anxiety...

[ayahav]

I am giving my 'debut' recital in a week *YIKES*. (Any of you living in Holland and want to come it's in the English Church at the Begijnhof on December 8th at 12:30. Today I woke up and realised I suddenly had problems playing a piece through (I have been able to play it without problems for about 3 weeks).. What do I do now? (I have decided to leave it for 3-4 hours and then try again...

Any other suggestions?

Amit

[BoliverAllmon]

one thing that helps me when i suddenly forget a piece of music, I just slow way down try to work out the hitches then do some mental practice.

boliver

[elena]

Hi ,
I suppose you've performed already...
How did it go?
Have you ever tried playing with the score ?
To play by heart is a massive stress!

[robert_henry]

Inconsistent playing comes from not having a plan for the moves you make with your body, and from not having a musical plan for every note you play.

It works one day, then the next day it doesn't, it works, it doesn't ...if this is your pattern, then you must develop a plan.  Hope has no business in music.  Hope is dangerous to the performer.  

My suggestion is to develop a foundation of musical and technical priciples and ideas.  Do you have some?

Let's see if you do...in playing the piano, what is the function of your shoulder?  What is its purpose?  If you don't know immediately, or if you had to think about it, you have no plan for your shoulder.  You should be able to point to any part of your body and describe the musical and technical plan and function for that part.  (my grandfather used to play the trumpet with one of his parts, but that's a different story).

Likewise, go to your music, close your eyes, and drop your finger randomly on the page.  Now open your eyes.  Do you know exactly what you want to do with that note/chord/scale musically?  Do you instantly know  how to acheive that with your body?

If you answered no to any of these questions, you are playing on automatic, hoping that things work out right from day to day.  Develop a plan.

Robert Henry

[jennbo]

frankly, I find playing without the music to be a whole lot stress relieving than to play with it.  if you know the notes cold, then play without the music.  You'll concentrate more on playing with feeling/sound/coordination/etc etc rather than concentrating on playing those notes correctly.  I dunno, I memorize the notes, and play several times without the music, and concentrate on just getting the proper sound, and feeling to it.  It's a lot easier that way.  

[ayahav]

hi.... I've already performed, and it went just like I wanted it to... Thank you all for your wonderful feedback. I guess the problem was just being tired. I knew what I was doing, but I was just too tired to do it.... A long sleep the next night helped me gain my playing for the next day....

[robert_henry]

I'm glad your performance went well.  Big crowd?  What did you play?

However,  

Having a plan means that there are NO surprises, be it a quirky piano, being sick, tired, squeaky pedal, tripping on the way to the piano (which I've done), or anything else you can think of.  Losing a finger in a meat grinder or severing a large limb might qualify as slight problems, but you should have thought ahead for all possible scenarios, kind of like the US Military has contingency plans for any possible attack or combination of attacks.  

We all will fall short of having a plan for every single thing that could possibly throw us off, but that should our goal, right?    After all, you are likely to be tired before a performance again sometime in the future, so don't give yourself permission to feel vulnerable like that again.  You feel fine now, but on November 30th, you were pretty worried, otherwise you wouldn't have posted your concerns.  Have a plan for those days too.

Robert Henry