Faith and achievement

[bennyboy]

I'm not convinced that faith and achievement are interlinked, as your thread title suggests. But put the lube away, please, I didn't need that graphic of a description of the disagreements that are sure to follow your OP - wow.

The athlete that wins a championship or gold medal does it after many, many hours of deliberate and goal-oriented practice. Same for accomplished musicians or for you while zoning into a difficult piece unencumbered by thoughts or self-doubts or even me as I finally nail a piece I've been practicing forever on my violin.

Believing you can achieve a goal is part of the puzzle but it's not the entire picture.

No doubt.  I'd categorize the "faith" part as that over which I have essentially no deliberate control.  I've learned how to play certain passages very well, and have intent: "Ooooh. . . I want it to sound like it did that time yesterday."  Then I keep stumbling around until the magic happens.

Especially for very technical pieces, it is only when I have faith, and do NOT attempt to think about anything more than how I want it to sound, that it comes out as well-formed music.

[Thumpalumpacus]

That it has nothing to do with Jesus, and very much to do with brain chemistry, doesn't matter to them-- they've found a way to suspend disbelief, and to access more fully the mental faculties which allow them to succeed.

I don't think that's faith as much as it is confidence in one's abilities, at least in my experience.

I'm a good guitarist, not great, but I've spent many many years honing the ability to improvise in a group setting. I'm not afraid to improvise onstage in front of an audience. I don't have faith that my mind will take me there; I've done my homework (learning multiple scales, training my ears, learning how to translate what I hear in my mind's ear to my fingers in useful time), and I've done it many, many times before.

I also know that I have good nights and bad nights, and that the possibility of failure exists every moment we're blowing (indeed, that's one reason why I love improvisational stuff -- you know you're dancing next to the edge, and you know it's very possible to fall off).

But I'm confident that I can pull it off most times, and that when the inevitable mistakes occur, that I can recover -- because I know things like key and groove, how to play outside and bring it back in, and other musical technicalities that would bore most reading this post.

If you're defining faith your way, great. But I don't agree with it, myself. I'm not crossing my fingers when I'm improvising. I'm using what I know to go places I haven't been.

You improvise too, most times you talk. Do you have faith that your mouth will speak the thoughts in your brain accurately? Or have you spent your life practicing the art of improvising language, and building your confidence?

[Thumpalumpacus]

[...] and then your mind starts giving you the answers in a weird way, it works extremely efficiently, you know exactly what and how to do it to achieve what you want in the moment.

This has been my experience, in a way. For me, when I'm in the moment, I hear a set of relationships and somewhere it clicks inside me ("ah, that's a #4 and a natural 7, I need to play Lydian mode") -- but it isn't a conscious thought for me, it's just my fingers and my brain have done this for so long (35 years now) that the connection is that damned fast.

My job is to get out of my own way, when improvising, and let that connection -- which I have nurtured through practice -- do as I've trained it to do.

[brewer]

I don't think that's faith as much as it is confidence in one's abilities, at least in my experience.

I'm a good guitarist, not great, but I've spent many many years honing the ability to improvise in a group setting. I'm not afraid to improvise onstage in front of an audience. I don't have faith that my mind will take me there; I've done my homework (learning multiple scales, training my ears, learning how to translate what I hear in my mind's ear to my fingers in useful time), and I've done it many, many times before.

I also know that I have good nights and bad nights, and that the possibility of failure exists every moment we're blowing (indeed, that's one reason why I love improvisational stuff -- you know you're dancing next to the edge, and you know it's very possible to fall off).

But I'm confident that I can pull it off most times, and that when the inevitable mistakes occur, that I can recover -- because I know things like key and groove, how to play outside and bring it back in, and other musical technicalities that would bore most reading this post.

If you're defining faith your way, great. But I don't agree with it, myself. I'm not crossing my fingers when I'm improvising. I'm using what I know to go places I haven't been.

You improvise too, most times you talk. Do you have faith that your mouth will speak the thoughts in your brain accurately? Or have you spent your life practicing the art of improvising language, and building your confidence?

I take my hat of to you sir. And anyone who can improvise. I played the pianie for 15 years and sax for 12 and could never improvise. I was a good technician (music awards left and right) but not creative.

