Reddit reviews The Inner Game of Music

I'm in the process of reading a book The Inner Game of Music

Back in the 70's I believe it was somebody wrote a book the inner game of tennis (then span it out to golf / skiing etc)

The premise was essentially ways to increase your performance by decrease interference from your brain and increasing things like thrust, awareness and will.

It basically was to my understanding a pioneering book in sports psychology.

It starts off quite simple with a formula:

Performance = Potential - Interferance

Most people want better performance so focus on increasing skills / the potential. Very few take the time / effort / practice to decrease the interference part -- which it sounds quite high in your case.

The book then delves into it more, presents ideas to help understand / cope / improve it. Some exercises and all sorts.

So some music dude hooked up with the original author and wrote one for music.

It sounds like the book may be of some help. Its a little bit "miraculous" in places but its not too bad. Has some nice fundementals with practice / approach.

I think as well part of it is just becoming more comfortable with what you are doing. It almost sounds if you are sitting above yourself when you are playing rather than laying back into it, if that makes any sense.

So I'd recommend Victor Wootens book The Music Lesson a shortish book, a little odd and almost self serving at times, but its an amazing book, really is.

I'd also recommend The Art of Practicing, it goes much more into the approach to the instrument, practicing and performing. Its from a classical piano perspective, but does cater for some other instruments / the musical ideas translate well.

Its quite interesting there is a reasonable amount of overlap between the inner game and the art of practicing. I'd say the art of practicing is better written (albeit written in a little bit of a dull style) and goes into detail more but I do like the inner games interference approach.

Yeah I found these books very helpful and I have a backlog of others to read. Essentially it looking at how you approach music and connect with the instrument.

I first became aware of this when learning how to sing, alot of my blocks to singing were all in my head and changing my approach really helped my voice get better and it translated to guitar. So I started reading more into that in general.

I'm not sure if this helps, but I've seen this book being mentioned in a somewhat similar thread => The Inner Game of Music. I've just started reading it, so I can't really tell you a lot about it aside from the description:

> The Inner Game of music is that which takes place in the mind, played against such elusive opponents as nervousness, self doubt, and fear of failure [...] Green begins by discussing what makes up a good performance. He invented the formula P = p - i, where P is the level of the performance, p is the potential of the performer, and i is the level of mental interference during the performance. He explains how to decrease the amount of i (interference) in order to bring the level of P (performance) as close as possible to p (potential).

That being said, you really shouldn't be so harsh on yourself. It's said that you are your biggest critic. Sometimes that's a good thing. But if it gets to a point where it affects your performance, maybe you should take a step back, take a break and find time to rediscover the pleasure of singing. I've been playing guitar for quite some time and sometimes I really get bored of it and become stuck in the same riffs and same songs. So I let it go for a while and do other things. When I come back, it's almost always a breath of fresh air.

PS: virtual hug \^_^