Transform Yourself Into a Performer | Alpin Hong | TEDxLaSierraUniversity

my name is Alvin Hong and I have been a classical concert pianist for the last 15 years although I didn't know I was going to be this growing up my first career aspiration was to become a ninja although my parents saw inherent aesthetic and intellectual value in classical music lessons and so they started me on piano and violin at the age of four like many kids I had great difficulty practicing the Nintendo Entertainment System came out when I was seven years old and there was no way that Bach Beethoven and Chopin could compete with Mario Zelda and Metroid but I did love performing eventually I decided to follow my passion and I attended the Juilliard School and started a career in music early on I realized that a great performance involved much more than simply playing the piano accurately or even dynamically and so I sought out other great solo artists and looked at old videos of the great solo performance of history including Vladimir Horowitz and Jerry Lee Lewis Victor borghi and Liberace another great solo entertainers such as Frank Sinatra George Carlin Michael Jackson I wanted to ascertain just what it was that allowed these incredible entertainers to instantly captivate their audience even sometimes before even singing or playing a single note or speaking a single word it became apparent to me that a great performance starts as soon as the person steps out into view all of us have to perform at some point in our lives we have to interview for a job negotiate a salary make a toast at a wedding ask someone out on a date but performing has to be practiced the reason why the performing arts are so important is it because it can give us a skills anyone to become a more effective communicator on or off the stage the first aspect of effective live performance is physical the projection of confidence can be just as effective as actual confidence it confers a sense of expertise even if the performer is suffering from horrible terror internally and may not realize this but as soon as you step onto stage the first outward manifestation of your confidence or the lack of it is your posture everyone has been to this kid's pianos Idol where the kid comes out like this all right no no no matter who you are how old you are wherever you come from when you see and you hear something like that everybody in the room thinks the exact same thing oh no because you know the next hour is going to be painful now the outward manifestation of posture that a lot of people have thought of all kinds of techniques to teach people to carrier itself but it's actually quite simple would all of you please stand with me now first visualize a string coming out the top of your head so it strings you know it's straighten your spine let your arms hang naturally your sides but rotate them out so that the inside of your elbow faces forward good and just turn just your hands in instantly all of you are in the exact perfect position for giving a speech singing or even dancing now as long as I have you standing I would like to take the opportunity to teach all of you how to properly bow after a performance a lot of people have all these complicated mechanisms for doing this you know take three breaths and then they'll go to 45 degree angle count to 3 up you know look no they're just three steps do with me forward up smile that last little bit is so critical and so often overlooked please go ahead sit down thank you the joyful expression of appreciation is that special touch that makes your audience feel like you know remember the feeling of the performance even if they don't remember what you performed there is that you know even there may not be many opportunities in your life to actually bow but that last step the smile its power cannot be overestimated here's a way in which posture is able to affect the outcome of performance drastically I've been talking to you high school students then telling them that there are two ways to ask someone to the dance or a date there's a one we all usually use hey would you like to go to the dance with me Friday but then there's always I don't always dance but when I do I dance with you now now your prospective date probably will laugh at you but I bet you his or her chances of saying yes have gone up by double digits you know a person who projects confidence is not afraid to laugh themselves is has a much better chance of being a fun date now the next aspect I'd like to talk about not the physical projection of confidence is the first outward manifestation also is when you look someone in the eye or if you're in a crowd like this to shift your gaze to his maintain visual contact with many people in your audience this captures their attention draws them in connects them to you and actually they become invested in your performance and your success the next aspect of performing I would like to talk about now is the fact that no matter how much confidence we project it doesn't mean anything if you don't know your stuff you know if you are not adequately prepared a lot of times you know you can fish around for ideas and you're not quite sure what's going to happen but you may not realize that actually there is a method with which you can prepare yourself in a way now I myself in all of us who play an instrument tend to practice the same way in preparing for a performance white we practice from beginning to end beginning to end beginning to end over and over and over again oh let's be honest with ourselves beginning to add it's kind of hard I don't know I just spent on the beginning makes you feel good so beginning and then you get to I'm kind of bored I want to kind of watch TV do something else and then oh but I'd like the beginning so you play the beginning again of course eventually what happens is that when you go to perform it you know the beginning well but the further along you go the less well you know it and that results of course in these performances right or the