[bennyboy]

My job is to get out of my own way, when improvising, and let that connection -- which I have nurtured through practice -- do as I've trained it to do.

Yeah, this is my 3-step process: 1) 100% conscious focus: fingering, note analysis, etc.; 2) get hand-locked and deaf for a while while my conscious self struggles with my now-involved subconscious self; 3) take a trip to my "special place" and just enjoy the music while auto-benny does all the work for me.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's still you, still controlling your digits.  It's not as though the hands have been taken off the wheel.  Just in the zone baby (which is actually a word we use to describe the upper transmission limit of human wiring, lol).  I love that feeling, btw.  I get it for flamenco strumming, -feels- like I'm just watching my hand.  I black out for difficult vocals, that one's even weirder.  You get out a line or two, then the next thing you know...the sets over, applause...apparently you did well. Panic though, for the milliseconds before people clap..and they're just staring at you, lol.

[bennyboy]

It's still you, still controlling your digits.  It's not as though the hands have been taken off the wheel.  Just in the zone baby (which is actually a word we use to describe the upper transmission limit of human wiring, lol).  I love that feeling, btw.  I get it for flamenco strumming, -feels- like I'm just watching my hand.  I black out for difficult vocals, that one's even weirder.  You get out a line or two, then the next thing you know...the sets over, applause...apparently you did well.  Panic though, for the milliseconds before people clap..and they're just staring at you, lol.

To me, any part of my brain that I don't have conscious control over is a kind of cohabitator in my head.  I don't consider it "me" playing, but more those other parts playing through me. It's like cooperative channeling or something-- "Hey, musical me, let's make this one a good one!"

But yeah, the two best musical experiences I ever had were really great practices/concerts, along with the dread, the disorientation when I "come back" to the real world, and the other is  a lucid dream in which I realized I could compose music and hear it, real time as I created it, in the dream.  That was bitching.  And while I wouldn't say it came from a Sky Daddy God, it certainly had the aesthetic qualities of a kind of revelatory or religious vision. Choirs of angels, that one was.

[Edwardo Piet]

I've had a lot more faith in myself recently.

I'm the sort of person who feels better about myself when I feel better about others. When I feel like a good person I like myself and when I like myself I have trust and faith in myself, which makes me more reliable, consistent and makes me become more than just good intentions: I become fun to be around again.

#ramble

It's all semantics really, in one sense faith is "belief without evidence" but there are other senses too, yes

Not all faith is religious faith.

[bennyboy]

That's how I feel about faith, too.

I'm curious if people think religious faith serves any useful psychological purpose, as I think it does (basically Christians might call "God" what I call "the little homunculi in my head" or whatever)? Or is it just pure BS and can only lead to delusion and failure?

Personally, I really think that talking to God or psyching yourself up is actually pretty similar. "Hey, God, I know you will get me through this song and it will be so awesome" isn't that much different than "Hey, musical me, I know you will get me through this song and it will be so awesome." Is it possible that that "magical feeling" people get when they pray is really just a sense of euphoria that comes when we connect with our subconscious selves more positively?

[mediocrates]

I think the "zone" you're talking about here comes down to simply a state of intense focus... Let me explain

The hours of practice or training set the foundation for the level of achievement possible when in the "zone." This foundation is the muscle memory that is developed allowing a task to be performed without any conscious thought.  If you are then able to free your brain of processing the world around you and focus only on the task at hand, then you become capable of a higher level of performance.  Muscle memory is handling things like it always does AND you mind is free to process and react to what you are doing most efficiently.

This is why you come "back to reality" after the performance.  You were so focused on the performance that your perception of reality was not a priority for your brain and allowed more energy to be used for making the music feel the way you wanted, or blocking the muscle pain, or in some other way pushing the envelope.  (lol, Gleaming the Cube came to mind.)

I don't think faith (or trust) is a factor at all.  Consciously, you know what your abilities are and you trust that you can perform at that normal level reliably.  In the zone, you find what your abilities are when you let you inhibitions go and get lost in your craft without regard for the world around you.  It's not putting faith in something you cannot control; it's allowing the entirety of yourself complete control.