Lesson 5 - gestalt thinking

Equally important to the idea of learning to play individual notes as a greater musical gestalt is the idea of learning to think of them in this way.

What do you think about while you are playing? Do you “coach” yourself through difficult passages (uh oh, here comes the high B-flat, got to get ready for that . . . don’t miss it again like yesterday! . . . ) then criticize, or compliment, yourself depending on the outcome? Do you practice in a distracting environment where your focus is divided between your instrument and your phone? Have you practiced your piece so much that it feels like you’re “flying on autopilot” while your thoughts wander?

A very wise person (who I hope to properly attribute some day when I remember where I read this) said something to the effect of, “there is no room for words in your thoughts when you are making music.” This statement is obviously more applicable to instrumental than vocal music-making, but the point remains that whether the words that pass through our thoughts while we play are encouraging or discouraging, they are equally distracting from the music.

The gestalt approach is a powerful way to focus our thoughts on the music, rather than on instructions about the music or distractions from it. It’s not easy to mentally conceive of an entire phrase as a single entity while we are in the process of creating it, but the effort of doing so can crowd out the words (positive or negative) that might be competing for brain space.

In my experience, this kind of thinking is not automatic, and must be consciously practiced until it becomes a habit. Even after working hard to form individual notes into larger gestalts as described in the previous lesson, it’s common for a player’s thoughts to remain stuck in the “one-note-at-a-time” approach. This effectively limits the music’s expressive power, though it may now be easier to negotiate.

Gestalt thinking is the step that follows the Phases of gestalt playing - it is the ongoing effort to mentally synthesize large musical structures into wholes once the technical issues of performing a work have been successfully addressed. Working towards gestalt thinking in any degree seems to consistently evoke better music from players.