How to minimize random errors before performances?

ranjit

Is there a good way to increase accuracy and minimize random errors in the final weeks leading up to a performance? When learning a piece, I would tend to play through a few measures, perfecting them, but that is more in the realm of making changes than ensuring accuracy and might be counterproductive. When I try to perform, it's usually not bad, but I know people who perform almost note perfect and I have no idea how they do that.

twocats

ranjit I'm very much not a note-perfect performer. No matter how hard I try, there is typically at least one mistake (usually more). It's my biggest struggle.

One thing that I think helps is slowing down, practicing so that each note is firm and deliberate. Make sure your brain knows your intention. And I find that once I get to the point where I know a piece so well that it's like it plays itself, that really helps a lot.

Animisha

ranjit When learning a piece, I would tend to play through a few measures, perfecting them, but that is more in the realm of making changes than ensuring accuracy and might be counterproductive. When I try to perform, it's usually not bad, but I know people who perform almost note perfect and I have no idea how they do that.

From reading this, you may start to perform too early. I think you need to practise for increased perfection.
The way I would do this is, once I know a piece well enough and I think I may be ready to perform, is to play through a piece from scratch, like you would do for a performance - no second takes allowed. Record the piece, and then afterwards, listen back and for every single random mistake you make, including those that you think, but that was just silly, practise correcting the mistakes by playing them five times correctly in a row. If you can't do this in one go, because you make a mistake again, do something else, come back, and play them six times correctly in a row. Etc, but not more than ten times correctly in a row (enough is enough).

Once you have worked to correct all mistakes you made, you do something else, and then again, play as if it is a performance, and work with correcting your new mistakes. This is a rather punitive method, but it works well for ironing out most of the random mistakes.

iternabe

I just happened to ask myself the same question recently when trying to make a recording for the upcoming forum recital. It's a four-minute piece (including repeats), much longer than the usual beginner pieces I did before. In the past, I do make random mistakes in the shorter pieces. And I just thought they are "random". I'll just do a play through again, that mistake won't happen, and all is good.

Well, it turns out probability makes "random" in a short piece not random at all in a longer piece. A 25% chance of making mistake in a 1 minute pieces means 100% chance of making mistake in a 4-minute piece! My complacency of thinking mistake being random led me to do so many takes of play-throughs that ends up unsatisfactory due to one or more glaring wrong note(s). Not to mention the several phrases where most random mistakes happen began to add to anxiety that I feel mentally and physically tense up before getting to those points.

This frustrating struggle finally stopped when I decided to treat no mistake as random. If a mistake happens just once, I must isolate that measure, and figure out exactly why I made that mistake, and what to change to fix it. Then, as my teacher has been telling me almost every lesson, to use Molly Gebrian's method of 3x perfect + something else + 3x perfect again to cement the technique. This takes a lot of concentration, and discipline. And it really works!

Obviously I am still quite inexperienced, so I don't expect this to help your situation. Just want to share my experience.

I also understand there are more important aspects of a performance than note perfection to make it an excellent one. That being said, I do still want to be as note perfect as I possibly can.

PianogrlNW

It feels good to aim for a note perfect performance, but I think it’s important to accept the fact that a few small errors will happen. This is what I’ve learned from various teachers and have found these suggestions to be helpful.

When learning a piece, go very slowly so that you don’t play any wrong notes. Those wrong notes are hard to undo.
Gain a solid understanding of your piece to the point where you don’t have any difficult sections that are not secure.
Practice the piece at a slightly faster tempo than your targeted performance tempo.
At the performance, before you begin playing, hear the 2-3 opening bars in your head as you would like to sound. Start at a slightly slower tempo as people tend to play faster when they are nervous. The confidence you gain from the opening bars affects the rest of the performance.
Learn to gloss over the errors and keep going without interrupting the flow and rhythm. It’s important to realize that most people won’t hear the error or not care about it.
Practice performing for 2-4 weeks in advance.
Try to enjoy the process of performing and think of it as an opportunity to share your interpretation of a piece you love. Then the performance is not about you, but about the music.

I think that most amateur pianists who perform note perfect have often picked pieces that are well within their technical abilities, and not playing stretch pieces.

TheBoringPianist

A lot of good thoughts/advice from people above.

PianogrlNW I think that most amateur pianists who perform note perfect have often picked pieces that are well within their technical abilities, and not playing stretch pieces.

I think this is absolutely true. With Alex Honnold's free solo of Taipei 101 still fresh in people's minds, it's worth thinking "in a situation where failure has devastating consequences, how does one make sure failure doesn't happen?", to which the answer really is something along the lines of "if the stakes are that high, build up your skill and consistency way past it and keep practicing until you don't even feel pressure doing the thing".

Now, most of us don't want to spend the time to get to a point where the pieces we play are stress-free (I'd argue that's not even a desirable goal if the true objective is to connect with the audience, as it should be for a performing musician, but I'm also a sloppy performer, so maybe that's just self-justification). But we still want to reduce "random" mistakes, and so I think it's important to understand that "random" mistakes we make are usually an indication that a particular section is not as secure as we might think, a weak spot we overlooked in the comfort of our practice room.