beginning is just great but then it starts to teary eight as time goes on and at worst it falls apart and stops completely this is what we performers call a train wreck and it is the performers worst fear now a performer there is a way to combat this horrible idea the fact that if I if you know I suggest that you know performance anxiety usually arises out of the fear that your audience is expecting such failures but I would like to suggest that you assume that your audience if they're in your audience they want you to have a successful memorable performance and so I would like to suggest a technique also to help you get from the beginning to the end and that is by flipping it around when you prepare in my own experience I learned pieces and started from the end and worked my way back to the beginning so I would learn the last two measures and then the last four and then the last six and then last eight this technique had several benefits number one the end of every practice session was a triumph it ended in a great conclusion but it also puts some mental flag points along the way to help you navigate through the piece instead of the piece being this massive singular undertaking it was broken up into these smaller more manageable accomplishments and when he eventually did put that piece on stage the your confidence would only build as the performance progressed now I would like to take a moment to address the other aspect unfortunately that performance has mistakes no matter how much time and effort you put into preparing your presentation there was always a possibility of the miss note the memory slip the verbal stumble we are not computers and in my own playing as a classically trained pianist I was forced to replicate a score note for note every marking to an exact tempo measured by metronome any variation from these elements was considered an error that needed to be corrected and this fear of making mistakes is reinforced by teachers pencils across my knuckles and my mom yelling at me no you missing notes you miss it you have to practice more you could depend on maybe some of you had that mom and I realized that the only advice that I got is a young person about mistakes was try not to make them or even worse practice so you don't make them now these little suggestions didn't help when in the middle of her performance I would blank and forget where I was in the music the performance skill that can help you deal with these inevitable moments of uncertainty is improvisation now I am NOT talking about abandoning ship and completely winging it this is obvious this is actually not often helpful what I'm talking about is understanding the framework of your presentation so that you can if a problem arises you can continue and find your way back on track in music this involves understanding the structure of your piece so that you can if necessary skip to a particular section and continue in a speech understanding the themes of each paragraph allows you to keep going even if individual words slip your mind Polonius monk once said there are no wrong notes some are just more right than others so in fact the extent of wit what the impact mistakes have on a performance actually depends completely on the performer we may not be able to control when mistakes arise but we can control the impact of what it does to us I would like to relate to you a story about the time when improvisation saved me from not only a train wreck but also inspired perhaps the peace that I am most known for performing ever the my most requested piece I was playing the variations on a theme of twinkle twinkle little star by Mozart far from the hardest piano piece in the repertoire but for some reason in the middle I couldn't for the life of me remember how the rest of the variations were supposed to go the last thing I was certain of was that I was the last thing I played was in the key of C and so you know I started the only theme that came to mind and the key of C was the theme to Star Wars and so I played that and then I realized that the baseline I'd just been playing was the same as Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by the Beatles and so I played that and then this left me in the key of a and I was like well the only thing I can think of right now in the key of A is the Legend of Zelda so I played that and so on and so on and so forth until I arrived at back in the key of C and I finished with perhaps the most famous video game theme of all time and I received perhaps the biggest standing ovation of my life I would like to share this piece with you right now ladies and gentlemen twinkle twinkle Deathstar you you you you you you you confidence performance under pressure the ability to improvise in difficult situations are critical attributes for anyone no matter what field you work in and that's why I think the performing arts is so important especially for young people the power to affect how people perceive you gives you the ability to transform the world around you thank you very much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 319,387

Rating: 4.9411225 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Entertainment, Arts education, Communication, Education, Emotions, Humor, Ideas, Learning, Motivation, Music (performance), Music (topic), Passion, Personal growth, Purpose, Self improvement, Senses, Sharing, Song, Sound, Success, Teaching, Video Games

Id: Xu1g6YL3AGE

Length: 22min 16sec (1336 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/IAmA_Nerd_AMA]

Enjoyed it.

TL;DW: Present yourself with confidence and know your shit well enough to improvise when things go wrong.

[u/knght_rdr]

Transform Yourself Into a Performer | Alpin Hong | TEDx

[u/TurntReynolds]

Ive came out on drugs, not knowing what city or even state im in. Not saying this is the way to do it.... But even in that state, i know i can throw down.

And yes.... There are a lot of times when you get out the bus, or wake up and have no idea where you are. even sober as a judge.