Episodes
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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 inner work behind becoming a musician.
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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 small topics or simple self-help advice—they are fundamental questions that every artist eventually has to face.
In this episode, I reflect on the five biggest lessons that have emerged through creating this podcast and through the conversations that have grown around it:
• Why our inner world matters just as much as technical progress.
• Why you are not alone in your fears, doubts, and insecurities.
• The difference between making music and building a career.
• Why understanding your true motivation changes the way you practice and perform.
• And why nobody is ever going to give you permission to create your own project.
If you have ever struggled with stage fright, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, or the feeling that you are constantly trying to live up to other people's expectations, this episode is for you.
Because growing as an artist is not only about playing better. It is about learning to think more clearly, understanding yourself more deeply, and building a healthier relationship with music, creativity, and your own artistic path. -
Missing episodes?
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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 teachers, depression, self-doubt, and the many moments where she almost walked away from music completely.
We talk about the inner voice musicians live with, the importance of asking for help, and why sometimes leaving music is not giving up, but creating space to reconnect with yourself and your creativity.
This conversation also explores a powerful idea: maybe artists are not meant to fit into systems with rules already written for them. Maybe we are meant to create our own systems, our own ways of making art, living, and connecting.
Patricia also speaks about A Mesa Project, an initiative that brings contemporary music into rural areas of Portugal, creating intimate shared experiences where music and local stories meet around one table.
A deeply honest conversation about identity, fear, creativity, and remembering that what we do is not who we are.
And maybe most importantly: if music stops being fun, we are allowed to imagine another way. -
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 their objectives, their way of studying, and their relationship with the music, the composer, and themselves.
You may recognize yourself in one of them — or maybe in several.
This episode invites you to become aware of your own path as a musician. -
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 reconnect with music, your career starts to move in a natural way.
I also share a real story: how a simple improvisation with a woodblock became a piece I later composed (WB1), and how that moment—when I was just exploring, without trying to prove anything—opened unexpected opportunities in my career.
We’ll also talk about something very important:
👉 What music are you not making because it doesn’t “fit” your career?
And one key question that can change how you approach your instrument:
Why do you play?
Not for the result. Not for approval.
But your real intention when you sit down to play.
If you’ve been feeling disconnected, pressured, or stuck, this episode is for you.
There is a place for you in music—exactly as you are. -
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 Transformative Bodywork, a practice that helps people reconnect with their bodies and release patterns that limit creativity, confidence, and well-being.
This episode marks an important step for the podcast: TITP is not only for musicians, but for anyone exploring creativity, expression, and personal growth.
We talk about the body as an instrument — something that is often overlooked, especially in music — and how physical awareness can directly influence performance, self-confidence, and artistic freedom.
Ina shares how unconscious patterns and defense mechanisms are stored in the body, how they shape the energy we have available, and how we can begin to work with them more consciously.
This episode is for you if you:
• feel blocked in your creativity, performance, or motivation
• struggle with fear, anxiety, or self-doubt
• want to reconnect with your body and feel more present
• are looking to develop more grounding, trust, and freedom
Even if you’re not a musician, this episode is for you.
And if you are — this might change the way you relate to your instrument. -
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 many musicians feel lost, pressured, or disconnected from music.
Why does something that once felt like pure play become something heavy?
When does expression turn into the need for approval?
And what happens when your music is no longer truly yours?
Through personal experience and insights inspired by the book Music and Emotions by Mauricio Weintraub, this episode dives deep into the tension between inner expression and external validation.
If you’ve ever questioned your path…
If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your music…
This might be one of those episodes that changes how you see everything. -
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 panic attack during my studies—and what I learned from that experience.
Finally, I give you practical tools to help you deal with guilt, organize your practice in a healthier way, and start building a better relationship with your music and yourself. -
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 personal experience at a concert by Mark Guiliana, we explore what happens when you truly open yourself to listening. What you feel, what you project, and how your sensitivity becomes a central part of your musical identity.
We talk about:
Listening for mistakes vs. listening to feel
How your listening reflects your inner dialogue
The role of the audience in shaping the performance
Why reconnecting with your inner world changes your music
This episode is an invitation to reconnect with your sensitivity—and start listening in a different way. -
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 to be essential. We explore the gaps in musical education, the emotional and practical realities of building a career, and what happens after the mountaintop.
At the center of this episode is Frank’s concept of self-mentoring, expressed through his 17 Laws of Self-Mentoring — a set of sharp, honest, and deeply useful principles for musicians, composers, and anyone navigating a creative life.
This episode is, above all, a real conversation — grounded in experience, clarity, and a genuine desire to understand what it means to make a life in music. -
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 traditional ideas in music education and introduces a new way of understanding identity, expression, and the inner life of musicians.
If you’ve ever felt pressure, confusion, or disconnection in your musical path, this episode may change the way you see everything. -
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 process similar to a recording studio:
play, listen, fix, play again — until we get the final take.
But while we are taking care of the music and the musician… what happens to the person?
In this episode we introduce a simple but powerful definition:
A musician is a person who needs or wants to express themselves through sound.
If the person behind the musician is ignored, what exactly are we expressing?
This is where the idea of the Inner Take appears:
all the experiences, emotions, thoughts and sensitivities that live inside us but are rarely acknowledged in musical environments.
The Inner Take is the part of ourselves that is not edited, not judged, and not erased.
And it might be the most important element of what makes every musician unique. -
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 say yes while your mind says no?
I share my experience starting over at a German university, dealing with stage anxiety, and the moment I began to understand the powerful inner dialogue that can shape how we experience music.
This episode is an invitation for musicians to listen closely to the voice they carry with them onto the stage. -
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 relationship with music, performance, and identity.
In this first episode, I share that journey openly — not as a success story, but as a turning point.
Because there is something we rarely talk about in music education:
We are trained to perform.
We are trained to compete.
We are trained to perfect technique.
But we are almost never taught how to deal with fear, vulnerability, pressure, or the psychological weight of being on stage.
The Inner Take was born from that gap.
This is a space for musicians who have experienced doubt, pressure, or anxiety — and want to understand it more deeply.
For those who have felt anxiety before a concert.
For those who question themselves more than they admit.
If you have ever struggled silently as a musician, this is where the conversation begins.
Welcome to The Inner Take.
