Art, entertainment, profession, business… Music is a very significant part of our society and, being a subject traditionally undervalued in our schools, we have not hesitated to build a very powerful formal education environment around this discipline.
Schools, academies, conservatories and others are intended to fill the void that music leaves in the educational system and, depending on the student’s aspirations, they can choose from a more casual or recreational training to one that is more regulated and oriented towards the professional field.
However, when we reach a certain level of specialization, we find an increasingly greater demand in the execution, which entails an increasing number of hours of classes and rehearsals, and what began as a hobby or a pending school subject begins to become in a high performance sport. As such, can involve all those risks associated at a psychological level that we find in every sport.
On the one hand, a music student usually has to, by necessity, combine his musical training with his academic training and let’s not fool ourselves: musical training is not a complement, but rather involves as much or more demand than a university degree (or much more, in the case of some careers), and you still have to hear that “you study music… and what else?”
And, dedicating so much effort and time to music in a world that urges us to “not mislead” our “true” training, together with the tremendous demand and competitiveness of some centers implies a very high risk for intrinsic motivation, that is, to be able to direct our behavior towards music simply because we like it, which has the consequence that many students abandon early, leaving a lot of talent behind, and many others continue. may develop other types of discomfort.
Firstly, the demand for performance and dedication superior to what each person considers “normal”, can lead to the mental state we know as stress Stress is an adaptive response of the organism to a situation of change in the environment or of maximum demand, but without adequate management, it can last longer than evolution had calculated, and bring with it certain psychological consequences (anxiety disorders). , depression) and physiological (indigestion, muscle tension, headaches, back pain, etc.).
One of the psychological consequences of stress is anxiety, characterized by involuntary thoughts such as regrets (“I should have studied more”, “I made a mistake that was too serious”) or pessimistic expectations (“I’m going to be wrong in this part”, “I’m going to suspend”, “I want it to end as soon as possible”) that tend to be interrelated with physical reactions (tremors, sweating, tachycardia…).
The most ironic thing is that this state, in high doses, is very detrimental when it comes to achieving high performance when performing any task, especially if it is playing a piece in public when we are playing for a title but the most discouraging thing is that what we were previously passionate about has given way to such negative feelings.
Progress in the psychology of music
It is this situation that has drawn the attention of psychologists to this medium, and although most of the work has consisted, at least in Spain, of investigating those optimal methods for teaching and learning music (constructive vs. directive learning ), More and more centers are interested in the mental training of their young musicians a variable that had traditionally been left to chance and had served as a kind of tautological natural selection in conservatories (“if you can’t stand this, you’re not good for music”).
Today more and more voices are being raised to say that no, these variables can indeed be trained. So, There are certain techniques aimed at maintaining intrinsic motivation based on working with objectives and the perception of self-efficacy, techniques to combat anxiety, such as breathing and relaxation in the search for that optimal level of activation or techniques to manage that pressure that, yes, will always exist, but it is in our control. It is up to us to regulate it, and we can do it through techniques such as exposure or cognitive restructuring, all with the ultimate goal of optimizing the experience and performance of not only our musicians, but also our dancers, actors and all those in the arts. scenic.
Finally, emphasize that Every day the importance of the psychologist’s work in the mental training of the musician becomes more noticeable In a world as competitive as music, the mental factor can make the difference in a professional’s musical career.
