Performing is a SEPARATE Skill - Tips and Strategies To Play Better on Stage 🎹

[Music] hi everyone I'm Josh and this is Josh right piano TV thanks so much for joining me today I hope today's insights can help each of you today I wanted to discuss the concept that performing is a separate skill that you have to develop a lot of times students will email me and say I had this perfect in my practice sessions and then I get on stage and everything falls apart why is that is that common is it uncommon is it just me first of all it's not just you everyone struggles with that and the solution that I've found that works really well for me is having a regimen to help you improve your skills as a performer something that I will commonly do is try to get 10 performances of a piece before the actual big concert or recital comes up if it's a small little concert for family and friends or just a local community concert that you're not as nervous for if you're using old repertoire for instance maybe you can get away with three to five performances I'm preparing a new piece right now the third movement of the moonlight sonata by Beethoven opus 27 number two and I just finished memorizing it and the concerts in about a week and a half now this is putting it way too close to the performance for my normal comfort level but this this week I'll be performing at every single day to try to get those 10 performances in before I actually perform it on January 6th so if any of you are struggling with performing a couple of other quick tips go through your music and make sure that you have rescue points so these can be large sections but within those large sections I would also make smaller sections so going through let's say you have a sonata that's 8 pages long maybe you know the exposition is three pages the development is two pages in the recaps 3 something like that and you have those three pages don't just have the whole exposition as one rescue point you have to jump all the way to the development have each of your themes rest big rescue points and then within those themes have little cues as well that you could jump to in case something goes wrong a lot of times you see people completely fall apart on stage they will get to a certain spot mess up go back a measure to mess up in the same spot go back mess up in the same spot and then they're like so flustered that they just end up jumping forward anyway whenever you make a mistake you always want to try to jump forward because first of all a lot of times I'm not gonna say it's less noticeable but it's it's less severe than going back it's so obvious when you go back whereas if you just jump one or two or three notes ahead it's just a little flub that you know you could probably get away with but and I've seen professionals do that before I've only seen one professional ever start completely over and it was shocking to see that whereas I have seen quite a few professionals make little mistakes and then they just keep going it's like just a like little stumbling block and then they keep going so I would highly recommend always jumping forward another little practice tip that I like to do for performing is to imagine myself in the third person and just imagine that I'm listening very carefully I have other videos both here on YouTube and in the VIP masterclass series I'll link that in the description below going over a lot more performing tips that I like to do but those are just a few of my favorites but I did want to establish that performing is a separate skill that you have to work at you can't be just a great practice or in your home and expect that to translate well onto stage no matter how well you do by yourself you have to practice getting in front of other peoples so if you're just a hobbyist someone who likes to play piano for their own enjoyment you really need to ask yourself do I want to be playing in front of others if so you have a long journey ahead of you of practicing that skill over and over and over people say how do you not get so nervous anymore and I get a little bit nervous for sometimes new pieces or big competitions I would get nervous for but everything in comparison to those big competitions is not too not too nerve-wracking so people say how do you do that it's because I've done those big performances that a local small community concert like I'm doing next week I mean it's not too small I think hundreds of people will come based on their normal concert attendance but something in comparison to like the preliminaries of the Chopin Competition which I did back in 2015 where the whole world is watching and you know you're one of a hundred and sixty people invited to play man that was serious pressure so just practice that imagine that it's a muscle that you have to keep working out that performance muscle if you want to perform for people you need to be constantly doing it in order to get better at it you can't just say I'm gonna practice several hours a day and really devote myself to this and hopefully by the recital I'll be ready you have to set up different situations one other thing I would recommend is sabotaging yourself before the performance gets there I remember before Carnegie Hall I would go make snowballs in Michigan winter which was probably like zero degrees outside it was so cold zero degrees Fahrenheit which would be negative degrees Celsius and I'd make snowballs until I couldn't even really fill my hands anymore hardly at all and then I'd go into the practice room and start la campanella' that was one of the pieces that I was playing there and it was a very weird sensation your hands are thawing out by the time you get to that point and I'm like oh my gosh this is crazy when you get to the warm stage and you're all warmed up and on a beautiful immaculate piano even though you're in front of an audience it's not so hard anymore so I hope today's tips have been helpful if any of you have any questions my email is Josh at Josh right piano calm I'm also gonna link a few things in the description below the first thing is for a free webinar containing ten of my favorite tips to take you're playing to that next level it's a great thing to get started on this you know new year 2020 set those ten practice methods into your normal regimen when you're struggling with things those really do help I mean I've learned those from some of the best in the world so I'll link that in the description below I'll also link a couple of my paid courses if you want to take your studies even deeper than this channel goes over and then finally I will link something to my kit which is basically all the gear I use beginner piano books microphones lighting everything else that I use to create these videos and other suggestions like books and CDs that I enjoy as well have a great week good luck in your practice sessions [Music]

Channel: Josh Wright

Views: 40,948

Keywords: piano, piano lesson, piano tutorial, how to play the piano, piano tips, piano tricks, classical piano, piano scales, piano technique, piano arpeggios, piano chords, best piano tutorial, piano masterclass, master class, perform, performing, nerves, nervous, stage fright, play better, perform better, performance anxiety, dealing with, dealing with anxiety, dealing with nerves, nerves on stage, dealing with nerves when presenting, performance tips, peak performance, piano skill

Id: Gk6h8e2mbnU

Length: 7min 9sec (429 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 31 2019