PianoTell Recital #1 Is Now Live!
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navindra My kids were laughing their heads off the entire time they watched your performance... you're already a true entertainer!
Really?! Well that's a good sign!
navindra The most amazing and admirable thing from my end is witnessing just how you took this vision for where you want to be as an entertainer and actively making that vision real with such focus and tenacity. Thanks so much for sharing the details of your journey on this and showing all us aspiring learners just how it's done.
If only I could be so organized in all other aspects of my life!
Thank you for the very nice comments Navindra. It really made my day.
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- a few more to add....
Nightowl — Plaisir D'Amour
Such a pretty tune, deservedly well known and perhaps everyone has played this at some time? Around 1 minute you choose (or maybe it’s recommended on the score?) what looks like an awkward fingering moving from 1 to 4 in the RH. It might be worth trying to figure out some alternative fingering yourself but I thought you played it with care and without it being too mechanical. Great progress for just a few months!
bSharp — High Heels
A really expressive performance giving more than I expect from Einaudi (too much jazz/blues has corrupted my ear). I even found myself humming parts of the melody for a while afterwards. Left me wondering if there’s a song or two that plagiarised this?
WieWaldi — Rainbow Connection
A tune which was so right for a light-humour icon like the muppets. Your polished performance lifted my mood…thank you!
SalmonJack — Alia
I like your composition, reflective and calm, it mirrors so well the setting in your charming animation.
Calavera — Chrono Cross - Scars of Time
Great drama in your performance, orchestral enough in its own way. Garritan sounds really good here, such a big sound.
rsl12 — Always Chew Your Food
What a cheeky fun song, carried off with an impressively relaxed style of playing - (I’m thinking of introducing it to my BIL whose table manners are seriously wanting). Your vocals have come on in leaps and bounds since one of your earlier recordings I heard in the PW forum. Bravo for holding your audience’s gaze!
TC3 — St. James Infirmary
A classy arrangement of a great 8-bar blues song and your performance was spot-on. Pushing the tempo up a notch definitely paid off.
iternabe — The Trout
That’s quite some progress for only 7 months playing. Metronomic with lively dynamics. Keep it up!
ShiroKuro — Nuvole Bianche
I don’t naturally warm to Einaudi but there’s no denying the hypnotic quality of his music and in your performance. Your C2 sounds lovely, the presence of an acoustic piano is always hard to beat.
lilypad — Manhattan 1928
With some very recognisable Gershwin colours I guess this must be an homage to his writing. Both your performance and the piece are so evocative - a pleasure to listen to. (Yes, the red-button syndrome; if there were a pill to counter it I would have OD’d and suffered side-effects by now)
TheBoringPianist — Prélude, Fugue et Variation, Op. 18
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your playing and marvel at memorising so much music. An impressive performance (towards the end I thought you’d introduced a third hand) you surely deserved to get into the final.
...more to follow...
@"diretonic"#p1618 Thank you! "Spot-on" is a bit generous, but I'll take it! 
Enthusiastic but mediocre amateur.
diretonic (Yes, the red-button syndrome; if there were a pill to counter it I would have OD’d and suffered side-effects by now)
I take propanolol for essential tremor (hands were shaking when trying to use a computer mouse or typing or using eating utensils). A nice side effect is that my hands don't shake anymore when I play at piano club meetings. Unfortunately it hasn't helped me to not think about having made it to the end of a recording without making a mistake - and then I make one. Sam has cautioned against doing this, but most of the time I can't help myself.
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lilypad Unfortunately it hasn't helped me to not think about having made it to the end of a recording without making a mistake
Oh my goodness YES. Whenever a recording is going exceptionally well, I get so nervous to bring it to a good finish, that I can basically GUARANTEE mistakes towards the end. I have given up on making that "perfect" recording... as long as I can manage to keep on playing smoothly with no pauses etc, it will have to do 
At least I know I can do it when no one (with a red eye) is watching 
Why do our brains do this? It is so annoying!!!
I have had some success with redirecting my brain back to the music: “Stop thinking and just play!” But it doesn’t always work…
rogerch Why do our brains do this?
Lol, in a distant past I read a book about it. It was a book about riding a motorcycle (translate to eng: "Upper Half of the Motorcycle"). The author was a professor in physiology and psychopathology at the university of Heidelberg, Germany. And riding a bike was his hobby. So he wrote a book about it. The first half of the book itself was just about learning theory, how the brain(s) work and all the stuff. And the second half was about riding a bike itself. (Not interesting here)
He divides the brain into the unconscious and conscious parts. The conscious one can do everythig. But is is faulty and slow and very limited capacity. It is used for learning. And after you learned something, the task is handed over to the unconscious brain, and the conscious one has then capaticy for new stuff to learn (slowly). The unconscious brain works way better, way faster, way more reliable. But it needs to be programmed (or trained) by the conscious brain before.
Unfortunately, if you are in danger, the conscious brain gets active and tries to help the unconscious one. (Making things worse.) He wrote a nice experiment about it:
Draw a line on the gound, 30 cm (12 inches) wide. And then you must walk on that white line. Is this a problem? No.
Then build a plank, 30 cm wide, raise it 10 cm over ground. Difficult? Not at all.
