I’m getting sleepy, sleepy . . . . But I need to wake up and write this review. The latest product to land on my desk in wait of critique is the Musicians Hypnosis app for the iPhone and iPad. While my first impression of the app was analyzing the grammatical correctness of the name (it’s not technically incorrect: I guess it could be plural nonpossessive but, really, doesn’t Musicians’ seem so much more logical than Musicians?) as well as observing other typos and minor grammatical slip-ups on the website (which, incidentally, looks like a throwback to GeoCities), this app does have something to offer. Let me back up.
The Musicians Hypnosis app is the iPhone version of the Self Hypnosis for Musicians CD, which is now 10 years old and in its third edition. I had never heard of or tried the CD, but if you don’t have an iPhone and you like what you read here, you should probably order the CD.
The app is intended to put you in a trance and help you achieve all kinds of music-related goals, such as overcoming stage fright, memorizing lyrics, and improving your rhythm. If you are not a smart phone user, you might wonder, “That sounds like something I would want to do at home. Why would I want it on my mobile phone?” Besides the trend for people to want to do everything everywhere from their phones, the app-ness of it offers a lot more customization than the CD and a lower price than a computer software program would likely go for.
I didn’t want to start out by getting too customized, though. When I do a review, I like to jump in with as little tomfoolery as possible, since that’s what most potential customers would do. So I turned on the app and basically just ran with the default settings.
There was very little in the way of instructions. I hit “Start,” and a British man started talking to me. He did have quite a lovely, soothing voice and a charming accent. But I started getting confused fast. When the “subliminal messages” started coming on (faint, hard-to-discern background voices that you have the option to turn off if you find the notion creepy), I was concerned about my inability to hear them clearly and wondered if I was supposed to be listening through headphones. Then the charming British man told me to feel my chest rising and falling, and I wondered suddenly if I was supposed to be lying down.
I hit “Pause” and jumped for the “Info” button before I could screw anything else up, but it did not answer any of my questions. There was no real “How to use this app” section or any helpful hints of any sort—just a lot of background information about what hypnosis is and why it is really not scary or dangerous at all (except while driving or operating heavy machinery).
But back to the track. You are basically led into a “trance” (or a half-awake-sort-of state) by some guided imagery, then you hear some encouragement about whatever you selected to be encouraged about, and then after some time with that, you are quickly guided back out of the trance.
I’m a moderately skeptical person, so I didn’t really think the trance would work, but afterward I felt different. I do think the trance had an affect on me. To be fair, I read somewhere that I’m supposed to be easily hypnotized because I cry at movies, books, music videos, sappy endings to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and, occasionally, at a really good commercial. So I can’t guarantee similar success for you. I suspect it might be harder for outright cynics and easier for my hippie yoga friends who love this kind of stuff.
Searching to apply my newfound confidence was kind of a botch. See, I had gone straight for the first option on the list of topics to be hypnotized about, which was “Announcements.” I guessed it was some sort of introductory message, like maybe with the detailed instructions I couldn’t seem to find. It turns out it was actually a hypnosis session about making announcements—at a concert or audition or something. It wasn’t at the beginning of the topics because it was supposed to be listened to first; it was at the beginning because it was first alphabetically. Well, fear of public speaking is not something I struggle with, so I don’t know that it did much for me. I mean, I was definitely psyched up to get in front of a crowd in some formal wear and start handing out awards or something, but I don’t know how helpful that is.
I did wake from the trance, however, feeling refreshed and lively, and decided I should probably try again. It was late at night so I wasn’t about to audition, perform, or even practice opera in my apartment. But, I had just bought an electric bass off a colleague, which I could easily practice at 2 a.m. I mean, basses are hard to hear even when they’re amplified. So I decided to try out the self hypnosis for “Turbo-Practice.”
After being guided into a trance by imagining a ruler and an arrow, I was infused with the turbo-practice technique. Basically, the charming British man was suggesting that if you learn something slowly and well, you’ll automatically be better at playing it faster—nothing revolutionary, but a nice practice technique to be reminded of. So as soon as I broke out of my trance, I jumped on my shiny blue bass to practice “Killing in the Name” very, very slowly. Of course it’s hard to judge your rate of progress on an instrument you’ve had for only a few days, but it was very much the most productive practice session I had had yet. I don’t know if it made me “learn 10 times faster” as the advertising proffered—that was probably a bit of an exaggeration—but even two times faster is a big difference, isn’t it?
After my experiment, I surfed over to their website to find more documentation—you know, like the instructions I’d been searching for. They, however, were not to be found. Instead, I had to sit through an extensive mp3 lecture that was basically the same as the “Info” tab on the app, explaining what hypnosis is and how it is really not scary or dangerous at all (except while driving or operating heavy machinery). Plus I had to register with my e-mail address to be granted a link to the free lecture, even though the link itself was not password-protected (kind of sketchy). Why did I have to sit through 16 minutes of background information just to discover that the information I wanted wasn’t there, instead of just being able to scan for it in written form?
Those frustrations aside, let me tell you a little more about the app itself. As I stated above, its chief draw is customization, and I don’t mean nonsense little quirks like changing the background color. On this app, you can choose how much time you want to spend being induced into a trance (Long, Medium, or Short), what imagery you want to use to deepen your trance (Steps, Ruler, Studio), what background noise you want (Air, Music, Waves), and whether or not you want to include the subliminal messages. Then you can choose what topic you want to focus on: Announcements, Auditions, Confidence, Creativity, Exams, Lyrics, Pitch and Tuning, Pre-Gig Pep-Talk, Question, Reading, Rhythm and Timekeeping, Stage-Fright, Turbo-Practice, or Visualization.
Having played around with it a few times, I felt like it worked pretty well when I was really free from distractions, and less well when I was uncomfortable or woken up by the sound of my iPhone hitting the floor because I was so relaxed I dropped it.
The app is $4.99 in the iTunes store. Whether or not you think that’s a good deal probably depends on where you fall on the skeptic/believer spectrum. I hope having some feedback from someone who falls in the middle has been helpful.
