do you get wandering thoughts?

[musical_fingers]

is it just me? but do your thoughts wander when you are performing? this is what happens to me especially in competitions, i start thinking about other things when i should be concentrating on the music!!!  (really does everybody do this?)

[Spatula]

Yes, I remember a long long time ago in a music studio far far away, I played for a piano recital, something easy by whomever wrote the piece that while I was performing this 3 minute grade 3 RCM standard piece that I was Luke Skywalker in the X Wing starfighter zooming down the Death Star trench, and that when I got closer to the finish of the piece, I was closer to firing those proton torpedoes into the ventilation shaft. 

And if I blanked out on the piece, I pretended that I was getting shot down by some tie fighters. 

But the force was with me and I didn't screw up (much) so I managed to get to the piece and did a shot that was one in a million (more like 1 in 6).

And after we were all finished, I was awarded the medal of honour (a Mcdonalds coupon for a free happy meal)

[alextryan]

Heh... uhhh.... 

I can't match that, but my mind totally wanders when I perform.  Victor Borge told a story once about playing a Chopin concerto and noticing a fly on the piano.  He got to wondering how flies land on the ceiling, and he was hilarious about it as usual. 

I had a concert Monday night, and during the Mozart my mind was all over the place, including on the audience, the reason i started learning the piece, the notes i'd had trouble with in the past, etc. 

In the first variation of the Schubert, I got thinking about my mom, who said she'd be sending "good vibes" my way.  The thought of her was so comforting that my attention was completely absorbed by it and by the music, and I had my best performance of the evening. 

[super_ardua]

When I was younger,  when I performed I was totally oblivious of the audience.

[rafant]

I also suffer from fantasizing while playing my memorized pieces, and I'd like to get rid of the habit. I think of it as a bad habit, consequence of those hours of mechanical, Hanon-like exercises, and even of those repetitive runs of scales and arpegios, in which the fingers can do it on their own. Another factor propitious to fantasize is to learn the pieces through hand-memory, since then the fingers can play alone, leaving the mind free to wandering.

In struggling against this plague, I have found that can be avoided when I concentrate  in hearing the quality of the sound of every note I'm producing. So I'm trying to implant this new habit of hearing very carefully to my own playing. Another practice good to avoid fantasizing is sight-reading, since the mind is too busy catching the notes.

[janice]

YES!!!  I thought it was just me!!  LOL  (breathes sigh of relief)
When I play a solo at church (that's my usual place to "perform"), I MUST space off.  It's imperative that I do!  Or else I will start obsessing about "what comes next?"  I have been very lucky because I never get nervous........ unless I forget to space off!!   And there is a family that sits in the very first pew every Sunday.  So that is like 5 feet away from me.  I can't handle it because they STARE at me!!  So I must space off or else I would fall apart at that!!  Seriously though, I don't "completely" space off, but "partially".  I can't explain it adequately.  Sorry.  It's just a "mode" that I get in.  Is anyone else like that?

[Tash]

yeah my mind wanders no matter what i'm doing. sometimes it's to do with the piece, and me thinking ok please don't stuff this up, or i'll be anticipating the bit that i am good at stuffing up. or i'll get so tuned out that i don't even remember playing half the piece! hmmm i don't think that's the greatest thing to do, but that's more practicing than in performances. i'm trying to work on it, and don't think i do it as much as i used to.

but last year in my final HSC music performance, the music in front of me, because i did everything from memory, was the music for the piece the girl after me was singing, so i was reading the lyrics whilst playing and for the next week had this one line of it stuck in my head 'if you really love me, say yes, but if you don't dear, confess!but please don't tell me, perhaps perhaps perhaps' do do dodododo da so that was a bit of a distraction!

[anda]

i used to, but that's not good. if you let your thoughts wander, you won't be so focused on the work. i don't know about you, but that happened to me not only on stage, but at practise too. my "therapy"? force myself all the time to sing in my head exactly what my hands are playing (kept me focused on the work vs. anything else). after a while, that comes naturally, efortless.

[shasta]

To me, "focusing" on the music as I perform shatters me out of that zone by which so many hours of practice has allowed me to be! 

If I am performing a piece and sitting there on the piano thinking, "OK, now F#, now a Cmin arpeggio in the LH, softer here..." to me that indicates that I have not 100% mastered the piece, since I still need to be conscious of what I am doing.

During a performance or competition, my mind as well as my body are relaxed.  When my mind is relaxed and I'm lost in my music, miscellaneous thoughts are able to come and go through my head without interferring with the music I'm playing.  I'm able to think about all the laundry I need to do after this recital, or the deadlines I have at work, or how that one guy sitting in the audience is wearing the ugliest necktie I have ever seen...