The magic of scales

Has music ever made you cry ?

From my experience, two occurrences come to mind, both live events: the slow movement of Schubert’s string quartet “The death and the maiden” and more recently, Florence and the Machine interpreting “Sympathy magic”.

I have a theory. These artists find a way of injecting a part of themselves, their hearts, energy, aura, whatever this “thing” is, I believe that they are able to radiate “it” and wire it directly to the beating hearts surrounding them in a live performance.

As someone who has an “amatrice” but regular practice of a string instrument and who drowned her voice with an other fifty sopranos in her twenties (laaaaaacrimosa), I marvel at the ease and elegance of professional artists. I admire their ability to make any technical pirouette effortless.

But that’s the thing though, nothing is effortless. Great artists convey beauty, crush your soul in the best possible way while making the hours and hours of practice, rehearsals, repetitions, blood sweat and tears invisible.

I have another theory. I suspect that during practice hours (if Florence Welsh is available I’d be glad to ask her directly and get back to you) artists know when to focus on technique and know when to focus on how to achieve the heart squeezing aspects during a performance. I also suspect that they master a form of detachment during practice, a healthy distance that allows them to go deep in the technique. An other way of putting it is that I believe (this is just a theory) that when they go through scales no part of their brain thinks: “What does this say about me?”

There is no self imposed censorship.

I was recently chatting with a young colleague who was second guessing the quality of the questions she wanted to ask in meetings. It would have been easy to dismiss the concern and say nah you’re fine. However, the feeling resonated strongly with older versions of myself. I thought it was was more interesting to reframe her doubt and seek out the root cause. Second guessing oneself can happen, like many intrusive thoughts, it is also something that can be kept away (even if these annoying thoughts do behave like unhinged kittens during a heatwave). A skill I honed together with my forty year old angry dragon mummy self. I suggested that she can start by practicing asking questions. Like a performer would practice scales, the “mistakes” you make during practice say nothing about “who you are” at your core.

Extrapolating from my own experience, I am convinced that young women have gone through environments which force them back in their place. The easiest way to ensure that they remain small is by caging them in debilitating boxes of self doubt:

“What would this say about me?”

Nothing, it says absolutely nothing about who you are dear one. Once we put our toes outside the box as terrifying as it might be, there is no going back.

It takes effort to appear effortless. There is no magic trick. However, it’s the hours of practice that allow the creation of magic.