How do you find and fix those weak spots before the real deal? By putting artificial stress on yourself (via recording yourself, playing for some friends, etc. or by imposing constraints e.g. playing blindfolded, while groggy, etc.). You'll never need to play blindfolded (unless you're doing some kind of party trick), but stress exposes weakness — and once you know where weakness exists, you can fix it (with good old-fashioned practice).

twocats

TheBoringPianist I'm also a sloppy performer

I don't think you are! You always seem very confident and secure in your notes!

PianogrlNW

TheBoringPianist do you find and fix those weak spots before the real deal? By putting artificial stress on yourself (via recording yourself, playing for some friends, etc. or by imposing constraints e.g. playing blindfolded, while groggy, etc.)

The recorder never lies. I use the recorder to mark my score where I have hesitations, mistakes, poor phrasing, etc. I think it’s the best way to improve. You can’t rely 100% on teacher feedback.

TheBoringPianist

twocats You always seem very confident and secure in your notes!

I make a lot of mistakes! But something I heard from a music teacher (not mine) stuck with me (paraphrased): "When I'm practicing, I can nitpick. But when I'm on stage, everything I do is perfect."

ShiroKuro

@ranjit this is a super timely thread! I was just coming to PT to start a thread because I was invited to play in a small concert and I have to decide whether I’ll be ready or not (I’ll start that thread separately).

For me, random mistakes in the performance of a piece that I have polished are mostly related to how well I control my attentional focus. In other words, as my teacher and I decided last semester, “it’s all brain.” It’s not about the fingers, or the music, but about how I’m directing my mind. I’ve returned to including sightreading (true prima vista sightreading) at the beginning of each practice session, and one thing I’m noticing is that, when I sightread, I’m pretty good at looking ahead in the music (obviously, looking ahead is a core component of sightreading, but bear with me while I get to the point 😅 ) Well, what I’ve noticed is that, with music I’ve never read before, and especially with music where I don’t even know the piece, I am really focused and diligent at looking ahead because otherwise, I have no idea what’s coming next. But with pieces I’m working on, and especially with pieces that are close to being polished, I notice that I’m hardly looking ahead at all in the music. My focus is elsewhere (dynamics, phrasing, musicality…) And I wondering if maybe part of the cause of random mistakes is because my attention isn’t where it needs to be. I’m not sure because I literally only just starting thinking about it in this way, in my last few practice sessions.

Anyway, the point is that, in a piece that you can play, that’s polished and ready for perfomance, mistakes are going to be due to attentional focus rather than technical skill. (If they’re not, then the piece isn’t actually ready). So the question then becomes, how to control one’s attentional focus. And I’m wondering if “looking ahead in the piece” more actively, more consciously, might help me to reduce those random mistakes.

For the record, this (the idea of looking ahead more consciously) is particularly relevant for me since I play from the score even when performing. But I think there’s a corollary even for people who play from memory.

TheBoringPianist When I'm practicing, I can nitpick. But when I'm on stage, everything I do is perfect."

I love this! I’m going to remember it!

ShiroKuro

ShiroKuro My focus is elsewhere (dynamics, phrasing, musicality…)

By the way, the other (perhaps obvious) conclusion here is that, maybe random mistakes are there because the piece is technically ready but the prep for musically isn’t as finished as I think it is.

Hmmm… so maybe some things I can work on in tonight’s practice are:

More actively looking ahead in the music
Revisiting the musicality prep to ensure that those aspects are sufficiently polished
Taking both of these aspects to control my focus and ensure I have enough “brain space” to stay focused on the piece, play it musically while decreasing random mistakes.

ShiroKuro

One more comment….

The other thing I have always tried to do in prep for performing is just be sure I’m “playing through” any mistakes that do arise, so that they’re less noticeable and so that things don’t fall apart.

I am sure everyone in this thread does this already, and I imagine that @ranjit ‘s question is the next step after that. IOW, having done all those other things, and being prepared to play through and minimize any mistakes, how can we take that next step toward performing well and truly reduce, or eliminate, random mistakes…

lautreamont

There are different kinds of mistakes. There are technique or mechanism based mistakes, where, in the heat of the moment something gets muffed. A remedy to this is isolated slow practice into tempo practice that starts a measure or so before the problem spot. There are also memory mistakes. I'm having this problem with a Bach piece, where I keep making a mental mistake when I play it. At the problem point, I follow the main voice and know the notes of the next most prominent voice, but their sequence gets jumbled in my head in the moment and they get played out of order. One remedy is to not just play the piece from start to finish but to pick a random measure if you have the score (not consulting it after you pick the measure) or start from a random spot from memory. A third issue I have is processing based mistakes. This could be something where in a contrapuntal piece there is so much going on that I can get bogged down, and the performance drags or stutters. It could be when one voice or figure is so technically challenging that it's difficult to devote any attention to the accompaniment figure. It could be when there's a lot of musical detail like syncopation, different articulations, finger substitutions, polymeter, leaps, etc. With these for me it's a matter of practice, practice, practice, but also a kind of practice where I shift my attention to those things for which it is difficult for me to attend to, naturally, in the moment, which is counterintuitive for difficult passages but which can contribute to a smoother whole.

I'm sure there's more but these three come to mind as big ones for me.