Unlock Your Best Music Performance (ft. Mark Morley-Fletcher)

Episode summary: Believe it or not, many highly skilled musicians suffer from performance anxiety. Or they can play well in practice but fall short of their potential when they play for others. This was the problem that Mark Morley-Fletcher set out to solve for himself and, in the process, developed a hugely popular, successful, and innovative course that any course creator can learn from as well.     In this episode, hosts Danny Iny and Abe Crystal interview Mark about his course “Unlock Your Performance.” Mark's course combines elements of evergreen and boot camp to create a seamless hybrid with 1,000 students and counting.In this episode we discuss:The background and the frustration of not being able to play as well in performance as in practice.The biggest challenge in making the course successful.The content of the course and its unique hybrid structure.Creating a forum and community that provides a safe place to share and perform. Danny’s and Abe’s debrief after the interview.“Because the biggest challenge, I think, for a lot of course creators, is people will often find ways not to do things. It's really easy to kind of get excited about going through the material and then not do the hard stuff of putting it into practice.” – Mark Morley-FletcherGuest bio:Mark Morley-Fletcher is a jazz guitarist and educator who specializes in training the frequently overlooked skills and mindsets that are a huge part of rapid improvement and outstanding performances. He is particularly interested in how musicians can benefit from techniques used by peak performers in sport and other fields to perform more consistently and enjoyably. He has helped over a thousand musicians at all levels and across all instruments reach new heights through his courses on Performance Psychology and Effective Practice.Resources or websites mentioned in this episode:Mirasee playinthezone.comCredits:Guest - Mark Morley-FletcherHosts - Danny Iny & Abe Crystal Producer - Cynthia Lamb Executive producer - Danny InyWriter - Michi Lantz and Cynthia Lamb Assembled by - Geoff GovertsenAudio Post Supervisor: Evan Miles, Christopher MartinAudio Post Production by Post Office SoundMusic soundscape: Chad Michael SnavelyIf you don't want to miss future episodes of Course  Lab, please subscribe to Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening right now. And if you liked the show, please leave us a starred review. It's the best way to help us get these ideas to more people.If you have a question for Course Lab, put the show title in the subject line and send it to podcasts@mirasee.com.Music and SFX credits: Track Title: FanfareArtist Name(s): ReveilleWriter Name: Brendan St. GelaisPublisher Name: BOSS SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTIONSTrack Title: Bossa BBArtist Name(s): MarieWriter Name: Chelsea McGoughPublisher Name: BOSS SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTIONSTrack Title: Carousel LightsArtist Name(s): Chelsea McGoughWriter Name: Chelsea McGoughWriter Name: Matthew WigtonPublisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTIONPublisher Name: BOSS SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTIONSTrack Title: GraceArtist Name(s): ShimmerWriter Name: Matthew WigtonPublisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTIONEpisode transcription: Unlock Your Best Music Performance (ft. Mark Morley-Fletcher)[00:00:00] : Mirasee. see the biggest challenge, I think for a lot of course creators and certainly the one that I've had is people will often find ways not to do things. It's really easy to kind of get excited about going through the material and then not do the hard stuff of putting into practice. Hello and welcome to course lab, the show that teaches course creators like you how to make better online courses. I'm a crystal co founder of resume, a course platform and I'm here with my co host, Danny B, the founder and Ceo of Mercy. In each episode we showcase of course and course creator who's doing something really interesting with their course And our guest today is Mark Morally Fleischer. Mark is a jazz guitarist who spent performing for more than 30 years. He teaches the psychology of performance to musicians. Mark, welcome to Corsica. Thanks jake. Great to be here. So mark, can you give us the 30,000 ft view of yourself, your background in teaching and how you came to this world of online courses. And then tell us a little bit about the specific course that you've been developing for musicians and how that's been going. Sure I've been a musician for, as you say, for for a long time performing all sorts of different things, but very much on the side. I'm a scientist by training. I had an office job for a long time and love to get out and play gigs in the evening. And I would find that I got very frustrated by not being able to play as well actually in performance as I could in practice. And I just assumed that this was the way it was. And I stumbled my way through that for decades or more of kind of just beating my head against a brick wall and making things better. And I found myself after I quit the office job, wondering what to do, going on a tennis course of all things, which looked at using performance psychology. So sports psychology techniques to, to improve your tennis playing. And I could not believe the impact that it had in just a three day course on how much my actual playing improved. But more importantly, in many ways, how much I actually started enjoying playing tennis much more rather than getting frustrated. So I thought there's got to be something here that I can do in music. Why didn't I know about this before I went around to look for where I could get that training in music and I just couldn't find anything that fitted the bill. So that started me off research and yet trying things out, bring things over from tennis, drawing on my experience, getting something that worked. And it made such a big difference. I thought, well I've got to see if I can help some other people with this. Just started teaching something reasonably informally to see where it went. And again, the results were better than I expected to the point where I thought, well I've got to try and make something of this and that's how I got into the online world. It was not a desire to teach online, rather it was having something to teach and discovering that it was just much more practical to do it and I could help a lot more people online. I mean, it sounds like a challenging topic in some ways to get musicians to think and perform differently. What were some of the challenges you encountered in helping people with this topic and what were some of the solutions and techniques you've come up with in terms of the delivery of your co...