Taming The Musical Control Freak! E: 299 with Jean-Paul Wright

Talking Flutes

Taming the Musical Control Freak: Unleashing Creativity and Achieving Musical Excellence!

As we all know, music, a universal language that transcends boundaries and stirs the soul, has the power to evoke emotions, inspire creativity, and connect us on a deep level. For many musicians, even if you don’t do if professionally, it becomes a lifelong passion, demanding dedication, practice, and a relentless pursuit of excellence.

However, in this pursuit of musical perfection, which if we take a step back for a moment… we’ll know that perfectionism doesn’t exist due largely to us being at the behest of audience and teacher judgement and validation, yet even though we know deep down that finding genuine perfection isn’t possible, some of us may still find ourselves trapped in the clutches of perfectionism which may lead to the occasional transformation into a musical control freak. This mindset manifests in various ways, often fuelled by an underlying fear of making mistakes or falling short of one's own demanding standards.

In this Bitesize podcast, Jean-Paul asks the question "So what is The Musical Control Freak" and then discusses why some of us have the simple desire for perfection!

At the heart of the musical control freak lies an unwavering quest for total precision, flawless tone and perfect interpretation. To some high achieving performers this drive may be how they believe they function best, however for the majority of flute players, these expectations can prevent us from ever being truly happy with what we do.

'Talking Flutes', 'Talking Flutes Extra' and 'Bitesize' are podcast productions by the TJ flute company. For more information visit www.tjflutes.com