Interview: Gunn-Hilde Erstad of Rendezvous Point on Musicianship, Physical Performance, and Navigating the Prog Scene

Hi there, my fellow basement-dwellers! We’ve had another interview, but this time, we’re aiming to educate you a bit, especially you, our musician demographic that needs to learn how to take care of your body since four energy drinks mixed with donuts are no healthy dinner. We’ve got Gunn-Hilde Erstad from Rendezvous Point, who happens to be a PhD candidate researching physical performance in musicians. But enough talking, let’s hear from her!

Gunn-Hilde: I’m researching at the University of Agder, where I’m a research fellow…it’s not just academic, but also practical. It’s partly a practical and written monograph that focuses on how to enhance and achieve peak performance.

And what would peak musical performance be?

Gunn-Hilde: You can talk about peak performance and flow as being similar, as you can experience flow when you are having a peak performance. It’s the upper limit of the level you are at in the moment. If you are on a certain level of performance, you should also expect that you can perform at that level on stage.

It was interesting for me to hear Gunn-Hilde use very psychological terms to define performance, such as flow. However, I wanted to know more details about how she decided to study this in the first place. What was the research problem?

Gunn-Hilde: What I have experienced before is that I am on a certain level, but I do not manage to perform at that level on stage because of nerves. The whole project started when we were recording our second album, Universal Chaos. On that album, there is a song called “Universal Chaos,”  which mostly contains thirty second-notes and thirty second 9-tuplest. It’s really fast, with lots of tapping, and it was very demanding to play. I was terrified of how I was going to play this live. It was okay to play it on the record because I was at home in my studio, but on stage, it’s not enough to just know the song. You have to be even better. In the studio, you can do multiple takes and put them together, but live, you have to jump in and perform perfectly over and over every night.

I believe every musician on stage can relate to performance anxiety, and I’ve known many who cope with it in ways that are… let’s say, not constructive. It’s no secret more and more Metal musicians are suffering all sorts of physical issues once they become senior citizens or even before that.

Gunn-Hilde: That’s when I started to look into how I could improve my skills and reduce my performance anxiety. I also have a history of struggling with performance-related pain, tension in my neck, and similar issues, which have impaired both my endurance and speed. That’s why I applied for a research fellowship to dig deeper into this problem because I guess it’s not just my problem.

You might be wondering now: does something as simple as working out properly and learning about your own anatomy make a significant difference in your playing? Well, according to the expert, the answer is yes!

Gunn-Hilde: Now I can play without any pain, and I feel that I have the surplus I need to perform our songs live. I have also reduced my anxiety a lot, so it doesn’t impair my performance anymore. Everything is connected; once you exercise more and have the surplus and stamina to rehearse more, you’re less anxious because you know the material so well, and you’re confident that your body will be able to deliver. I also believe it’s even more important for female musicians to know how to exercise both mentally and physically because research shows that women experience more pain.

Given that Gunn-Hilde touched on the subject, I wanted to address the elephant in the room. You see, she’s a woman in Prog Metal, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a Prog concert, but it’s usually a sausage party, which is why I wanted to know how she felt about being part of a scene that originally wasn’t meant for women.

Gunn-Hilde: I have always been reminded that I’m something unusual, and when I got into higher music education, there was always the assumption that I had been “quotated” just because of my gender and not because of my skill… It’s something I keep in mind, and it has made me a bit self-conscious, making me feel like I have to convince people that I belong. I also get a lot of comments that are really not okay, so I have to deal with that too.

The internet is a ruthless place full of people who take advantage of others from the safety of their keyboards. This isn’t anything new. The same goes for music schools and academic environments. I can tell you from my own experience that these are places that historically have benefited only a minority. So, next time you want to be mean online, remember how much many of us have fought to be part of the Metal community—a community that needs each one of its members to survive. Yet, not everything was bad according to Gunn-Hilde.

Gunn-Hilde: I’m privileged to be part of the scene, and I think it’s good for the band that we stand out in some ways, that we’re not just like the rest of the bands. I also feel a lot of support from companies like Dingwall, who have supported me with gear.

It was nice to hear that! Yet I wanted to know more about Rendezvous Point itself. Now that I knew they were athletes with gear, I wanted to know if that was the only secret for them to make music that was proggy yet extremely poppy.

Gunn-Hilde: We covered a lot of Dream Theater and Tool, so that was the foundation when we started the band. It was actually me and Peter who started the band when we talked about our shared musical tastes. Since we all have music degrees, we have been associated with several different genres. For example, our keyboard player, Nicolay mostly plays for huge Norwegian pop artists like Emile Nicolas, Bernhoft, and Sondre Justad who are really big names here in Norway, and Geimund has his background mostly in pop.

So, they’re not only good at hitting the gym and studying the human body. They also have a wide musical background, proving again that if you put your body and mind in the right place, you get more done regardless of your “talent”. Despite how the idea of getting in shape and learning body mechanics makes me feel about my own playing, I wanted to know a few more details about the research project.

Gunn-Hilde: So, I  just research my own practice through artistic research, focusing on how I experience changes in my performance strategy, using an auto-ethnographic approach. Apart from my doctoral thesis, we’re actually starting a study on how physical exercise affects music students at the university. We’re going to teach them a bit about anatomy and how the body works. My aim is to talk about this topic and combine sports research with what we know about musicians, so we can generate more research in this area later on.

And this is how small ideas become big in research! You start with something affordable and raise the odds by creating programs and social interventions. So, next time you’re not sure what researchers are doing with your tax money, think that maybe, just maybe, they’re finding ways to make Metal music more awesome!

Please follow Gunn-Hilde here, Rendezvous Point here and check out our review of their latest album!