| What Is Performance Psychology? |
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Performance Psychology for music instruction and performance is relatively new. It is an exciting and rapidly developing specialization that cuts across psychology and the performing arts. Music performance psychology offers scientists and clinicians a common opportunity to interact and to aid performing artists to further their personal and professional capabilities. For children in the arts, it offers a unique opportunity to learn their art within a framework optimal functioning. An example would be a beginning student learning how to accept negative parts of piano so as to stay in lessons longer. Some of Performing Arts Psychology's areas of interest include persistence and achievement, psychosocial issues in rehabilitation, counseling techniques with students and performers, practice adherence, self-perceptions related to learning and achieving, expertise, and performance enhancement and self-regulation techniques. Performing Arts Psychology brings together the clinical, scientific and musical aspects of participation in the arts.
Today, typical music instruction does not involve knowledge of learning, motivation, perception, child development--the basic 'things' that all other types of teachers are mandated by the state to know. Stated differently, musicians largely ignore psychology. Instead, some musicians have come up with their own ideas about learning, motivation, memory, etc. Even preschool teachers and daycare workers have state-mandated requirements with regards to child development, child psychology and the general well-being of the child. We now know that arts training can mediate significant changes in a child's brain. Currently, however, the arts has no oversight, no state or national licensing requirements. Music teachers even get by without even a background check. Teaching in the arts is decades behind all other modes of teaching. True music psychology is like sport psychology; it is studying all the aspects of psychology that a psychologist knows, then applying that knowledge to sport. 20 years ago, sport psychology was in its infancy, like music psychology is now. At that time people thought that they either did not need psychology in sport, or they thought they already knew what they needed to know. Of course, neither viewpoint is correct, and we now take sport psychology for granted; it played a large part in optimal performance at this year's Olympics. However, if you have a child who plays soccer, baseball or any other sport, know that sport psychology is mandating certain guidelines with regards to working with the children. It now touches all aspects of sport. ***Cognitive perspective The perspective on psychology that stresses human thought and the processes of knowing, such as attending, thinking, remembering, expecting, solving problems, fantasizing, and consciousness.
What does performance psychology mean for a first-grader entering lessons, or a 5th grader attempting to improve his sightreading ability? As sport psychology was viewed 2 decades ago, many view arts psychology as being 'over the top' and unnecessary today. However, like sport psychology, we know that once arts psychology finds its way into the private studio, as it has here at Zinn Piano Academy, that all students will be happier, remain in lessons longer, and generally enjoy the entire process of lessons while they study piano. We know the core processes that have to be attended to in order for the child to develop a healthy real self, and we make sure we actively weave relevant interventions into every type of contact we have with the students here at our academy. Said differently, we take care of our students psychologically as well as we do musically. Actually the two interact so as to complement each other; musicians achieve their peak performance when they are in peak control of their inner world. It is their inner world, or their own self-dialectic, that interfaces with the outer world. When those are congruent, people are free to be their best at their instrument.
Some of the psychological techniques to help students be at their best are:
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