Practising for a lesson vs performance

[immortalbeloved]

Hey everyone,

So, I have a question regarding how YOU practice for a lesson vs for a performance. I might partake in my first non-lesson performance next month in a non-judgemental adult performance show (though I don't mind being ''judged.) and am curious how most of you approach perfrming or a lesson vs a show.

I always love seeing the idffernt responses and answers.

[birba]

Well, when i was taking lessons a few years ago....i found no difference between the two.  In fact, it was more demanding at the lesson with the teacher breathing down my neck.

[marijn1999]

Hi,

Good question and I too am curious about the upcoming answers.

Anyway, I always keep practicing for lessons or concerts seperate and they are very different from each other. Before I leave my lesson I always convene on my goals for the next week with my teacher. We make sure that these goals are achievable and then, I simply make sure that I will indeed achieve those goals and have them finished one day before the day of the lesson.

For a concert I usually don't practice a great deal, simply because of the fact that I mostly play pieces which are well within my comfort zone. This, in turn, is because I don't like to give concerts and don't feel the tendency to put a great amount of effort in practicing for them them to prepare new pieces.

BW,
Marijn

[visitor]

I made better progress when i started treating lessons as performance. I mean i did the whole prep thing to reinforce it. I was struggling w the goal or once the piece qas completely worked out then each lesson began w a play through if the entire work or works, i dressed in a suit, fresh shower, relaxation techniques prior to lesson after warming up. Etc
in my mind treating the lesson same as being on stage or room full of people helped me work out the perfotmance nerves while in a safe place so when i did perform, wadnt a big deal, had already done it lots before
 

[kawai_cs]

Practising for lessons I do not focus as much on knowing the piece inside out because even though I will be playing from memory I still will have the score in front of me.
I do not have much experience performing but one thing I know for sure. You need to memorize your piece very well and you should not rely on kinetic memory. When I prepare pieces just for the lessons I do not pay so much attention to memorizing. For some passages I just rely on muscle memory. However when you play a concert it is really risky to rely on this kind of memory. You may be stressed and you may be a little distracted by the noises from the audience or whatever and a memory slip is then more likely to occur if you only rely on muscle memory.
Actually that is what happened once to me back in music school. It was my first year's final and I was playing Clementi sonatina. I was prepared very well but I relied on muscle memory and suddenly, in the middle of the piece I stopped because I had no idea what comes next.
Preparing for my recital I memorized my piece as good so that I was able to play it on the keyboard in my mind. So this is mostly what I meant by practicing for performance. To know every note of your piece is time consuming.
Another thing is that I practiced like Visitor wrote: trying to imagine that there were audience on the right hand side. I also recorded myself a lot to get used to pressure of " live performance".
Good luck!

[immortalbeloved]

Wonderful advice. I am really starting the process of just memorizing everything and playing from different spots everytime etc etc.

[keypeg]

If a lesson is leading to a performance, then near the end, the nature of both the practising and of the lesson may be different.

In a lesson, I'll assume that the teacher has certain things in mind that he wants to teach, and you are practising toward those things.  You may take things apart, focus on this or that element that you are learning.  It is not a performance.  When you're home you want to focus on those things as well.  But when you are getting close to a performance you want to have some run-throughs as if you are performing - both in practising, and in the lesson(s) preceding the performance.