How to perform music in public

1. Introduction : So you've got the data in your diary. You've got a big concert performance coming up. In this series of videos, I talk about how we can perform music in public immediately. It's quite a scary topic. And in this series of videos, I'm going to break down all the key elements to doing your preparation. Dealing with errors along the way, how to deal with feedback, and also how to deal with the nerves that can be associated with performing a musical instrument in public is something that can really take you out of your comfort zone and allow you to grow as a performer, being able to go out and perform in public. So I believe it's a really important skill. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Ben Lewis Smith, and I'm a pianist and conductor based here in London in the UK. I regularly perform with choirs and accompanying singers, and I also teach singing and piano too many students here in London. I hope that you find this series of videos helpful as we look through a few of the elements about performing in public, such as dealing with errors, dealing with feedback, audience versus an audition panel. And also how you might cope with nerves. 2. Dealing with nerves : Let's talk about one of our least favorite topics, nerves. So as soon as that performance comes in, you can be thinking, Oh my goodness me, it's coming up in two weeks. I've got to perform this big concept. How am I going to get through it? And if you're anything like me, it kind of naturally a bit anxious. It can take over every single aspect of your life. From when you first wake up in the morning, through your lunch, through dinner, even it can affect your sleep. The fact that you've got to performance coming up. I think the most important and first thing is to acknowledge that you are going to feel nervous. Unfortunately, there's no magic cure for suddenly getting rid of the nerves. The things that will come to talk about in this series of videos will address ways of making the nerves more manageable, but we're never going to totally get rid of those nervous feelings. And some performance might argue that actually those nerves that you feel are quite important and can add a drama and a sort of interests to the performance. There's sort of high emotions and the feelings and the adrenaline that comes with a really excellent performance can make moments so magical and they can just create that sense of drama with the audience. So I believe that you don't want to completely get rid of nerves, but you want to acknowledge that as the performance gets closer. In order to handle the nerves most effectively. This is where our preparation comes in, and this is something we're going to talk about more in the next set of videos. But I would say the more regular you can make your preparation, the more you can be looking at your scores. If you're a musician, you can be memorizing your words. If you're a singer, these things are going to be immensely beneficial. My strategy is that, you know, when you're working, when you're preparing your piece for your concert, and when you're not working, when you're switching off, try to be very clear and very deliberate with your time. So you'll proportioning the day, say you can devote 1 h a day to your practice even if it's half an hour, it doesn't really matter. But say that worn out and you divide it into two half an hour sections. So you have half an hour of practice in the morning and then half an hour in the afternoon. I try to be very strict with yourself or outside of those times. You're not letting the thought and the worry about the concert circulate around your mind. I know that this is much easier said than done, but the more you can be either working or not, the better. I think in a post-COVID world, this is especially difficult because many musicians work from home. The home is our office. And it's very difficult to switch off and have those areas. So try to have a sort of, if it's perhaps at the piano or you have a room that you devote to your music preparation. Try to have a space that's away from your everyday living environment so that you can take yourself there, do your bit of preparation. Then later in the day you can go somewhere else to relax. So just try to be really deliberate and have those specific areas in the house where you're doing your preparation. Another thing for some players, I teach piano. Lot of my piano players. I say that work away from the piano is just as useful. You, you'll test whether you really know a piece by practicing it in your mind and going through each of those fingerings. So say you've just learned to PC, see how good you, even if you play another instrument, just practice going through it in the air almost. And that will really test how well, you know, it's but I think just to finish up on nerves and acknowledgment of the fact that they're always going to be there. But just being very deliberate in the time that you're spending preparing can be immensely helpful because otherwise they'll just get through every, every single aspect of your life. If you're anything like me, you get lots of emails related to specific concerts and they come in sometimes quite late at night. Musicians seemed to work odd hours. So just a little bonus tip is that try not to check your emails just before you go to bed because it can really have a negative impact on your asleep. So try to, again with the administration that comes with the concert, tried to be doing those things as part of your working day. I'm not checking late at night to know because they can create that bit of extra anxiety. 3. Look like you're having a great time!: Look like you're having a great time. I know this sounds really silly and a bit superficial, but it's so important because T audience, if you look really serious and like what you're doing is really hard work, then the audience again to think that you don't really want to be there. It's so funny because it's all, a lot of this is about Perception. And bought. It seems to be on at a certain point in performing in public. We've got to switch on that sort of showbiz switch because we're not in the practice room anymore. And I think this is a really important idea. Time spent in the practice room and time spent on the concert hall, on the concert hall stage performing their different very different areas. And the more you can make that distinction clear and protect your practice space. Got it with your life. It's your safe space to make errors and to try things out, to experiment, to work hard. But it's definitely not the performing space, practicing and performing. The more you can distinguish between those two areas, I think the more you can do, you can handle the pressure that comes with performance because performance is innately more