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Hey guys, I'm back with another piano question but anyone that's conquered a mental block that they've had can chime in too.
So I've noticed over the past few years that when I'm performing in front of an audience, I'm suddenly aware of my own capacity for error, and the fact that my muscle memory can actually fail me if I get too nervous. I know as a pianist that you're not supposed to rely entirely on muscle memory, and I'm certain that I don't rely on it 100%, but I know that I utilize it at least to some extent, especially when memorizing.
It might sound strange but I guess when I was younger, I wasn't really thinking that I could mess up, so I didn't. I don't think I realized that a lot of what I had learned was based on muscle memory, and that it had the capacity to fail me. So whenever I would perform I would be thinking that I could play it 100%, so I wouldn't be nervous, and everything usually went fine. Even if I did screw up I usually blamed it on the fact that I wasn't paying attention, and the mess-ups were never major.
So, as of now I'm working on Rachmaninoff's famous prelude in C# minor, and I pretty much have the entire thing memorized, but as I move forward I need some tips on how to improve my nerves for live performances.
It's so strange... as soon as I realized that a lot of my memorization was muscle memory, I started getting nervous that something might escape me during a performance, which is horrendous because now that I'm more nervous, I'm more conscious of the fact that I can screw up, so I probably will.
It's almost like... if I was high, I could probably play it perfectly because I'm not thinking that I'll mess up, and my fingers will just do the work for me.
A few years back if I was reading this post I'd probably say something like... "just be confident and go in thinking that you won't mess up", but that just doesn't cut it anymore. It's sort of like I've lost my innocence, and even though I can try and convince myself that I won't screw up, I know it's possible, and that probability gets my nerves going and makes me think about screwing up throughout the whole performance. It's to the point where, when I'm playing, it's like I'm just watching my fingers and waiting for a screw-up. Ok that's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly does happen.
Sometimes I get lucky and forget about all this shit when I'm playing, and then suddenly my brain remembers all my deductions and I start getting nervous.
Hmm, as a final thought I feel like I should say that... I can get through the prelude in C# minor pretty well each time I play it. So far I haven't been able to do the entire thing perfectly, but I think that's partially due to the fact that I'm still working on it.
I may even be able to get it to the point where, at home, I can play it with a few or no mistakes. But I know in the back of my head that a concert setting is different.
Can anyone think of a way I might be able to emulate a performance setting, to work on any of this shit?
Also, have any other piano players here thought about this, or am I seriously obsessing. Maybe I do have OCD, I always felt like I did. haha.
tl;dr version: I need to figure out ways to distract myself during a performance, or just make it so I stop thinking about screwing up. HALP
Cheers,
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solution:
if I was high, I could probably play it perfectly
edit - when im playing table tennis in a tournament, i clench my fist and sometimes yell to pump myself up after getting a point. this boosts your confidence and makes you make less mistakes. but you can't really do that when playing piano lol. you also develop a mentality about not caring/ignoring when your opponent scores a point, except emotionless analysis where you figure out what your opponent did so you won't let him do it again. but you can't really do this either cuz you're not supposed to make mistakes in the first place. but if you do, don't let that bother you.
i guess you could pump yourself up before performing. think to yourself that you fuckin own at piano, and that youre like a god to the people watching you. make yourself feel amazing, think positive thoughts about the audience clapping and cheering for you. stuff like that.
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^^yep i agree with the edit, go in thinking that you will fucking own no problem
As a fellow musician, I have a few ways of relieving performance anxiety:
1. Practice in front of people. Doesn't matter who they are, but set up a mock performance where you sit down and play all the way through the piece just like you would at the real thing.
2. Relax before the performance. Keep your thoughts away from the performance. I like to think about beautiful women, honestly it helps.
