Piano Video Lesson: Play for Anyone: 5 Steps to Piano Confidence

I'm Robert Estrin, you're watching LivingPianos.com and today's such an important subject. So many people ask me about this.

I've made other videos, but I thought I'd make it really concise for you today.

Overcoming stage fright, five strategies to play with confidence.

I'm sure you've been through it. If you're watching this video, you practice, you practice, you practice, you practice, you think you got it and then you play for people and everything goes haywire. You go, what is the matter with me? You're thinking, well, I got a news for you. There's nothing the matter with you. It is human nature. You know, we are wired for the fight or flight response. And when you all have a bunch of eyes looking at you and you're performing, it's natural for your body's functions to get elevated. You might get a little sweaty palms.

Your heart rate might go a little faster. You get that nervous feeling inside. This is normal.

So what can you do to mitigate these, these natural physiological reactions? Well, number one, you have to realize that performing is fundamentally different from practicing and you have to draw a wall, a line that you never cross that you know which one you're doing.

So number one, of course, prepare more than you think you should, like way more before you ever perform. You should have a piece so solid that, you know, you could wake up in the morning and sit down at the piano first thing. You could just play it. You know, you can be tired and you can play it. You know, any situation that you really, really have worked every which way, of course, slow methodical practice without them, without the pedal, metronome speeds or sections that give you problems, all of it, trying different ways of playing louder, softer. And that's one of the things, by the way, the next step is play, not just slowly and securely play faster than it even goes. Why? Because when you get excited or nervous, you're naturally going to play faster than you think you are. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've experienced this as a teacher where I have a student who has prepared diligently and the performance comes and they're going, whoa, so they start, oh my gosh, how are they going to get through this thing? Have they ever played it this fast? And they don't even realize you're going that fast. Why? Because your physiology is sped up and therefore you're playing faster. And if you haven't practiced playing faster, you're in trouble.

So play faster. And of course, slowly, slow practice is such a strength builder for you anyway.

Now here's one that's so important. You must practice performing. You might wonder, how can you do that? Well, you can psych yourself into it. Better yet, put up your phone or another recording device and pretend it's a performance. Even announce it as if it's a person. Maybe you have company coming over and you thought, wouldn't it be nice to play for them on your nice new piano if they ask? And you want to get into it. So you put that up there, pretend it's the people and here's the key. No matter what happens, don't stop the recording and start again.

Go for it and see how you recover. And I can tell you also as a teacher, when I hear students play, how they recover in performance to me is almost more important than how they perform. Because no matter what level you're on, even the greatest concert pianists in the world have finger slips or memory issues and it's the recovery that sets it apart and makes for a satisfying performance for the audience and makes the performer feel better about what they've done.

So then after you've recorded, have low stress playing like maybe you have a spouse or a good friend or a child even and just, oh, can you sit here and play for them? So you just get used to it and then build from there and build.

Then maybe you have several people over and instead of preparing for one big event and hope that everything goes well, do many smaller events and build up to it.

My father, Morten Estrin, was a great concert pianist and whenever he had a performance like a New York recital playing at Lincoln Center or something like that, he would have tryout recitals. He would do it early on. As soon as he had the program under his belt, he would just invite a few close friends first to perform the program to see where to practice it, to see what things maybe weren't as strong as he thought. And then he would do maybe a couple of these to be able to work through the nerves, work through the pacing, the energy level. It's invaluable.

Another thing that is awesome if you have the possibility to play on different pianos, particularly if you're going to play a performance somewhere else and you're playing on a different piano, boy, wouldn't it be great to try it on different pianos? Well maybe that's impossible. You're thinking, oh, there's no piano I can play on. There's a couple of hacks you can do.

Like here I have a piano and it's all the way open. Well you could actually have your piano completely closed, even with a fly lid closed, get a different sound. Or if you have an upright, open it up if it's not usually open. Try to do something to get a different sound out of your piano, make it feel different so that you can see what happens and do it cold so it's just like suddenly you're there.

And the last tip is perhaps the most important of all and I learned to do this many, many years ago, which is visualization.

There are so many people and I've met people in conservatory, they practice, they practice in the practice room and they go out on the stage and they go, oh, I don't want to look at them. And they want the audience to be dark so they can feel like they're playing all by themselves.

Big mistake.

First of all, what is a performance? This is a communication.

You want to be aware of the audience. You know why? That same nervous energy can be used to propel you to places you've never thought of going before because you're excited about the moment. Things will happen that you couldn't have conceived of all by yourself.

Use that energy and you'll be more creative on the spot.

So this visualization is you're sitting at home, you're doing this practice performance, you imagine the moment, maybe there's company coming over, maybe it's a performance at a venue, maybe it's a student recital you're playing in, whatever it is, you imagine being there. What I like to do is if I know what piano I'm playing on, let's say it's going to be a Schimmel and I'll imagine what the Schimmel logo looks like and I'll have that emblazoned in my head.

I'll take some deep slow breaths and imagine being there ready to play the black and white keys, I'll imagine the room, the people looking at me and I'll take some deep slow breaths and feel the energy of that audience and then think the music and then play.

That is almost like a post -hypnotic suggestion for when the performance comes. I do exactly the reverse. I look at that logo on the piano, I take the deep breath, it reminds me of all those times I sat on my piano imagining this moment and then I'm like in familiar territory.

I'm not trying to block the audience out, I'm embracing them and since I've looked forward to it I can enjoy the performance and use their energy to inspire something I've never created before.

Because remember a musical performance isn't a regurgitation of everything you've done before. It is a new experience, it's a communication and you get the energy from the audience and the room is different, the acoustics are different, even if you're playing in a room you've played in before, just having more bodies in there changes the acoustics and you must create something fresh.

So those are the things. Remember to recap, prepare way more than you think you should, you'll appreciate it when the moment comes.

Play not just slower but even faster, work at different tempos, play louder, play softer, do everything so when the moment comes you have more than a bag of tricks, you have an arsenal of things you can bring to your performance.

Remember to practice performing, separate it, make that wall, that impenetrable wall between practicing and performing and you can practice performing and when you practice performing there's no stopping, make it real. Then work up to small groups and larger groups as you get comfortable performing even the same pieces.

Play on different pianos or try to make your piano sound different so it can provide a new way of hearing which is what's going to happen in a live performance so it gives you a little inkling of how to adjust to a new situation which is what a performance really is. And finally and most importantly use visualization. Imagine that moment you're going to perform so that you can be ready for it and enjoy it instead of being petrified at the shock, oh my gosh there's an audience here, I thought I could block them out, I can't, no, don't block them out, embrace them. They will inspire things when you're playing you didn't even know you had.

Again I'm Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource, check out the description if you want to take your piano playing to another level.

See you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/overcoming-stage-fright-5-strategies-to-play-with-confidence/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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