Animisha I always thought it would be wonderful to sing with others, like an a cappella group or something. Is that what you did?
thepianoplayer416 After a while I learned to ignore the camera and focus on the playing.
Interestingly enough, since last year, since I’ve gotten into the habit of recording my performances, it doesn’t bother me at all.
I never used to do that (i.e., ask someone record me during a recital or public performance). In the years before the pandemic, I had been playing fairly often at music parties. And as I recall, I specifically didn’t want to be recorded, But last year, I had two public performances maybe two weeks apart, and that was the first time since the pandemic that I’d played for anyone outside of my own home, let alone in a recital situation. So for the first one, I asked my husband to record so that I could listen and try to fix anything before the second one. Well, it turned out that when I listened to the recording, I realized I had played much better than the impression/memory I had immediately after the performance.
This surprised me because usually when I record during practice, I find lots of things that need to be corrected or improved on. So I guess I’d assumed that the performance recordings would be similar, in other words that it would be as bad, if not worse, than my memory of it. And certainly, the recordings show all kinds of things that need improvement. But what I’ve discovered is that my memory of a performance, or how I think I played, is much, much worse than the reality. For example, for the two pieces we played at this party, I knew I did a pretty good job in the first piece, but when I listened, I realized it was actually really, really great! For the second one, my impression immediately after finishing was focused on all the notes I’d missed, all the problems. But when I listened to it, I realized it was actually a perfectly respectable performance. And because I kept it together throughout, the mistakes and missed notes that were so glaringly awful to me would have been hardly noticed by most listeners.
And the recordings do have the benefit of helping me think about ways to improve.
So yeah, not only does knowing that I’m being recorded not bother me, I know actively look forward to being recorded. A few years ago, if you told me that I would have just laughed and said “don’t be ridiculous.”
Also, if this isn’t proof of the saying that we are our own worst critics, I don’t know what is! 😃