stressful to me than practicing. Because you've got a whole sea of people all their faces looking at you and wanting the music that they hear to be over really high standard. The more you can also visualize the process of walking out onto the stage, how you will be feeling at the time. Those nerves that are associated with that, I think the better is worth. If you get a chance. Before your concert performing in the room where the constant is going to be. Obviously, it's not always possible, but try a couple of weeks or week or even a few days beforehand to at least visit the venue. Walk it out, know how you're going to look. Visualize it being filled with people, preferably smiling people. It's a small tip, but you've got to imagine yourself walking out there to a sea of smiling faces. There's nothing worse than imagining everybody looking very serious and not having a good time. Got to remember what we're doing here is allowing our audience to have a really grand time. And the more we can encourage that to happen, the better really. I would say that performing by its nature can be a stressful activity. And one thing that I found that helps us to really center back to the breathing and the breadth. And I know for some people this might sound a little bit out there, but I think often there's performance. We're so obsessed with getting the notes right, getting through the piece, getting to the end, that we stop breathing or stop being aware of our breath. And one of the easiest tips just to lower the level of the nerves and the anxiety is to take a deep breath, to hold the breath, and then to shout. One of the best I've tried before is if you breathe in for four beats, hold for five beats, and then out for six beats. There's something about the out-breath being longer than the in-breath, which is really calming. So breathe in for four. Hold 2345 and then out 23456. If you do that three or four times before your next performance, I'm pretty sure you will notice a difference reminding yourself of slowing the breath down before you begin. Can just be so useful. It depends on the instrument you're playing. But sometimes like I'm a, I'm a pianist and sometimes with the piano, we can stop leaving silences because you can fill all the time up with notes. And the danger of that is the performance becomes quite breathless. And we need to remember if we were a woodwind player, oboe, clarinet, or we were a singer for instance, singers have to take breaths all the time. Don't need to shape the music and to replicate what the composer wants. So just reminding yourself with that as a piano player or as a string player, if, if you are that a breadth is really important in the music can help. The other thing that this comes down to, more connected with looking like you're having a great time really is that speed and tempo can just increase and increase and increase when, when Nerva. So one thing is just to look like you're having a great time, but also remained quite calm. You know, there's the lovely idea of the duck looking super serene and happy on the surface but underneath paddling like hack. And that's where all the preparation, all the energy is gone in. But on the surface, calm and serene and completely in control. That's so important. Remember when you're nervous, tempos will naturally increase. You'll get quicker and quicker with your PC. You want to be performing at about, I would say 75, 80 per cent of your, what you think is the best tempo. I've always said Just hold it back a little bit. Yes, if things are going well, the ordinance is loving it, then do accelerando keep going. But especially for younger students, I've always said just, just be cautious when you first begin because you will be feeling a bit nervous and naturally, you'll want to erase forwards with the tempo, but it's so important as you're walking out there onto the stage that you look like you're having a great time. A smile is, there must be a good quote here. I can't think of one off the top my head, but smiling is so important and it immediately puts people at ease. 4. Making mistakes : Errors, mistakes, wrong notes. These things are going to happen. I think as soon as we acknowledge as performers that live music isn't about perfection, isn't about going playing exactly what is on the score to the nth degree. The thing is that's actually impossible because only a computer or something programs to replicate exactly what it sees. We'll be able to do that. The thing is we've got to remember we are human and by our very nature, make imperfection and we are emotional beings. And we have that. If you took that away from, if you took the emotion and the joy and the spontaneity and the curiosity away from music-making, it will just be so boring. Can you imagine just if somebody who was just playing the notes? Look at Vladimir Horowitz is concerts. We have recordings of his live concerts and he gets the final page of scores and just be playing into, let's say, dare I say it wrong notes all over the place and it doesn't make them any less of a, of an expert performer. The audiences loved what he was doing and the character that he had, and how emotionally involved he was with the music. I think this is so, so important. If a mistake happens early in a piece, please don't let that then ruin the rest of your performance by worrying about I made that mistake, I've ruined it. It's pretty rare that audiences noticed these things. But what they do notice is if we give little cues. If for instance, if you make a mistake and you go back and you replay that bar correctly, It's sort of like, I wish I hadn't made that mistake. I'm going to correct myself immediately, so try not to do that. Keep going in the music as if nothing has happened. Keep calm and carry on as they say. I think that's so important because if, if you replay or if you shrug or if you go, I've heard sighing before in performances, kind of tossing all of these things. But they're less, the audience knows the better. Remember, unless they're a little bit strange, they're not gonna be sat there following the score and ringing every moment that when slightly wrong. So just remember that the performers are here. Remember you've lived with this music for a number of days or weeks or months or years. You know, this music, these performance or hearing it for the very first time. There was a great tradition back in the days of Mozart and those great bastions of classical music that there was an improvised 83 elements. Some of their music was made up on the spot. And then you got to remember that there's something to be said for the idea that what we're doing is fresh, it's new, it's creative, and it's sort of occurring in real time now on the spot. So it's so funny how audiences aren't looking to sort of critique you and they wanting to, to