Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum I played it worse at home.

Well, not really. But this question was inspired by a comment on another forum.

One of the most common gripes from students on every piano forum I've read is "I played it better at home." There has been some good discussion. I've personally experienced this with my handbell group, who normally plays about 15% worse in performance than rehearsal due to nerves. Sometimes 15% is enough to cause an unrecoverable train wreck. I go to great lengths to make a piece bulletproof but sometimes stuff happens.

But, I just saw an opposite comment.

On this other forum, a young student remarked that you had to subtract about 15% for live performance (a gig).

The reply, from a respected teacher and working professional jazz performer, was no. If you can't play 15% better when it's live, you need to find a new career path.

Of course the move from home practice to piano lesson isn't a perfect analogy to the gig scenario being discussed, but maybe there are some parallels.

Thoughts?

I find this true for public speaking. The adrenaline rush adds energy to the speech.

For piano playing, not so much. My playing skill drops about 50% when I'm anxious. Checking Monster.com this afternoon for a new career path.

I can echo that, not that I am a great public speaker, I do tend to think faster, and speak better when there is a larger audience.

For my boys, the performances on their recitals are usually their best performance ever. I always thought that's because the piano on the recital hall was better.

Jazz is different from classical - people aren't looking for uneven passagework or voicing (in the classical sense), missed notes etc: all of which can occur with the 'flight, fight or fright' response with performance anxiety when playing classical music. Risk-taking in jazz can produce inspirational stuff in improv, whereas in classical, while it can also inspire a sense of spontaneity and flights of fancy, it may also cause the performer to play too fast, fumble some passages, finger-slips (partly due to sweaty fingers) and lose control in intricate and fast sections.

For me personally, I think I play better in front of an audience, but not always as accurately as when I'm playing at home for myself. But even though the risks I take when playing live don't always come off (they can occur in the spur of the moment ), and I often play some fast pieces markedly faster (and slow pieces slower) live, I believe that the pluses outweigh the minuses. I find inspiration in the heat of the moment playing for an audience that I never get when playing at home. And I find that applies to professional concert pianists too - whether classical or jazz: when I hear great classical pianists play live, they almost always sound 'inspired' in a way I rarely get from their recorded performances of the same pieces. I often wish that they'd put their live performances out for commercial release on CD/download.

Presently, only Grigory Sokolov among the great pianists has made a point of only releasing live performances (warts & all) on CD.

There is an longer talk on YouTube about how the brain processes music and makes music etc. The speaker is sitting at a piano because he is making examples and such.

Somewhere at the beginning he says that switching between talking and playing is hard for the brain as different sections are engaged.

When I play/practice at home, I usually do not have to talk and will not talk for a while. When I go through a piece with my teacher I just talked to her or I am still listening.

On stage, I think, the key is to get into the zone fast and then stay there.

THIS!!!!!!!!!

I've yet to teach a student who plays better at recital/competition/festival/exam than at lessons. I might have taught a few kids who can thrive no matter how many people are in the audience. But 99% of the students play far worse in pressure situations.

The idea is to prepare as much as possible prior to the event, and then hope for the best.

Could that be your expectation is higher in those formal events than in class?

No. Most kids put the pressure on themselves when there is an audience or a panel of judges. That's normal.

My 9 year old son generally plays the best at his lessons, second best at home, and worst at recitals. I'm not sure where testing fits in exactly though since he's only been tested once.

Interestingly though, my son does speak better in front of a group.

I'm noting immediately that the first speaker is a young student, and the second is a performer talking about career paths. There is a difference between someone who has mastered his craft and needs to give his audience the show they paid for, and a student who is learning to play and gaining experience playing in front of others. If as a teacher he is advising a student in this manner, then I wonder if he is primarily a teacher of students who are already advanced. The "15% worse" is what I learned from my own first teacher. This came in conjunction with the advice to master your piece as well as possible - to 110% so that your performance will be 90%, and not to be dismayed at that 90%.

My main performance experiences were at the recitals. At some point I caught on to a kind of "switcheroo" in practising. I.e. when you learn to play a piece, you will work on doing each thing as well as possible, you will work on a small section, or on some weak area getting at the cause of the problem and the way of working on that. The way you practise is not how you would perform. The idea is that you have every aspect of the piece as solidly as possibly, in as many ways as possible. This is the pool you draw on. The "switcheroo" happens when performing, and when practising for performing. Here you do not stop for mistakes, you do not focus on weak areas - you use everything. If you make a mistake you "play through" that mistake. You put yourself into a different mindset, but now you can also draw on that "pool" that you have built.

If all your practising has been in the manner of "practising for a performance" then you'll have a bunch of automatisms and if anything goes wrong, you are lost. A seasoned performer already has that bag of tricks, but a student is still developing his skills. Something like that. What do you think, Tim?


Years ago I had a "study buddy" - a friend across the ocean who was studying the same instrument - and we compared notes. Dropping the idea that you are "performing" for a teacher yielded a huge change. In a lesson you are working on particular elements, your teacher is focusing on particular elements. In fact, if there are weaknesses in your skills, your teacher has to be able to hear them in order to correct them. Unless your lesson is shortly before a recital or other performance, where you are actually "rehearsing" under your teacher's observation, I think for the majority of teachers (teacher input please?) you would (should) not be in performance mode.

