Sign-up is Closed - Dr. Molly Gebrian Live Zoom Q&A

Pallas

Maybe you have heard of Dr. Molly Gebrian's book, Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician's Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing (https://a.co/d/9vPwLcx)!

If you would be interested in meeting Dr. Molly Gebrian via Zoom for a Q&A, please leave a comment!

I sent Dr. Gebrian a Facebook message earlier today telling her that she has a fan club here on PianoTell. She wrote back to me:

"Hi! Thank you so much for your message! I'm so glad you're enjoying my book! 🙂 I do have a newsletter, which you can sign up for on my website at the bottom of my contact page: https://www.mollygebrian.com/contact"

"I also have a YouTube channel where I post a lot of content. I also teach live online courses on the science of practicing where people talk and interact with me and the other participants. The next installment of that is actually starting a week from today on Sept. 7. More info on that here if it would be of interest: https://www.mollygebrian.com/courses/liveonline"

"Finally, different groups (music teachers associations, student organizations, universities, etc.) often bring me in for presentations and/or Q&A sessions. If you guys at PianoTell.com would like to organize some sort of Q&A over Zoom or something, I would be very open to that. Just let me know and we can figure out the details! 🙂 Thank you for reaching out!"

Participant Availability. Please make sure your name is listed below if you want to participate. On Wednesday, September 4th, I will 1) close sign-ups, 2) calculate the fee we will each contribute, and 3) open a private discussion to collect contributions and advance questions.

Live Zoom Group: The following members will join the Zoom session on September 20 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. EDT, and ask questions during the Q&A (if you have any):

@twocats
@Pallas
@Ithaca
@HeartKeys
@ranjit
@Animisha
@Sam
@PatG
@iternabe

Recording Group: the following members will watch the video of the session and submit their advance questions by September 16th.

@JB_PT
@BartK
@navindra
@ShiroKuro

With 13 participants, each person will pay about $12 for a 2-hour session. On 9/4, I will create a private group to collect the payments and the advance questions from the Recording Group.

Animisha

Pallas If the time of the Q&A doesn't suit their schedules, the following members are interested in watching a recording:

@Animisha

That is not quite what I said! I am very interested in joining the meeting if that is possible.

Animisha

Pallas I sent Dr. Gebrian a Facebook message earlier today

Thank you SO MUCH Pallas for organising this for us! 🥰

ranjit

I would definitely be interested, sign me up!

ShiroKuro

I would be interested too, but I would imagine she wouldn’t want to do a presentation or Q&A session for free (and I wouldn’t expect her to). I don’t know how those kinds of things are organized when there’s a fee involved.

Pallas

ShiroKuro I would be happy to ask her, and to contribute to a fee.

ShiroKuro

Pallas maybe you could ask her what her policy is, or what she charges for 1) a presentation (I’m assuming she would do some formal preparation), versus 2) a quality session, which I’m assuming she wouldn’t do as much prep for.

Pallas

Also, I'm not posting anywhere but PT, but if anyone wants to cross post to generate more interest, I would welcome that. If anyone has any experience at arranging this sort of thing, I would be happy to hand it off too.

Pallas

Dr. Gebrian is offering to speak to us for a fee of $80/hour (which is her professional lesson rate). She says smaller groups usually engage her for 1-2 hours. I noticed there has been quite a lot of conversation about how to implement her methods in a private practice, and this seems like a great opportunity to ask her those questions directly.

Pallas

ShiroKuro She said this:

Thank you! I appreciate that! My typical fee when an organization brings me in is $250 for a 1-2 hour workshop, but organizations usually have a budget to bring in guests. I'm not sure how many of you there are, but my hourly fee for lessons is $80, so for a more informal Q&A like this, I would be fine charging my regular lesson fee. My guess is it would make it probably $10-$15 per person, which seems doable for people. Please let me know what you think about this and we'll go from there. Thank you so much for your interest in and support of my work!

ShiroKuro

@Pallas I didn’t see your post right above mine.

That’s quite reasonable!

Now the big question! What time zones are we all in and what time zone is she in?

Ok also the complicated one, how should we best move money around 😅

Pallas

ShiroKuro She is based in Boston (Eastern Daylight GMT-4). Once we see how many people want to participate, we can determine if one or two hours would be better (to make sure there's enough time for everyone to ask a question). I would be happy to take point on the money part if someone else can do the cross-posting. I'm hoping we can get 6-8 people to make it a nice little class for Dr. Gebrian.

HeartKeys

interested as well

Ithaca

Happy to chip in, too, although I haven't even managed to watch her videos all the way through, yet. I'm guessing 2 hours is a good idea....

Pallas

Ithaca I think it matters very much how many people want to join. If we get no more than 8, she has indicated that an hour might do. More people than that, and questions might go unanswered. So far, we have 5! Let's see what happens!

Ithaca

Pallas Fair point, but fwiw, if we've got more than one wordy person (like me, ahem), I'm happy to pitch in extra. [I tend to come at these things theoretically, w/a lot of "what if" type questions, which can take a lot of time to answer. Once I was in for a medical consult, and after ~ 75 min of back-and-forth I asked the doc what questions I'd missed. She gave me the side-eye and said, "most people stop after the first one". 🤣]

twocats

Count me in!

Pallas

Ithaca I'm also full of questions, so we'll just have to see how many folks sign up, then agree among ourselves how to manage the time so everyone gets a turn! If we can afford two hours, that'll be amazing! I'm glad you're excited and interested!

Ithaca

Also, is anyone interested in compiling a partial list of questions in advance? (Or, alternatively, does that seem inappropriate?)

Just off the top of my head, I'm curious about

(1) ranjit's long-ago question about whether/how Gebrian thinks flow states affect the general timing in her schedules.

(2) whether any of her ideas/research shine a light on how to regain one's touch on the piano. (I don't know if this is something she can speak to, since her main instrument is the viola.)

ranjit

Ithaca
Another question: In her attentional focus videos, she talks about how aiming for the sound results in the body's movements being the most optimized, vs aiming for specific hand movements. But it is a common issue for some students to focus on the sound and somehow get a piece of music to sound good while using inefficient or tense movements. How do you reconcile these?

Pallas

Since our time will be limited, I'm going to read the book again and primarily ask questions that will help me most effectively use the methods in my practice as a first-year piano student working with many small pieces at a time.

I very easily get into a flow state at the piano so I have to set a timer to make sure I get my breaks!

BartK

Nice idea but I probably won't be able to join for 2 hours in a time slot that matches your time zone. Besides, I watched all the videos and I don't really have questions at this stage.

I can contribute to the fee if you guys are OK recording the whole thing so I could watch it later.

Animisha

I am interested, if the meeting is not too late. I have said it before, I am in the wrong time zone...

Edit: already now during practising, a bunch of questions are arising... I really hope that you will choose a time that suits us in Europe!