Classical Guitar » Guitar Performance Tips

Practicing Performance

Giacomo Fiore — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:03:22 +0000

The time we spend practicing is probably the most critical time from a creative and professional standpoint. Part athletic conditioning, part meditation, and part artistic development, who we are on the concert stage depends largely on who we are in the practice room. If you’re not prepared for a concert, your nerves are going to be much worse than usual, and—unless the stars are looking kindly upon you—chances are you’re not going to have the most memorable night. Over the years I have found that there is a particular mindset that one can strive for when practicing, in order to obtain more reliable and, dare I say, flat-out better results as a performer.

Let’s assume you divide your practice time more or less equally between technical issues, learning new pieces, and the upkeep of pieces you already play or are currently programming. Every time you’re “running” one of these latter pieces, I suggest you do that as if you were onstage. Picture yourself in concert garb, hear the hollow reverberation of your steps on the wooden floor, see the dimly-lit figures in the scarcely attended hall…wait a second—since this is a visualization exercise, let’s be generous and give ourselves a standing-room only performance. With some practice, you should be able to recreate the experience, and hopefully the same pre-performance focus. If you’re doing it really well, you might even get a little nervous.

Now play. Unlike the saying, play as if someone is listening. Play outwards, project the sound to the back of the imaginary hall, project your musical thought and interpretations to the imaginary audience. Let your playing be bold and clear—own every note you play, and put all of yourself into every musical gesture. In other words, be deliberate, and practice being deliberate.

Granted, reading the above couple of paragraph might make the more pragmatic among you scream. But in all seriousness—shouldn’t we aim to recreate what happens in performance within the confines of the practice room? Isn’t one of the worst elements of stage fright that feeling of alienation, that eerie taste of strangeness that comes from realizing that you’ve never actually done that before? New hall, new program, new shiny suit—it even makes the guitar slip a little bit. All strange and unfamiliar. “Wouldn’t it be so much better,” you think, as you notice the pounding of your heart and the dryness of your mouth, “if I could just be back in the safety of my practice room? Then I could really play.“

What I’m suggesting is that you pre-empt that feeling of strangeness through the methodical employment of visualization techniques. As you prepare for a performance, you should try as much as possible to envision yourself in the act of playing. Do so without a guitar, perhaps with the score, or simply by closing your eyes. As you go through each piece on the program, hear the music in your head as you feel the movement of your hands on the guitar. Imagine the sound of your guitar in the hall, and if you lose your place—well, you have found a spot that requires a bit more attention. As you get better, you can do these exercises in places and situations quite remote from your usual practice schedule, effectively expanding and maximizing your actual practice time. Nothing wrong with visualizing your program as you go for a jog, or when you’re stuck in traffic (just don’t get in an accident).

Run-throughs, whether physical or imaginary, can help making your next performance an enjoyable and successful one. Don’t wait until it’s showtime to practice your performing—make every practice session more deliberate and expressive, and I guarantee you’ll be amazed at the results.

Practicing Performance from Classical Guitar

Video Lesson: Tuning the 6th String to D

Christopher Davis — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:00:31 +0000

This is a (very) short video about how I like to put my guitar in “Drop D” tuning. This method, as I explain the video, works a bit better for keeping the sixth string more stable. As in, it doesn’t go sharp again after a minute or two of playing.

Video Lesson: Tuning the 6th String to D from Classical Guitar

Manipulate Your Audience in Three Easy Steps

Christopher Davis — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:15:29 +0000

If you’re on stage, you have to be in control of the situation. Here’s three ways to do it.

1. Smile

Your control of the audience begins when you walk on stage. You get to convey whatever it is you want to be. I suggest that you convey enjoyment.

Smile like your life depends on it when you walk in. It’s amazing what happens to an audience when a performer smiles. They’ll think you’re at home on the stage.

If you don’t feel like smiling, fake it.

2. Master the Silence

After (quietly) tuning, it’s time to start. Please don’t plow into the piece. Take a moment of poise before you begin.

This creates a tense moment, in which the audience knows that the real performance is about to begin. The moment of poise is a way to separate the walk in, seating and everything else from the music.

After you finish a piece, take another moment of poise. Play the silence at the end of the piece by freezing in place for a few heartbeats after muting the strings. Then relax, look up and smile (see above).

3. Stay Focused

As an audience member, it’s incredibly uncomfortably when you don’t know when to clap. Sure the program is there, but when a perform sends unclear signals it becomes difficult.

Practice the moment of poise (see above) after each movement, but stay focused on your instrument and the music. Do not address the audience by looking at them during this time. Take a few moments to relax (I like less time between movements, but that’s up to you!), then use another moment of poise and begin.

Of course if the movement was particularly fiery, you might get some applause anyway! That’s okay. I suggest acknowledging it with a smile and nod, but not a full bow. Save that for the end of the piece.

Manipulate Your Audience in Three Easy Steps from Classical Guitar

The Real Truth About Performance Anxiety

Christopher Davis — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:00:42 +0000

Is that it’s probably not going away, and we should be grateful for that. The nervousness and excitement before a concert is what gives us that edge as a performer–it’s what makes interpretations exciting and keeps us coming back. In the audience, the feeling of a live concert is entirely different from that of recordings. I would suspect that little bit of unpredictability combined with the performers anxiety and energy is what makes a live concert the experience it is.

