Meditating Through the Brass Instrument

Eglė Liutkauskaitė

This study examines the relationship between meditation and brass players' ability to cope with music-related mental challenges, as well as its effect on breathing. The results highlight that meditation could be beneficial for brass musicians, even though there were initial concerns that meditation might interfere with breathing during playing. The findings show that brass musicians might have additional tools for dealing with mental challenges without compromising their airflow and breath support. Future research could further explore brass-playing-specific meditations and tailor them to greater effectiveness. An experiment was conducted with two groups of conservatory brass players (experimental and control) to assess whether music-specific and general guided mindfulness meditations affect their ability to deal with music related mental challenges (MPA, negative self-perception and focus issues) and how they in particular affect participants’ breathing. The findings indicate that both types of meditation affect students’ abilities to deal with mental challenges in a positive way while mostly having either positive or no effect on their breathing and sound. The participants’ progress was assessed by using the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, the Mindfulness for Musicians Questionnaire, weekly forms evaluating MPA, negative self-perception and focus in different settings such as daily practice sessions, main subject lessons and performances as well as interviews. Furthermore, the Self-Experimentation Log suggests that aside from aforementioned benefits, one of the most visible short-term effects is enhanced focus that has been observed during practice sessions right after meditating.

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Conclusions

The results of this research suggest that meditation can be a valuable tool while dealing with the mental challenges of being a brass musician. Data gathered from both groups, as well as the self-experimentation log, has shown that both general and music-related meditations help one to deal with MPA and focus issues as well as improve self-perception. Even though both groups have noticed numerous improvements in various areas of the aforementioned aspects, including but not limited to improved quality of focus, improved attention span, deeper engagement, reduced MPA both in lessons and during performances, improved self-perception, and eased recovery of mood, self-esteem, and self-perception after unfortunate events, the results of this research suggest that some of the mental challenges were more affected by music-related meditation than the conventional one. For example, music-related meditation was noticed to help improve the engagement aspect of the focus more than general meditation. Furthermore, improvement of self-perception was also noticed to be more observable in the group of participants who were practicing music-related meditation. Moreover, initial concerns about meditation affecting technical proficiency in playing in a negative way were not confirmed. In addition, music-related meditation was observed to cause a positive effect on such playing aspects as breathing technique and sound.

This research could potentially be developed in multiple ways. First of all, in order to be able to draw definitive conclusions, the research ought to be conducted on a wider scale. That would allow to get data necessary for statistical analysis as well as decrease the impact on results of external factors affecting some of the participants. Furthermore, being able to use more validated measures would also improve the reliability of results.

On a personal level, practising meditation has become a meaningful tool for dealing with daily mental challenges of being a musician. Along with the long-term effects of improved focus, I have noticed that meditating at the beginning of practice sessions is one of the determining factors in my concentration in the upcoming practice sessions of the day. Furthermore, even though I personally see no changes regarding the amount of MPA experienced, meditating is definitely a useful tool to keep the MPQ level aligned with my capabilities even when I am very anxious. Last but not least, meditation made a long-lasting impact on my self-perception by helping me to be less emotional about my limitations as a musician, directing my energy from rumination to progress, and most importantly, helping me internalize that even in the face of the biggest challenges and failures, I can always “briefly observe them without judgment and start all over again.”

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Table of Contents:

Introduction

1.1. Literature Review: What is Meditation?

1.2. Literature Review: Meditation and Music

1.3. Literature Review: Brass Playing and Meditation

2.1. Experiment: Methodology

2.2. Experiment: Results

3. Self-Experimentation Log

4. Discussion and limitations

Conclusions

Bibliography