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During the undertaking and subsequent completion of the practitioner programme I have been looking at ways of incorporating increasing amounts of NLP in the field of music teaching. Results have certainly been impressive; though occasionally mixed.

There have been a number of areas where different NLP techniques have made a significant difference.

Break State

This is undoubtedly the most useful. I have always used something like it to a degree: like having the student clear the mind when they are suddenly unable to play a piece; possibly after too much to much repetition or the mind just freezing up.

However using the full break state process involving the full physiological process of moving, shaking out and combined with a mind clearing process is far more effective. I have used this with everyone I teach to good effect. Notable examples are:

A child that I teach in a primary school; who is always very quiet, polite and does the weekly practice. She played well, though with a slightly timid restrained style. One day she was, unusually of her, unable to play a particular piece. I did the Break State with her and she sat down to play. Not only could she now play the piece well, but she had an energy in her playing which nearly pinned me against the wall. It was like another person had come into the room and picked up her guitar. Spooky!

Another pupil at the same school in a boy who tends to tense up, mainly through a fear of making mistakes. Interestingly enough he is also the ‘Class Clown’. The Break State again proves useful with him when combined with some words relaxation and some gentle performance coaching dialogue a la “The Inner Game of Tennis”.

It does have some group applications. For example using the Break State on a small group of little b…..b……b…….b………how did you do this? boys and girls who would not settle down and behave for the lesson. The Break State technique did improve behaviour for the rest of the lesson. Notice though I say ‘improve’ and not ‘perfect’! I did think of some other techniques for controlling their behaviour, but unfortunately there all illegal!

Before leaving the Break State and on a slightly side note: I did teach it to an adult pupil who also owns her own hair dressing salon. It did have an effect on her playing; though I also mentioned that it might be useful to do between customers - particularly if one had been a little awkward! The next week she reported how effective this was while at work. Can’t help thinking that this is a simple technique that should be taught to everyone. Mind you she is an hair dresser; strange people, spend all day talking to mirrors!

{hmm……..Good prospective NLP material come to think of it.}

Conscious vs. Unconscious Battles

This is a very fundamental problem to do with the battle of the brains. NLP training now lets me see so clearly when this is occurring. This happens to every pupil at sometime; so I will give a general example rather than specific ones.

A pupil can be playing either well or even ‘so-so’ - but getting through the exercise or piece. Then something happens; I see a slight hesitation in fingering combined with a slight change in physiology and sometimes expression. They are going for the correct note; but then the finger hovers slightly before either going for the correct note or moving to a different and wrong one. Even it they succeed in playing the correct note; the hesitation process then starts a cascade effect though the rest or the piece - which can cause a collapse as spectacular as in the English Cricket teams’ batting.

Now what is happening is that the Unconscious mind (most probably) is doing its job and working fine alongside the Conscious. {Music like sport I believe requires a combination of conscious and unconscious co-operation in differing proportions according to the tasks.} OK, all is going fine until the conscious wants to interfere and dominate proceedings. It starts saying things like ‘Is that the right note,’ or ‘Careful, don’t get it wrong’. This then causes a total distraction as the two minds fight it out. The casualty of course is in this case the piece of music that the pupil could have spent all week preparing superbly!

My solution is to stop them playing and gently explain what is happening. However as this can involve young children I do not use the terms ‘Conscious’ and ’Unconscious’, which I believe could further confuse the issue.

The terms I use are ‘parts of the brain’. I say that; “one part of your brain has told you to go to the right note; while another part of your brain has told you that is wrong or may nor be right“. I may even say that; “We need to use the front part of our brain for learn a task, but then we must hand it over to the back part or our brain which is better at carrying it out.” I tell them that once they have learned a task, note or notes, that they must trust themselves to be able to play them. This I find produces very real improvements that are usually apparent when they play the piece immediately after.

If there is still some slight hesitation and maybe if there isn‘t; I deal with it while they are playing by using just a slightly soft hypnotic voice tone saying things like; “That’s Right, just let your fingers dance, let the tune play itself” and “you know what to do, ” etc. This I find oils the wheels of conscious/unconscious mind diplomacy quite nicely!

I also tell them a favourite analogy that I have used for some years. It goes like this:

If I was to bring in a plank, place it on two bricks and ask you to walk across it; you would do so without thinking about it. If though, I was to put the same plank 60 feet in the air {I suppose I really should use metric} then you would fall off. Why? Because your thinking about it, and start to concentrate on falling - so you fall! It’s the same plank and the same problem - all that’s different is the way you think about it.

