Musician’s resources for the Soul: Incredible books that will benefit your journey
Don’t spend money on a counselor, psychologist or anyone charging an arm and a leg for self-help until you have tried reading these books first. You will be surprised what you can achieve on your own without hurting your wallet.
The Inner Game of Music.
Barry Green and Timothy Gallway
If you want the ‘secret’ to becoming a true musician, whether you are a professional performer, teacher, hobby performer or youtube performer, Gallway and Green’s book is probably the most respected book out there. It will grant you a unique perspective on performing music which will remove a lot of your self-doubts. It comes from the understanding that we, the performer, are the mode of deliverance between the composer and the present audience. It teaches us to become more absorbed in the world of the artist rather than the ‘self’. Artists who are bound to fail are the ones who are not only unaware of the composer’s intentions, but of their own health.
They approach the idea of ‘self’ from two perspectives; The first and second self. The first self becomes absorbed in all the voices (the inner voices), becomes distracted and attempts to multi-task. This is the state of ‘blurring’, where we cannot stay in the moment and appreciate every musical note or nuance we hear. The second self is reliant on our past musical experiences. It is instinctive, flowing and motion-centered. The musician wishes to find a balance between the two; where we chose to ignore or accept the advice we receive from Self 1, and to ‘relax into’ the flow of self 2. By the end of the book, we should be more instinctive, sensitive musicians who are not as self-absorbed.
When you watch brilliant musicians at work, and I mean the BEST of the best. You will see that they are very instinctual. It looks as if it merely ‘comes out of them’. This is the state that The Inner Game aims to create within the reader.
If there is one book you NEED in your life it’s this one.
The Inner Game of Music amazon links:
The Inner Game of Music
The Secret and The Magic
Rhonda Byrne
Have you ever watched or heard about the movie ‘The Secret?” If you have not, here it is. If you haven’t watch it, stop what you are doing and watch the whole thing from start to finish, it will change your entire perspective on life.
The premise of ‘The Secret’ is something called the Law of Attraction. I actually explain the link between the law of attraction and musicians here. Put simply, the Law of Attraction is when like attracts like. If you put out positive vibrations into the world, you will receive positive results. If you are metaphysically or spiritually minded, you will not have too much difficulty accepting this fact. The book and the film will speak to you on every level.
If you are skeptical about the law of attraction, my logic is this: If you were to be kind to one new person a day for the next two years, you will have been kind to over 600 people. Among these 600 people, I can guarantee you will make some contacts. Some of these contacts will change your life. They will know many people in their own life. If they know that you are a musician, what is the chances they will know somebody who knows somebody? Do you see where I’m going? I completely understand why people would be skeptical about this, but even if you use pure logic, the law still works.
As for the books; yes, you will get more out of the book than the film. The film is excellent, but you can only deliver so much information in 1.5 hours. The ‘fine print’ as it were can be found in the book. Don’t worry, there is no catch to the book, it’s cheap and you are not signing up for anything. Like The Inner Game, it is a book that will change your life.
The Secret discusses the law in its entirety and suggests a number of activities. The Magic helps you create a 28 day programme where you apply the law of attraction in your day to day life. It is a bit of a commitment, since you have to put aside some time every day to count 10 blessings, or to write a list of problems you want solved in the near future. You will, however, change your entire perspective on how you are faced with challenge. At first, you will feel as if you are forcing it, on the other hand, you will start to notice more positive things happening around you in your life. Things that seem uncanny and miraculous. You might end up with a part that you did not expect to get, land a job that came out of no where, find a relationship, achieve a weight loss goal. They are all things that you would normally ‘want’, but because you are practicing the techniques in The Magic, they come to you more readily.
After 2-4 months of this, you will be entirely changed. Challenges will still appear in your life, they will never go away, but you will notice that you are less flustered by them. You are more equipped to face them. The reason for this is that with enough mental programming, you can change the way your sub-conscious reacts to certain scenarios. You will feel challenged, but something within you will just ‘know’ that you will get through this.
Because of the nature of work as a performer, the Secret and the Magic are perfect for our line of work. We are constantly faced with problems and situations where we need to act intelligently to get to the next step. Don’t spend hundreds of dollars seeing a counselor or psychologist until you have at least tried these books.
The Secret and The Magic amazon links:
Kindle Edition: $17.02
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