Tag: performance

Prepare for a Performance Like a Pro – Adult Students Getting Into Performance: Part Three

Nicole NealLeave a comment

This is the third in a series of blog posts designed to give some tips and a helping hand to adult students who are relatively new to performance

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As with anything that is worth doing in life, I am afraid that there is no one secret answer to preparing for a performance. It’s about putting the right amount of work in leading up to the performance and following some relatively simple steps in the day or two prior up to the gig.

In the weeks leading up to the performance….

Practicing is the key tip here, and regular, sensible practice is the key. A little bit every day will do you much more good than one or two big fat practice sessions per week.

Sensible practice means don’t spend hours bashing through your pieces aimlessly. Plan out which are the more complex sticking points in our pieces and work the knots out of them. This kind of practice ensures that your hands and fingers are really on top of technical issues, and allows you to focus your attention on making music out of the notes.

Practicing in this way also acts to programme the music into your hands and fingers, using your body’s muscle memory. This gives your hands a kind of “auto pilot” when you’re performing – they’ve made the movements a hundred times or more so will be second nature when it comes to performance day.

Practice performing

Make sure you work performance practice into your practice sessions. Although it is not recommended to just play aimlessly through your piece or pieces, do run whole pieces or your whole programme with full musicallity and expression throughout, just as if you were performing them to an audience.

If you’re playing a selection of piece, or you’re playing a longer piece, this approach allows you to build stamina and pace yourself through a performance. It also allows you to understand where you may have to particularly concentrate.

Putting a piece back together, and playing all the way through once you’ve been working on more complicated sections gives you an appreciation of the works overall structure, and where the main climaxes and anti-climaxes are.

Where are you performing?

If you’re able to try and rehearse in the venue of your performance. This will enable you to hear how the guitar will sound in the space – I’ll bet it sounds quite a bit different to your bedroom or loungeroom.

This is not an essential, as it may not always be possible, but it just allows you to hear what your guitar and playing will sound like in the space, so you know exactly what it will sound like come performance time.

The day before the performance

This is the time to relax (or at least try too!). You’ve done all the hard work and practice. You can be rest assured that the body and brain has absorbed all the good work you’ve been putting in.

In the day before the performance, my top tips are:

  • Don’t practice too much; perhaps just run over one or two technical exercises, and more complex sections in the piece/s
  • The things that you do play, play them through things nice and slowly; don’t play up to tempo
  • Make sure you’re eating well – it’s hard to concentrate if you’ve not eaten enough (we’ve all seen the Snickers ads and we don’t want that to happen to us!)
  • Try and avoid too much caffeine – a nice camomile tea or similar before you go to bed that evening is good for settling you down
  • Rest well and go to bed nice and early

 

 Performance day

 Repeat the steps above! Plus:

  • Don’t have a drink from the bar until after the performance – adrenaline and alcohol are not the greatest of combinations. Same with caffeine really.
  • Have a good play and warm up about an hour or so before the performance is scheduled (but don’t play through the pieces; save your performance mojo!); then have a wee rest and give a quick 5-10mins final warm up.
  • If the place is cold keep your hands nice and warm – try mittens or gloves, a bowl of (not too) hot water, or I’ve even seen someone use a hairdryer on their hands!

Most importantly of all – do try and go about your normal preparation activities, as if you were just cracking out the guitar for a bit a strum at home. Which is essentially what you’re doing, just in a different location.

 

Adult Students Getting Into Performance: Part 2 – Eeek, what should I play?

Nicole NealLeave a comment

This is the second blog post in a series designed to give some help and guidance to the adult student, particularly those with no or limited performance experience.

So what should I play then?

If this is your very first performance (or open mic night or guitarists gathering or that sort of thing) – firstly well done for making the commitment to play for or with others. It’s an important step and a milestone to be proud of. Now comes to the seeming conundrum of picking which piece or pieces to play.

So, if this is your very first performance, my recommendation is simply to pick a piece or pieces that you feel the most comfortable and at home with. Which pieces do you often find yourself turning too when you want to just play something through, have a bit of fun with and enjoy, feel like you don’t have to think or work too much on?

This could be where your answer lies.

Why?

Chances are you will experience different feelings than you do in the practice room; having a piece that you feel really comfortable with playing in yourself will allow you to experience those different feelings of playing for people, allow you to feel what your body and your brain is doing in that situation, without having to worry too much about playing something difficult or involved or something you’re less comfortable with. It gives you a bit of room for manoeuvere, room to breathe and experience these new sensations.

But none of my pieces are like that?

Well, that’s ok too. What have you been working on most recently? What do you feel a connection with? Is there a piece that has some background personally for you? Some kind of story you could share with your audience?

One could argue that you may not feel comfortable with a piece until it is “ready” – but when might that be? Look at the performance of a piece as a way of saying “this is what I’ve been working on guys, and this is where it’s at at the moment”.

That experience of sharing a piece with an audience at a stage or different stages in its development also allows you an additional insight into the piece – how it feels, flows and how your body moves with it in the performance situation.

What if I want to play more than one piece?

If you’re playing one than one piece or a selection of pieces, try to provide some contrast – stylistic contrast, different tempos, different technical requirements.

This creates interest for the audience and also perhaps gives you a mental and physical break, depending on the types, tempos and styles of pieces you’re playing. Perhaps you could also weave some pieces together with a bit of a theme or storyline that connect them?

“Guitar throughout the ages” for a selection of pieces from different eras, “music of Spain/ Brazil/ South America/ insert your country or area of choice here”, “my favourite pieces” – there are numerous possibilities for crafting a mini programme theme.

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Following up on my previous post on performance anxiety…. A reading suggestion for you Prior to sitting for my Eighth Grade examination a few years back, in came across a book called The Inner Game of Music, from a professional double bass player by the name of Barry Green. I found the ideas and concepts described in the book helped me a lot and is well worth a read.

Watch this space!

I’ll follow up this post with another blog in the series, on preparation for performance.

Keep your eyes peeled!

Coming up, I’m planning a wee edition to the blog site over the coming weeks to help you, dear readers, and make sure you don’t miss a post.

As always, please feel free to comment below, ask questions or give me your thoughts on things you’d like to see covered in this blog.