7-Day Step-by-Step Gameplan to Dominate Performance Anxiety

[keystroke3]

There is no "cure" for performance anxiety... it's just one of those things we all deal with as pianists.

That being said, there's a lot we can DO to optimally prepare ourselves for it. And it's more than just "practice a lot" or "just be confident" or "who cares what other people think"...

The 7 Day Plan

The way I look at it, having a rock-solid performance is like trying to get to sleep. There's no way you can "will" yourself to fall asleep. And there's no way you can guarantee a good nights sleep.

BUT... there are a lot of things you can do to increase the percentage chance you'll have a great night's sleep. You can:
-Exercise more
-Don't eat right before bed
-Avoid screens before bed
-Knock out as much light as possible from your bedroom
-Hit yourself in the head with a brick (just kidding :-)
-ext.

In a similar way, I think it's useful to have a step-by-step "protocol" to follow, a system that's going to maximize your percentage chance to have a rock-solid performance.

Days 1 Through 5: Gauntlet + Performance Runthroughs

Alright, so hopefully when you're a week out from a performance, you have your song complely learned. But "learned" is different from "solidified" "Learned" is great in the practice room, but it'll fall apart during a performance. "Solidified" means you've hit your piece from multiple different angles, so it's stored in multiple different parts of your brain. That way if one memory system fails due to nerves, you'll have another that can pick up the slack.

I like to think of it like this:
Imagine your piece is a giant rock hanging from the ceiling. If you learn your piece ONLY through pure repetition, you basically got one tiny string holding up this giant rock (mainly muscle memory).

If someone nudges the rock slightly, it's going to come crashing down. So if you only learned your song in one way, any little variable could throw you off and ruin your performance. Like if you're nervous, or if the piano's touch is different, or if a guy in the stands throws a melon at your head ;-)

So the strategy is to practice your song from multiple different angles (I sometimes like to call it "P90Xing" your piece :-), in multiple different ways. That way you can "attach more strings to your rock" and duct tape that bad boy to the ceiling. So if one of your "strings" snaps, you'll have other strings holding it up. In other words, if your muscle memory fails, you'll still have your visual memory, or audio memory, ext to fall back on. This is where the Gauntlet Exercises come in...

Gauntlet Exercises

Alright, so during days 1 through 5, you want to choose ONE of these exercises a day (you'll also be doing "performance runthroughs", more about that in a bit...

Gauntlet Exercise 1: Entire Piece Hands Separate
This sounds easy, but you'd be surprised how hard this can be... a lot of times even if you can play a piece hands together, you won't be able to play it (especially the left hand!) hands separate, because you're relying on the muscle memory of hands together. So play it hands separate, find the parts of the piece that you have trouble with, and DRILL them. Those are often the same parts of the piece that'll trip you up during a performance.

Gauntlet Exercise 2: SUPER Slo Mo
Ok, I stole this one from Rachmaninoff... he was said to be doing this ALL the time before a performance. Basically you just turn your metronome down super slow, and play through your whole piece. And when I say slow, I mean not "easy slow", but "annoyingly slow". This method works in a similar way - By slowing down the tempo, you can't rely on your muscle memory because you're not used to playing it that slow, so it forces you to ACTUALLY know the notes of your piece.

Gauntlet Exercise 3: The Added Measure Strategy
This one is a BEAST... but it really works well. So basically you start out and play JUST the first measure of your piece. Then go back and play JUST the first two measures. Then JUST the first three... and so on until you've played the whole piece. Then do it backward. Play JUST the last measure, then JUST the last two measures, JUST the last three and so on till you get back to the beginning.

The reason this works is by forcing yourself to start at a specific measure, you'll have to actually know how that measure starts. Often we can only play our song if we START at a specific point. So those middle sections we don't actually know in our bones, we just rely on the part BEFORE it to "get us into" the next section. Obviously this isn't good to get back on track if we screw up during a performance...

Gauntlet Exercise 4: Visualization
This is just what you think. You literally just visualize your hands playing the notes on the keyboard (without actually playing them!). This sounds easy, but it's actually way tougher than you think. If you've never tried this, you'll be surprised how many "holes" there are in your playing - Sections you can play from muscle memory but don't actually KNOW what the notes are.

Gauntlet Exercise 5: Analyzing Your Piece
If you know music theory, this helps a lot. Basically you just go through and write out all the chords in your piece. The benefit here is it's a lot easier to memorize, for example, 4 chords than 16 notes. And also easier to memorize 40 chords than 160 notes. So by knowing the chord structure, your brain has a lot less work to do during the performance.

Performance Run-throughs

Ok, so on the first 5 days, after you practice your Gauntlet Exercises, you want to do a few performance run-throughs - Actually practicing performing.

Now, of course, the best kind are when you're actually performing. So see if you can book a performance at a church, or even an old folks home.

If you can't get that, play in front of family or friends. It won't be quite as nerve racking, but better than nothing.

And the last type are the "simulated performance runthroughs". That's when you just imagine you're at your performance, you walk up to the piano, and play AS IF you were actually performing.

Over the course of 5 days, for example, you might have one performance day at a church, one performance in front of your family, and three days of "simulated performance runthroughs".

Key Points for Performance Runthroughs

When you're doing any of these performance runthroughts... you have to REALLY treat it like a performance. So actually start out of the room and walk to the piano (if that's what you'd do during a performance). Actually bow. Then most importantly, you CAN'T STOP when you play. If you mess up, you just gotta figure it out. If you're playing in front of your Mom, you can't stop and say "Sorry Mom, hold on let me start over."

You're literally practicing the performance, so you want to simulate it as close as possible to the real thing.