enjoy what you're sharing with them. And then it's an offering, isn't it? We're sharing the music-making with our audiences and opening their ears to our interpretation. You get it quite a lot in jazz as well, where, where performance are playing, they're improvising a solo and they perceive they played a role in the way that correct, that is simply split twice. And something that happens again ceases to become a wrong mate. It's actually become part of the score and parts of the interest. And that's so, I think so important that in terms of dealing with errors, keep playing. Don't overanalyze. Remember that the audience doesn't know the music as well as you do. You are the expert in the room. 5. Receiving feedback : Now, dealing with feedback is quite a tricky area because I guess it depends who is delivering the feedback. Have you trusted circle around you, your family, close friends, evidence that you've got from recordings that you've, you've done before. Your teacher. I think it's important to have a, a guide no matter what stage of playing you're at. I think it's important to have another pair of ears, the feedback. Now, there's a different type of feedback which comes after a concert where you get somebody well-meaning, say something. I wasn't quite sure about that, but you've got to remember. People have opinions. And the important thing is not everybody's kinda like you and your performance, your interpretation of the piece. And the world would be a boring place if everybody agreed with everybody else's performance of every piece, can you imagine how, how dull the world would pay? And all I say is, go with your heart, go with your interpretation. The one that you've slaved away in the practice room to deliver a tradition of people sort of copying recordings. Oh, because such and such, Glenn Gould played bark in this way. I'm going to do the same. Tried to be your own best pair of ears. And I would say that sometimes learning a piece without a knowledge of the recording is the best way of doing it. Find this quite a lot with singers where they will, they'll hear a certain singer, Maria Callas. So something has sung a piece in a certain way and they will sing it in exactly that way because, well, she's done it. She's famous and try not to compare yourself with the sort of classic artists because it doesn't, it doesn't really work as soon as you start going down that line of well, they performed it that way. You're getting rid of all your individuality in the performance and that's what makes it yours and makes it true to you. I think keeping hold of that, how you've worked in the practice room, you've come up with your interpretation. Obviously, there are certain things that might not work like if you eat an entire piece backwards or something that might not be quite as a composer intended it, but there is a bit of freedom in an interpretation. And I think that's what makes music exciting. When an audience hears it, they don't know quite how they're going to hear it. And I think that's very important. 6. In conclusion : Thanks so much for listening. I really, really enjoyed making this series of videos, something a little bit of a different topic for me. But if you've enjoyed what you've heard or if you haven't, then some feedback would be great because it just shows me what people find interesting and what I can sort of talk about. So just to conclude a couple of points there. So we've been talking about how to perform in public. And I think I can hear a lot of people think really scary. This is one of the scariest things we have to do. And I find that a lot with my students when I'm preparing them in, in music classes, in piano lessons, whatever they go, I can never perform in public. How, how dreadful that idea would be. The other thing that happens is in lessons, a lot of students go, well, I played it perfectly well 10 min ago and now you've come in from the whole thing has gone really wrong. So it's really funny, isn't it? As soon as somebody else starts to listen to us, our performance can start to disintegrate a little bit. And I think it shows how well, you know, a piece, if you can go out on the stage and perform it, I think it shows that you have spent time with the piece, you've studied the piece, you're feeling like you can conquer this challenge. If you're in a position where you're thinking, I just don't know whether I can do this. It's it's like it's on a knife edge. I'm either going to call them and say I'm not going to do the performance or I'm going to do it. I would encourage you to give it a go. I know I would say that because I've made a series of lectures about it. But I would say that the feeling, the sense of achievement that you will get from going through this process. Learning how to cope with the nerves, how to prepare your piece, how to get yourself ready and deal with an audience. All of the things you will learn so much about yourself and just having these challenges along the way. Yeah, you're learning about yourself, but you're also, you're furthering your musical ability. Because if you can perform something in a stressful situation, imagine how that will impact on other areas of your life. I do think for the younger players, for children, especially that the skills that you can learn, interacting with an audience, being up the front, overcoming these challenges are so confidence building that I would encourage every child to learn a musical instrument. I think the, one of the most important takeaways from this series of classes is the idea that we can never achieve absolute perfection in a piece because it's not human. As humans, we have this level of emotion and we'd like to shape the music and create drama intention, but also lightness and shade and interest along the way. So please don't be discouraged if in your first experience of performance you do end up making a couple of mistakes along the way. Because remember there's nobody sat in the audience with the score is going to be marking you at the end. Smile. Look content because it's such a, such an important thing. How does an audience know how well the performance is going? It's not always just about playing the notes. It's about how you walk onto the stage, the air of confidence that you bring to the characterization of the piece that you're doing. I think that's so important. How you hold yourself on the stage and just be, have that sense of well, you've done the preparation, you've been in the practice room for all these weeks. It's your interpretation. Please go to the stage with confidence. It keeps smiling and these are the keys. I do hope that you found this series of lessons useful. I've really enjoyed making them. And any feedback down below is, I'd be really grateful for so, thanks so much. And until next time, all the very best.