3. Don't practice the piece at least for a few hours before the performance. You can play through it undertempo maybe just to warm up. The reason being that if you make a mistake playing it right before the performance you will be 10x more likely to be very worried about making that same mistakee again(and thus more likely to commit the error)
My 2c hope it helps
Edit: also, experience helps a lot, after performing and auditioning many times I really don't get all that nervous anymore. I hear the potassium helps nerves as well, eat a banana before you perform 
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Hi dm47,
I'm a music performance major and have played plenty of times with orchestras and in front of large crowds. Even when I have the piece under my belt perfectly, I still get nervous when I play for a large audience, and I feel as though that is almost unavoidable. One of my old teachers from North Carolina has performed with several orchestras and played in numerous competitions all over the world, and he tells me he still gets nervous! Once I get to the stage you are at (you have the piece memorized), then that's when you should be most critical. Start picking out fine details, analyze every note/phrase and try to make them as meaningful as possible. And I guess you do that by listening to the masters (pianists Richter, Horowitz, Rubenstein, etc.) and taking the ideas that you like out of there, and applying it to your own playing. I feel as though once you start thinking more about the music in this way, you'll start thinking less of the notes and the ideas of "memory slips" and such will fly out the windows, and you'll be more worried about whether you play the music as beautifully as you want it to. Nervousness in this situation is merely just the result of a lack of confidence that your performance will be as good as you think it should be. So make it so that you are confident that you can perform that piece so well, that you will have no regrets. Also, it's helpful if you record yourself doing runthroughs. If your first runthrough isn't "at least" technically proficient, then you're most likely not as well prepared as you should be. When your first runthrough is well executed, that's when your confidence starts to skyrocket, and thus when performance time comes around, you'll be happy to be sharing the results of your hard work to a keen audience.
Best of luck on Rach 
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Baa?21244 Posts
Play in front of your family, your friends, and tell them you want to know when you mess up (assuming they can even tell =P). Practice makes perfect, and when you play it in front of people a few times, you'll be fine.
Pianists for the win, good luck! ^^
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I thought this was about Piano the progamer.
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P.S. For me, I can't rely entirely on muscle memory. Cause sometimes I think to myself before a run (okay, I think a C# is the first note of the run) when it's really a C natural or some bullshit like that, and then i'll fuck up the whole phrase. So if there are places where it's easy to just let your fingers glide, then that's good for muscle memory. But if there are places that you're not sure of, then it's good to have reference points "oh, I know that in measure 47 that it starts off with a F# minor arpeggio" or something.
In the end, you just have to be aware that there is a chance that you might slip up. I read in "The Art of Practice" that Arthur Rubenstein once had a huge memory slip on one of his pieces, and just decided to start the whole piece over again. We're only human, but what makes players great is just that they try to make the odds work for them, and minimize all chances of any sort of mishap.
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thanks for the input guys.
@Fontong: I think I'll try out the beautiful women tip tomorrow, and the banana, lol. Also, I've had lots of performance experience, but nothing outside the realm of my piano teacher's end-of-the-year recitals. And it's basically only parents at those, so sometimes I'm not even that nervous.
@StarN: it's good to know that everybody still gets nervous. and... I think concentrating on what I'm hearing is a great idea. I do it already in small doses, but maybe that should be my central focus for the duration of the performance. i'll also try recording.
and, in general I do feel confident when I go up to perform. Maybe... when I'm really nervous that I'll have a muscle memory lapse, it's really just unpreparedness, and I haven't been accepting it. guess that means more practice, heh
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Judging from what you said, I think one piece of advice is just to prepare better. If you've never played the whole piece through perfectly, you shouldn't be worrying about performances yet, because you can't play the piece nearly well enough to be performing it.
Nerves are a strange thing and one thing I've learned from playing sports very competitively and playing the piano since I was little is that everyone has their own way of dealing with them. I've never been nervous before a game for years and I usually perform my pieces better than I could play them at home, but I don't think giving you tips on how I stay calm would accomplish much.
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easy, when you play all the time, imgine someone can hear you.
in your house, our just outside, that way.. youre always being criticized.
in performance it will be no problem. whenever you play, someone can probably hear you. and play at least 1/2 hour a day of course.
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17018 Posts
Something that may help you if you have time on your hands that has helped me in the past:
Buy some notation paper, and transcribe the entire piece from memory. If you can't, then you better get working on it. For pieces I've done this for, I've never made any memorization mistakes. And if you practice enough, you'll never make any technical mistakes either. Then you can work on actually interpreting the piece without pesky lower order concerns like technique or memorization get in your way.
Before you complain that it's too hard or whatever, I've done this for the first Brahms piano concerto.
It just takes an ass load of time.
EDIT: Oh, and as for the performance jitters, just tell yourself you're better than everyone else and it'll work out perfectly. Works for competitions, too, and I've placed at random non-shitty piano competitions (Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition, for example), and telling yourself you're better than everyone else really works to cure anxiety.
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On April 26 2009 13:25 Empyrean wrote:
Buy some notation paper, and transcribe the entire piece from memory.
Before you complain that it's too hard or whatever, I've done this for the first Brahms piano concerto.