The Day Before the Performance
Alright, so on the day before the performance, it's all about building confidence. Think about it, you're not going to "learn" your piece any better with one more day of practice. You just want to spike your confidence up.

So today don't practice more than 30 to 45 minutes, and practice slowly and with music. Not annoyingly slow, like the "Super Slow Mo" gauntlet exercise, but slow enough that it's very comfortable for you and builds your confidence.

The Day Of the Performance

Alright, today is similar to yesterday. Get there early, do 10 to 15 minutes of warmup with scales or technique drills. Then again, play through your piece slowly and with music. Again, we're just building confidence.

Also, you want to set a specific end point on this. Don't keep going back to "warm up more". End it on a good note, otherwise you'll constantly keep going back and playing again, and second guessing yourself. So have a hard cutoff of when your warmup is done.

10 Minutes Before Your Performance
Alright, we're 10 minutes away, woohoo! For this step, I hate to give you this answer, but everybody's different. But you need to find something that works for you to get you "in the zone". And it should be something you "do", not something you "think." Anybody who's had performance anxiety knows that even if you logically tell yourself "just be confident" or "who cares what anyone things" or "I'm well prepared, I'll be fine", when you walk out on that stage, you'll FEEL the nerves. You can't "out logic" your way out of it.

Here's my personal routine. First I Backstage I do a quick meditation to relax me. Then I get all hyped up. I jump around and shadowbox and just try to overcome the nerves with aggressiveness. It works really well for me.

But everyone's different. I know a girl who just gets really chatty and nonchalant with the stagehands, and it helps her forget about the nerves. I know another guy who blasts heavy metal music and air drums, then goes out on stage and plays friggin Debussy lullabies.

But the main thing is you have a PLAN and then follow that PLAN. And if it works and you can feel your nerves decrease, great. If not, then next performance try something out. And eventually you'll figure out something that works for you.

Anyhoo... I hope that helped y'all out! If you have any thoughts let me know! Here's a video that goes a bit more in-depth into it if you're interested:

-Zach Evans

[danielo]

Thanks for this Zach! Very helpful.

[timothy42b]

That's good.

I think you should consider contributing it to wkmt. 

[louispodesta]

Per the OP:

["There is no "cure" for performance anxiety... it's just one of those things we all deal with as pianists."]

And, I get taken to task for promoting my original performance video?

For the record, I flunked my senior jury because I was shaking so hard I thought I would fall off of the bench.  The next time around, I hit it out of the park.  Why?

Because a brilliant pianist by the name of Dickran Atamian (Ritchie to his friends) said to me:  "Have you heard about Inderal?  It is a common non-narcotic Beta Blocker that keeps your Adrenal Glands from "taking off to the races."  (My words)

In that Ritchie won the Naumberg Competition when he was 17 years old, I thought I would listen.  He further shared with me (1981) that all of the orchestral musicians in Europe have used it for years prior to performance.

To summarize, without the "nerves," then any anxiety (in my opinion) is of a philosophical nature, and not your usual psychobabble behavioral nonsense.

[keystroke3]

Personally, I'm very against Beta Blockers.

I think, while they work, they become a crutch people use to get rid of the nerves, and then never learn to deal with the nerves (which I think is a skill in itself).

Plus, I think having some nerves is a good thing and can make the performance more emotional and exciting. It's what makes a performance a performance instead of just playing in the practice room.

Just my thoughts, but to each his own!

[timothy42b]

Personally, I'm very against Beta Blockers.

I think, while they work, they become a crutch people use to get rid of the nerves, and then never learn to deal with the nerves (which I think is a skill in itself).

Your comment:

There is no "cure" for performance anxiety... it's just one of those things we all deal with as pianists

.

Suggests that you have no experience with crippling levels of anxiety.  Yes, we all have some nerves when performing, but most of us are in the center of the range.  Some are on the ends, and these medications are life savers. 

That said, if your anxiety is more in the normal range, and you could get through a performance without any chemical assistance, but with it you could step up a level and deliver something more true to your art, something the composer intended, something that inspired the audience, is there something inherently wrong with that?  Is that worse than ensuring a tuned and regulated piano, comfortable underwear, good night's sleep, blood sugar under control?

There are lots more unhealthy things we do in the service of our art than take an occasional pill under medical supervision.   

[keypeg]

Personally, I'm very against Beta Blockers.

I was concerned about drugs being recommended as a solution to anxiety in a forum that is read by people of all ages, including young people.  The first thing I did was google the drug, and side effects.

I was also bothered to read a reference to "psychobabble" when what I read in the opening post seemed to be some pretty standard ways of working on music to make it solid. 

[louispodesta]

I was concerned about drugs being recommended as a solution to anxiety in a forum that is read by people of all ages, including young people.  The first thing I did was google the drug, and side effects.

I was also bothered to read a reference to "psychobabble" when what I read in the opening post seemed to be some pretty standard ways of working on music to make it solid. 

Dear "keypeg":

There are very true souls on this or the "Other Website."  You are a true soul.

For those out there who think that only pianists who perform have major nerve problems, I proffer the following:

Every physician/surgeon that has operated on a patient in the last 40 years took a (non-narcotic, so-called drug) generically named Propranalol/Inderal.  It is a derivative of a certain tree bark.

It, unlike other drugs, is not a dependency medication.  I take it every day because I have low-level Parkinson's Disease.  The rest of you, who choose to do so, should only take this (non-side-effect, very cheap pill) only before studio class or a jury.

Otherwise, vis a vis, (as I have recommended many times before) Neurofeedback  training by a PhD Psychologist is the best way to go for long term nerves control.  The Royal Academy, many years ago in their detailed studies, said so.

This EEG biofeedback literally re-wires your nervous system back to the one you had at birth.