Yes, but I'm trying to look at the competing drives.

In live performance, the pressure of nerves may degrade your capability. But at the same time the energy you draw from your audience, and from fulfilling your musical purpose, should enhance it.

Which one outweighs the other?

In a lesson or recital, probably it's nerves. But for the real performer at a gig, it should certainly be the energy. That's what I drew from the conversation anyway.

The nerves are your focus on yourself, while the energy is your focus on the listener? maybe?

I agree that nerves are focusing on yourself. I think of the energy a little differently, though--as something you are sharing with the listeners as you all focus on the musical experience of that moment. Listeners are present to me but I am not really focusing on them.

Not that I'm a seasoned performer, but even as an amateur, I've had some performances that go beyond what I can do by myself. Wish I could make this happen all the time!

I had to think about this a bit. I certainly have experienced this "drive" in performance the first time I was put in a bit of a performance situation; you become sort of super-focused and it's a bit of a high maybe. At the same time if you think you played well, did you? But I don't know if it has any bearing on a lesson situation. If you are near-beginner, and you try to impress your teacher by "performing", and especially if things went well at home and you're excited, then your lack of experience and lack of trained control can make the whole thing bomb. In fact, you can bomb performing too if you are still a student for the same reason. The reason I focus on skills when I write about music studies is not because I'm some kind of a boring details-nerd, but because it was lack of skills that caused me to struggle with what I wanted to express in music. There is also one experience in a recital that was related to this, which I prefer not to go into here. Lessons are for learning.

I don't know if nerves are a focus on yourself. Like, imagine somebody has just discovered something he's really excited about, and when he tries to tell someone else he is so overwhelmed that he stammers and stumbles in his words. Nerves can be because of how you think others will see you, or they may simply be because a situation is over-exciting and over-stimulating.

Is the energy a focus on the listener, or on the music (which you want to share with the listener)? (I wonder).

It's an interesting question.

I think that how well a musician performs in a live performance depends on a combination of how well he/she has prepared the piece to be performed and also of what happens in the mind of the performer during the performance.

I regularly perform my favorite love songs for private parties and also for senior communities, and, since I know and love the songs that I pay so well, I play them more beautifully than I do at home, likely because I know that an audience is listening with enjoyment and perhaps even hanging on every note. I want to share with the listeners the beauty of the song and perhaps even move them with my music.

However, if I were to perform a classical piece that I had not played regularly for a long time before a group of piano teachers, I am pretty sure I would play it worse than at home, and I think that the reason for this is because of the fear that I would have of making a mistake in front of my peers.

I encourage my students to focus their thoughts on the way in which they are playing their music (i.e. dynamic contrasts, variations in tempo, etc.) so that their minds may become so focused on these musical elements as to not permit negative fearful thoughts to creep in.

A few times when I have been playing for a dinner where people were talking and not listening intently anyway, I experimented with this theory by trying to psych myself into making mistakes with a piece that I had been playing well for many years. I would force myself to think, "If I mess us and forget this piece, it's going to be really embarrassing." And sure enough, thinking these negative thoughts would often cause me to have a memory lapse in the middle of playing a familiar piece.

So I really do think that one's performance level in live performance has a great deal to do with one's mental disposition. Is the performer thinking of how they have played this piece so many times, of how much they love the piece, and of how they will express it to make it beautiful for the listeners? Or are they thinking about how they hope they might make it through the piece without making mistakes or about how embarrassed they will be if they should mess it up?

I agree that a seasoned performer will most often perform better in a live performance. Most of our students, however, are not seasoned performers, so I think the best that we can do for these students is to try and help them prepare their music to 110%, and to encourage them to focus their thoughts on the music that they are playing.

Having said all this, it is also true that performance anxiety decreases with experience. The students whom I have taught for many years, and who have performed in many piano recitals, do not become nervous at all, so their performance is simply a reflection of how well they have prepared. Perhaps this is because they have already made their share of mistakes during their first years of performance, and they know that nothing terrible happened to them as a consequence of making mistakes.

I agree with those who have mentioned the importance of educating parents to not be over-preoccupied with expectations of perfection. We should help parents to understand how performing in a piano recital helps students gain self-confidence, and that, toward this goal, parents should congratulate and encourage their children for having the courage to play before an audience. We should also help parents and students understand the importance of the opportunity for students to hear other students perform at piano recitals.

I find this is true for improvisation, but not true for anything prepared.

Well, my son was an exception in that regard, at least on a lot of high pressure occasions. He had the proverbial ice water in the veins. It's a useful trait.

The adrenalin rush is something that can destroy a lot of students. It causes an increase in speed, a lot of rushing, and a tendency to crash and burn. Dynamic shading and musicality can go to h**l. But if the extra juice can be controlled and channeled, the results can be quite good. I remember many an occasion when I thought son #1's speed was an extra few clicks above the practice level yet the control was surprisingly firm. If a student can get in a "zone" (or zen) state, the extra energy can compensate for an occasional dynamic lapse or small tempo change.

In competitions, this is a noticeable advantage.