into the cycle of frustration. So, I thought I'd share a few ways you can re-frame things in your head when you feel stuck.
Repetition is good, but it only works when you are on the right track. If you've been doing the same thing over and over again without seeing any results, it's time to re-think your approach. Can you play it slower? Work on a smaller section? Break down the rhythm that's been actively tripping you up?
"That was good" and "That was bad" are never useful judgements on their own. If you want to improve, you have to evaluate your playing more specifically.
For example:
"That was good because I was able to stay with the metronome. But I kept forgetting these flats."
This allows you to check one item off your list and gives you information on what to do next. If your focus was on staying with the metronome, you can be okay with forgetting some flats. Set an intention to work on that once you feel secure about playing with the metronome.
I recently read Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers." In one of the chapters, he describes a woman in a study (who hadn't taken a math class in ages) figuring out a math concept without a teacher by playing around with a computer program. It took her 22 minutes. And it was extremely gratifying.
Meanwhile, a survey outlined in the same chapter showed that the average math student will give up on a problem and ask someone to explain it to them after sitting with it for only 2-5 minutes.
You can solve a lot of problems on your own if you just sit with them for longer than you think you should.