Music Video Lesson: Avoiding a Trainwreck in Your Musical Performance

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource.

Today we're going to talk about the flywheel effect in your piano playing. This is an essential element that you must embrace in musical performance and your audience will appreciate it and so will you. What is this all about? Have you ever gone to a play and occasionally there will be a little problem and somebody will need a line, they forget a line, it can happen.

And you know what? If the performer just wings it, maybe improvises a line or two, unless you're really familiar with the play, you won't even notice. But just imagine what would happen if somebody missed their line and then they went back a line so that they get it the next time. You're like, huh? And now suddenly you're absorbing the story, now you're thinking about the performer, you're thinking about what else is messing up, what's going on here. It takes you away from the magic. Well, it's exactly the same with your musical performance and you must think of your performance as a train. A train keeps going. Now let's say a train gets slightly derailed for a moment. It would be a disaster if it completely stopped and getting it back on the track. But imagine if it just got off for a moment and went right back on. It wouldn't be a big deal, would it? It's the same exact thing with your playing, like a flywheel that keeps going. That's what you must do in your musical performance. I'm going to demonstrate this with Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, the second movement. Let me play it for you first just so you can hear it. OK? Right. So that's the beginning of the second movement. Gorgeous theme.

So imagine you're playing it and you have a momentary glitch and you correct it on the spot like this.

The flow of the music is interrupted. Anybody who's kind of tapping their photo along is jarred by the experience. And they also might start to feel, oh, are they going to miss something else? And they might feel sorry for you. And it takes them away from the whole experience. And you did the best you could to correct the mistake. Well, the secret is to keep going like that train. Use the flywheel effect. So the mistakes come and go as quickly and inconsequentially as possible like this.

So unless somebody's intimately familiar with the score, they probably won't even notice.

Just like at the play, who knows all the lines of the play if they just improvise something for a moment, it'd be fine for almost everyone in the audience. You don't want to disrupt the flow of the music. Use the flywheel effect. Ignore the mistakes and just focus on where you are in the score and let the music keep unfolding. And the performance we find, it doesn't have to be perfect, but it must have continuity. The most important thing, utilize that flywheel effect. The show must go on. I hope this is helpful for you. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos. Thanks so much for joining me. If you haven't subscribed, this is a good opportunity to go ahead and ring the bell for notifications about future videos and a thumbs up if you like it. Thanks for joining me.

I'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/avoiding-a-trainwreck-in-your-musical-performance/

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