The Inner Take

In this episode of The Inner Take, percussionist Cristóbal Gajardo reflects on the experiences that have shaped his musical journey. From lessons learned with influential teachers to insights gained through years of practice and endurance training, Cristóbal explores how self-talk influences learning, performance, and personal growth. A thoughtful conversation about discipline, awareness, and the...

There are certain ideas that every musician encounters sooner or later, yet almost nobody talks about them. They shape the way we practice, perform, deal with fear, build a career, and understand our place in the world. After thirteen episodes and countless conversations with guests, colleagues, friends, and listeners, I realized that these five ideas keep appearing again and again. They are not s...

What happens when the thing you love most also becomes the thing that breaks you? In this episode of The Inner Take Podcast, I talk with Portuguese oboist and performer Patricia Pinheiro about the emotional realities behind a life in music. Patricia shares her unusual beginning in music — auditioning for an instrument she didn’t even know how to play — and opens up about navigating abusive teacher...

In this episode, we explore a question that most musicians are never asked: What does it really mean to be a music interpreter? Many of us spend years improving technically, but we never stop to think about what kind of interpreter we are becoming — or where we actually want to go. Based on ideas from the book Music and Emotions, this episode presents four types of music interpreters, defined by t...

What if the problem is not your talent… but your focus? Many musicians spend years trying to build a career — auditions, competitions, networking — and still feel empty, insecure, or stuck. In this episode, we talk about a fundamental idea that can change everything: Music is the cause. Career is the consequence. When you play only to be accepted, you lose your connection with music. When you reco...

In this episode of The Inner Take Podcast, I’m very happy to welcome my first non-musician guest: Ina Greiner. Ina is a dancer and teacher of tango and folklore based in Cologne, originally from Berlin. Through many years of working with movement and body awareness, she has developed a deep understanding of the connection between body, expression, and presence. She is currently training in Transfo...

The difference between making music and building a career in music is the key to understanding why musicians suffer—because we spend our lives playing to be accepted by someone else. In this episode of The Inner Take Podcast, we explore a fundamental idea that can completely change how you understand your life as a musician. This is not just another concept. This is one of the main reasons why so...

Guilt is one of the most common emotions in musicians. That voice in your head that says: “You should be practicing…” That feeling that no matter what you do, it’s never enough. In this episode of The Inner Take, we explore how guilt works, why it is so present in musicians, and how it can become destructive if we don’t question it. I also share a very personal story about how guilt led me to a pa...

In this episode, we move from theory into real experience. We explore something essential: your inner source—the place where your music truly comes from. But instead of starting with how you play, we begin with a different question: How do you listen? Because the way you listen shapes not only your experience with music—but also how you play, and how you speak to yourself as a musician. Through a...

In this special episode of The Inner Take, I welcome my first guest: composer Frank Pesci. Frank is an American composer based in Cologne, and someone who thinks deeply about music, the creative process, and artistic life. His clarity, honesty, and experience make this conversation particularly meaningful. We talk about what often goes unspoken — the things we “didn’t learn in school” but turn out...

This episode marks a turning point. In Episode 4 of The Inner Take, we explore a powerful and rarely discussed theory about why so many musicians feel constant guilt — and where it actually comes from. This is not about discipline, productivity, or practice habits. This goes deeper. What does it really mean to be a musician? What are we actually expressing when we play? This episode challenges tra...

In this episode we explore one of the central ideas of this podcast: The Inner Take. As musicians, we spend a huge amount of time preparing music for what I call “exhibition venues” — concerts, auditions, classes, competitions, rehearsals. Places where our playing is presented to someone else and where we try to deliver the best possible version of what we do. Our preparation often follows a proce...

In this episode of The Inner Take, I talk about a major turning point in my life: moving to Germany at a time when everything in my career seemed to be going well. Concerts were happening. I was studying, performing, building a path. But inside my head, another story was unfolding. A voice kept telling me that something was wrong — that I wasn’t good enough, that I couldn’t do it. How can reality...

I didn’t create this podcast because everything was working. I created it because something broke. After moving to Germany, I was forced to confront a fear I could no longer ignore: performance anxiety. Not just nerves — but a deep inner instability that began to affect how I played, how I thought, and how I saw myself as a musician. What followed was a therapeutic process that reshaped my relatio...