Truth: Successful Performances Breed Successful Performances

When someone asks advice on performance anxiety, the common advice is, “you need to perform more!”

That’s true. But let’s add a bit to that advice, “you need to perform the same thing more.”

Too much of our energy goes into a one time performance of a piece. In undergraduate programs around the country juniors and seniors spend a year preparing a recital that will only be heard once. At my school, graduate performance students are only required to give one recital!

Performances do get better with time, but there has to be more controlled. Live with a piece for a while and playing it feels like put on your favorite t-shirt: familiar, but you like wearing it because you look good and feel confident. Performances improve only when you showcase a piece in front of an audience multiple times: the piece is familiar and comfortable, but you know with out a doubt that you’ll do well. That calm assurance and confidence only comes after a piece has been performed many times. Playing a piece for an audience more than once makes it better.

When I chatted with Steve Aron after our interview, I mentioned that I had several concerts booked in the coming month. He said, “That’s great! by the third concert you’ll wish you had 15 more.” He was right. By the third concert, all of the issues I had were exposed and practiced, and that third concert went really well (so did the fourth and fifth).

Performance is the Ultimate Indicator

Music is a performance oriented business. Even the strictest of hobbyists should seek out performance opportunities.

A performance is a test to see how well your practice really worked. Did your phrases end well? Did you convey the overall mood you wanted to convey? Did that tricky part go well? Were there memory slips? Sometimes things will go badly that never have before, exposing an issue that needs work.

In short, a performance can provide a new set of goals on which to work. Then when the next performance rolls around, the previous issues have been fixed (though new ones may arise!).

We need to abandon this idea that a performance is a one time thing. Live with repertoire for a long time. Perform it often.

The Real Truth About Performance Anxiety from Classical Guitar

How to Stop Your Guitar from Sliding While Playing

Christopher Davis — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:00:10 +0000

Ever played a concert or been practicing and felt like your were fighting to keep your guitar in place? It’s the worst with slacks: the guitar slides everywhere. Enter the leg sticky.

A leg sticky is a small patch of shelf liner or a cut up swim cap. Anything that has a lot of friction will do fine. I use shelf liner.

Simply cut a chunk of of whatever material you chose, put it on your left leg, and set the guitar on top of it. This should keep the guitar from sliding. When you play in slacks, it’s also a good idea to put another bit of material on your right leg where the guitar contacts it. This will keep the guitar’s neck from getting pulled back. To be honest, setting the material on the right leg will probably do a better job of keeping the guitar in place.

How to Stop Your Guitar from Sliding While Playing from Classical Guitar

The Fine Art of Screwing Up

Christopher Davis — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:00:07 +0000

We all make mistakes in performance (except John Williams). It just happens. It’s part of the game. The really hard part is recovery: those milliseconds after the mistake.

The problem is confidence. Specifically, too much of it. We saunter on stage, start playing, then promptly screw up. The confidence we walked on with is gone. In its place is a ball of nervousness. The one mistake has thrown us into a downward spiral from which it’s hard to recover.

A performer needs confidence and poise, however, so we can’t let that go.

The fine are of screwing up is mastering non-attachment to the mistakes.

And it’s incredibly hard to do. I completely screwed up an entire section of a piece in a guitar ensemble concert last week. It took me the rest of the piece to recover. I’m writing this post as a reminder to myself what should happen when mistakes happen.

As mistakes happen, let go. Focus on the task at hand, and look forward to making the next bit as beautiful as you possibly can.

It’s easy to say what needs to happen, but it’s much harder to actually do it when the pressure is on.

The Fine Art of Screwing Up from Classical Guitar

Four Ways to Prepare for a Performance

Christopher Davis — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:00:59 +0000

Whether we go on stage to play a full hour program or for just one piece, performing is an intense (and mildly terrifying) experience. This article is about dealing with the time immediately before a performance. I assume you’ve already selected repertoire and learned it.

1.) Practice Performance

Practicing is different from practicing performance.

Practicing performance is playing a piece straight through. No stopping, and no loss of rhythmic flow. This is a test of performance outside of the nervousness inspired by playing for an audience.

The big thing, when practicing performance, is to get your head right. Mistakes suck. They’re frustrating. Get in the mindset of a performer. Observe mistakes happening, then file them away or disregard them completely. Work towards not dwelling on mistakes. This is something that has to be done during performance, so it might as well be practiced.

2.) Warm-up Performances

About a month before the recital is a good time to start doing warm-up performances. Keep mind that you should probably plan these well in advance if you’re planning on performing an entire recital.

A warm-up performance is just playing for a few friends or your significant other or a video camera¹. In short, it’s just a way to get some experience in real performance situations before the big event happens.

The greatest indicator of how preparing a piece is is a performance. Did all the thing you practiced come out in performance? How did that hard passage go? Did your hands get tired? Asking these questions can help provide the new goals for practicing should be.

