In the performing arts, students need both training and teaching, but training has the most direct influence on how the performer executes their craft.

A performing musician executes a dizzying array of motor sequences, all infused with the subtleties and influences of the culture and tradition that inspired the music. Various parts of the brain coordinate in the complex process of performing.

Various parts of the brain are involved in specific parts of the performing process:

• The musician acquires motor skills by encoding whole sequences in the cerebellum through training.
• The thalamus enables the musician to focus on the phrases and the music.
• The prefrontal cortex quashes distractions.
• The occipital lobe processes visual information about the instrument, other players, and the environment.
• The basal ganglia collects and prioritizes motor programs that may be needed, then passes instructions to
  • The posterior parietal cortex that calls up automatic movements, and
  • The pre-motor cortex, which plans out complex movements.
• The motor cortex orders the muscle movements, combining automatic and complex movements, and then...
• Music happens.

In this process, the musician's brain executes the details of task mostly without conscious thought. Every musician above the beginner level has experienced a sub-par performance where they performed more like they had performed months or years earlier, seemingly ignoring much of what they and their teacher have been working on more recently. When the basal ganglia collects the motor programs, it gathers all programs that might be needed in the current situation, including several ways to do any particular movement. The movement programs are prioritized in some way, usually by familiarity and reliability, based on experience and training. The most familiar movement pattern in the brain may not be considered the "right" one by the teacher or by the performer.

Paul Creston used to say, "Practice makes perfect, right?" Then with an implish grin, he would shout, "NO! Only practice of perfection makes perfect!" He was right, but now I also know that we can only experience perfection in rare, exquisite moments that are preceded by a great deal of imperfect learning, training, practice, and experience.

The conscious parts of the brain are simply inadequate to the task of executing a complex performance. The complexity of a musical performance must be executed to a great extent on an unconscious level. In fact, conscious intervention can make it almost impossible to perform at all. Telling a performer to "try harder" or to "think about what you're doing" just before a performance is devastating if they are unable to discard the comment before they begin the performance. Imagine the effect of shouting "Think about what you're doing!" to a person walking a wire across a canyon.

Performers tend to execute their performances according to their training,
regardless of what they have been taught.

If a student spends one hour per week in a one-on-one lesson with their teacher, and then spends four hours per week practicing alone, we have to acknowledge that the student's practice sessions constitute the majority of their training time. In other words, it is the student who is doing most of the training. It is the student who actually programs into his or her brain the complex movements that are required or may be required by a piece of music. This kind of practice is self training, and it only works in performance when the "right" movements are at the top of the collection of movement programs gathered in the basal ganglia.

So if the goal is for the student to easily and fluently perform complex music with style and grace, then these non-technical elements somehow must be incorporated into the process of practice. I know this is being done in many studios, because I have heard young musicians do exactly that, and frankly, many of my own students over the years have done exactly that. But I wonder, was it because of, or in spite of, the teaching they received?

See Also: The Five Stages of Performing.

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