BTW another thing I noticed about doing the one-shot recordings is it helps me find stupid mistakes I do and that makes it possible to prevent them.
For example, when practicing (without recording) I rarely think much about my left foot and the page turns I do with my Bluetooth foot pedal. But when recording, I find myself hyper-aware of my left foot, not just when turning, but I like to turn the page and then I stay in that position, then I bring my foot back, and then when it’s time to turn, I move my foot forward a bit again. When I’m just practicing, I don’t think I notice as much that I’m doing that, it feels like my foot moves without my conscious attention. When I’m recording, it’s “omg, help! when do I move my foot?!!!” 😅
So page turns are sort of a cognitive burden, and then there’s the details of the piece. There’s a theme in my jury piece that repeats four times in groups of two, with the first set of two leading into the middle of the piece and the second set of two leading into the end. After for the first set of two, you’re at the bottom of a page, so I need to turn the page (which I do with the foot pedal). But after the second set of two, you’re in the middle of a page, so no page turn yet.
Also, in the middle of the first group of two, you’re in the middle of a page so no page turn, but in the middle of the second group of two, you’re at the bottom of the page so you have to turn the page.
This theme is also one of the sections I have memorized, even though I intend to continue playing it from the score.
So during a recording, I turned the page too early, partly because I was sort of confused about where I was in the piece (first set of two or second set?) and partly because I can play this part from memory so I obviously wasn’t paying attention in the right way.
Recording helped me find out about this and I have changed how I pay attention, which has helped me prevent that from happening. Presumably, I could discover these tricky spots or potential pitfalls during practice, and certainly I do find and correct mistakes like that during regular practice, but there’s something about playing in the stressful environment (of recording or performing) that causes me to make mistakes I would never make otherwise (like turning the page too early).
TL;DR: one-chance recording is awesome and everyone should do it! 😁