3.) Visualization a Successful Performance

Most of us know about mental practice. Visualization is a powerful tool, and it can be used to help prepare for your performance.

Imagine yourself on stage, see yourself from the perspective of an audience member. Hear the music you’re playing. Then switch points of view. Imagine the feeling being on stage (confidence!), and image yourself playing perfectly.

More important, I think, is visualizing the time after the performance. How will it feel to be over? Capture that feeling of success before it happens. Then use that energy when you walk out on stage for real.

4.) The Day Of

Some performers have little rituals. I think there’s a lot of value in that if you perform very frequently. For those of us who perform less frequently, doing some ritual can often freak us out more.

Here’s a different approach: do whatever you normally do. Whatever your technical or warm up routine usually is, do it. Then spend a few minutes starting each piece. If you feel like playing more, stick to practicing performance (see above). My preference would be to do these things either early in the day or a few hours before the performance.

Right before would be a good time just to noodle around or start pieces to get your hands warmed up.

I would not, under any circumstance, work on drilling a difficult passage or change a fingering or do any sort of real practice the day of a performance. Doing so might lead to a loss of confidence that carries over on stage.

___________
¹ Other warm up performance ideas: playing for a elementary school class, giving a short performance at a local library, performing in a retirement home, playing the prelude music at your religious institution, visiting a local college with a guitar program for a lesson with the teacher (more intense), performing for a local guitar society meeting. There’s a lot of opportunities for warm-up performances. Just think outside the box.

Four Ways to Prepare for a Performance from Classical Guitar

The Psychology of Simple Music

Christopher Davis — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:00:43 +0000

In the interview with Petar Jankovich, he said, “don’t go on stage displaying your abilities… it’s not about showing off.” Petar went on to say that if you do that, you’re doomed to a, “non-expressive, flat — maybe virtuosic — but pretty flat and boring performance.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I think we do this almost automatically: we want to display how good we are. We want others to be impressed. This is especially true if the performance is for peers or other guitarists.

Lately I’ve been playing some very simple pieces by Fernando Sor. I love these pieces. They’re fun to play, and easy to do well on.

But playing simple music is different. When there’s no virtuosic passages, there’s no place built into the piece to show off. There’s only musical issues to sort out — there’s only musicality to save these simple pieces from being boring.

The lack of virtuosity in these pieces changes the mindset to performing them. They just become fun. It’s not about, “look how good I am,” it’s about, “I love these simple pieces, and I want to share them with you.” That’s a totally new world!

There’s a lot of reasons for performing simple music: gives you something to start with and warm up on or they give you extra time for not much effort.

Maybe playing simple music can help improve performance by helping adjust the psychological aspects of performance.

Thoughts?

The Psychology of Simple Music from Classical Guitar

The Power of Expectations

Christopher Davis — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:28:26 +0000

Today I had a bad performance experience. Every week at APSU we hold a guitar performance class — each guitar student plays for the others. I went in not knowing what I was going to play and not knowing how it would go. After a fairly mediocre performance, I left frustrated: my nervousness and lack of clear outcome expectations had sabotaged my performance.

When thinking over the performance later, I realized that I treat performance class very differently from a recital. I prepare well for recitals, and I feel confident walking on stage. I don’t just choose pieces off the cuff like I do in performance class. I’m also always sure that the recital is going to go well, not so for performance class.

Expectations Rule

Ever had a day where you made a mistake thought to yourself, “I sound terrible, nothing is working,” and that turns into the truth very quickly? That’s an expectation. And it’s powerful. That thought is charged with an emotional frustration and leads to other thoughts and doubts, quickly destroying any chance of a good performance or practice session.

Never go into a performance or practice session with poor expectations because it’s sure to go bad. Even if you don’t feel confident, tell yourself you are and fake it.

Something I learned today the hard way, and something I wish I would have figured out last year.

The Power of Expectations from Classical Guitar

Moment of Poise

Christopher Davis — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:25:31 +0000

In a previous article I wrote about smiling and how just doing some simple things can make you appear to be a experienced and confident performer. The article was titled Faking It. Today we add another way to fake it: the moment of poise.

Most performers have a moment before they begin playing, after walking out, where the entire room is settling it. The applause is done, and the performer or performers are preparing to begin. There’s that moment of silence, time stops, then the music starts. That’s the moment of poise.

Calling it a moment of poise is misleading. The performer is probably anything but calm. But for the audience it’s this moment that really signals the start of a piece.

Anyone can incorporate a brief moment of poise before performing. The key is to try and settle your mind — actually, the key is to distract yourself, and think about the music and not the audience. There’s a few strategies for this. One is to just imagine the first few bars of the piece. Feel your hands moving and hear the sounds for the first few measures before beginning to actually play. Another strategy is to just notice the room or what you feel (a concept borrowed from Madeline Bruser). Notice things like the way the room sounds or feels or how your body feels seated, etc. There’s also the option of focusing on breathing for a few seconds.

Lots of options, but incorporating brief moment of poise before the first notes can really make your performance more polished and professional.

Moment of Poise from Classical Guitar