Good solid preparation is crucial to playing well but even the best prepared students can still have difficulty on the day. This is because playing your best under pressure requires two types of preparation:
- Practicing to learn and improve (i.e. learning repertoire, developing and refining technical and musical skills). This requires the ability to self-monitor, correct, analyse and self-instruct.
- Practicing to perform (i.e. learning how to trust in what you have trained, and have the confidence and courage to let go of conscious control and just allow it to happen). Best performances occur when our mind is focussed and quiet. In other words you need to be able to switch off the self-monitoring, instructions, over-analysis, and criticism that are our constant companion in the first type of practice as well as have well developed skills to deal with the spike in self-doubt, fear, tension and heightened anxiety that inevitably accompany a public performance.
Most students are aware of the importance of practicing to improve and learn (even if they don’t necessarily dedicate enough time to this process!). Few, however, understand what it takes to actually prepare for a performance. Additionally, few understand how to practice efficiently to get the most out of their practice sessions. Learning music and performing music are two entirely different processes and require different skills. So, regardless of how many hours of effort your students dedicate to practicing it will only get them so far if they haven’t developed the skills:
- To be productive in practice, which is an area that can be significantly improved with well-developed performance mastery skills; and,
- To switch from practice mode into performance mode. Remember, this is a big ask for any musician (not just students) when you consider that musicians (unlike athletes) spend the vast majority of their time with their instrument in practice mode. Opportunities to perform are rare, particularly in the more exacting performance situations such as exams and auditions.
To further complicate this issue is the fact that many students don’t really know what it takes or feels like to be ‘well prepared’. Unfortunately it often takes the actual performance for them to realise that their preparation has been less than ideal or inadequate. Practicing to perform will not only significantly improve preparation but has the added advantage of highlighting any weaknesses in preparation well ahead of time so the necessary steps can be taken to deal with any problems before the actual performance.
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