Metaphors

Once again a very useful tool. These are ideal for describing the feel of a piece of music as well as explaining playing faults. When I use these I tend to make them up on the spur of the moment and then forget them. However, one I remember is, “it should sound like water trickling down a mountain side - not like falling boulders!” I think that one speaks for itself.

Teaching Ideas from the Unconscious

I believe that I told you about this in September. Due to the time constraints of teaching as a peripatetic in schools I realised in the early summer of last year (2005) that I needed to find a new method of instilling notes and their positions on the guitar fingerboard. In 2003 this had been an acute problem taking up many weeks of valuable time. I had done better in 2004, but only by bringing in a second guitar teacher for a few weeks to provide more one-to-one contact - a somewhat less expensive solution was needed!

However all through the summer a solution continued to escape me (though 2005 was a very strange summer). It was not until 10 am of the Monday that I was due back that the idea finally just popped into my head. It was a simple matter of having the pupils say or sing the notes along with the string and fret number whilst playing them. Example: 1 0 E 1 0 E, 1 1 F 1 1 F, 2 3 D 2 3 D. This has proved to be a very effective solution and I shall continue to use it.

While I am indeed grateful to my unconscious mind for providing the solution I do wish that it had done so a little more earlier. Still it did leave me with three whole hours to produce a new handout (only one mistake in it too). Oh well; it seems that the unconscious is never too late, but does miss opportunities to be early.

Untried Areas of Applications

There are of course a number of these; but it is not always possible or appropriate to use them - particularly in a school environment. Also the teaching system for schools consists of twenty minutes of group tuition a week for about 35 weeks per year! This totally inadequate format makes this the worst teaching environment I can think of. Time is indeed tight and am grateful that NLP methods have worked as well as they have. However I do feel that if I try to do other more time consuming NLP techniques I could well find myself at odds with parents and/or the school.

It may though be possible to do something with accessing eye cues, Circle of Excellence and Anchoring (maybe to deal with any stage fright leading up to the summer concert?) we’ll see what happens.

There is certainly much to be done in the area of modelling in all aspects: symbolic, intuitive and conventional.

Trance work could have interesting possibilities though at the moment I have no adult pupils to apply this to. An interesting story though concerns a boy pupil. I had him doing something called Dorian Mode Improvisation. Without getting technical this is an improve primer which uses the white keyboard notes. The nature Dorian scale means that it can create a very spaced-out type of melodic progression - particularly when combined with a new age type keyboard timbre.

Now I had Jack doing this improvisation while I was sat behind him listening to his rendition. He seemed to be doing quite well though I did feel it was time to stop after a couple of minutes. So I said to him. “Ok Jack, that’s fine.” Nothing happened, he just carried on playing. So I said again “OK Jack, that’s fine,” only this time a little louder, nothing happened, he just carried on. I then said louder still “I think that’s enough Jack.” He suddenly stopped and suddenly half-turned himself to me. From his expression and physiology I could see that he had induced himself into a mild trance state whilst he had been playing by the nature of the melodic form.

I wish I had spotted that this had happened so I could have brought him out a little more slowly instead of jolting him out like I did. However we were doing a normal music lesson: I was not monitoring him for trance state and he had his back to me so I had no real way of knowing what had happened until it was too late.

Now was this caused directly by the music or by the fact that he was in a creative mode. My guess at this time would be both - though I am unable to say in what proportion. However there does seem to be some power in music using Dorian Mode for trance induction. I have started looking at this and am currently putting a piece together on my computer sequencer. Maybe this could be combined with audio metaphor and even the fuzzy word chart for specific outcomes? Watch this space.

Conclusions

NLP certainly has wide applications in the field of music teaching. There are a number of avenues which could be explored to yield great results. What I have explored so far encourages me greatly. I have found that I have changed the way I teach and am able to do so to a far greater efficiency. It is not a substitute for diligence and practice on behalf of pupils- nothing can be; the use of NLP however does though increase the rate and possibly the depth of learning.

Now would it be possible to completely rewrite the book on music teaching? The best answer I can come up with is - no & maybe! There is certainly much more to be done, but one would have to get far more experimental in order to implement a more radical approach. I in no way believe that conventional teaching is wrong - at least not for the most part. No, I am interested in complementing and not replacing what has gone before. There has though been much change in the way music is being taught and implemented in schools, collages and universities. Perhaps the climate is right for such development. A phrase that has dropped into my mind only this morning is ‘Holistic Music Coaching’. I wonder were that one is going? We’ll see.

Christopher Walton