Is “Shifting Focus” the Key to Playing With More Freedom on Stage?

How to Use Focus Cues to Play More Freely on Stage

By Dr. Noa Kageyama, PhD of The Bulletproof Musician

I had a conversation with a pianist some years ago, who shared the last bit of advice they received from their teacher as they finished school and many years of study.

At their last lesson, the teacher’s parting message was something like: “OK, now forget everything I ever told you.”

Heh? What could the teacher possibly have meant by this?

An external focus

The idea, was that it was time to trust himself. But also, to just play, and not overthink every tiny little detail.

This is something legendary Chicago Symphony tuba player Arnold Jacobs intuited decades ago. And which researcher Gabriele Wulf similarly intuited and developed further in her research (more on this here, here, and here).

The gist, is that we are able to perform complex skills more effectively if we adopt what’s known as an external focus during performance. Where we focus less on our motor movements and more on the goal of our motor movements. Like focusing on the sound we want to produce (external), and less on the precise bend in our thumb, how soft our fingers should be, what our elbow should be doing relative to our shoulder, etc. (internal).

An internal focus

Of course, there are many points during the learning process, where we focus quite a lot on internal details, like our hands, fingers, arms, embouchure, and more.

And even on stage, in the last few seconds before we start playing, many musicians will take a moment to release tension in their shoulders. Or adopt a more balanced stance. Or release tension in their left hand. Even though these are all internal things that the research suggests could increase our risk of “choking” under pressure.

Or both?

So are we playing with fire by focusing on these internal details? Should we be focusing more intently on just the sound we want (an external focus)? Or could there be any benefit to combining the two in some way?

A study!

A pair of researchers (Aiken & Becker, 2022) recruited 79 participants to practice a golf chip shot.

The goal was to get the ball to land on a target 4 meters away. Their score was determined by how close they got, with 0 being a bullseye, and their score increasing by 10 points, the further away the ball was from the center of the target.

Each participant had 80 practice repetitions, but they were randomly assigned to one of three groups, which each group having slightly different instructions.

Three groups

One group was given pre-shot instructions that involved an internal focus of attention – to focus on the swinging motion of their arms.

Another group was given externally focused instructions – to focus on the clubface hitting the bottom of the ball.

And then a third group was asked to shift from an internal focus to external focus before hitting the ball. To focus on the swinging motion of their arms first. And then to focus on the clubface hitting the bottom of the ball before taking the practice shot.

So was there any difference in performance between the groups?

Results

Well, all three groups improved over the course of practice.

But to see how much of the learning would actually transfer to performance, 24 hours later, everyone returned for a final test of 10 practice shots from 4 meters away.

And the group that performed the best was the internal-to-external focus group. The participants who shifted from thinking about the swing of their arms (internal focus) to the clubface hitting the bottom of the ball (external focus) right before taking the shot.

So what are we to do with this?

Takeaways

The research is pretty clear on how an external focus of attention can help us “let go” and play more effectively under pressure. But it seems that there may be some interesting nuances with this in terms of timing.

Where we might be able to better prepare ourselves for action by momentarily remembering a physical cue that helps prepare us for the opening of a piece (like thinking about our arm moving through the air and making a gentle landing on the string), but then shifting our attention to the goal of these movements (like the tone and color of the opening note) before playing the first note.

Does this resonate at all with your experience? Other than thinking “don’t #$%& this up” before starting the first note (which is not helpful, of course!), what have you found most helpful to focus on in those last few seconds?

Performance psychologist and Juilliard alumnus & faculty member Noa Kageyama teaches musicians how to beat performance anxiety and play their best under pressure through live classes, coachings, and an online home-study course. Based in NYC, he is married to a terrific pianist, has two hilarious kids, and is a wee bit obsessed with technology and all things Apple.