Raise the plank 1 meter above ground. Difficult? Not really, but it starts here.
Raise the plank 5 meter above ground. Difficult? Yes, now it is.
And now pout this plank inbetween the Petronas Twin Towers, 400 meter over gound. Most of us would go down to the knees and use all four legs!
Here the conscious brain senses danger and takes over the contol. Of something that is basically a very simple motoric task. Up in the air, the conscious brain proofs again, it is way inferior to the unconscious brain doing the ground walk.
Okay, this is comparing apples and bananas and the red light of a video camera isn't killing you, if something goes wrong. But it is about the same concept.
Bottom line: nothing is more true than:
rogerch “Stop thinking and just play!”
diretonic Thanks for the feedback. You're right, my RH looks awkward around that point, you can see and hear the hesitation as I'm changing the position of my hand and not 100% confident about hitting the correct notes. I think I did follow the suggested fingering throughout the piece, but I will have a closer look when I next play it and see if I can find a smoother way to transition at that point. I was playing the piece very slowly so it annoys me that I was still unable to play it smoothly. I find some of the book 2 pieces quite challenging but I guess that's the norm when moving from beginner to what seems to be "early intermediate" level.
"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)
WieWaldi Thanks for sharing. That makes sense!
The solution, then, is to somehow train our brains that recording or performing isn’t dangerous. The only way I can think of to do this is to record and perform so often that it feels normal. This actually worked for me with public speaking, but so far not with piano. I have read that some pro musicians still get stage fright so maybe playing music seems somehow more dangerous than speaking!
I think the danger of performing is fear of embarrassment or humiliation. The danger of the red dot is fear of messing up the recording. Hmm.
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rogerch maybe playing music seems somehow more dangerous than speaking!
My theory on that is that speaking is a lot more forgiving than playing. While speaking we can pause a second to gather our thoughts, or more accomplished speakers have little distractions ready in case they are lost for a moment, such as a sip of water or side remark.
With music you have no such luxury, especially when playing something people are familiar with. A small hesitation, a wrong note, or even a forgotten repeat are all in plain sight.
You just can't stop for a few seconds, take a deep breath... the show must go on!
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@lilypad @Sophia @rogerch @Rubens @WieWaldi
The book WieWaldi mentioned reminds me of the American book The Inner Game of Music. It’s been many years since I read it, and actually I’m thinking maybe now would be a good time to start reading it again. It is about the “inner game,” in other words what happens in your head while practicing. And it takes as its starting point the idea that the way we have to practice performance — this is nothing new and is something all of us at PT have been discussing already, but it gives you concrete things to do to practice in ways to make your “inner game” as good as your other playing skills, and to get out of that habit those inner thoughts that get in the way.
In case anyone is interested:
www.amazon.com/Inner-Music-Barry-Timothy-Gallwey/dp/1447291727/
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WieWaldi I do and teach amateur motorsport. What that author said is very true. Building driving skills is a constant process of constructing muscle memories in consciousness, saving it to subconscious with repetition, and often bring established muscle memory back into consciousness to revise and refine. Not that much different from piano playing, right? In fact, one well-known young coach’s weekday career path is professional pianist.
One small aspect I may add is it’s not danger that bring brain back into making conscious (but sometimes incorrect) decisions. Rather, it’s the surprise or unknown that prompts brain try to figure out how to respond on the fly instead of relying on preprogrammed reaction. The problem is on the fly decision is usually based on instinct. However most really tricky situation are tricky exactly because the correct response is against common instinct.
Having a mistake affect a drivers driving rhythm is very common. They keep thinking about what happens before. And the resulting distraction will cause more mistakes in the corners that’s coming up. Instructors need to drill into students head nothing can be done for what already happened, so you always has to keep eyes up, look and think forward.
I may have read about this book in another place here on PianoTell, can't remember, but I wanted to make a strong recommendation to you to get it and read it.
Dr. Gebrian has a rather unique background - as a performing musician Julliard quality, as well as a neuroscientist. I have, instinctively, been doing a lot of what she recommends, but... I confess, she's taught this old dog some new tricks and helped him refine some of his old tricks - and I'm only 25% through the book!
Regarding messing up a performance at the end when recording, I totally resonate with that. I've experienced it myself, and it explains why recording a 3 minute piece of music may take 8 takes to get to one that I like that I don't screw up the ending. I am going to try two of Dr. Gebrian's suggestions to see what effect they could have:
- Divide the piece up into chunks by difficulty level; practice the hard bits separately, to which I will add, practice transitioning into/out of those hardest bits.
- Practice in chunks in reverse order, i.e. ,start at the end of the piece, practice the ending, then add a preceding section, practice from there to the end, and continue the process until you arrive at the beginning.
Hope this is helpful.
lilypad Wow! I really love this composition and you certainly made it feel larger than life. The Fabers never fail to impress me. Are all the compositions in this book this good? I enjoyed your performance very much and feel inspired by it. Awesome job! 
TheBoringPianist What an undertaking! I cannot imagine how you could have learned so much music in so little time. Astounding performance and certainly well-deserved that you managed to enter the finals. Captivating, enriching, and you certainly gave that Steinway D a full work out in the best way possible. Thanks so much for sharing this incredible achievement of yours. Bravo! 
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