Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner How do you handle fear of memory slips or getting stuck?

How do you overcome fear of memory slips and getting stuck at the same spot on a piece? Thank you.

Two things:

-- Really, really, really knowing the piece.

-- Experience.
Even if you really really know the piece, it's hard to have anything like full confidence unless you've had success before, including with that particular piece. I think for most of us, 'the first time' performing any given piece always feels at least a little iffy.

Adding to what Mark_C has written :

Make sure when learning a piece that you have a multiple number of starting points so that, when you get "stuck," you can immediately jump to the next entry point and continue. I've seen some pianists without such predetermined safety points having to start a piece from the beginning once they lose focus and come to an unexpected halt. Not only have should you have such points, but they should be part of your practice routine for performances; you should practice regularly starting from as many of them as you have learned.

Regards,

^^ +1 ^^

I agree that this is important. I do it very consciously, and those "entry points" are EVERYWHERE -- each new section, and even each new phrase. Besides helping you be confident that you'll be able to escape from any problem, it helps make sure that there won't be any problem, because you'll know the piece so well.

This is very helpful...

Just to rephrase Mark's spot-on point a bit ....

Preparation, preparation, preparation.

Know the pieces inside out. Part of that preparation is indeed knowing the structure of the piece so well that a mistake at any point can be arrested before it does any damage. If you know every phrase as an entity (its meter, its chord progression, where it's going, and how it ends) then landing on a wrong chord doesn't lead to a cascade failure.

Examples: well, the first one that pops to mind happened in a concert given by Polish pianist Anna Kijanowska. She was playing a Chopin Mazurka. I noticed that it seemed a bit longer than the real piece and I asked her about it afterward. She smiled and said that she lost her place in the middle. Knowing the piece thoroughly, she just cycled to the next point at which she could jump to the section she had missed, and then she was back on track. Second example ... my son's senior recital. He landed on a wrong chord in the left hand at one point. Knowing where he was, he kept the right hand going accurately and got pretty close to the correct left hand progression for the remaining beats in the measure where that phrase ended. Then he picked up the following phrase like nothing had happened. In fact, I'll bet that 90% of the audience did not know that he had a misfire.

I've been thinking a lot about this, because I've recently finished working up Book I of Schumann's Davidsbundlertanze, and I'm playing it for various people... always with great nerves.

Does "really, really, really knowing" a piece mean, in your opinion, being able to name all the notes, or most of the notes, away from the piano?

I find that even though it feels solid when I play it for myself, and I memorized the music very proactively, I still lose confidence by thinking, away from the piano, things like "What was that particular passage... is it A-C#-G, or A-C#-E, or what?" And I psych myself out, even though it's gone perfectly fine the last 20 times at the piano.

Of course, I can answer these kinds of questions about some of the music, especially around my "starting points" that Bruce mentioned. But I can't do it for a lot of the piece. Do you think I should be able to answer these kinds of questions in general, or should I really not be asking them, and accept the fact that even with a very solid piece, some of it will just "come" when I play it?

-Jason

To me, no. I might make sure I know what the first note is of a section or of a tricky part, and maybe sometimes, when there are certain parts that I have particular trouble with, I might make sure I can do what you said -- but it's not a major thing that I would do. What I'd be more inclined to do with such a place is to be able to envision, in my mind's eye, playing the passage -- like, envisioning your fingers on the keys. And I think that in general "knowing the notes," while I suppose it's nice, isn't as important as you seem to be thinking it might be.

Look at it this way: It's an abstraction. It's a representation of the keys. What's real is the keyboard and the keys, and playing them -- and I guess that's why it hasn't much occurred to me to "know the notes" but rather to envision the fingers at the keyboard.

I certainly can't name all the notes, but I certainly can hear them in my mind. And knowing that sequential structure is .... key (pun intended, sorry).

Indeed, all of this is an abstraction of some sort. Hearing the piece in the mind is an abstraction no less than being able to call out all the notes in exact order in which they appear on the page. But I would bet that for most pianists aural memory translated into hand position memory, and using that aural memory to nail down the structure of the piece is far more important than the reading abstraction of memorizing a sequence of letter names.

Let me rephrase the question, then. Forget the names of the notes. When you have a piece at performance-level, are you able, in your mind's eye, to *see* all, or most, of the passages? So that, for example, you could, envisioning a run, see exactly where the notes are adjacent, where they're separated by a third or a fourth, etc.?

Let me clarify one thing: It's not that I think that this kind of knowledge would actually be helpful in making a piece more secure. It's that, living in my brain as I do, I have the (Western?) notion-- surely an illusion, really-- that to have a thing's ingredients at one's mental beck and call is to master it. And I psych myself out, away from the piano, when I see how little I can recall those ingredients, either by names of notes, or by visualizing the keys at the keyboard.

And for Piano*Dad (who I seem to keep posting over): When you say you can hear the notes away from the piano, does that mean also having an awareness of subtleties of voicing, like which inner notes in a chord get tied? Some of that I eventually let my hands take care of "by themselves", and I wonder if I should be able to replay those effects away from the piano-- not the note names, but the sounds, or "the notes" (whatever that means).

-Jason

I don't want to "psyche" anyone out, especially young people. But, is it possible one is unable to master memory slips? I enjoy playing and have started to play in earnest again. My teacher wants me to perform, but the added stress is bringing back memories of past performances and slips. Also, music critics are very cruel when one makes a few, even minute note slips. I have read reviews of great performers and performances I have attended where critics make a point of mentioning missed notes. In context, I thought it was insignificant to the entire wonderful performance. Thank you for your suggestions.

Out of curiosity, what music critics are you worried about? I have attended many a professional concert at which note mistakes were clear to just about anybody who knew the music. Only a pedant would care, unless the mistakes were frequent and distracting, and reflected seemingly poor preparation and sloppy execution. An occasional hand slip or minor glitch is a part of the human condition. Making sure that those errors are rare and not shattering is what good preparation is all about.

I think that all pianists get to a point with a piece where they know it so well they don't make note slips anymore (unless they're really, really tired). I know I've reached that point with several pieces in my repertoire. One of them I've been studying for a year and the other one, two weeks. Some pieces I've played I've never gotten to that point. Anyway, that doesn't mean I still don't have memory slips or "getting stuck" sometimes when I totally lose concentration (normally this happens when I'm rather tired), but there's no more finger slips.

Also, I don't think critics or competition judges are that cruel about wrong notes unless it's totally noticeable. Kissin made some little slip-ups (listen to the Chopin sonata and you'll hear them) in the 1997 BBC Proms debut and yet that concert was still a huge part in making his career even more of an international success. In the 2010 Chopin Competition, Avdeeva had a bit of a slip up in the Polonaise Heroic but she still won gold medal.

Don't get scared of making mistakes. We're all human after all.

There's no crime in reading music even at a concert.

I generally think it's a worse idea to use sheet music in a concert because from what I've seen, people normally tend to lose their place. Performing without sheet music is so much freer. My piano teacher won't let me perform with sheet music.

Depending on the context of the performance, could you play from sheet music? To me, it's the ultimate Linus blanket for memory failures. Make xerox copies and mark them up. Red circles around the changes that are hard to remember, mark your entry points, etc.

That's what I do when I accompany, but I have been raised (whether this is right or wrong I don't know) to think that using sheet music is rather unprofessional when playing solo pieces.

It was commonplace once upon a time (before Clara Schumann popularised memorisation). Besides, if it's good enough for Richter, it's good enough for me.

Practise and knowing how to do so.

However, Richter, didn't use the score for fear of memory slips.