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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),...

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...

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?...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...