Approaching Music Practice with Gratitude, Part Two of our Conversation with Amy Beth Horman

This week’s episode of the Time to Practice podcast is the second in a two-part interview with violinist and pedagogue Amy Beth Horman.

Here is a bit of her bio from her teacher page at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music

“A passionate teacher and performer, Amy Beth Horman has enjoyed an active solo career as a soloist and recitalist throughout the US and Europe. She made her debut with the National Symphony at age 15, performing the Tchaikovsky Concerto. A graduate of the Paris Conservatory of Music, her students, whom she currently teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and in her private studio, have an impressive list of achievements. 

She is the creator and host of “Beyond the Triangle,” a podcast focused on the art of raising young classical musicians and violin breakfast which she will tell us more about. 

There was such a wonderful response to the first half of this series which you can find HERE, I can’t wait for you to listen to part-two!

To Listen to the full episode you can find the Time to Practice Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Audible , Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform.  

Highlights of this conversation with Amy Beth Horman include:

On how we approach practice: “Often I say to my students, you know, could it be that when you’re practicing that you’re not as curious or as, intellectually activated as you are when you’re in your chemistry class? Is that possible? And they’ll go,” well, yeah, maybe.” I say, ‘Are you bored? Like, are you allowing yourself to be bored?” Because if you really look at it, this opportunity to get to know yourself and your potential, not just musically, but just in general through the violin, there’s a very high potential that you can get to know yourself at a very intricate level through this instrument. But if your approach is to put the violin on the shoulder, and I always say it hits the shoulder, what happens next? If what happens next is for you to be like, well, I’m gonna get this over with <laugh>. That’s not going to go anywhere. But if you train your body’s response to the weight of the violin on your shoulder to light up and become more curious, to be more open to challenge, that actually, over time, I think has yielded so much joy for us.”

On the mental shift about practice that also translates to how she works with students who are playing at a high level:

“I think that decision ofreally becoming a, a little bit more specific about what I wanted to feel when I was practicing and being more mindful, and definitely making the decision that if I felt like it turned in another direction, giving myself permission to put the violin down was a very bold thing at the time, because I was teaching so much that you can’t guarantee that you’re going to have more practice time later.

But what would happen is, is that I would put it (the violin) down, I would recognize that I wasn’t present in a way which I accepted as being good. And then I would place the violin down and then continue with the day, and then I would generally have lots of teaching or parenting duties to do or whatever.And then by the end of the day when I was too tired to actually practice, then I would sit with a score.

So I knew I still needed to do something substantial and thoughtful. So it just shifted how I perceived practice. Even I started doing more mental practice. I started doing more listening. I recognized that it was okay, that I was physically exhausted to the point where I wasn’t going to be getting good work done, but that I needed to just then shift. Right? And miraculously, those were the best concerts I gave because I had done a lot of practicing in my lifetime at, at that point. It’s not to say that everybody can shift that much, but I think it’s important to ask ourselves, like, do we need to repeat that same passage 20 times? Maybe not, you know, maybe we need to do it two or three times in a way, which really sits beautifully in our hands and where we’re fully focused and aware of lots of little nuance details.

And then that’s enough so that it isn’t so much about “how many times did you do this?”, but more, were you aware enough to receive the signal from your body that this, this was good, this this has been understood.

And actually that is something that I talk about with the students a lot. You know, “do we need to really repeat things 10 times” or do we need to talk more about what does it feel like when you’ve done enough repetitions and it’s okay for you to move to something else? And, and even just asking them that question has been a very interesting thing as a teacher, for me, because they all have a little different answer, but then they listen more to themselves because they, they’ve been asked the questions, so then they, they think about it like, well, maybe that does feel good and understood and deep now and seated, so maybe it is okay for me to go to another piece and work a little bit on it.”

– Amy Beth Horman

Links from this episode:

This episode is brought to you by Christine Goodner’s upcoming talk for teachers about how we can help parents and caregivers reduce conflict in the practice room. You can find details and sign up HERE

Connect with Amy Beth Horman here: https://sfcm.edu/study/faculty/amy-beth-horman

Instagram: www.Instagram.com/hormanviolinstudio

Connect with Christine on Instagram: www.Instagram.com/SuzukiTriangle

Email Christine: TimetoPracticePodcast@goodnerviolingmail-com

Transcript of my conversation with Amy Beth Horman: