Justine, Author at Justine Cormack

Attitude is everything

“Attitude is everything”

It’s a common saying and personally I couldn’t agree more. When it comes to successfully and confidently expressing yourself and having a great time in the process, awareness of your attitude allows for a wealth of opportunities.

Do you adopt a confident, positive attitude when you play/create, or is your attitude doubting and/or negative? Perhaps you are somewhere in between, and of course, your attitude will probably change with each day, each piece of music, each performance…

However, you most probably have a ‘default’ attitude when you pick up your instrument or start to create. Do you know what that attitude is? Are you choosing it, or is it choosing you?

Try this:

Start by observing your attitude and keep exploring it in all its detail until you know it intimately. Keep watching it and attempting to describe it. Quite possibly in the process your attitude will change – and noticing this change is of great value.

Once you know your ‘default’ attitude well, try on some other attitudes for size. Do you observe attitudes in others that you would like to emulate? Are there attitudes you wish you had? Don’t think too hard about this…perhaps the first ideas that come to mind are the most meaningful?

Like it’s a game, adopt an attitude you want to explore, and start playing. Observe how that attitude affects your performance. Do you feel more confident, are you expressing yourself more easily? Do you feel better physically or emotionally? Or perhaps it is less successful and rewarding than what you are used to? Then try some more on for size…keep exploring and observing closely.

This process of exploration will educate you about the attitudes you have been working within, and it is highly likely that in the process you will discover some new liberating attitudes to incorporate into your performance process.

The first and most important step is to get clarity in regards to the attitudes you bring to your performance and creativity. That clarity will propel you forward towards developing new and improved attitudes, and in the process, as you get to know and fine-tune your attitudes, your self-expression will improve, as will your confidence and creativity.

Silver linings the second time around

Having performed the complete cycle of Beethoven’s violin sonatas in February 2020 with American pianist Kate Boyd, we had originally planned to perform the cycle again later that year. But of course, COVID had other plans for us and the soonest that we could rearrange for our second cycle was for 10-17 January 2023 – almost 3 years later.

With the first of these concerts now just a day away, I’ve been reflecting on the new opportunities that presented themselves because of the enforced ‘change of plans’, and the silver linings have been numerous and rather wonderful.

Building Confidence

Radio New Zealang Concert asked me for advice around confidence, and in particular if it can be built.

I believe it can.

You can read what I had to say about it all on their website: Confidence Tricks – some tips for musical performance.

Effort, Age and Survival

It is over a month since my last blog post and with the 6 weeks that have passed, we are well and truly in mid-summer here in Central Otago.

I have been systematically working through the 10 Beethoven violin sonatas, regularly inspired by the awesome landscapes outside my window, and accompanied by my trusty sidekick – Coco the cat.

It turns out one of the biggest current challenges is physical fatigue.

A reset from the inside out

Having previously performed 6 of the 10 Beethoven violin sonatas more than 20 years ago, it has been a lovely process coming back to the familiar, as well as discovering the new. Primarily due to the work I have been doing over the last 2 years getting to the nitty-gritty of my performance philosophies, these incredibly pristine works of Beethoven are proving to be an absolute gift for me.

Where to from here?

The next three months are super exciting for me, with 3 concerts confirmed in Mid-Feb 2020 for the performance of all 10 Beethoven sonatas within three days…and all in my new gorgeous neighbourhood of Central Otago.

It’s quite possible that I am naïve to the full enormity of this project – but one thing is for sure, sinking my teeth into these works again is a true treat, and the magnitude of the project is just what I am now needing at this point in my life.

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Acknowledging the positive

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Discovering whole-body awareness

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Be true to your own creative voice

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Taking ownership of your confidence

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The mind+body connection

Mind+body connection is at the heart of creative ease and flow.

As a human being, your mind has the potential to be your greatest asset or greatest downfall, and everything in between. By learning to objectively observe your thoughts, your mental habits, and your ongoing mental chatter – both positive and negative, you can gain enormous insight around how you interact with both the world in general and your creativity in particular.

Hand in hand with gaining awareness of your mind and thoughts, developing a keen awareness and connection with your body – how it feels, how it moves, how it communicates to you – is key to gaining creative freedom in your creative pursuits.

In addition, by fully connecting to the physical body, you gain more ability to quieten and even disengage with the limiting mental chatter. By being aware of your physical body through your senses, if you really pay attention, you instantly gain access to your body’s intelligence and wisdom. By listening to this wisdom, and allowing yourself to be guided by it, you gain insight into natural and ease-ful ways of expressing your creative self.

Connecting with your physical body also gives you access to the current moment – the place of greatest creative power. How you interact with the current moment determines how you live your life within these moments.

So working towards a consistent awareness of both your mind AND body is of fundamental benefit in unlocking your creative confidence. With the two realms connected, you have access to your full mental and physical intelligence, and your natural self-expression can flow effortlessly.

The mind+body connection, and the power it brings to your creative self-expression, is at the heart of my ListenFeelPlay philosophy, and the holistic awareness of mind AND body is a critical element of being fully engaged and truly in a creative space.

Try this:

When you are involved with your creative pursuit, ask yourself how much you are in your mind, and how much you are in your body. Try to give a percentage – for example 75% in my mind versus 25% in my body. If you don’t know, observe yourself in action again, and look for your own balance of awareness between mind and body.

Then try a different balance – perhaps the opposite – so in this case 25% in your mind, 75% in your body…how does that feel? What happened?

Then, try to be 95% in your body and only 5% in your mind…and pay attention. What happened to your creativity? How did it feel?

By exploring different divisions of awareness between mind and body, you will gain objective insights into how this awareness plays into the success of your creativity. There is no right response. Experiment, gain objective insights into your own mind+body awareness, and pay attention to how it plays into the success of your self-expression.

Keep exploring and have fun with it.

Silver linings the second time around

Building Confidence

Radio New Zealang Concert asked me for advice around confidence, and in particular if it can be built.

I believe it can.

You can read what I had to say about it all on their website: Confidence Tricks – some tips for musical performance.

Effort, Age and Survival

It is over a month since my last blog post and with the 6 weeks that have passed, we are well and truly in mid-summer here in Central Otago.

I have been systematically working through the 10 Beethoven violin sonatas, regularly inspired by the awesome landscapes outside my window, and accompanied by my trusty sidekick – Coco the cat.

It turns out one of the biggest current challenges is physical fatigue.

A reset from the inside out

Where to from here?

Mountains and overcoming self-consciousness

Acknowledging the positive

Discovering whole-body awareness

Be true to your own creative voice

Taking ownership of your confidence

Clarity of intention

Gaining clarity of intention when creating is vital and liberating.

Too often we muddle our way through a learning process without really taking care to ask ‘what do I really want?’ When we consistently stop and ask a few simple questions about what we really want, allowing your imagination to soar without imposing restrictions, the way forward then becomes much more clear.

This clarity of intention is a key to unleashing your creative potential, to finding your own voice and developing your self-expression.

Clarity of intention through objective listening:

As a performer, in order to discover and evolve our intention, it is both powerful and imperative to be able to objectively listen to our playing in order to notice what we want to change. Once we are able to notice how we are currently playing, we can pay attention to what we like and dislike about it. Again, once you notice these things, it is then usually pretty clear what needs to be done to evolve and improve them…that is if you are truly listening objectively, with absolute honestly, and impartiality.

Through this process, you can evolve and fine-tune your intention…and by doing this over and over again, and evolving both your quality of listening and clarity of intention, you will improve and get closer and closer to your expressive potential, unleashing your creativity and imagination.

Clarity of intention through objective feeling:

Noticing how you feel as you move and play, and then asking ‘how do I want to feel?’ and ‘how do I want to move?’, the body often has great wisdom to inform a better way to feel and move. To develop a clear intention of how you want to move, and what you are going to feel is expressively liberating.

Fully listening and fully feeling for what we want has the effect of unleashing our creativity in the moment.

Listening and Feeling are vital keys towards developing our creative potential as performers.

Silver linings the second time around

Building Confidence

Radio New Zealang Concert asked me for advice around confidence, and in particular if it can be built.

I believe it can.

You can read what I had to say about it all on their website: Confidence Tricks – some tips for musical performance.

Effort, Age and Survival

It is over a month since my last blog post and with the 6 weeks that have passed, we are well and truly in mid-summer here in Central Otago.

I have been systematically working through the 10 Beethoven violin sonatas, regularly inspired by the awesome landscapes outside my window, and accompanied by my trusty sidekick – Coco the cat.

It turns out one of the biggest current challenges is physical fatigue.

A reset from the inside out

Where to from here?

Mountains and overcoming self-consciousness

Acknowledging the positive

Discovering whole-body awareness

Be true to your own creative voice

Taking ownership of your confidence

Objective listening

Over my years as a violinist, I have come to the conclusion that the most powerful way to develop my playing is to pay extraordinary attention to both the intention: what I intend to hear as I play, and the actual: what I actually hear as I play.

These may seem to be the same thing, but the creative power is in the acknowledgment and awareness of how these two realities differ.

The intention is generated in the realm of the imagination. The actual is generated in the realm of the physical.

The intention is where the creative potential begins, and the actual is where it is realised.

The intention anticipates, and the actual responds.

A key to playing to your creative potential is for these two realms to be identical aural pictures of each other – in total alignment. When this is achieved, your ear is finely tuned to both your imagination and the sound you are producing, and you are in total control in the creative moment of performance.

Objective listening is paramount to this successful alignment. Being able to objectively observe the differences between these two realms allows an opportunity for objective decisions regarding what needs to be heard differently. If you can fully harness this awareness, you can improve and develop your playing very quickly.

Consider this: I find it helpful to assume that what I ‘actually played’ is what I ‘actually intended’.

It is easy to be deluded in terms of how we are actually playing, and often we believe we are playing better than we are. I find the best confirmation of what we are hearing in our imagination is what we actually play.

Furthermore, it is when we really notice the detail of what we are imagining (or lack of detail) that we can start to really craft what we want to be listening for – and this is where the power lies.

Put simply, if you don’t like what you are hearing when you play, and want something different, you have to change what you are listening for and consequently hear what you want to play.

“If you can hear it, you can produce it”, is a powerful and creative paradigm to work within. If you want it to sound different, you have to hear it differently, and hear it precisely the way you want it to be.

Take ownership and responsibility for what you are hearing, and keep refining until you know exactly what you want to hear, and until you play it that way.

Albert Einstein is broadly credited as saying “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. If you want to play differently, you need to change what you are listening for.

It requires great imagination to create what you want to hear – and this is where the fine tuning comes in. To get total clarity about all the aspects of the sound you want to create – character, colour, texture, timbre, pitch…the list is quite endless – you must always be refining the picture of the sound in your imagination.

Silver linings the second time around

Building Confidence

Radio New Zealang Concert asked me for advice around confidence, and in particular if it can be built.

I believe it can.

You can read what I had to say about it all on their website: Confidence Tricks – some tips for musical performance.

Effort, Age and Survival

It is over a month since my last blog post and with the 6 weeks that have passed, we are well and truly in mid-summer here in Central Otago.

I have been systematically working through the 10 Beethoven violin sonatas, regularly inspired by the awesome landscapes outside my window, and accompanied by my trusty sidekick – Coco the cat.

It turns out one of the biggest current challenges is physical fatigue.

Attitude is everything

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The mind+body connection

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Clarity of intention

Clarity of intention through objective listening:

Clarity of intention through objective feeling:

Other Inspiration Articles

Objective listening

Other Inspiration Articles

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