Transcription
I just had one of the biggest practice breakthroughs of my life. So you guys might not know that besides being a singer, music producer, and guitar player, I'm also a world champion winning juggler.
[Music] [Applause] things I had not changed. [Applause] So I've done a lot of things in life at a very high level and have done crazy amounts of practicing at various skills. So I was just browsing Instagram and I came across a video with Dr. Andrew Huberman, who is getting quite famous these days. He's a Stanford neuroscientist who talked about a study that talked about micro-breaks. And that people would do a certain task for a few minutes and then take a 10-second break. And what they did when studying their brains is they found out that during this 10-second break, they actually learned 20 times faster than when they were actually practicing.
So I was looking at the comments and I saw someone mentioning a video by another doctor, Dr. Molly Jebrian, and I'm going to link to that in the video description. I watched this video about micro-breaks, and this was very interesting. I'm definitely going to include micro-breaks now in my practice. The way that she does it is she will do something for three repetitions and then take a 10-second micro-break after three perfect repetitions of a certain task on an instrument. She's a violist. So if she doesn't get those three perfect repetitions, then she'll do it again until she gets three perfect repetitions and then take a 10-second micro-break. That's the basic gist of what she does. Super awesome thing to implement into your practice.
But that is not what absolutely blew my mind and led to me today having the best guitar practice of my life. It was another video by Dr. Molly Jabrian, and that one is on the focus of practice and either internal versus external practice and how that leads to more improvement. Okay, so when I'm playing guitar and I'm trying to get faster, which is one of the things I've been working on a lot lately.
[Music] Um, I will really focus on my right hand, my picking speed, and then my left hand and how fast I can go with my left hand. And so I'm really focusing on my hands. I'm really focusing on these body parts. I've done that very similarly in my juggling practice. When I'm working on something, I'm really focusing on my hands a lot. I'm focusing on, you know, my, my, if I'm juggling over my head, my shoulders. I'm focusing on body parts. I've spent a lot of time doing this.
And Dr. Molly Debrian goes through all of these many, many, many scientific studies that say when you practice, you should focus externally. So she's got a three-part series about this. So today, instead, I said, "Okay, today I'm not going to think about at all body parts, which would be internal things that are part of my body. I'm going to instead practice the same thing, try and go as fast as I can, but instead practice thinking only listening to the music, not thinking about what my hands are doing at all." I'm just listening to the music that is coming out of the speaker as I'm practicing and trying to correct that and trying to work with that and trying to make that go faster and have no thought whatsoever about my hands. And suddenly I felt more relaxed. I was able to go faster. There was less fatigue. My playing was better. Everything improved as if by magic. This is the closest thing to a magical moment I've had in my guitar practice history.
Dr. Jabrian also talks about singers, that being important for them to focus on external. Again, I do a lot of singing, lots of singing practice, and I've always wondered why on stage if I've got some big high note, sometimes I will choke, you know, and I'll like crack at that note. And it's a note that I, it really can do every time in practice. I mean, it's a difficult note, but it's not that difficult. It shouldn't be something that I really should ever, ever break on or ever crack on or ever mess up. But yet, sometimes in shows I will, and I don't understand. And what I've realized now after watching her video is that I'm really thinking about it internally. Usually when that note comes up, I start thinking to myself, "Okay, David, like close down your chords, okay, try and bring, give like this." I start really thinking about my body parts, and that often leads to me messing up. What I should instead be doing is just thinking about that note coming out in the, in the audience, in the auditorium, and just filling up the auditorium. I should be thinking externally about that note, filling up the auditorium with sound, instead of going inside.
I also, as soon as I did this practice and watched this video, I knew that this was so true because in my own juggling practice, I will often have more trouble in practice than I do on stage. And I don't understand that. It should be easier in practice when I'm rehearsing these tricks than when I'm on stage in front of 2,000 people and there's lights and I got to get it perfectly and everything like that. Why is it that I actually usually perform much better on stage than I do in practice? And now I understand that when I'm on stage, I'm thinking about the audience. I'm thinking about the audience. I'm thinking about the band behind me playing the music while I'm juggling. I'm thinking about all these external things. And so that just puts me in this zone where suddenly my subconscious, that knows how to do these tricks, I've practiced them tens of thousands of times, it takes over. And sometimes I wonder on stage, I'm like, "I feel like I just can't even mess up. I feel like I'm so in the zone here that I can't mess up." And why is that? It's because I'm not thinking about any of my body. I'm just letting what's what's supposed to happen happen.
So anyway, this completely transformed my guitar playing practice today. So I wanted to share this with you. I can't wait to go practice later my vocal practice and start thinking about my, my, my voice filling up the sound of the room instead of thinking about my chords closing a certain way or breathing a certain way and all these different types of things. So I hope this helps your practice. I think it is going to massively make a difference.