Looking for mental techniques

Posted under Uncategorized by spencer

Someone sent me an e-mail a couple of days ago about the book sample and he said he was “looking for something on the mental techniques”

It’s a difficult thing to really give away without a large amount of the background and explanation which the whole book goes into. Anyway my answer to him was…

One of the things that drove me to write the book was the personal discovery that there is a specific set of thought processes that a player goes through each time he plays a note. This could consist of an ordered pattern of pictures, sounds and feelings.

Now the order that the thoughts occur are very fast (as you would expect) but they are

typically the same for the same speed of playing. For example when I was

modelled I made a picture, then remembered a feeling and then the sound

when playing at a medium speed. The pattern would change when

attempting to accelerate playing or slowing it down (often introducing

mistakes).

Part of the book goes through the process NLP’ers use to

model these patterns. Once you become aware what your own particular

pattern is, it is then possible to refine and change it to solve very

deeply ingrained playing problems. This is covered too.

The book also explains how shifting awareness can improve your playing -

similar techniques that Timothy Gallway has used for his Inner Game series

of books.