It just takes an ass load of time.
holy shit. are you still in college? I know for a fact that I could not transcribe the entire prelude from memory, is that bad? I mean, I could try... but I only started it about 10 days ago. Now that I'm thinking about it, I would probably have to set my hands down on a table and shadow-play. That's probably a bad sign... too much muscle memory. I'm not going into music for a living so I guess I won't really need this skill but I can certainly see why this might help. Maybe I'll try it out on a shorter piece that doesn't have each hand playing on its own grand staff at the end, lol.
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do you have a girlfriend? if you do, play a few romantic songs for her, and her words always help as a confidence booster. workout? it gives you self esteem. if you play a lot in front of people, it just becomes natural.
edit: and you always look fly in ur suit ;D
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Play in front of people, play in front of people, play in front of people, play in front of people, play in front of people
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I was a clarinet performance major last year, until I decided that I didn't really want to spend the rest of my life practicing 8 hours a day. Here's a few things I usually do:
Most of the time, I just listen to myself as I'm playing. Before a performance, I know the music intimately enough so that I can play it not exactly from memory, but so that I'm not concentrating on the notes on the paper, but the notes coming from my clarinet. I hear any mistakes instead of saying "oh I just played a C instead of C#."
If you're playing for family/friends, if you miss a note, they're not going to notice. Seriously. As long as you just take it in stride, especially during fast passages, even fellow musicians will have a hard time picking out individual mistakes.
In the middle of the performance, think about anything *but* the performance itself. My teacher told me he used to think about what he was going to eat for dinner after the performance.
10 days ago? When are you performing this? Getting a piece to performance level takes a few months, at least.
Semi-related story: My senior year in high school, I was auditioning for Senior Regional Orchestra, and I was unusually nervous. The orchestra only takes two from the whole region, and I was auditioning along with another clarinetist from my school who I knew would place ahead of me, so it meant I had to be better than everyone else there. In order to calm myself down, I started listening to one of my favorite works, "The Planets Suite" by Gustav Holst. I was listening to the first movement, Mars, The Bringer of War, and suddenly I just started interpreting the music in a very different way. The music suddenly conveyed the emotions of horror and despair of everyone else who heard me audition.  It was a very satisfying feeling, and it really helped me prepare mentally for an audition. I got in, by the way, second chair. I repeated this at the All-State auditions and made seventh overall.
Hopefully something in this post helps.
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On April 26 2009 14:04 Koldblooded wrote:
Play in front of people, play in front of people, play in front of people, play in front of people, play in front of people
this. also, play in front of people.
try to sign up for some group-masterclasses that involve you playing in front of people and getting critiqued by a teacher. these are great for getting used to playing in front of people and for getting used to the idea of these people knowing what you did wrong. because in truth most people who are going to hear you will not notice when you make a mistake. and once you are confident enough to play for people who will know about your mistakes, playing for those who won't is trivial.
also: never react to a mistake. even when you are practicing: if your finger slips, continue on and stop where you would have anyway; then do it again if you need to. even people who do know the piece you're playing will rarely be able to detect (small) mistakes unless you react to them; even if they do detect the mistake, if you play through and ignore it it will often be passed off as artistic license.
hope that helps.
btw, what level (roughly) are you at? are you in highschool and taking lessons, or in a music program at college/university, or ...?
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Along with what everyone has mentioned so far, I strongly suggest practicing meditation during the months leading up to your performance, the day of and the moment of.
Always be conscious of what you are doing - be aware of the notes you play, even during practice. This is immensely difficult to do continuously without losing focus and requires a lot of concentration, so your practice might be harder. However, it makes you think of the notes you play, and in some ways, I think it makes you mean them more. For instance, think of the correlation between muscle memory and programmed responses: "Hey, what's up, dm47?" "Not much, you?" You may say this without thinking, and if you think about it, you may have to take time to answer, which you can't do on stage. But you have the advantage that you know what question is coming, and you know your answer. The difficulty in any performance art is that this answer always has to be new, unexpected, as though the performer himself were thinking or hearing or playing it for the first time: a story unfolds for the audience.
Probably the best way to train this is to meditate and be more aware of yourself. Try this for a week and see if it works: find 15 minutes each day to sit and calm down. Your breathing should be regular, and holding a single thing in the focus of your mind should be easier. Then, sit down at your piano in your mind's eye, and play the entire piece start to finish. Know every place your finger goes. Imagine the force in your fingers without them even moving at all physically. If you do this consistently, you should be much more aware and able when you play.
This kind of training has been proven to improve you. You are forming circuits in your brain in which you are completely aware of playing and mean anything, and cannot rely on muscle memory. Thus, it is logical that it will help you when you are conscious of mistake, since you play and practice consciously.
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EPT
